The Tossing Yellow Sea

Last night I discovered a new way to conserve. Having cooked pasta in good, clean, drinkable Culligan water, it seemed like a waste to simply toss out the hot, starchy salt mixture. So, I did what any resourceful young man would do: I shaved with the water. That's right, with bits of noodle still swimming around. To put the unsanitary tap water into one of our good kettles just to boil it and use it for shaving seemed like a lot of crazy effort; this was hot and this was ready.
If it doesn't make me break out, then I could start the newest trend in facial care: spaghetti water. It's no trip to the Jefferson Pools at the Homestead, but it's a start.

By the way, our two guests were treated to a perfectly cooked meal. No extraneous spices.
And great eggs for breakfast. Yes, I cooked them.

After seeing our guests off, we cleaned the shop where we sell Haitian handicraft (wood and metal work, banana bark cards, linen, etc.). We were helped by one of our "famn" helpers, Themise. She cooks for the large groups and does other cleaning work. We dusted and rearranged and chatted occasionally. We told her that we would have to pay her extra for helping us along in the Kreyol conversation, which I then realized may have been a mistake; what would have passed as a compliment in the U.S. is taken literally here. She laughed, but I won't be surprised if she asks about it later.

We started in on the storeroom. It probably hadn't been dusted in several years. The work again raised the issue of stockpiling: everything is saved here, sometimes until it is worthless. There are many needed things (like toilet paper) and some extraneous ones (like two year old powdered drink mix or the aforementioned linen collection). What happens, I think, in the conservation consciousness is that people are too afraid to use what they have productively; they tend to store and feel guilty about consumption while staying in the third world. Then they leave a trunk full of shoes, two tubs of pink lemonade mix, and enough medical supplies to perform minor surgery--though most of the medicines have gone out of date--until they have piled up in the corner. This, ironically, seems to me to be a backwards form of materialism--the very thing they were trying to avoid. As I commented with some help by Father Alan to the exact reference, "Store not your treasure up where the moth can eat and the flame consume."
The antithesis of consumerism is not conservation, so what is it?

This situation is, pragmatically, understandable in this specific house. The long time manager (15+ years) had to leave suddenly after an erroneous arrest and ridiculous charge of "conspiring to overthrough the interim government"; the sweet nun who was recently staying left after seven months due to contracting malaria; various people, like myself and Father, have donated time here and there. Without continuity things have simply piled up and become a little dusty. In the larger picture, however, it rests in a type of nihilism that focuses only on suffering. This is not a mindfulness that transforms, but a fear. One often sees this in a radical preoccupation with the poor (liberation theology) or other more, shall we say gently, leftist issues. They have a point--in theological terms, Jesus is in the face of everyone, especially the broken, the hungry, the naked. But to rest simply in their brokenness, their hunger, their starvation, their nakedness is not the point. They must be affirmed, fed, clothed. This seems obvious; but then, why are there necessities collecting dust in this house that should be used out in the streets, or at least served to those who come through these doors seeking solace before and after their labors of love and charity? To quote Father Alan, "There is enough 'Country Time" [lemonade] here to turn the sea of Gonaives yellow."

I think it is guilt ("We must not overuse; we come from consumeristic society; people in Haiti have nothing so we should have nothing") or fear ("We will run out of materials to use"). We should fast and put ourselves in the shoes of the poor everyday to understand them, but not to the expense of using the gifts that have been provided. A lesson I read from Taoist master Deng Ming-Dao last night ("coincidentally" during my mental struggle on the matter) put it best:

"There is admittedly a great deal of suffering and horror in this world. But if we accept life's sad parts, we must also embrace its good parts. As long as we are in this world, we must accept it all. If what comes our way is occasionally wonderful, no one should deny our enjoyment....As long as we have behaved responsibly, there is nothing wrong with enjoying the best of what life has to offer." Or, in Christian terms, we should "feast while the Master is around."

So I continued to enjoy myself today through a walk through the streets, a struggle with speaking when trying to by grapefruit from a street vendor, the news of the death of my friend Steve Hintze, a sweat-laden day of dust that ended in a wonderful fruit salad with the sweetest mango I have ever tasted.

We could get so caught up in this up-and-down sort of day. However, the moment of grace comes when we can see that the up-and-down is merely one day, complete. It is, as wrote yesterday, an opportunity for being. It is what it is, life; it is analogous to God, who Is Who He Is.

Deng Ming-Dao: "We all know every rise is followed by a fall."

And this tossing tide, a sea turned yellow in abundance, is filled with salt, starch, and spaghetti. The absurdity makes us turn inward so that we realize it's not what comes from the outside, but from within. Stockpiles become unimportant, stored or spent, the poor remain hungry and are also fed.

Then without fear (or complaint) stockpiles can be opened, poverty fought, life lived. It ceases to be a lot of crazy effort; life is hot and life is ready. The polarities can unravel themselves from the struggle between themselves, where one half is always under the sway and power of its opposite, and become the true freedom: moderation. We are free from the world and the rejection of it. We live in it, but are not of it.

And we do so with peace and contentment.