Midway through the service, our pastor, Julie Morris, stopped speaking. She leaned down and listened intently to her three-year-old whispering in her ear. She encouraged us to carry on. Soon, mother and child returned, and the service continued. Evidently, this was a bubblegum-in-the-hair emergency. Our weekly Campus Ministry gatherings in Malibu Hall on the new CSU Channel Islands campus, were intimate, informal and, organic.
Founding administrator of the new university, Ted Lucas sponsored the Campus Ministry Club consisting of two Episcopal students, and Pastor Julie (serving at the St. Columba’s Episcopal Church). In attendance were Julie’s husband, Paul DeBusschere, their young daughters, a handful of students and guests and me. We met from 5 –7 p.m. approximately, worshipping and fellowshipping over a potluck dinner. I always brought the same thing: fruit salad made with Trader Joe’s frozen fruit. We discussed the evening’s homily and our lives. We shared requests and prayed for each other.
The idea of a Christian presence on CSUCI campus was born over the dinner table in 2002, the year it opened. Julie and her family came to our home for Christmas dinner. Over dessert, she shared her passion to work with college students. Only students could legally start a religious group on campus. “Let’s do it,” Dr. Lucas agreed.
We met around the grand piano, on the stage of the former site of the Catholic congregation of Camarillo State Hospital. http://maps.csuci.edu/?id=502#!m/189838). Music, worship and fellowship continued in this way for two years with a faithful dozen or fewer members. Occasionally the question was raised: “Is this really what we should be doing?” Despite our efforts to get out the word to other students, we remained a nucleus of believers, sharing each other’s company sometimes feeling “stuck”.
Sarah Nolan, shy, somewhat scattered, wearing dredlocks, began driving up from her home and job in Los Angeles to work with our fledgling church on Sunday evenings. Erynn Smith joined us as an education major with her bubbly enthusiasm. Dr. Josephine Solis became a regular. And in another “watershed moment”, Pastor Julie shared with us that maybe our true mission was really about feeding people, as Jesus did, with the loaves and fishes. Shortly after, she and her husband, Paul, offered their Hueneme Road ranch house as a home for our new interns and worship center. Sarah renamed us The Abundant Table and soon the first five interns arrived, feeding the soil and soul. Members began reaching out to neighboring fieldworkers with clothing, food and other items.
Over the next few years, the interns continued to come. The farming locations changed from Hueneme, to Ventura, to Santa Paula, Camarillo and Fillmore. They were surrounded by avocados, citrus and The Abundant Table served its communities with delicious, fresh, and varied organic produce. For each of the first moves to a different location, I organized the move-ins and outs, finding furniture, linens, household items and even decorations to make the new place like home. Ted and I were like house parents, helping out where needed.
Some specific memories:
Hueneme Ranch house surrounded by avocado trees—Sunday services with the homemade
eucharist bread, water moment and meals in the backyard shared with children and chickens
running through.
1- The baby showers and foot-washing ceremony for two of our expectant family members.
The interns made several tie-dye layette items for the baby boys.
2- Sunday afternoon cooking lessons with our only male intern (to that point), Harrison, from
the South, with no cooking experience. I remember the night he served his lasagna and veggie
salad, beaming with pride.
3-Collections of jackets and baby clothes for Margot Palacios to distribute to fieldworkers.
4- Christmas music evening, complete with Pastor Julie’s group rendition of “The Twelve Days of Christmas”.
5- Making tamales with Reyna at the over-sized round kitchen table.
Santa Paula Ranch house surrounded by orange and lemon trees–
6-Sitting on the living room floor, watching toddler, Olivia who had come with her mom,
Hannah, since she was born, dancing as we sang, splashing water during the water moment,
nursing and sleeping as we shared the words.
7-Being led to their kitchen garden where amaranth, an ancient grain was growing and then
eating bread made with flour they ground and baked.
8- Hearing for the first time the praise song–lyrics written by Julie and music composed by
Ted—which we then sang at every service.
Santa Paula house in the old dentistry office building–
9- Guest Pastor, Erin Martinson, sharing her personal journey.
10- Jerry Kahler bringing his own table and chairs to the intern’s kitchen.
11- Eating the delicious and adventurous dishes prepared from the CSA box. Julie’s “Massaged kale and almond salad”, Erynn’s basil pesto and Alise’s fritatas.
12- Summer Solstice service and meal at Ched and Elaine’s home in Oak View.
Then there was Erynn and Dave’s wedding in the Community Roots Garden and Alise and
Eric’s Commitment Ceremony on the beach. So many more personal moments together. Some
of my facts are not perfectly remembered.
In 2013, after the Oxnard fire, Ted and I began working with fieldworkers on a regular basis. The Abundant Table covered us for our donors so they could get tax-exempt letters. In 2015, The Friends of Fieldworkers, Inc. officially became a non-profit. At some point, The Abundant Table initiated a program called “Solidarity Shares” to provide some of our fieldworker bi-weekly C.S.A. boxes, delivered to their doors! During Covid, FoF received a $5,000 grant from Rebozo Festival which we signed over to TAT. They got a matching grant which allowed them to provide C.S.A. boxes to all FoF families (25) for a year.
In November 2022, we got a grant which enabled us to hire an executive director, Dr. Martha
Martinez-Bravo (Martita) and she is in the process of building a functioning board to take over
FoF’s mission—to befriend, celebrate and support Ventura County’s fieldworker families. After
Ted and I are gone, we want our legacy to merge with theirs to be sustainable.
This month, April 2023, we are creating a new nonprofit. The Atomic Love Explosion (ALEx).
All we can tell you is that it will serve mostly people of color, nationally. It is based on the
principles of Pay It Forward, Power of Dreams (Honda’s slogan) and bootstrapping. People of
any age 12 to 100 may apply. We will offer this to our fieldworker families first and then, well,
who knows?