Rolling Grape Leaves of Delight

Today, Easter Sunday, Pat and I had made lots of stuffed Grape Leaves to take up to our son’s house to celebrate Easter with him, his wife and our three grandchildren. It is a favorite food for all of us. However, this morning our daughter-in-law called and said our son, David, had a virus, and it might be best if we did not come up. So for dinner tonight we enjoyed a wonderful meal of Grape Leaves and will do so tomorrow night and Wednesday for dinner.

Making and eating the Middle Eastern meal of stuffed grape leaves, the leaves which we picked in our backyard last summer, reminded me of a quote that has been in the back of my mind for awhile. It is a quote from the book Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck. The book, published in 1939, is set during the Great Depression, and “focuses on the Joads, a poor family of tenant farmers driven from their Oklahoma home by drought, economic hardship, agricultural industry changes and bank foreclosures forcing tenant farmers out of work. Due to their nearly hopeless situation and in part because they were trapped in the Dust Bowl, the Joads set out for California. Along with thousands of other “Okies”, they sought jobs, land, dignity, and a future.” At the end of the book Tom Joad, the eldest son is forced to flee the migrant workers camp because of his struggle for human rights for the poor farm workers. Saying goodbye to his mother he says:

“Maybe it’s like Casey says. A fella ain’t got a soul of his own, but only a piece of a big soul, the one big soul out there that belongs to everybody. And then it don’t matter. Then I’ll be all around in the dark. I’ll be everywhere…Wherever there’s a fight so hungry people can eat, I’ll be there. Wherever there’s a company thug beating up a guy, I’ll be there. I’ll be in the way guys yell when they’re mad, and I’ll be in the way kids laugh when they’re hungry and they know supper’s ready…And when our people eat the stuff they raise, and the houses they build, I’ll be there too.”

Times have changed but in ways the poor are still suffering from the hands of rich and mighty. Struggling to take a stand in solidarity with poor by practicing the Mission of St. Vincent De Paul Society or resisting the teaching of war and killing at Marquette I am tempted to give up at times but keep on going knowing that I must take a stand and fight for what is right and need to follow my conscience.

If nothing changes in my life time, if our struggles for peace and justice fail, the belief in the Resurrection keeps me going. For if we are with people who struggle for peace and justice then we will be there, at least in spirit, “when our people eat the stuff they raise, and the houses they build” or when they Teach War No More at Marquette and the Society of St. Vincent de Paul devotes all its resources to the works of mercy. The Grapes of Wrath will become the Grape Leaves of Delight.

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