“Feed everyone.”
~ Sri Neem Karoli Baba

Mother Teresa said, “Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty of all.”  When I think of feeding the hungry, I imagine volunteering time in a soup kitchen.  But the nourishment others often need most does not come from a casserole dish.

Warmth and light and a feeling of belonging are the foods that feed true hunger.  “To eat bread without hope,” wrote Pearl S. Buck, “is still slowly to starve to death.”

I can sense that there are people who want my light, and I’ve resisted, as if my portions were too meager to share.  I hoard my being as though expecting they would take a bite right out of my torso.  What am I afraid of?  Being eaten alive?

What better way to give than to sacrifice one’s body to the whole.  I imagine taking a chunk of light from my being and giving it to the first person in line.  Here, take this.  Be nourished.  And the next person in line, another piece of me.  The supply is endless.

I am the banquet.  I am the feast.  In this line, the hungry don’t need bread, they need me.