The Way of Soup
The Way of Soup is like John Steinbeck's great American novel, The Grapes of Wrath... pretty much everything gets added to the pot, with what salt, pepper, and herbs may still be on the shelf... and it never gets brought to a boil, oh it might get close, but a stir with the long-handled spoon and a touch to the knob that lowers the flame a tad, and the soup just rolls, settles down again, and sits there simmering up at the world... just simmering up at the world... maybe a hundred, and maybe two hundred hungry mouths to feed today... and everyday... year after year... this is the "monasticism" of the Kitchen in Chinatown-America... outside, the train whistles and a rumble shakes the building... more folks either coming or going... and some may have bought tickets...
Everyday in the Soup Kitchen is like climbing into that old rattle-truck with Ma Joad, and Tom at the wheel, and the Rose of Sharon looking apprehensive at Ma's side: no one knows what is coming next, or who, or why... all that's known is that there will certainly be a coming... which is an entirely different sort of poverty. There is the poverty of the farm: scraping by and working like a dog. There is the poverty of the city: too many people and not enough work and days that just sort of pile up until they become a knife that starts, all on its own, to slice away at your soul. There is the poverty of quit: run out of gas can't fill out another form lost the car lost the job lost the house lost the room got tickets out of town missed the train hitchhiked me and the family until the girl wet her pants and the car started to smell and we were told to get out here. And there is the poverty of the Kitchen: show up, do the best you can with whatever is at hand, talk but mostly listen, try real hard to keep believing when everything screams otherwise, and go home to other expectations which slowly still and quiet the life and the dream and then it's the grind of grace that grips by the scruff of the neck and refuses to let go, no matter the sin in both head and hand...
Poverty is the fierce glory of Ma Joad who can't do anything other than rise in the morning... poverty is the fire stoking the heart of Tom -- and the millions more like him -- who were born wearing the hat of justice and god damn it but every time it gets knocked off it just somehow grows all by itself until there it is again, sitting right there, forcing him to speak and do things that only a fool out of his mind would do... and poverty is the Rose of Sharon who watches loss after loss, who experiences her own shattering, and from that dark place of Nothingness, blossoms into food for the hungry and so becomes the everlasting "welcome home" that roots every poverty in the absolute Poverty of God...
Dorothy Day, inspired by Peter Maurin, put a pot of soup on the stove back in the Great Depression. and for fifty years kept the soup going, adding what could be added... baking bread, and getting old bread ready to be tossed from the markets and baker's shops: soup, bread, and the psalms, and hot coffee poured into donated mugs and held tightly in rugged and scarred hands. Wars came, of course, with their usual stories of the rich and powerful abusing another nation and then a welling-anger that unleashes monsters of hate and violence: and the young are sent off to kill and be killed until the fury itself finally dies and then the women pick up the pieces and the world rights itself for another little while: and Dorothy was always speaking her mind: "War is not the answer" and "Love your enemies": and she went to jail... and ate soup... The last time she was jailed was when she was arrested demonstrating with Cesar Chavez and striking farm workers in California... the golden land of dreams for the Joad family...
Dorothy had only just died a few years before we began to "feed the hungry" in Salinas: the first 65 sandwiches grew to over 2 million meals in thirty years: the long line of beautiful souls who received soup from my hands -- and in turn saved and resurrected my life many times over -- are like a small sea of faces that wade in and out of my consciousness like the effortless ebb and flow of the blue Pacific: some who linger are Leo, Jason, Wild Bill, Paloma, Mark, California, Suzy, Rosie, Sarge, Piano Joe, Junior, Fresno, Veejay, Blackjack, Patricia, Connie, Eleanor, Jose, Jim, Jody, John, David, Stephanie, Johnny, Bob, Pam, Sunny, Dwain, Michael, Gloria,Tony, Martha, and Kalai... To mention a few is only an admission that an endless list of names is beside the point. The point is always this: poverty has a face, poverty is a story, and poverty is a call to service, surrender, and solidarity...
St. Ambrose wrote that, "All who wish to return to paradise must be tested by the fire." Of course, he could very well have written, "must be tested by the soup" (and perhaps he considered it), but it sounds far less dramatic than does fire. But what is it, exactly, that needs burning? There are stories that St. Francis used to sprinkle ashes on his food -- but considering that he ate only what he had begged, his bowl probably contained little better than slop, so why bother with ashes? Burnt food tastes awful: a taste of burn ruins a good pot of soup, although there is an herb that can effectively mask the burnt taste if the burning wasn't horrific. Is it your left foot that needs burning, or just your collection of bad attitudes? Is the point, instead, that we all simply must suffer as penalty for having lived? If so, then why must so many millions only know life as suffering -- with no relief whatsoever -- for each breath of their being? And why are there others who live in untold splendor -- with the best in everything -- for each and every one of their breaths? Maybe Ambrose, Francis, and Dorothy were each demonstrating something entirely different: and we just missed it?
To ponder the reality of poverty one must inevitably move on into pondering the liberation of the poor: either that or one is just another big-time capitalist or theologian. The Way of Soup is not about burning -- although mistakes can happen: instead, it is about cooking and "being cooked". Liberation passes through the "fire" of a rEvolutionary transformation: like a potato, which can be eaten raw, but which utterly transforms in its nature if gently simmered so that it literally melts upon the tongue... The Way of Soup is the daily surrender to the divinely human need to eat in fellowship with other human beings: and to show up, again and again, and cook. The Way of Soup is the daily service of good food, hearty hugs, welcoming conversation, a sharing of stories, the gentle inquiry of needs, and the delightful advocacy for and of possibilities... And the Way of Soup is the "fire" -- that truly cooks -- by means of a daily solidarity: empathy recognizes another's suffering as one's own... compassion realizes the need for action and helps shoulder another's burdens... but solidarity is a step beyond both empathy and compassion into something entirely different: solidarity is the daily awakening into the divine mystery of "no difference" between my brother, my sister, and myself: "I am You, You are Me, and We are All Together": the illusion of being a separate self has been cooked out of us by the sacred action of a "simmering Love": until all that remains is a hearty mystic-blend of divine ingredients... Okay, you can call that a "burning" or a "fire" if you wish, but it is also a good soup...
This soup is the food of destiny in the banquet hall wherein everyone who has been spun out upon the margins of humanity have been brought back into the center. This liberation has two essential characteristics: the first is the disappearance of the separate self, and the second is the re-creation of every breaking into the Love that should have been the experienced reality of every being. To be sure, suffering will be present in the life of the cooking rEvolutionary: for all separation, exploitation, oppression, injustice, and act of violence to cease a radical commitment must inspire and ignite every drop of life in the cook -- until full awakening and everyone's liberation is achieved. Stepping into this "fire" -- or jumping directly into the soup-pot -- is to confront, directly, the One Reality before every apparent separation... perhaps this was the reason for Francis' ashes sprinkled on his food, and Dorothy's insistence that she would organize, demonstrate, and go to jail in the pursuit of peace and justice...
The Spoon in the Bowl
Awakening might be facilitated by significant periods of contemplative silence and solitude, but it is never a solitary affair. Why else do you think the Trappist hermit, Thomas Merton, wrote so passionately about race relations, war and peace, Gandhi and nonviolence, inter-faith experiences and dialogue, and everything else under the sun? Even to begin to awaken is to call everything into question -- for the perspective of an opened heart knows no boundaries: and to personally accept responsibility for the suffering of every "other" is to plant both of one's feet upon the path of a mutual liberation. Upon his enlightenment, what was the very next thing that the Buddha did? He put his spoon in the bowl... he didn't escape into some sort of blue perfection: he lived exactly what he began to teach: he withheld his hand from no one, but accepted all and practiced compassion toward all beings... And what of Yeshua the Poet? He was known to hang out with prostitutes and others considered, by the good people, as sinners: he was a winemaker who enjoyed a good party: he fed the hungry, and as he did so, he too placed his spoon in the bowl...
"The Spoon in the Bowl" is evidence that empathy and compassion have evolved into solidarity: every thought of manipulation, control, or of domination has been "cooked" until only that which remains is a fine, clear, broth free from all taint of fear and one is, perhaps for the first time, simply a free human being. Free: in substance, not lauded in mythos. Free to engage every "other" at the deepest levels of their ontological being. Free to surrender and free to serve: both of which are an entirely different style of love-making from the styles for sale on the so-called "free market". Free to live, everyday, "I am You, You are Me, and We are All Together: One". This profoundly radical freedom to love is at the very heart of awakening, enlightenment, realization, and salvation: it is the one sure sign of liberation...
Liberation means an end to all exploitation and oppression: no human being, no corporation of human beings, and no national state of human beings has the right to prosper upon the backs of other human beings. Liberation means equality between male and female: equal opportunities and equal access to every avenue of decision-making and exercise of power: all power exists as a means of service -- any other use of power is a misuse and abuse of power. Liberation means the economic, political, and spiritual practice of "Welcome Home": you are worthy of the very best: and this precious blue Planet is our home, sufficient for the well-being of all and every life upon it, with the practice of justice and reverence... "The Spoon in the Bowl" is the struggle, the organizing, the building (the cooking and serving) of the New Creation in the midst of our everyday lives... Liberation is that which necessarily follows after our freedom to love, and to love wildly, and without exception or limits... And this is key: the awakened one eats from the very same bowl as everyone else: Yeshua dipped his bread in the bowl held by the hands of the prostitute... and thereby resurrected human community... and the glorious freedom to care once again about, about, absolutely everything!
"The Spoon in the Bowl" is life under the influence and intention of caring: "I care, therefore I am!" Our transcendental human need for meaning and purpose is localized in the immanence of caring: "I care, therefore I form community". Our isolated and lonely crowds of "me, myself, and I" needs liberation into "I am You, You are Me, and We are All Together: One": every step that we take upon this precious blue Planet leaves a footprint somewhere on her beautiful Body. Think of that! Every thought, every word spoken, and every action that we take leaves behind an imprint upon the Consciousness that connects us all: so it is incumbent upon us to "practice beauty and kindness" and so reduce, steadily, the suffering that is everywhere so evident...
"I care, therefore I build the New Creation". What consumed Gandhi's attention and commitment -- even as he led a liberation movement in India against the British Empire? The answer is really simple: daily life! Or rather, the living of our lives in community, service, and rEvolution... or as has long been said in the Catholic Worker Movement, "Editors also cook!" If every step that we take is to plant a flower in Paradise (which is a good way to look at it), then we each and all have equal shares in cooking, cleaning, building, gardening, maintenance, planning, decision-making, organizing, child-care, adult-care, and every other aspect of life in community... "I care, therefore I practice beauty"... Years and years ago, Bob Dylan wrote, "How does it feel, how does it feel, to be without a home"... and Dorothy Day wrote, "We have all known the long loneliness and we have learned that the only solution is love and that love comes with community." The Way of Soup -- and the will to place one's spoon in the bowl -- is the very "stuff" of the mystic-activist life: and it is all so very, very, good! Go ahead, dip your spoon in the bowl... scoop out just a bit for a taste... blow on it gently so that none of it spills... slide the spoon into your mouth... close your eyes and taste how good it is... now open your eyes and look out upon a brand new world that has been anxiously awaiting your arrival! "Welcome Home!"
The Sweet Surprise
So, have you concluded that the up-shot of this little essay is an effort to convince you to open a Soup Kitchen? Perhaps you should -- but that really isn't for me to suggest: for that which is most important is that you live in such a way that you allow, no, that you encourage, your heart to break wide open... and that you leak out all over the place... because only when you are empty of your "little self" can your "real self" emerge from the exile of life lived at a distance from the One Reality. My path was the "way of soup": it was in a Soup Kitchen that I had the opportunity to "be emptied": and I fought that emptying tooth and nail! And eventually, I lost...
Liberation's "other half" is contemplation: what, or rather, whom do you see when you look in a mirror? Certainly, if your name is "Jane", you will answer correctly and say, "Jane"... ah, but here's the rub: that is the answer required by the false reality of "separation": follow that path to the bitter end and what do you get? Well, take a look at the news: climate change, planetary devastation, terrorism, wanton killings, the worship of guns, inequality, exploitation, injustice, violence against women everywhere, oppression of minorities, religious triumphalism, mass poverty, and children still dying everyday from starvation: and still Power demands more... So if "Jane" is the wrong correct answer, what should be said instead?
Contemplation, when experienced hand-in-hand with the struggle for liberation, is the direct gaze into the mirror of the One Reality: and seeing: You: seeing Every Other: seeing Only One: "I am You, You are Me, and We are All Together: One". Through the union of contemplation and liberation, the Holy One has the freedom to get a little wild... When Gandhi said that nonviolence, or love, was the most powerful force in the world, he was speaking as one who had glanced into the mirror and could no longer see his own face: he saw reflected back, the British Empire... he saw reflected back, the leper in the hovel, and he saw reflected back, the Beauty of the Holy One... all looking back at him: with adoration in their eyes... from the clear-eyed perspective of this most radical of glances: love was certainly the most powerful force in the world... and not because love could conquer hate, oppression, or violence... but because only love could transform and re-create hate, oppression, and violence...
Stripped of the illusion of separation and unable to sit any longer upon the stool of Power, it is possible to awaken... It is possible to awaken into the sweet surprise of emptiness being full, and of powerlessness being invincible. All of the props of Power, like predatory capitalism which asserts that unlimited profit is the single most important factor in global economic well-being, simply fall away in the enlightenment that there is always enough for everyone: there is no real race to the top of anything worth getting to... Enlightenment knows that the Universe -- and this precious blue Planet -- was created in the Divine Condition of Enough: there is always enough for everyone's well-being (of course, the catch is that we must share!)... "The Way of Soup" actually means that "I", the cook, am doing two things: I am not hoarding and I am not cooking to change those who partake of the soup: "The Way of Soup" is the slow-learning that the "gift" is the thing, and that "I" am the one being cooked (or changed!). Love recognizes the "other" as one's very own Sacred Self, and thus the will to Power Over Others is transformed into Solidarity With "Others"... the "outside" of service, has become the "inside" of a common table, around which server and served both sit, and together struggle for their mutual liberation... [It is important to note that many "service organizations" evolve to the very edge of getting to this point, only to back away and instead hunker down in the familiar, and profitable, place of "doing good" and marginalizing justice. Why? Perhaps because things can start to get messy: "losing" control prompts the reaction of "getting control"... and so visions get lost, but Boards can relax, "because someone is in charge"...]
The union of liberation and contemplation in the daily life of the mystic-activist is to glance into the mirror and to recognize the One Reality for what It is: a breath, a wind that lifts up and projects forward, and a touch that holds and caresses: to surrender one's (at best) feeble attempts at control of life (having already set aside the desire to dominate life) is the essential work of contemplation... While the essential work of liberation is the choice to live in the firm resolve of "I will not commit murder"... Love is the will for safety and blessing towards each and every "other": economics, politics, and religion are all both global and local as is the Unity of Solidarity... Love is the will to union, Power is the profit of Division: the daily life of the mystic-activist is the bridge of transformation...
Now, here's another sweet surprise: "The Way of Soup" could also be the Way of Art, Music, Literature, Teaching, Mentoring, Nursing, Street Sweeping, Bricklaying, Road building, Carpentry, and on and on! The direct experience of the One Reality in Liberation and Contemplation is everywhere Possible! So you see, you could, but you don't have to open a Soup Kitchen: perhaps you are an artist: you could open an art gallery: you could freely teach art to youth: you could help beautify lives and neighborhoods: you could... you could... Or maybe you are a teacher: you could begin an afternoon book club that would eventually write and publish your own books... Or maybe you are a musician: you could open a coffeehouse that features music of local musicians, and sponsor book discussions that connect worlds, and serve free coffee to the homeless, and open a recording studio to produce records and trade them for records produced in Third World countries... Or maybe you want to start a small business -- what shall you do? -- well, how about starting a silk-screening company that features revolutionary T-shirts with the words and images of folks like Dorothy Day, Nelson Mandela, Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta, MLK, Wangari Maathai, Vandana Shiva... and on and on: for youth need heroes!... Or maybe you have some land that is sitting idle somewhere and you could find folks who want to "Imagine Paradise and Practice Beauty" and so facilitate the opportunity to create another sweet surprise for folks in your area... Whatever your work is -- right in the midst of your daily life -- you can make your path both holy and rEvolutionary by the practice of "service, surrender, and solidarity"... Whatever you do can be as beautiful and sacred as you: if through your work you give your love to the world... You see, "The Way of Soup" is really just the will to love magnificently, with as few limitations or barriers as is humanly possible: and because "I am You, You are Me, and We are All Together": anything and everything is possible!
Rise!
As the sun rises, lift your hands
in greeting: arms held high, tickle
the sky: become as a hollow flute
sounding peace about the world...
follow then the sound of any single note
into the within of everything, from
there, instigate your riot of imagination
until the entire earth is undulating
to the rhythm of the only dance there is...
every song is a verse of the One Song
every move is a leap upward into Only One
every love is a resurrection of the One Love:
listen! as you rise you can hear the steps
of every other coming your way, over
mountains, across the oceans, everyone
is hungry for the secret you've been cooking:
that's all that we want, that's all that we want...
-- Robert Daniel Smith
Resources:
We Rise / Xiuhtezcatl Martinez
Why The Dalai Lama Is A Socialist / Terry Gibbs
Small Is Beautiful / E. F. Schumacher
Everyday in the Soup Kitchen is like climbing into that old rattle-truck with Ma Joad, and Tom at the wheel, and the Rose of Sharon looking apprehensive at Ma's side: no one knows what is coming next, or who, or why... all that's known is that there will certainly be a coming... which is an entirely different sort of poverty. There is the poverty of the farm: scraping by and working like a dog. There is the poverty of the city: too many people and not enough work and days that just sort of pile up until they become a knife that starts, all on its own, to slice away at your soul. There is the poverty of quit: run out of gas can't fill out another form lost the car lost the job lost the house lost the room got tickets out of town missed the train hitchhiked me and the family until the girl wet her pants and the car started to smell and we were told to get out here. And there is the poverty of the Kitchen: show up, do the best you can with whatever is at hand, talk but mostly listen, try real hard to keep believing when everything screams otherwise, and go home to other expectations which slowly still and quiet the life and the dream and then it's the grind of grace that grips by the scruff of the neck and refuses to let go, no matter the sin in both head and hand...
Poverty is the fierce glory of Ma Joad who can't do anything other than rise in the morning... poverty is the fire stoking the heart of Tom -- and the millions more like him -- who were born wearing the hat of justice and god damn it but every time it gets knocked off it just somehow grows all by itself until there it is again, sitting right there, forcing him to speak and do things that only a fool out of his mind would do... and poverty is the Rose of Sharon who watches loss after loss, who experiences her own shattering, and from that dark place of Nothingness, blossoms into food for the hungry and so becomes the everlasting "welcome home" that roots every poverty in the absolute Poverty of God...
Dorothy Day, inspired by Peter Maurin, put a pot of soup on the stove back in the Great Depression. and for fifty years kept the soup going, adding what could be added... baking bread, and getting old bread ready to be tossed from the markets and baker's shops: soup, bread, and the psalms, and hot coffee poured into donated mugs and held tightly in rugged and scarred hands. Wars came, of course, with their usual stories of the rich and powerful abusing another nation and then a welling-anger that unleashes monsters of hate and violence: and the young are sent off to kill and be killed until the fury itself finally dies and then the women pick up the pieces and the world rights itself for another little while: and Dorothy was always speaking her mind: "War is not the answer" and "Love your enemies": and she went to jail... and ate soup... The last time she was jailed was when she was arrested demonstrating with Cesar Chavez and striking farm workers in California... the golden land of dreams for the Joad family...
Dorothy had only just died a few years before we began to "feed the hungry" in Salinas: the first 65 sandwiches grew to over 2 million meals in thirty years: the long line of beautiful souls who received soup from my hands -- and in turn saved and resurrected my life many times over -- are like a small sea of faces that wade in and out of my consciousness like the effortless ebb and flow of the blue Pacific: some who linger are Leo, Jason, Wild Bill, Paloma, Mark, California, Suzy, Rosie, Sarge, Piano Joe, Junior, Fresno, Veejay, Blackjack, Patricia, Connie, Eleanor, Jose, Jim, Jody, John, David, Stephanie, Johnny, Bob, Pam, Sunny, Dwain, Michael, Gloria,Tony, Martha, and Kalai... To mention a few is only an admission that an endless list of names is beside the point. The point is always this: poverty has a face, poverty is a story, and poverty is a call to service, surrender, and solidarity...
St. Ambrose wrote that, "All who wish to return to paradise must be tested by the fire." Of course, he could very well have written, "must be tested by the soup" (and perhaps he considered it), but it sounds far less dramatic than does fire. But what is it, exactly, that needs burning? There are stories that St. Francis used to sprinkle ashes on his food -- but considering that he ate only what he had begged, his bowl probably contained little better than slop, so why bother with ashes? Burnt food tastes awful: a taste of burn ruins a good pot of soup, although there is an herb that can effectively mask the burnt taste if the burning wasn't horrific. Is it your left foot that needs burning, or just your collection of bad attitudes? Is the point, instead, that we all simply must suffer as penalty for having lived? If so, then why must so many millions only know life as suffering -- with no relief whatsoever -- for each breath of their being? And why are there others who live in untold splendor -- with the best in everything -- for each and every one of their breaths? Maybe Ambrose, Francis, and Dorothy were each demonstrating something entirely different: and we just missed it?
To ponder the reality of poverty one must inevitably move on into pondering the liberation of the poor: either that or one is just another big-time capitalist or theologian. The Way of Soup is not about burning -- although mistakes can happen: instead, it is about cooking and "being cooked". Liberation passes through the "fire" of a rEvolutionary transformation: like a potato, which can be eaten raw, but which utterly transforms in its nature if gently simmered so that it literally melts upon the tongue... The Way of Soup is the daily surrender to the divinely human need to eat in fellowship with other human beings: and to show up, again and again, and cook. The Way of Soup is the daily service of good food, hearty hugs, welcoming conversation, a sharing of stories, the gentle inquiry of needs, and the delightful advocacy for and of possibilities... And the Way of Soup is the "fire" -- that truly cooks -- by means of a daily solidarity: empathy recognizes another's suffering as one's own... compassion realizes the need for action and helps shoulder another's burdens... but solidarity is a step beyond both empathy and compassion into something entirely different: solidarity is the daily awakening into the divine mystery of "no difference" between my brother, my sister, and myself: "I am You, You are Me, and We are All Together": the illusion of being a separate self has been cooked out of us by the sacred action of a "simmering Love": until all that remains is a hearty mystic-blend of divine ingredients... Okay, you can call that a "burning" or a "fire" if you wish, but it is also a good soup...
This soup is the food of destiny in the banquet hall wherein everyone who has been spun out upon the margins of humanity have been brought back into the center. This liberation has two essential characteristics: the first is the disappearance of the separate self, and the second is the re-creation of every breaking into the Love that should have been the experienced reality of every being. To be sure, suffering will be present in the life of the cooking rEvolutionary: for all separation, exploitation, oppression, injustice, and act of violence to cease a radical commitment must inspire and ignite every drop of life in the cook -- until full awakening and everyone's liberation is achieved. Stepping into this "fire" -- or jumping directly into the soup-pot -- is to confront, directly, the One Reality before every apparent separation... perhaps this was the reason for Francis' ashes sprinkled on his food, and Dorothy's insistence that she would organize, demonstrate, and go to jail in the pursuit of peace and justice...
The Spoon in the Bowl
Awakening might be facilitated by significant periods of contemplative silence and solitude, but it is never a solitary affair. Why else do you think the Trappist hermit, Thomas Merton, wrote so passionately about race relations, war and peace, Gandhi and nonviolence, inter-faith experiences and dialogue, and everything else under the sun? Even to begin to awaken is to call everything into question -- for the perspective of an opened heart knows no boundaries: and to personally accept responsibility for the suffering of every "other" is to plant both of one's feet upon the path of a mutual liberation. Upon his enlightenment, what was the very next thing that the Buddha did? He put his spoon in the bowl... he didn't escape into some sort of blue perfection: he lived exactly what he began to teach: he withheld his hand from no one, but accepted all and practiced compassion toward all beings... And what of Yeshua the Poet? He was known to hang out with prostitutes and others considered, by the good people, as sinners: he was a winemaker who enjoyed a good party: he fed the hungry, and as he did so, he too placed his spoon in the bowl...
"The Spoon in the Bowl" is evidence that empathy and compassion have evolved into solidarity: every thought of manipulation, control, or of domination has been "cooked" until only that which remains is a fine, clear, broth free from all taint of fear and one is, perhaps for the first time, simply a free human being. Free: in substance, not lauded in mythos. Free to engage every "other" at the deepest levels of their ontological being. Free to surrender and free to serve: both of which are an entirely different style of love-making from the styles for sale on the so-called "free market". Free to live, everyday, "I am You, You are Me, and We are All Together: One". This profoundly radical freedom to love is at the very heart of awakening, enlightenment, realization, and salvation: it is the one sure sign of liberation...
Liberation means an end to all exploitation and oppression: no human being, no corporation of human beings, and no national state of human beings has the right to prosper upon the backs of other human beings. Liberation means equality between male and female: equal opportunities and equal access to every avenue of decision-making and exercise of power: all power exists as a means of service -- any other use of power is a misuse and abuse of power. Liberation means the economic, political, and spiritual practice of "Welcome Home": you are worthy of the very best: and this precious blue Planet is our home, sufficient for the well-being of all and every life upon it, with the practice of justice and reverence... "The Spoon in the Bowl" is the struggle, the organizing, the building (the cooking and serving) of the New Creation in the midst of our everyday lives... Liberation is that which necessarily follows after our freedom to love, and to love wildly, and without exception or limits... And this is key: the awakened one eats from the very same bowl as everyone else: Yeshua dipped his bread in the bowl held by the hands of the prostitute... and thereby resurrected human community... and the glorious freedom to care once again about, about, absolutely everything!
"The Spoon in the Bowl" is life under the influence and intention of caring: "I care, therefore I am!" Our transcendental human need for meaning and purpose is localized in the immanence of caring: "I care, therefore I form community". Our isolated and lonely crowds of "me, myself, and I" needs liberation into "I am You, You are Me, and We are All Together: One": every step that we take upon this precious blue Planet leaves a footprint somewhere on her beautiful Body. Think of that! Every thought, every word spoken, and every action that we take leaves behind an imprint upon the Consciousness that connects us all: so it is incumbent upon us to "practice beauty and kindness" and so reduce, steadily, the suffering that is everywhere so evident...
"I care, therefore I build the New Creation". What consumed Gandhi's attention and commitment -- even as he led a liberation movement in India against the British Empire? The answer is really simple: daily life! Or rather, the living of our lives in community, service, and rEvolution... or as has long been said in the Catholic Worker Movement, "Editors also cook!" If every step that we take is to plant a flower in Paradise (which is a good way to look at it), then we each and all have equal shares in cooking, cleaning, building, gardening, maintenance, planning, decision-making, organizing, child-care, adult-care, and every other aspect of life in community... "I care, therefore I practice beauty"... Years and years ago, Bob Dylan wrote, "How does it feel, how does it feel, to be without a home"... and Dorothy Day wrote, "We have all known the long loneliness and we have learned that the only solution is love and that love comes with community." The Way of Soup -- and the will to place one's spoon in the bowl -- is the very "stuff" of the mystic-activist life: and it is all so very, very, good! Go ahead, dip your spoon in the bowl... scoop out just a bit for a taste... blow on it gently so that none of it spills... slide the spoon into your mouth... close your eyes and taste how good it is... now open your eyes and look out upon a brand new world that has been anxiously awaiting your arrival! "Welcome Home!"
The Sweet Surprise
So, have you concluded that the up-shot of this little essay is an effort to convince you to open a Soup Kitchen? Perhaps you should -- but that really isn't for me to suggest: for that which is most important is that you live in such a way that you allow, no, that you encourage, your heart to break wide open... and that you leak out all over the place... because only when you are empty of your "little self" can your "real self" emerge from the exile of life lived at a distance from the One Reality. My path was the "way of soup": it was in a Soup Kitchen that I had the opportunity to "be emptied": and I fought that emptying tooth and nail! And eventually, I lost...
Liberation's "other half" is contemplation: what, or rather, whom do you see when you look in a mirror? Certainly, if your name is "Jane", you will answer correctly and say, "Jane"... ah, but here's the rub: that is the answer required by the false reality of "separation": follow that path to the bitter end and what do you get? Well, take a look at the news: climate change, planetary devastation, terrorism, wanton killings, the worship of guns, inequality, exploitation, injustice, violence against women everywhere, oppression of minorities, religious triumphalism, mass poverty, and children still dying everyday from starvation: and still Power demands more... So if "Jane" is the wrong correct answer, what should be said instead?
Contemplation, when experienced hand-in-hand with the struggle for liberation, is the direct gaze into the mirror of the One Reality: and seeing: You: seeing Every Other: seeing Only One: "I am You, You are Me, and We are All Together: One". Through the union of contemplation and liberation, the Holy One has the freedom to get a little wild... When Gandhi said that nonviolence, or love, was the most powerful force in the world, he was speaking as one who had glanced into the mirror and could no longer see his own face: he saw reflected back, the British Empire... he saw reflected back, the leper in the hovel, and he saw reflected back, the Beauty of the Holy One... all looking back at him: with adoration in their eyes... from the clear-eyed perspective of this most radical of glances: love was certainly the most powerful force in the world... and not because love could conquer hate, oppression, or violence... but because only love could transform and re-create hate, oppression, and violence...
Stripped of the illusion of separation and unable to sit any longer upon the stool of Power, it is possible to awaken... It is possible to awaken into the sweet surprise of emptiness being full, and of powerlessness being invincible. All of the props of Power, like predatory capitalism which asserts that unlimited profit is the single most important factor in global economic well-being, simply fall away in the enlightenment that there is always enough for everyone: there is no real race to the top of anything worth getting to... Enlightenment knows that the Universe -- and this precious blue Planet -- was created in the Divine Condition of Enough: there is always enough for everyone's well-being (of course, the catch is that we must share!)... "The Way of Soup" actually means that "I", the cook, am doing two things: I am not hoarding and I am not cooking to change those who partake of the soup: "The Way of Soup" is the slow-learning that the "gift" is the thing, and that "I" am the one being cooked (or changed!). Love recognizes the "other" as one's very own Sacred Self, and thus the will to Power Over Others is transformed into Solidarity With "Others"... the "outside" of service, has become the "inside" of a common table, around which server and served both sit, and together struggle for their mutual liberation... [It is important to note that many "service organizations" evolve to the very edge of getting to this point, only to back away and instead hunker down in the familiar, and profitable, place of "doing good" and marginalizing justice. Why? Perhaps because things can start to get messy: "losing" control prompts the reaction of "getting control"... and so visions get lost, but Boards can relax, "because someone is in charge"...]
The union of liberation and contemplation in the daily life of the mystic-activist is to glance into the mirror and to recognize the One Reality for what It is: a breath, a wind that lifts up and projects forward, and a touch that holds and caresses: to surrender one's (at best) feeble attempts at control of life (having already set aside the desire to dominate life) is the essential work of contemplation... While the essential work of liberation is the choice to live in the firm resolve of "I will not commit murder"... Love is the will for safety and blessing towards each and every "other": economics, politics, and religion are all both global and local as is the Unity of Solidarity... Love is the will to union, Power is the profit of Division: the daily life of the mystic-activist is the bridge of transformation...
Now, here's another sweet surprise: "The Way of Soup" could also be the Way of Art, Music, Literature, Teaching, Mentoring, Nursing, Street Sweeping, Bricklaying, Road building, Carpentry, and on and on! The direct experience of the One Reality in Liberation and Contemplation is everywhere Possible! So you see, you could, but you don't have to open a Soup Kitchen: perhaps you are an artist: you could open an art gallery: you could freely teach art to youth: you could help beautify lives and neighborhoods: you could... you could... Or maybe you are a teacher: you could begin an afternoon book club that would eventually write and publish your own books... Or maybe you are a musician: you could open a coffeehouse that features music of local musicians, and sponsor book discussions that connect worlds, and serve free coffee to the homeless, and open a recording studio to produce records and trade them for records produced in Third World countries... Or maybe you want to start a small business -- what shall you do? -- well, how about starting a silk-screening company that features revolutionary T-shirts with the words and images of folks like Dorothy Day, Nelson Mandela, Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta, MLK, Wangari Maathai, Vandana Shiva... and on and on: for youth need heroes!... Or maybe you have some land that is sitting idle somewhere and you could find folks who want to "Imagine Paradise and Practice Beauty" and so facilitate the opportunity to create another sweet surprise for folks in your area... Whatever your work is -- right in the midst of your daily life -- you can make your path both holy and rEvolutionary by the practice of "service, surrender, and solidarity"... Whatever you do can be as beautiful and sacred as you: if through your work you give your love to the world... You see, "The Way of Soup" is really just the will to love magnificently, with as few limitations or barriers as is humanly possible: and because "I am You, You are Me, and We are All Together": anything and everything is possible!
Rise!
As the sun rises, lift your hands
in greeting: arms held high, tickle
the sky: become as a hollow flute
sounding peace about the world...
follow then the sound of any single note
into the within of everything, from
there, instigate your riot of imagination
until the entire earth is undulating
to the rhythm of the only dance there is...
every song is a verse of the One Song
every move is a leap upward into Only One
every love is a resurrection of the One Love:
listen! as you rise you can hear the steps
of every other coming your way, over
mountains, across the oceans, everyone
is hungry for the secret you've been cooking:
that's all that we want, that's all that we want...
-- Robert Daniel Smith
Resources:
We Rise / Xiuhtezcatl Martinez
Why The Dalai Lama Is A Socialist / Terry Gibbs
Small Is Beautiful / E. F. Schumacher