Dear Friends,
I missed writing to you all last week, but four doctor’s appointments, including one halfway across the state, kept me a bit occupied. This is how you live in a body that fails the structural integrity test. But it’s not all medical appointments and it’s not all bad. More than that, I like to think that being disabled is one of many possible revelatory experiences. (Nancy Eisland’s “Disabled God” is a useful introduction if this sounds interesting to you.)
Anyway, I’m back in the swing of things this week, tackling my projects, trying to squeeze 30 hours of work into a 24 hour day. I think most of us, especially those of you with children at home, are always doing that. My mother, for one, always called the car her office, to the point that she kept a stapler in her vehicle. She never knew what might come up. I take a similar approach to leaving home, but with medical gear. Still, as much as we all try to do more with less - less time or supplies or experience - we’re not exactly feeding the 5000.
When crowds turned up to hear Jesus speak, far from any village, his disciples were pretty sure dinner was out of the question. The crowds were so great and the resources so little. Jesus wouldn’t hear of it, though. Blessing the bread, he broke it, and as it made its way through the crowds, it proved endless. After everyone had eaten, there seemed to be more fragments than there had been at the beginning, overflowing a brigade of baskets.
There’s a saying that “Gratitude turns what we have into enough,” and sometimes that’s true. Certainly this seems like part of the story of what happened on the beach that day, after Jesus finished preaching. But it’s not that simple. In the moment that Jesus declared he would feed the people with what was there, he was also committing to an act of radical creativity. He was making do. And we can, too.
Consider this an invitation to small actions. Sometimes, radical creativity looks like being a good steward of your resources by addressing issues like food waste. I, for one, am the sort of person who saves vegetable scraps to make stock or creates baked goods when fruit is threatening to turn rotten. A few weeks ago we even made avocado brownies out of some very sad avocados, and that’s just what we can do at home.
My parish’s EBT/SNAP/HIP accessible monthly farmer’s market donates its leftover produce for redistribution via Good Food in Every Hood. We grow enough food that no one should go hungry. It’s inequality, capitalism, and the way these structures encourage food waste rather than access that leaves many people with bare shelves. What can you do in your community to support food access?
At a smaller scale, radical creativity can also provide the conditions that make discovery possible. What happens when your child’s art supplies run low? You could refill and replace items, or you could see what happens. For so long, we have created from the scraps - quilts and collages, practical items pieces together from scraps. Poets often say that constraints allow us to say new things. Constraints can be productive, make us more aware and less wasteful.
As for me, the constraints of my physical body offer me a different array of calls and opportunities. It lets me see things differently and forces me to be creative in daily situations. That in itself opens me to new perspectives and, as a result, to new people. What do you see when you change what you do? What is created from your willingness to take creative risks? Children are masters of this art. What are they showing you this week about what is possible?
Open Eyes, Open Heart,
A. Bird