Veggie Tales

finding the beauty within

Report by Kate Tsubata

As part of our ongoing efforts to conserve resources and serve the largest number of people, WAIT in DC has been volunteering each week at a food bank where we help distribute food to those in need, and we also receive a substantial amount of food for our own use, and to distribute to others in our community.

We never know what kinds of things we’ll get, which makes it quite a challenge to cook with the items we receive.  However, thanks to the large amounts of fresh vegetables, salads and sometimes, fruits, the WAIT meals are now more healthy and diverse.  The WAIT girls are especially grateful, as they are always craving fresh fruits and veggies, which are normally quite expensive, and therefore, in less abundance.

Although some of the food is in great shape, there are some things that look pretty unappealing.  This forces us to come up with ways to process the foods to capture the good food value, but to get rid of the rotten parts. Recently, we had a few bags of onions which looked pretty bad.  At least 4/5th of the 50 pound bags were covered in black, sooty powder and had soft, liquefying skins.  My initial instinct was to just throw them away.  However, I wondered: “Could the inner sections still be usable?”  So, I dumped the nasty looking onions into a sink full of water, and began cutting off the ends and stripping away the outer layers of the onions.  To my surprise, most were clean and clear of blight under a few layers. This inspired me to do the  same to the entire bag of onions.

 Here and there, I found an onion that would have a core that was rotten, but most of the onions were pure and beautiful once the ugly outer layers were cut away.

As I filled up the large zip lock bags with the gleaming white spheres, I kept thinking about humanity.  So many times, we are like those onions. We may look bad on the surface—having destructive habits, negative thinking, or poor influences.  But when the old layers are removed, a shining individual is revealed, pure and perfect.

The work of WAIT is not just looking for people who already agree with our message, but finding those who are unaware of their value, who may be already battered or hurt, and helping them peel back the old, broken image they have of themselves to reveal the true and shining self that exists inside.

Even for us “older” WAIT members (Parents, you know who we are!), the main challenge is to shrug off the old, negative self-image.  Getting rid of negative thoughts about ourselves automatically frees us from the tendency to think hopelessly about others.

The reality is that each of us has a beautiful nature within, and we need to bring that out.  Let’s be ruthless in stripping off the negative perceptions we have allowed to exist in our minds, and to expose the true and beautiful original being that we were created to be, and that is our universal destiny.

AIDS is just another way of trying to deceive humans into feeling broken.  We are not defined by the situation around us, or even the physical condition of the flesh.  We are unstoppable, infinite, creative and inspiring individuals.  When we fully realize this, and we move out into our world showing others their own real identity, we create revolution so mighty that miracles happen.