CRIMINALIZING COMPASSION

            Have you been to a funeral and eaten a potluck dinner afterwards?  This is routine in rural areas.  Of course, funerals in the country are usually held in churches, not funeral homes.

             The post-funeral service potluck has been a mainstay of compassion for a long time.  According to an article in the Wall Street Journal, however,  "in part due to fears of running afoul of food-hygiene regulations," this practice is falling by the wayside.

             What better way for a community to surround grieving folks than with an outpouring of culinary compassion?  The trend now, according to the article, is outsourcing to professional caterers. 

             The dominoes fall:  first, we sterilize the soil with chemicals, then we sterilize the food with anti-microbials, then  we sterilize our relationships with faceless food.  Ministering to grieving families, bringing comfort to them in their time of loss, has been a central theme of both religious and secular communities.  Now even that is criminalized and consumerized.

             Each day it seems like another piece of human soul is ripped out of the human experience by the juggernaut of government oversight and litigious threat.  We've done it to ourselves, of course.  We have no one to blame but ourselves.  When we award big compensation claims to people who voluntarily went someplace or bought something as if accidents don't happen and nobody bears personal responsiblity, it drives paranoia on a million fronts.

             The funeral potluck is just another institution of help and encouragement terrorized by bureaucratic and litigious overreach.  As a culture, this progression impoverishes us; it does not make us safer, happier, more secure.  It robs us of true friendship wealth and true personal interaction.  It robs the would-be giver of a way to bless and the griever of the blessing.

             I'm sad over this.  Just sad.  Why don't we fight for this healing institution?  We don't, of course.  It simply fades away, one church, one group, one funeral, one family's friends at a time.  We replace it with nameless, faceless, culinary protocol working for wages rather than love.  Must everything be sacrificed to sterility and money?

             Today, even the Good Samaritan would be sued and criminalized.  That's sad.

             How can we get energized as much for a funeral potluck as we are about political contributions?