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Feeding Lies

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During Lent, we have been using the meditations of Jesuit Anthony de Mello in his book, published posthumously, The Way to Love. In last week’s post, David mentioned de Mello’s insistence that our minds are programmed to convince us that we must have a particular thing or person in order to be happy, and that he calls that thing Attachment. In a later meditation, de Mello asks us to choose an attachment and keep it in mind while exploring four truths about attachments: 1. You must choose between your attachment and happiness, you can’t have both; 2. You were not born with your attachment, so what lie did it come from (self, family, culture, media)?; 3. Life is infinitely greater than this trifle, therefore you must develop a sense of perspective; 4. No thing or person outside of ourselves has the power to make us happy or unhappy.

Since we are in the midst of a struggle about our feeding program, I chose “feeding the hungry” as my attachment. After all, it seemed to fit the description that attachments send our emotions into a tizzy, making serenity, inner peace, or happiness impossible. We have been suffering a certain angst every time a guest knocks on our door and near panic when our cupboards empty at an ever more rapid pace, all the while the price of food escalating and the donations to our program diminishing.

De Mello warns that if our heart resists or argues against the thing chosen, then we haven’t suffered enough at the hand of the attachment to be willing to let go of it. This makes me think of the common sentiment that an alcoholic has to hit rock bottom before he or she is willing to face and then let go of the bottle. In my meditation, I did okay choosing happiness over feeding the hungry but when I got to the second truth, asking where the drive to feed the hungry came from, I came to a screeching halt. Is doing a work of mercy an attachment? Is it possible that what is a fundamental virtue in one spirituality can be a vice in another? Perhaps the problem isn’t “feeding the hungry” but another thing. What is the real attachment here? David suggested control in his post, and yes, I like to control as much as the next person. But there seems to be something else going on as well.

Where does my drive to feed the hungry come from? I remember when in elementary school I would give my lunch away to someone who did not have much to eat, and then tell the teacher I did not bring a lunch and would be going home for lunch. This was a win-win situation because the other kid got a hearty lunch and I got to eat at home, by myself, away from the mayhem of the lunch tables where the monitor looked in your bag to make sure you ate every last bite. Oh, how I despised eating at school!

In high school, I developed a love of cooking and would bake bread to give away—sometimes to friends but other times to the poor.  My mom was a good cook who certainly taught me love of food but I have no recollection of being taught to give food away at random, especially not to the poor. My training was to stay away from “those people,” they are “that way” out of laziness and could just as easily earn their keep as the next person. I suspect this impulse to feed others is rooted in my love of Jesus and of the Eucharist. Jesus, too, loved to feed others, claiming his food was the source of eternal life.

Rebellion then? I do admit to being a bit of the rebellious sort, even now. Am I attached to rebellion? If I can’t rebel, I can’t be happy? Maybe. But where does that come from? My mom promoted independence and my favorite early childhood book was If Everybody Did, a repetitive tale with the most wonderful pen and ink drawings.  For example, “Please don’t squeeze the cat” with an accompanying illustration of a girl holding her cat around its middle followed by “This is what would happen if everybody did,” with the illustration of a large cat shaped like a bow with the thinnest of middles. All these years later, I still have the book memorized with its moral: don’t be like everybody else.

It was at this point I realized the mistake in my thinking. Feeding the hungry is not an attachment because it does not come from outside myself; it is part of who I am or my hard wiring. That should have been apparent when I reflected on my training. And that is why it was easy to choose happiness over feeding the hungry because they are one and the same, neither chosen, simply there.

The lie I was seeking was giving credence to the voices of others: Don’t give Rosie any food unless she agrees to bring her children to the weekly Pastoral; Don’t give to Luciano, he deserves nothing until he stops drinking, if then; Don’t give food to those drunks, they just turn around and sell it for more cachaça; Stop wasting your money, you’re enabling bad behavior and overrunning our neighborhood with the wrong sort. These lies are flimsy strings used to attach others to myself.

What I have noticed is that since we have put the feeding program on the table to take a look at what is working and what is not, to find the source of our unhappiness, I feel a lot better. The grumpiness is dissipating. The learning is that it is not necessary to label the problem, only to face it. Once noticed, it loses its power, possible solutions arise, and we can go back to our giving with cheerfulness. 



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