The taming of the Steve's

Did you know that if you make the appropriate gestures (dangling a cherry from your hand in plain sight) while making this strange noise with your mouth (I can only replicate it in person and upon request), that inevitably a steve (this is the technical and collective name for the squirrels that dwell on the new haven green for those who are uninformed) will perk it’s head up, look in your direction with it’s little paws clenched and the most expectant looking posture? And then it will come skipping toward you as you laugh at the hilarity of the situation, go bounding after the cherry you’ve just thrown in it’s direction, and attack it with only the single-mindedness that a squirrel after a cherry possesses. It’s quite the show. Not to mention they like to play with sticks while being disillusioned that they have no audience. Someday I will have a pet squirrel, and I will have hours of free entertainment.

We only have a couple weeks of breakfast on the green left, and I will be sad to see it go. It feels almost like we’ve been doing this longer than we have, and I found my thoughts scurrying around the last few days to how it was when we first started. It’s funny how things always seem to morph and change, and yet still be what you had in mind…….
I remember when we couldn’t even find people on the green, when all there was to arrive to in the morning was the leftover dew and rain and chill from the night before. Or the first day of ’success’ when we met diana and this other guy who was sleeping. I remember the picnic blankets and how encouraging it was to meet Richard and Billy, and …… the list keeps growing. And I want to call all these people friends, I know they are. But it’s so easy to throw that word ‘friend’ around. I don’t mean to demean what we do at all, I guess I am just thinking a lot. It’s so easy to go home, go to work, and do breakfast on the green. I feel like there’s so much we will never know about our friends, and I have to be ok with that to some extent. On the other end of it all, I want to learn what it is to love like Jesus, and also to trust that I am not God, and it isn’t my job to fix everything or everyone. I’m only to love God, and to learn to love others….and to have peace that there is so much going on that I can’t see, and probably won’t ever be aware of.

Yesterday and today there was an Indian man who came to breakfast, who it turns out, after talking to him, is a missionary….here. Anyway, some good conversation on Indian culture, geography ensued, and me, trying to remember some Hindi. I could remember the song I learned…. And so I sang that today, and felt very happy when afterward he told me that I had a good accent… (it’s been a year and a half….forgive me a little pride : )

And it’s funny, I think I’ve heard more people talk about Jesus and God since starting breakfast on the green than I have most of the time that I’ve lived in New Haven. (I don’t go to a ‘church’ here)

In India complete strangers will address you as ‘brother’ or ‘sister’ or ‘auntie’ or ‘uncle’ (depending on your gender/age in relation to theirs) and I’m being reminded of how true that is, and how people blankly walking down the streets, not talking to each other, avoiding eye contact, each acting as though they are in their own isolated bubble, how false that is……..
Oh how we’ve divorced ourselves from our families….from our neighbors, from our brothers and sisters, and they are all around us………