Walk very slowly...(serving oryoki Part 2)

You might want to read the first post about oryoki before reading this one...
After everyone was served their rice, we moved on to serving the food in the second bowl: some sort of thick soup. I think this was my favorite part. Like I said, when you serve food in the second bowl, you actually take the person's bowl from them, fill it, and then hand it back to them. Oh! I forgot to mention about hand signals during oryoki. Oryoki, like everything else in the zendo, is done in silence. So, in order to communicate how much food you want, you make a gesture that communicates either: 'more' or 'that's enough'. As a server, you have to keep your eye out for this. As you are serving the food, you are also watching the hand of the person you are serving to know whether or not to give them another spoonful.
So, basically, the soup serving went like this. I'd gazelle up to the quadrant with my pot of hot soup in two hands, approach the two people I was serving, and bow to them. Then I'd kneel down to the level of the mealboard, rest the pot on it, and put out my left hand to receive their bowl. They'd hand me their bowl and that's when I had to be super mindful. I had to hold  their bowl over the pot of soup, pick up the ladle full of soup and pour it into their bowl without spilling; meanwhile, watching, out of the corner of my eye, for their gesture of 'enough' or 'more.' I'd either ladle another scoop or hand it back to them- all without spilling!
I loved the delicacy of this exchange. When you hand your bowl to the server, you do it with just three fingers and as a server, you receive their bowl with just three fingers. So I would hand back this bowl full of steaming hot soup, so gently, and they would receive it, with such great care, it was beautiful.
Then we served the third bowl which, if I remember correctly, was salad. All I remember was that it involved tongs that seemed longer than the bowl they were in so I was super afraid they were going to fall out of the bowl and onto to the zendo floor...
After the third bowl, everyone chants and then they eat. The servers, however, start to clean up a bit and prepare for the 'cleaning' portion of oryoki. I remember feeling kind of good about my gazelle speed but then beginning to wonder if I was going too fast in the zendo. I honestly worried that I might be making a breeze with my speed, like I might be a distraction during oryoki. But then I realized that my mind was wandering and I needed to focus on bringing the pots back up to the kitchen, so I did. After we were finished with that and I was taking my shoes off I remember this funny feeling of serving others and not eating. I've never worked in a restuarant or been in a situation where I have given food to others but not eaten myself. It was weird and I wish I could say that it felt good to serve others and not eat, but it didn't. Mostly I thought, 'I hope there's enough left for us,' 'Wait, do we eat now?' and 'Wow, how long do I have to wait before I get to eat?'
Then it was time to 'clean up.' Basically this means that we offer hot water (in tea kettles) so that people can 'clean' their bowls (after they've already mostly wiped them clean with their special utensils). As I approached the doshi door with tea kettle in hand, the soku whipsered to me: "Walk very slowly." I nodded to her, in acknoweldgment, and thought, "Okay, got it. I've been going way too fast and she knows this and was going to tell me later but she knows that if I go as fast as I have been going, with a kettle of hot water in my hand, I will spill hot water all over the zendo floor and it will be a nightmare." So, I walked, extremely slowly. Like, seriously, one of the other servers lapped me. But I wasn't speeding up- I did not want to spill that water.
And I made it, poured that water to my quadrant without spilling it, and headed back out.
After that, we cleaned everything up and brought it back up to the kitchen. Then we put away everything in the kitchen and sat down at a table to have our own oryoki meal. We served each other the same way as we had served the others in the zendo. We chanted, bowed, and ate in silence. Then we cleaned our bowls, wrapped them up, and bowed to them.
Afterward, the soku and head server 'debriefed' how oryoki had gone that morning. We all talked about how we thought it had gone, asked any questions to clarify forms, and then bowed in gratitude to each other. The soku had one point of clarification for me. When she had told me to slow down, I was sure that it was because I was going way too fast. It turned out that the only reason she said it was because there were people in my quadrant who, at the time, hadn't completely finished dry cleaning their bowls. She thought that if I walked slowly, they'd be done by the time I arrived with the water. I laughed and shared with her how I thought she was protecting me from spilling the water and how grateful I was for that. She shared with me how it was for her: that as she watched me slow down she saw how seriously I had taken her advice, and what a beautiful experience that was.

It was a beautiful experience for me too. I loved seeing everyone's hands as I served them, loved the feeling that we were working together, loved being part of a community of people whose intention is just to be kind.

Okay, I'm just going to say this next thing because, well, it's the truth.

There is one more really important point about this experience- one thing about me, and the zendo, and the people in the zendo. I wrote a post a while back about feeling judged in the zendo. Granted, by the end of the post I realized that no one was judging me, they were just offering me feedback but still, here's what I'm going to say.
No one in the zendo has changed- the same people who I initially thought were 'judging' me are the same people who I've just written about, who were supporting me, encouraging me, accpeting my mistakes as part of the learning process. The only one who changed, was me- the only one who has ever been 'judging' was me.