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A-Bun-Dance :)

The server crew pulled off an amazing effort at Karma Kitchen Berkeley on Sunday, serving a whopping 138 people over a longer-than-usual day. 

 
Abundance was the theme of the day, and that certainly applied in terms of people  -- both guests and servers, as Sharanya stepped up in the morning to help with setup in between work at the lab, Lachmin swung by with some gifts for the kindness table, and other Secret Santas replenished low supplies and filled in gaps as he so effortlessly does. Veteran server Kai even jumped in to help bus tables after eating a meal as a guest.  And that was just the extra help! More veteran servers and new servers alike stepped up to ensure a full server crew, as MJ and Bhoutik returned after another huge effort last week, Pancho heard help was needed and of course showed up, and not only that, but brought along Kate, who rocked her first time serving at KK! So certainly abundance was in the air that day. :) 

But little did we know just how much A-Bun-Dance would manifest. :) There were not one, but two spontaneous expressions of joy that wanted to collectively happen this Sunday! (Not to mention the perhaps dozens of song outbreaks that Natalie led with the tables she served :)) First, Natalie and a guest led the restaurant in a couple rounds of two-part song "In the Jungle" -- complete with high notes and all. :) 

Later, one table played the smile deck game and someone picked the spontaneous dance of joy card!
 
That called for another pause-for-collective-gratitude moment in the restaurant as everyone fell quiet and DJ Bhoutik served up some tunes. Perhaps not as organized as last week's dance of joy, :) but a few coherent dance moves arose, and soon nearly half the restaurant was dancing along! Even some guests who had been waiting outside came in just for this. For some of those waiting outside, that was the only taste of KK they would get that day, as we have to stop seating at 2:30PM in order to clean up, allow the last lingering tables to finish, have our closing circle, and reset (read: re-transform) the restaurant for dinner that night. Still, we hope they were able to tap into the abundance from within that Matthew brought up in the opening circle. :) (Begs the question, is abundance a state of mind or a state of things?)

Of course, lots of visible abundant joy that was happening out front was enabled by plenty of invisible abundant work that was happening in the back. Matthew and Michelle were plating up food with gusto (and making sure servers had a bite to eat here and there :)), Emily mastered the dance of drinks & desserts during her first time serving, and Jay handled a volume and frequency of dishes that's hard to imagine.
 

One guest put it (and illustrated 'a bun dance' ;)) nicely on one of the reflection cards: "grateful for art because art is abundance." This kind of no-strings-attached service is indeed an art, and every week everyone co-creates this work of art -- from guests, to kitchen staff, to extra help, to the serving crew, to folks waiting outside happy to just come in for a dance. We are indeed grateful for all that art. Thank you all.

--Maitre-D :) on Feb 1, 2011




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