Christoph Schwaiger
Every fourth Sunday of the month, a group of dervishes is working at Martinde Porres, a soup kitchen in the Mission district in San Francisco. Our fellowsemazens, Jim and Thorn, made this wonderful opportunity of service availableto us.
Most of the regular Turn students and teachers from the Wednesday night Turnclass in San Francisco make this event an extension of the esoteric teachingthat has become alive and manifest exoterically. Working at Martin de Porresis for me a part of path: there is zhikr, poetry, community and of course,the Turn, but now there is also service, the opportunity to channel Allah'smercy and compassion through my own hands.
After the tekkes were closed in Turkey in the 1920s, the government authorizedSuleyman Dede to operate the kitchen of the tekke as a place to feed thepoor from the time of the Depression to the 1960s. Having heard that communityservice played an important role in the Mevlevi Tekke, I felt that the workat Martin de Porres adds a small bead onto the chain of the lineage of Mevlevicommunity service.
Themechanics at Martin de Porres appear to be quite simple to me as a volunteer.As I arrive at around 7:00am from out of town, the preparations have usuallyalready started. Every helpful hand is put to work right away, cutting bread,slicing fruits, brewing tea, setting up and decorating the tables with freshflowers. This is the time to socialize, to find out what happened in thelast four weeks to the person who cleaned pots next to me a month ago.
There are usually about 15 volunteers (depending on who shows up) half ofthem dervishes, but at Martin's there is no distancing of race, color ormotivation; there is work that needs to be done.
Right before we start to serve the food, we all circle up and, led by oneof the shift leaders, we focus on our intentions to serve our guests a nourishingmeal, with the help of Allah, in an atmosphere of love and respect.
Every hand is needed when the great rush starts at 8:30am. Everything progressesin a very gracious way, governed by some basic set of rules that our guestsknow and the volunteers pick up easily.
Working in the cyberspace of Silicon Valley Corporate America, my companyspends easily a few hundreddollars to teach me and other software engineers how to build and work ina team. Teaming is not an issue at Martin de Porres, it is a natural stateof being. Everyone helps out with a smile to keep the line moving, to getthe spoons or plates through the dishwashing line to ultimately fulfill thetask of serving our guests.
At 10:30am, the doors are closed, everybody takes a couple of deep relaxingbreaths and shifts down one gear for the cleanup. On an average fourth Sundayof the month, around 800 meals are served, quite a respectable number.
Come and check out Martin de Porres at 16th and Potrero in San Francisco.
Describing it with the words of our beloved Hazrati Mevlana:
| No one leaves here with a sour mouth. Climb the minaret and invite everyone to wine and dessert! Even a nine-year old vinegar gets a sweet tinge! Ordinary stones are suddenly marbled with ruby. All eyes feel blessed in this orchard and most amazingly, everyone is saying what Hallaj said, I am God! There was once a man who rushed terrified into a house his face yellow, his lips blue and his hands trembling like an old man's. "What's wrong?" "Outside! They're rounding up donkeys to do some labor!" "Why are you upset?" "They are so fierce in their purpose, they might take me too!" - Mathnawi Book V |  The Dervish Kitchen Multimedium basket sculpture by Zehra Haqq Schwaiger |
- Version by Coleman Barks, Rumi: One-Handed Basket Weaving, Maypop,1991
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