Pruned

Well, it has been a while since my last entry. Free lunch has still been going on, but it has been business as usual, and not much has been different. Sometimes I don't know that I really have a lot to write about.

When I first started out, I had a grand vision of a local or regional charity growing out of free lunch, and when I picked my blog address, freelunch.blogspot.com was already taken, so I had to settle for freelunchproject.blogspot.com. I was a little disappointed with the "project" part of the address because in my mind at the time, it was not a project. A project has a beginning and an end from the outset, and my vision at the time was an organization that had no end.

As I am now learning, the title was a little more appropriate than I thought because free lunch is going on a leave of absence for a little while. And I don't know how long! Healthy things grow, and I can certainly see how this has grown over the past year. I have given 945 lunches to hungry folks since the 16th of September 2006. A little over $2,000.00 has been donated (unsolicited) with a total lunch cost of about $3,150.00. Over 50 people have volunteered, and there was starting to be a good number of very regular volunteers. All of this is very encouraging.

When a gardener plants a garden (I don't know very much about gardining, so I am talking about my limited experience), every winter, the plants are pruned back so that new life can grow in a new season. Over the last few months, I have seen this coming, and I knew I was going to have to make a decision. I could try to keep a plant alive through a cold winter (which wouldn't work), and then try to make it grow in the next spring (which also wouldn't work). I am sad to see things go, and also looking forward to a little break. Through no planning of my own, the timing is pretty good. Around the holidays, a lot of charities ramp up and a lot more people volunteer, so I can trust that the people I have been serving will still be served.

Even as I type this, and as I have started telling people, I can feel the resources of the existing growth being pulled back in to the roots, awaiting something new. It may come back and look exactly the same, and it may appear different in the next season, but I know that this root will not die. It is permanent. And if it does die, it will leave a hole.

When I started free lunch, my life was messy. It still is. I had $1,000.00 in the bank, and I decided if I was going to go broke, I was going to do it my way. There were a couple of times that I was spending close to my last dollars on lunch thinking I was crazy. Other parts of my life were messy too. Relationships in ruins, a poor attitude, making bad choices for myself, all these things were going on, and one truth I could hold on to was serving poor people matters. It really matters. And it doesn't matter what is going on in my life when someone else hasn't had a healthy meal for a few days. My struggles are easier than a person completely addicted to a drug that is ruining their life. Or a person who can't hold a steady job for a whole host of reasons. Or a guy who thinks he has to pull a gun on a white boy from the suburbs to protect his way of life, I am not under the pressure or the threats that guy is under. Or the guy who's wife is dying of breast cancer and he is sending the money he earns here back to whatever part of the world she lives in so she has a chance to live.

I don't assume to know anything about that kind of life, because I have heat and a bed and clean clothes. But I do know something about eating lunch. And it is good to eat lunch. And I love it when my friends come and eat lunch with me. In the midst of whatever is going on in anyones life, lunch with a friend is pure gold. And even if it is for a few minutes, I can enjoy some time with a new friend.

Thank you to everyone that has helped out over the past year. I could not have done this on my own. I appreciate everyone who gave money, and everyone who volunteered. We will see what happens in the new season.

Free Lunch is 1 year old

1 year ago this past weekend was the first free lunch. 805 lunches later, i feel like my blog posts have just become boring! It kind of troubled me at first, but after some reflection, I came to realize that free lunch is predictable. And for me, predictable is good. The people I see are familiar. The newness of experiencing a different culture and different kinds of people with different values has worn off. The are no longer objects that fulfill my desire of being charitable, they are people I see and even know a little bit. I see Lorenzo at the community center almost every time. Lorenzo knows me and I know him. He sees my car and he stands up and puts his arms out with a smile, and we walk to eachother and shake hands, and it is good to see him. I look forward to seeing Lorenzo, and I hope he looks forward to seeing me. After we exchange our greeting, he grabs a lunch and we hang out for a little bit.

When I think about it, it takes a measure of trust to take a lunch from a stranger. I would be a little skeptical if someone just gave me a lunch...what if they put ex-lax in the chocolate chip cookies? Luckily, I don't serve chocolate chip cookies, so I don't ever get the question.

The familiarity is a good thing. A very smart dude sends out an email every so often, and the last email was pretty insightful and encouraging to my latest experience, Floyd McClung writes:

Put down and cultivate roots. There is no fruit without roots. Roots give us strength. They bring stability when the wind blows. Roots mean we belong. A rootless person is a person who floats through life, never having stayed long enough or committed deep enough to really give himself or herself to a place or a people. Roots give us depth. In times of drought people with roots will survive, even thrive, while others dry up. There are seasons in everyone’s life of dryness. But a person with deep roots draws from the water that flows far beneath the surface. There are different kinds of roots: emotional roots, relational roots, cultural roots, and spiritual roots. Love the place God puts you. Love the people God joins you with. Invest your life in a small community of people where you are known, held accountable, and are loved.

If I were to stop doing free lunch, I would feel a little uprooted. That's a good thing, and a new thing, something I can smile about.

Last Saturday

It has been a month since the last free lunch. My neighbors volunteered with me this week, and that was pretty cool, and a couple of other really cool things happened.

I have been going down to the hispanic community center for a while now, and I sort of know a few of the regulars that are hanging out there. When I got down there, everyone was happy as they normally are, and the coolest thing happened, a few of the guys came out to meet me, and I think we could have hugged. I was taken back by it at first, so it didn't happen, but dang, we are familiar enough with eachother that we could really greet eachother with a hug. It still makes me smile when I think about it. Almost a year ago, I walked in there with lunches, and they all looked at me like some sort of weird stranger, and now, we almost hugged.

Sometimes when we are driving around in the hood, we offer a lunch to someone who isn't homeless, and they have responded in a lot of different ways, some just laugh, others get really mad. One guy this last Saturday was just really happy to get a lunch, and I was happy to give it to him. It was really great. No qualifications necessary. Just lunch.

Artwork!

Image is copyrighted by Jason Carrigan 2011

Over the last few months, I have been trying to come up with designs for a logo and a t-shirt design for free lunch, and it has been slow going. Today, I would like to announce the new logo, designed by Amber (thanks Amber!!).

Does that rock or what?

There has also been quite a bit of development on the business side of things. The form for registering free lunch as an official non-profit organization is almost complete, and I would like to get that done before the end of the year.


Last weekend was pretty cool because we had a lot of volunteers, half new half had volunteered before. I had a meeting in the morning and I didn't get back to the house until 11:30. According to the schedule, we should be finished packing lunches by 11:30, and guess what, when I got back to the house, they were exactly on schedule. Without me being there. Awesome. I have the best volunteers.


What do you think of the new logo?

Raving Fans

Ever since my encounter with a drug dealer a few months ago, I have mostly been turned off to them, and quite honestly a little scared of going back there. I have served lunches in the outskirts of the park where the drug dealers hang out, and I have really wanted to go back there, but I was not wanting to have an encounter with them like I have in the past.

Yesterday it was raining, which means most people are inside and there aren't that many people walking around. We had to work a little harder to find people, which always reminds me of how isolated anyone can become. When rain hits, we head for shelter. Out of the open and in to the places where the rain can't touch us. Sometimes those places can be filled with friends and families, and other times those can be places of isolation. I know what the outside of the buildings look like in the hood, I can't imagine what the insides of those places look like.

I drove around the block where the drug dealers hang out, and saw a drug deal going down, my enthusiastic friend, never having witnessed a drug deal going down, was so excited that she was able to experience that for the first time. So we went around the block thinking that when we circled back, they would be finished with their transaction, and it would be safer to give them a lunch. They were done, and we gave both of them a lunch. It is easy to figure out who the drug dealers are, because they are dressed much nicer than anyone else around there. This drug dealer looked pretty mean, but he was a nice enough guy, and we gave him a lunch and he thanked us.

We had to drive around quite a bit to find people, and when a car is driving around in circles in that area, it most often means that someone is looking for drugs. A guy waved us down, and I knew why he was waving at us (to offer us drugs), and so we drove over to where he was at. I rolled down the passenger window, he leaned his head down, and with a big smile, he said, "whats up?". This translates to: what kind of drugs would you like today? I smiled back and told him we have some lunches and asked him if he was hungry. He paused for just a second, and he figured out who we were, and he laughed and asked us what was in the lunch. He didn't care for ham sandwiches, but he asked for a water, and we gladly gave it to him.

He was the nicest drug dealer I have ever met. If I bought drugs, I would go to that guy every day. There was something about him that was just pleasant to be around. He was encouraging, he had a nice smile, and he was happy to serve me.

It was refreshing to have a pleasant interaction with people in that area. It is so hard to know what to expect going there because when people are on drugs, they are unpredictable. The Hispanic community center is very predictable. Smiles, everyone is glad we are there, the language barrier always makes communication a little difficult, but it is really fun. Drugs are just bad news. The addiction binds people up so that it makes them very difficult to be around. It isolates people to a certain way of life that isn't good for them and not good for the people around them.

When I meet a guy like that, it renews my hope and my purpose for going down to that part of town. I give them what I can, and be there in the ways that I am able to. I can only hope that they receive even a fraction of the joy I experience.

i'm lovin' it.

That is the current slogan for McDonalds. I remembered when McDonalds had a sign that used to read 50 million served, and then it kept going up and up. I think now they just say billions and billions served. So tonight I decided to add up how many lunches that have been served through free lunch, not quite in the same league as McDonalds, but 560 is not too shabby in my opinion.

In case you didn't know, I was McDonalds Employee of the month in September of 1993 at store #6003, located in Apple Valley, MN, one of the busiest locations in the Minneapolis area. That's not too shabby either. The store is located on the main road that goes through all the southern suburbs. When I got bored, I would sneak down to the utility room, open up the breaker panel, and turn the breaker for the big sign out front on and off for about a minute. People freaked out and didn't know what was going on, not even the managers. I just smiled and kept working hard....and no one ever knew....until now.

Values

This week my mom is in town, so I thought it would be a good time to talk about the values of free lunch. She went with us downtown to serve lunches on Saturday, and it was fun to have her along because she lives in Los Angeles, and we don't get a lot of time to hang out.

I always find it interesting that more girls volunteer than guys. In my observation, girls are so much better at getting involved and helping out. I don't understand why more guys don't join in, because the girls are cute, and a lot of my guy friends don't have girlfriends. It is a mystery to me...what better way to get to know a girl than to spend a few hours together on Saturday serving lunches??

I have been asked several times in the last few weeks if I would be interested in receiving food donations that aren't the standard free lunch menu items. Good food too...a friend of mine is a caterer, and she fixes food every weekend, always has leftovers, and she doesn't have a good place to take them. Another friend offered to take a grill downtown and put on a big bbq for people. These are good offers, and I have been a little conflicted about accepting them.

The vision of free lunch has evolved, or formed in to something that would resemble a city wide, or even regional charity organization that reaches invisible communities in the vicinity of a person that wishes to become involved. In order to accomplish that, I would like to develop a model that is so simple, that anyone can repeat it. The formula is simple, make a lunch menu, go to the store and buy it, go to wherever the people are at, and hang out.

Finding an invisible group of people is hard enough (because they are invisible), and each lunch has its own set of unpredictable events, so I think it is important to make as many parts of the process as planned and predictable (and efficient) as possible. I go to the grocery store at the same time, I even pack the cart the same way, we pack the lunches the same way, go to the same places at the same time in the same car. If someone wants to help out, and it doesn't fit in to the set of expectations that I operate under, I typically turn down the help. I feel bad, but as this little experiment is being built, it is important to stick to the values that hold it together. So here is what I see as the valuable parts of free lunch:

• Set very clear, and very low expectations of what I am willing to offer. Lunch and hanging out are two things that I know I can deliver on a consistent basis.
• Seeking out and connecting with invisible people is the fundamental purpose, and value.
• Sticking to a plan and model that can be duplicated is a value that will serve as the fundamental growth strategy.

That's about it. I try to keep it simple.

As I pulled up to the community center on the west side, one of the guys remembered my name, and that feels good. There were a bunch of people there, and I didn't see Alejandro. I will try to give an update if I hear from him again.