Communion

"It isn't much, but it's the best I can manage." We lived in four shabby rooms in Harvard Square in 1971. Every evening, James, my first partner, dragged one or more people up the creaking stairs for supper without any notice to me, the residing cook. I was teaching high school at the time. On my way home from my job, I stopped and picked up stew meat or beans for soup with greens and roots. Lazy nights gave way to jars of pasta sauce and macaroni.

The faces around our living room were often new. We ate from soup plates on our laps and bread plates on the floor by our feet. We sat on low platforms I had built from cheap lumber. I managed to line the walls of the small room with enough seating for a dozen or more. No matter how crowded it got, it never felt cramped. One regular guest called it "loaves-and-fishes magic". 

James, a musician and composer, had a knack for adopting people and stray animals. I never turned around from the stove when I heard his feet on the stairs. I knew we would have enough somehow. I also knew I wouldn't have to worry about left-overs. This was a labor of joy. I was "the quiet one" of our group. The others were actors, street musicians, painters, poets and radical activists. I cooked. I served. I was happy.

This time of my life was a time of constant communion. My apartment was no more my own than my soup or my bread. I was able to grow as a human being by leaps and bounds. Each stranger brought a lesson to our door. Some of those lessons were laced with giddy, dope-smoking laughter. Other lessons were deep blue with the struggles of those less fortunate than I was at the time. Our place was drop-in center, home and performance venue.

Thinking of this time is not the sentimental journey of an old man. I draw on memories of that time often. The lessons of it still apply. Learning to open the door freely, to open heart and hearth to strangers, is a practice in itself. The bumps and falls of life can cause us to bar our doors in self-defense. However, retaining the ability to throw open the door at any time is rewarding. Developing the ability to balance this ready openness to communion with pursuing a personal path and practice is the business of becoming a mindful and compassionate human being.