A lot of news and talk has been floating around lately about the world of food. It’s no wonder – I guess we humans have a little addiction to the stuff! But these days there’s a lot more to talk about – the unbridled growth of the organic food movement, locavores and the the 100-mile diet, I’ve seen choices at restaurants increase more and more to include vegetarian and vegan, and this morning I even read about “rescued” food (trash treasures, or dumpster diving, whatever suits ya).

In every country I’ve traveled to, the uniqueness of the culture seems to reveal itself most around issues of the bathroom and the dinner table. People eat differently in Japan than they do in Argentina! (Eat with your hands above the table in Argentina (prove you don’t have a switchblade) and keep your sticks out of your food when you’re not eating it (or your hosts will think you consider their food as delicious as a funeral).

I’ve been reading Jesus for President, (seeing as how this is an election year and I want to research all my options,) here’s a quote:

“How do Christians eat? Christians eat with the poor folks, with the outcast, the marginalized, and the excluded – all who were never invited to anyone else’s party. Ours is a different kind of party. It’s more like a divine banquet than another political program. Society’s misfits are our people, our ‘constituency.’” (pg.241)

And some words from Jesus’ political manifesto:

Luke 14: “When you throw a banquet do not invite your friends…invite the poor.” (Jesus)

Mark 2: “But when some of the teachers of religious law who were Pharisees saw him eating with people like that, they said to his disciples, “Why does he eat with such scum?”

Jesus was a Pooravore.

He surrounded himself with the overlooked and the outcast, the misfits and the marginalized. He gave his rapt attention to those who had been ignored all day as they begged in the streets. They were his posse, his “supper club.”

Today Kat and I were walking through our neighborhood’s market streets with some great friends of ours from Chicago’s south side. I had been thinking and talking with God about some of this all morning. And there as we were walking past the Ten Thousand Villages store (a store about fair trade and justice for the poor) sat an elderly man with no teeth asking for money (the irony was hard to get past). Turns out his name is Bill (name changed to protect the innocent) and he lives in a nursing home not far from where we were.

Bill, like others at the home, is allowed $30 a month from the home (they keep the rest of his social security check, plus any money he makes at a job). He was out of cash and hungry for some hot dogs. I had a $1.25 on me so it we hightailed it down to the corner market and got some juicy ones. The store clerk even mircowaved ‘em for us.

I noticed that everyone in the store and everyone on the sidewalk was from the nursing home, which doubled as a mental institution. He and I sat under the shade of a tree in a park across the street from where he lives his life. He was just as interested in me as I was in him. I got the feeling he was lonely – his family rarely comes to visit him, though they all live in the city.

As I sat there talking with him about coffee crystals and cigarettes, it dawned on me that Jesus made it very clear what kind of diet Christians were to be on. A steady diet of conversation with the oppressed, for that is where their Jesus is. Though those hot dogs left a “mechanically separated” taste in my mouth, it was the best food I’d eat all day long.

Become a Pooravore, and watch your life change.

An inspiring “money drop” on Wall Street from some inspiring brothers and sisters in Christ.

What if another world is possible???

Monday is Martin Luther King Jr. Day; for most the first chance to fire up the grill after December snows. For others, a chance to stand up to current injustices and pronounce a new Kingdom economy in the United States of America.

In Abilene, there is a large bridge that crosses HWY 80 over a large, undeveloped, wooded lot. Nearby there is an abandoned energy plant with busted windows, teetering smoke stacks, and weed-smothered fences. I know that about 350 homeless frequent this “Hobo Jungle” as the locals call it. Many of its inhabitants are children. A little village of the mentally ill, socially discarded, and abused live right underneath and around one of the busiest bridges in the city.

This bridge has two names:
1. The Martin Luther King Jr. Bridge
2. The “Singing Bridge”

Why the “Singing Bridge”? It got this nickname because of the rivets in the street to help drain the rainwater off the bridge. These rivets, as tires drive over them, create a “hum” that sounds eerily like a choir of human voices singing.

What in all of this might God be saying to his people in Abilene? What obvious (or unfortunately, not so obvious) connection might there be in these circumstances?

MLK was a saint – “an incarnated capsule of the Kingdom” that I talk about in this post – I imagine his cries for freedom and justice and equality in this land, and I mourn. I see such devastating prejudice, such insurmountable inequality, and I wonder if MLK failed completely. I wonder if anyone can see or is willing to do anything about the irony of the situation on HWY 80’s “Singing Bridge”.

On Martin Luther King Day, how will we spend it? I know that every year there is a small parade that march across the MLK bridge. Maybe I’ll go this year. Only maybe I won’t just walk over the top of the bridge, but head down underneath it – and meet someone new…maybe Martin Luther King himself.