A Simple Cup

This Saturday there is a summit of Human Concerns-Social Justice committees from a number of parishes including my own Church, Blessed Trinity. A member of our Human Concerns committee had a great idea for centerpieces, small herb plants. She asked me to grow the herbs. Then she had an even better idea: why not plant the small herbs in a recycled cup with saucer purchased from a Goodwill store? This is what I did today. As I was filling the small cups with homemade soil, I thought what a wonderful symbol these cups are. One of the basic human concerns and rights is for food. The whole idea of Growing Renewable Affordable Food (GRAF) is represented in these centerpieces consisting of a simple cup with a plant.

Part of the purpose of this domain of Nonviolent Worm is to bring together as one two major concerns of my life — growing power and nonviolence. In this simple used cup, soil made from waste grows from a seed an herb that can spice up life. In a noisy life full of clutter, too much to do, spreading oneself too thin, trying to do too much, this simple cup with a plant represents a time to slow down, as some cultures do at “tea time”, and just be where we are.

There is a saying that goes through my head that goes something like this: “All things and experiences in life, when they are deeply probed, lead to God.” As Jim Douglas demonstrated last night by deeply probing one event, the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr, he has revealed an ‘unspeakable’ world in our country. He could have done many things, and written a number of books, but he chooses to take one thing and deeply explore it. Thomas Merton, a monk withdrawn from the world, was good at deeply probing events in life. With a few word changes his writings of the 50’s and 60’s sound as if they were written in our times. The Truth is universal and consistent. “Speaking Truth to Power” is what nonviolence is all about.

I understand now that I must in my life, like the simple cup with a plant, rid myself as much as possible of the clutter of life by saying no, so I can say yes to the deep truth of who I am, a simple man, who like a worm, continues to probe life deeper and deeper till I touch on the silence of being. We can overcome the violence of the world with one simple cup of growing power at a time.

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