Be Excellent To Each Other

When I arrived at Dinner last week and walked in through the door, all the people lined up ready to eat looked toward me and a bunch of them cheered. A few clapped. It was very affirming. Until I found out it was because somebody'd told them I was bringing the scalloped potatoes.
***
In line, I got talking to T. He said he'd seen me driving down a particular street and I said I'd seen him on a bike. He smiled and said, yeah he'd just got it. T: When I got it, it had 21 gears. Me: Wow. Cool. T: But the derailleur didn't work. Me: Oh, that's too bad. T: It's OK, I got another one from a wreck. Me: Good. You fixed it? T: That one has 18 gears. Me: Not too shabby. T: But only one works. Me: Oh. T: (shrugs and smiles again) It's better than walking.
***
When I walked in I was wearing a hat I bought recently at a charity shop. Paid a couple of bucks for it. It's camo. (See ill.) While I was eating, W. started hollering at me from a few seats down, "Hey, R. Give me your hat! Gimme your hat!" and snickering. I thought she was teasing me until I remembered the camo leg braces. And noticed the camo lanyard around her neck. So I gave her my hat. She says she's got the pants, now all she needs is a shirt. But the exchange started up a conversation at that end of the table about how the Bible says that if somebody asks for your shirt, you have to give it to them. So there. It's funny how the Bible pops up in conversation now and then. More than at most church socials, I suspect.
***
The whole Not For Profit corp thing was a bit onerous last week. We had a meeting on Wednesday morning, and some press attention on Thursday. Local TV, one of the papers. And I went to another meeting on Friday morning to 'network'. Which was actually kind of good. Sparked a few ideas. I met somebody I'd like to get together with for coffee and compare notes. And a representative of another organization who says we're welcome to read some of their documents and learn from them. Which would be really helpful. Plus an extraordinary volume of emails going back and forth, some to one list of people, others to another list which, because of Conflict of Interest guidelines, must exclude certain people. We're going to have to be careful of the corp. thing. It was born out of the Dinner dynamic, which created friendships and understanding of and within a culture that's quite different from that of the rest of the town we live in. And that's a good thing. And the purpose of the corp is to serve the needs discovered and defined by those relationships. But... the corp has become the parent to its ancestor, if you know what I mean. On paper, at least, the Dinner people are under the aegis of the corp. It would be really easy for the corp to start influencing the Dinner - the way we do things and why - instead of the other way around. Plus, the corp can be very demanding and time consuming and high maintenance and fiddly and more than a bit exasperating. We've spent all of our time so far getting organized. Grants, insurance, bank accounts, job descriptions, filing this and filling in that and finding the right wording for the other. What are the rules for the provincial government? What are the rules for the funding body? What does common sense dictate? Do we have to vote on this? Or is a consensus enough? And what, exactly, are we going to do for these people? (In my head, Bill S. Preston, esquire is saying "Most egregious, dude!") I'm reading a book called, "When Helping Hurts" by Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert. It's written to church folks who want to get involved in poverty, missions and cross cultural issues. The chapter I'm in right now includes this story, told to a 'missions expert' by an African Christian friend:
Elephant and Mouse were best friends. One day Elephant said, "Mouse, let's have a party!" Animals gathered from far and near. They ate. They drank. They sang. And they danced. And nobody celebrated more and danced harder than Elephant. After the party was over, Elephant exclaimed, "Mouse, did you ever go to a better party? What a blast!" But Mouse did not answer. "Mouse, where are you?" Elephant called. He looked around for his friend, and then shrank back in horror. There at Elephant's feet lay Mouse. His little body was ground into the dirt. He had been smashed by the big feet of his exuberant friend, Elephant. "Sometimes, that is what it is like to do mission with you Americans, " the African storyteller commented. "It is like dancing with an Elephant."
We're going to have to watch that the corp doesn't dance all over the Dinner. Especially not the scalloped potatoes. r

Comments