Breaking Bread in Humboldt Park

We ate bread today for lunch.

It was just another week day for the Humboldt park community – a place full of colorful store fronts, the whoosh of passing cars, and the Latin culture. But there we were- five females on a picnic table on the edge of the side walk. Before us on our stone spread was a loaf of bread, a tiny jar of peanut butter and one large, unripe orange. Yep. This was lunch.

Early in the day Krista (one of the staff members of Radical Journey) had given us a challenge. Each person was to be given a dollar for lunch. Yes just one dollar. I could already image how loud my stomach would growl by 3 o’clock. Five dollars for five people? It was not going to be easy. (It wasn’t). It was not going to be good (it wasn’t) but it ended up being enough – amazingly enough.

While my group was eating lunch, I told Rose that it felt like we found a way to “re-do” communion as we passed around the jar of peanut butter and dipped our bread into, hands sticky with the juice from the fruit. I don’t mean this in a sacrilegious type of way. But when I literally break bread with a community, it’s hard to stop the Lord’s Supper from coming to mind. Breaking the crusty bread couldn’t help but remind me of the realities that are beyond my own perspective. Part of being “broken and poured out for others” is understanding. I never have to worry about not getting enough to eat. I never have to wonder if what we have will be enough for everyone. I never stop to think what the reality of not having enough would be like day after miserable day.

It was humbling – sitting on the streets of Humboldt Park in the cold, eating on dollar each, and learning, in a new way, how to be grateful. And in many ways, it was more than enough.