The phrase empty bowls can bring many sad images to mind, can't it?
The pictures that clouded my soul were of people who, through one of life's harsh circumstances or another that can blind side you these days, can't get enough. Not enough cereal to fill the breakfast bowl. Not enough soup to fill the lunch bowl. Not enough spaghetti to fill the dinner bowl. Not enough food to nourish the body or mind.
But across the nation, Empty Bowls has come to stand as a message of hope, too. As the site emptybowl.net explains, it's evolved as a grassroots effort to end hunger. The site's calendar page for October has 10 fundraising events listed for as many different states.
Last Friday was our turn as Syracuse University hosted a three-hour Empty Bowls lunchtime fundraiser at the Nancy Cantor Warehouse on West Fayette Street. The premise was simple, honest, genuine, amazing. You brought $20 to hand to a cashier. That bought you the right to stroll past more than a dozen tables of hand-crafted ceramic bowls to pick out your very favorite. Then you got to eat a lunch of soup cooked by a handful of Syracuse's great restaurants, and hunks of fresh and tasty bread, too.
The money went to the Interreligious Food Consortium, which services more than 70 food pantries and meal sites throughout Onondaga County.
My dear wife Karen and I walked up to the Warehouse a little after noon, and were greeted by a line of donors/lunchers that stretched out the front door and onto the plaza. Some who'd already paid and picked out bowls and the soup of their choice filled the tables set up in the sun on the plaza outside.
Inside the doors, we were directed up the stairs and into a big gallery room reserved for tables of the special bowls. Because the event was organized by students and faculty from the ceramics program in SU's College of Visual and Performing Arts and community gallery workshop Clayscapes Pottery, I envisioned the art and the craft that went into each and every one.
Some people carried around boxes and were filling them with bowls. Karen figured they were buying them for Christmas gifts, a great idea indeed.
I was looking for an eye-catching bowl, certainly, but also a bowl big and deep and able to meet my soup and pasta and cereal needs all in one. A bowl, in other words, that would keep my food in my mouth and off my lap when used on my recliner chair. Karen, on the other hand, was going more for the aesthetics, I could tell.
I found my big blue boy early on and stuck with him.
She traded off midway through our stroll, brown bowl put back for a lighter-hued, multi-colored, thoroughly gorgeous bowl. Then she spotted another pretty, shallow dish perfect for use as a ladle holder next to the stove.
Our three-bowl donation gave us three soup tickets.
Out of the restaurants ladling out varieties that all smelled quite special, I picked the vegetable soup from SU Campus Catering and the Italian Wedding soup from Grimaldi's Luna Park. Karen selected the New England Clam Chowder from Attillio's. That one proved so popular, she got only a half-bowl serving, so the Grimaldi's server gave her a half-bowl of the Wedding soup, too. By the way, we spotted first-year SU Chancellor Kent Syverud waiting patiently in line for soup with the rest of us.
We found the last open table outside and took our time savoring the soup and the fresh bread.
And now the phrase empty bowls brings a more hopeful vision to my mind, one of families whose food needs are closer to being met by the Interreligious Food Consortium, thanks to the folks who attended this simple fundraiser that turned out to be rather spectacular.