it's compost time?

It's compost time!

...I hope.

I've been thinking about starting to compost for a while. I remember my grandfather had a compost pile near his garden in the backyard, and we'd carry out leftover foods and scraps after meals. At Wadmalaw (see last post) I was the compost champ, diligently emptying the bowl once or twice a day. As one of our hosts, Trenholm, put it, "Isn't it cool to think that you're returning it to the Mother?"

...And it is. By composting, I participate in the natural cycle of death and life, consuming and producing, eating and feeding that which feeds us. There is definitely a spirituality in this process - a deeper recognition of our connection within Creation and with other created Beings.

Apparently, it is a spirituality that Suzy does not share.

When I floated this idea to her in the car, she was...hmmm...shall we say, less-than-enthusiastic? I believe her exact answer was, "Hell no. Look at me. (Remember: I'm driving the car.) Look at me. There is no way in hell you are going to put a big pile of trash in my backyard."

And no matter how much I tried to explain the process of composting, that it wasn't really "trash," and the benefits of composting, she wasn't going to hear of it. 

Maybe I can start a pile without her noticing...

Here's some info on composting.

EPA Flyer on Backyard Composting

Top 10 Composting Tips

How to Start Composting

If you know of other information or resources, or if you have any experience with composting - good or bad - let me know!

day nineteen: country

Suzy's Grammy is "country as sin," as Suzy likes to say (although I don't know why sin would be associated with rural areas). And like most country folk, she's a different breed. Here's a little excerpt from Suzy's blog about the first time I met her Grammy:

     When I first took Greg to meet my Grammy, I walked into my grandparent’s home with Greg following behind me.  Grammy was on the back porch so I bee-lined to open the door for her to meet my sweet, new man.  Before I could tell her that I brought someone for her to meet, she blessed me with the funniest moment of my life.  Not noticing Greg, she started into“Hey Suzy….did you hear about my friend?  She has shingles all the way down her butt crack and straight up into her a-gina.”Yes, you read that right.  She calls a vagina an “A-gina”She also calls a penis a “Wobjanger,” but that’s a whole other story.     I awkwardly introduced Greg to her after he turned a shade of red saved only for these kind of moments.  I thought she would play it off, but oh no.  She then launched into“Hey Greg, glad you’re here…. Did you hear about my friend??”
She is one-of-a-kind.

Grammy with her great-grandson

As a child, Grammy only had shoes in the winter, and even those were made of canvas sewn together. The house she lived in growing up didn't have a true floor, just boards with gaps so wide that if you dropped a pencil, coin, etc., it was gone.

Grammy also volunteered for years at the North Greenville Food Crisis Ministry, where we donated food today. Suzy would go up there and help out when she wasn't in school or teaching, and then they'd always get hot dogs at the restaurant next door.

But Grammy has retired from volunteering and the restaurant has closed.

What hasn't changed, however, are the needs of the people who come to the NGFCM for assistance. Most of them have a deeply ingrained work ethic and hold blue-collar or labor intensive jobs, but can't make enough to meet their basic needs (even working for minimum wage...imagine that!). They've been hit harder than most in a bad economy. They are country folk, just like Grammy.

But she hasn't forgotten her roots. Having grown up in poverty, she grew to serve those still firmly in it's grip. She's modeled that kind of service for her granddaughter and great-grandson, and even for her grandson-in-law. Grammy has known God's blessings in her life - in her need and in her giving - even if she is "country as sin."

A sign on the door of the ministry
"May all who enter our doors know God's blessing, either in receiving during their time of need or give to those in crisis."

day eight: in the kitchen

Lemonade or water?

I asked that over 100 times as people passed through the serving line. The most interaction I had with the patrons of the Project Host soup kitchen was a small smile and a brush of my gloved hand as I handed them their drink.

It was meaningful, but sadly distant. I was freshly showered, had on an apron over my recently washed clothes, and wore plastic on my hand as to avoid skin-to-skin contact. I worked hard busying myself to get things ready for their arrival. I chopped, peeled, mixed, and poured in order for these people to be welcomed, but even my appearance signaled the differences between us. They were dirty, rundown, and desperate. I was clean, enthusiastic, and hopeful...maybe naively so.

We made fruit salad, peeling and segmenting an entire box of oranges.

I went into the soup kitchen to try to show love to and share life with those who need food the most. (After all, that is my hope for these 40 days...to care for people using food.) But I realized the distance between my hopes and where I actually was. I was behind a counter, not around a table.

Sure, I offered them a cold drink and gave them my most heartfelt "How are you?" I wanted them to know that I KNEW they were just like me. But they didn't, and they aren't. We are different. We were separated. I was standing behind a three foot wide stainless steel serving line, covered in protective clothing and surrounded by rules of how to interact and how much to give.

At the beginning of the serving line...

I know there can be transformative moments around a table. But can there be those kinds of moments when we're separated by a counter? Don't get me wrong: I've worked in a non-profit and I know the need for rules and regulations. But as a volunteer, those same rules and regs felt so constraining and so inhumane. I wanted to go into the cafeteria, sit, and eat. I wanted to, but I didn't...and maybe that's my fault. That counter might as well have been a wall - me on one side, them on the other.

In the kitchen, I felt more like Martha than Mary. When Jesus visits the sisters' home, Mary sits with Jesus while Martha is busy cooking. Today I was Martha. I was busy making sure everything was prepared and ready, without much willingness or even opportunity to sit and visit. There are usually "counters" of some kind in our way: time constraints, societal expectations, or just wanting a moment to ourselves without having to deal with other people. But whatever the reason, we rarely take the time to just sit with others to share a meal, or to share life.

The kitchen was still transformative, though. There was a strange mix of volunteers, all working together to make this meal happen - a retired man from Buffalo, a woman originally from England, high school students with special needs and their teacher, a woman working off community service hours. I took pictures of several signs around the place, but I wish I had taken a picture of the one above the ovens and center island. In letters a foot high, it read: "God's Kitchen." This morning, it was. We were cooking up God's kingdom right there in an commercial kitchen.

Artwork capturing the spirit of Project Host, created by students at the SC Governor's School for the Arts and Humanities.

Nice paraphrase of 1 John 4:16.

I'll leave you with this, though: Even if we can't share life around the table, even when we can't be as relational as we'd like, we can at least show love for the "least of these" (Matt 25:40), offering food to the hungry. And maybe if enough of us do that together, we'll find that God, too, is in the kitchen.

forty days of culinary care

Chocolate. Alcohol. Meat. Sweet tea.

These are just a few of the things that I’ve given up in past years for Lent. But this year I wanted to do it differently. Enter: my brilliant wife. Suzy came up with the idea of blogging through these 40 days of Lent, finding ways to care for others using food.

So here’s what we’re going to do:

40 days of Culinary Care. Each day of Lent*—Ash Wednesday (February 22^nd this year) through Holy Saturday (April 7^th this year)—we are going to share love by sharing food. Sometimes we’ll be cooking. Sometimes we’ll be donating. Sometimes we’ll be serving. Sometimes we’ll be getting really creative, because it’s hard to think of 40 different ways to do this.

I’ll be blogging each day to share what we’ve done. I feel kind of weird doing. It feels a little pretentious and self-righteous. Please understand: I don’t have any delusions that what we’re doing will change the world, or even that it will be all that meaningful (for us or anybody else). Honestly, I just thought it was a cool idea when Suzy suggested it.

I am hoping, however, that this undertaking will give me some discipline during these seven-ish weeks. I am hoping that it will make me more intentional in my Lenten journey, more aware of how I use food (to show love, to feel comforted, to display status or power, etc.), and maybe even more aware of how the accessibility of food is a justice issue—not just on a global scale, but in my everyday, normal, routine lives.

I’m sure that I will stumble my way through these 40 days. There will be times when I will screw it up or miss the point; when my hypocrisy will be exposed; when I will not feel like doing anything at all and will just go through the drudgery of whatever we have planned, simply so that I can post something here. If nothing else, it’ll be interesting to watch the idea unfold, and to see where it takes us.

Hopefully, by the end of this season, we will be able to "taste and see that the Lord is good" (Ps 34:8).

*Sundays are not included in the 40 days of Lent, because Sunday is always supposed to be a celebration of Christ’s resurrection. That’s why they are called the Sundays in Lent, not the Sundays of Lent.