Cantaloupe - The Fruit of Community 9-10-9

A Front Lawn in Anderson, South Carolina

Abraham Maslow was celebrated in the academic world for his deep insights into human nature and motivation. He is best known for his defining work on motivational hierarchies. His so-called “Maslow Needs Hierarchy” describes the five need levels we have in life. The bottom four are referred to as deficiency needs. The lowest level includes physical needs such as food shelter, sex, and water. When these are met, attention shifts to a concern for safety in an orderly predictable world. As one feels well fed and safe, consideration is given to friendship, intimacy, and family connections. As one experiences a physically satisfied safe life with stable relationships, a powerful need for belonging emerges; the need for acceptance and value from others. The need for self-actualization is one that emerges only when all four deficiency needs have been met. Maximizing one’s own potential and possibility may be thought of as the only true motivator, all other needs or motives merely being assistive to this need for actualization.

The take-away message from Maslow’ insightful analysis is that people simply cannot and will not “pass go” and go on to buy the next side of the board until the basic stuff in life is in place, especially things like food, shelter, a bit of money, and a sense that the world is mostly safe. We have a hard time listening to motivational industrial psychologists on Nightingale-Conant cassettes while our stomach is growling in a dark apartment after the power has been turned off and we can’t afford to buy the medicine we need to keep our cancer in remission.

Meals-on-Wheels must be one of the coolest organizations going. Every week I go to the kitchens in the old high school and put on a frayed, but clean, apron and join a substantial community of other volunteers to build six-hundred and fifty meals that are dispersed by an army of volunteer drivers to the far reaches of our county. This efficiently run organization has it down to a science as to the feeding of six-hundred and fifty invisible people who have fallen through the cracks of the richest society on earth. These hundreds of recipients have the vast luxury of not thinking about food for another day. We think about it for them. The highlight of my week is probably the time I spend on a rubber mat in a hot kitchen cutting and dressing meat to go in those aluminum trays. The recipients are getting a level one need taken care of. I am getting a strong level five need taken care of. For me maximum possibility comes from building community, especially among those that are short on the necessary ingredients to bake bread in their lives.

Many groceries partner with us and we often find ourselves with copious amounts of things - some days almost too much. We scramble to conserve and distribute everything possible before its safe shelf life expires. So it was that I found myself partaking of mountains of fruit in five large fruit crates and hauling a good bit of this home with me; figuring to set up an ad hoc distribution in my neighborhood. In my haul there were a lot of cantaloupes.

Cantaloupes are a bit like geodes; one is not quite sure what is inside until they are sawn open. These cantaloupes were mottled and dented on the outside, not unlike geodes. With baited breath, I cut one of these open and was elated to find a firm orange interior, fragrant with nutrition and succulent flavor. These were a definite go. I cut up the bunch of them for distribution. A lot of people are uncertain about sawing open geodes, especially ones they are considering eating. With food, presentation matters big time, even at Maslow level one.

Normally communion is done with wafers and fermented grape juice. I just found one can have profoundly deep spiritual communion with another using cantaloupe. I went out the front door to find a neighbor lady in her nightgown, walking her teacup poodle. In my hand I had a Tupperware box full of fragrance, nutrition and succulent flavor. Wordlessly, I wrapped myself around her as she sublimated into dark fierce tears of utter despair. A phone call from another neighbor had told me she watched her son die yesterday from a torture battle with congestive heart failure. I opened the lid of the box and wafted that fragrance under her nose. There really is something to aromatherapy. I closed the box, commiserated with her, held her as I prayed and conclude our church service on her lawn. I felt like I should have taken off my shoes; having been on holy ground.

Keeping my shoes on, I went back in my house and filled another box with fragrance, nutrition, and succulent flavor. I headed down to the corner house where a dear friend climbs the night, almost every night. Night terrors often have her waking, screaming, and fleeing dysphoria. At some deep level, her level two needs for safety did not happen. Perhaps there is something in one of God’s orange geode’s that will crystallize a sense of safety that will yield deep sublime sleep for her.

In the middle of the block I have new neighbors; having arrived by U-haul a few weeks ago. These two fiscally challenged women have long struggled with the existential question, “Is the universe a fundamentally friendly place?” I try to help them answer that question with minor repairs to their house, the salvage of furniture that was destroyed by the homeless men hired to move it who then stole $600 in cash from these women. Somehow, fresh fruit seemed to offer more potential for meeting an immediate deficiency in their lives than my drill bits and screws. It sure smells good in that house now.

Next time you do neighborhood visitation, consider cantaloupe. And see if Meals on Wheels needs you.