‘A wake-up call on wastefulness’

CatholicAnchor.org
Last night, I came home with two fine, free loaves of bread baked at one of my favorite bakeries, a well-known chain.

I felt a pang of guilt as I tucked them into my freezer. Why should I get free bread?

I had just returned from a meeting of Ignatian Associates, a faith-based group centered on prayer and apostolic activity. When I arrived at the meeting, I noticed the table was piled with loaves of bread, oatmeal bread, French bread, baguettes, none of them wrapped. They looked like someone had just dumped them.

And in a very real sense, they had.

In our Ignatian group, we support each other in “apostolic activity.” What’s apostolic activity? I think it’s a fancy way of saying you try to live the works of mercy as best you can.

That runs the gamut, but we have people who do some great stuff. One woman regularly visits people imprisoned due to citizenship and documentation issues. Another helps with the Ignatian Spirituality Project, a national program providing retreats to the homeless in recovery. You can Google ISP if you’d like to start one in your city.

Another friend, a mom of three, chairs a department at Creighton University, and volunteers tirelessly with the Nebraska Innocence Project, which has just merged with the Midwest Innocence Project. Those projects provide legal support to people who have been unjustly convicted and imprisoned.

I could go on listing the great work my friends do. The longer the list the more I have to ask myself what the heck I’m doing. They’re inspirational people.

So, anyway, back to the free bread. As it turns out, this particular national chain bakes more bread daily that gets thrown out or given away than is sold. The idea is that you will never walk in asking for, say, a loaf of rye only to be told, “Gee, we just sold our last loaf.” No, in America we live with constant excess and the shelves are always full, even at five o’clock in the afternoon.

Therefore, at the end of the day, there is a lot of leftover bread.

Two of my friends in Ignatian Associates make it their mission to help repurpose food. Fortunately, this chain is willing to give away their excess if someone is willing to pick it up. So, my friends had picked up a lot of bread headed for the dumpster and delivered it to a group home for women in recovery from addiction. What they had picked through and couldn’t use was now sitting on our table as an illustration of the day’s topic.

My friends regularly pick up excess food at several venues in town. At our meeting, they showed the film, “Dive” which was written and produced by some young millennials who dumpster dive on a regular basis. Filmed on the West Coast, the divers claims they eat better than they ever could if they were paying. Pricey cuts of meat one day beyond the sell-by date, a fresh carton of eggs with one egg missing, a bag of fruit with one piece rotten — all discarded.

Along the way, this merry and intrepid band of divers is trying to raise consciousness. We — and most of the Western world — waste half of the food produced. As Pope Francis reminds us, we are integrally connected to the earth, or as someone in the film says, “Food is life.”

You can buy the film or download it on iTunes. It would be great for a youth group, or anyone who wants a wake-up call on wastefulness.

The writer is formerly from Anchorage. She now lives in Omaha, Neb.