It's no wonder that the Eucharist is bread and wine... food and drink... but so often, we miss the wonder of this meal in our fast-food-eat-in-your-car world. Scarfing down our nourishment as though an inconvienence, hoping nobody speaks to us so that we can move on to our next tasks, I think how we approach our meals is ultimately telling in how we live our lives and telling in how we live our lives of faith: hoping it doesn't slow us down long enough to inconvenience us, long enough to change us, long enough to make us think, "How did we ever come to be so blessed?" So we go to our faith communities, hoping to scarf down enough to remind our bellies that they are empty, rather than to remind our bellies that our meager meal is the Great Feast, which fills to overflowing. How we eat is how we live.
Now, don't get me wrong: you don't need to be a chef or even love food to approach a meal as something more than an inconvenience (I must confess, it helps). Even a simple meal of a box of pasta, a bit of butter, and some parmesan cheese can have as much joy as a rack of lamb (or steak, if you're of a more Midwestern persuasion). A simple meal can be rendered a feast in its approach. Boil the pasta, saute some garlic in more butter than what you're comfortable with, and (for the love, buy real parmesan cheese - it's not that expensive!) a grate of parmesan cheese. Put a tablecloth on the table (or a bedsheet if you lack a table cloth), light a couple of candles, and voila! Feast.
Much of our food philosophy has been borrowed from varied sources: from friends who are chefs, from books we have read, from people who find themselves nourished by good food, good drink, and good company, and from our own experiences of discovering the propensity for food to mitigate continually falling in love: with each other, with the world, and with the Creator who, for whatever reason, gave us empty bellies and hungry hearts.
If you have not read The Supper of the Lamb by Robert Farrar Capon, buy a copy now.
He says: "To a radically, perpetually unnecessary world; to the restoration of astonishment to the heart and mystery to the mind; to wine, because it is a gift we never expected; to mushroom and artichoke, for they are incredible legacies; to improbable acids and high alcohols, since we would hardly have thought of them ourselves; and to all being, becuase it is superfluous; to the hairs on Harry's ear, and ot the seven hundred and sixty-eighth cell from the upper attachment of the right gluteus maximus in the last girl on the chorus line. We are free: Prosit, Dear Hearts. Cheers, Men and Bretheren. We are free: nothing is needful, everything is for joy," (Capon, 86).
If everything is for joy, then each meal is a feast. Whether it's the poker chip communion wafer and shot glass of wine body and blood of Christ, or whether it's a rack of lamb lovingly prepared for friends or family, it's a feast. It reminds us that our lives are unnecessary gifts; we take delight in these gifts because God delights in them, and indeed, in us, as indicated in Psalm 18:19. Here's to the feast!
Much of our food philosophy has been borrowed from varied sources: from friends who are chefs, from books we have read, from people who find themselves nourished by good food, good drink, and good company, and from our own experiences of discovering the propensity for food to mitigate continually falling in love: with each other, with the world, and with the Creator who, for whatever reason, gave us empty bellies and hungry hearts.
If you have not read The Supper of the Lamb by Robert Farrar Capon, buy a copy now.
He says: "To a radically, perpetually unnecessary world; to the restoration of astonishment to the heart and mystery to the mind; to wine, because it is a gift we never expected; to mushroom and artichoke, for they are incredible legacies; to improbable acids and high alcohols, since we would hardly have thought of them ourselves; and to all being, becuase it is superfluous; to the hairs on Harry's ear, and ot the seven hundred and sixty-eighth cell from the upper attachment of the right gluteus maximus in the last girl on the chorus line. We are free: Prosit, Dear Hearts. Cheers, Men and Bretheren. We are free: nothing is needful, everything is for joy," (Capon, 86).
If everything is for joy, then each meal is a feast. Whether it's the poker chip communion wafer and shot glass of wine body and blood of Christ, or whether it's a rack of lamb lovingly prepared for friends or family, it's a feast. It reminds us that our lives are unnecessary gifts; we take delight in these gifts because God delights in them, and indeed, in us, as indicated in Psalm 18:19. Here's to the feast!
Artwork at top: The Wedding Feast at Cana, circa 1545, Jacopo Tintoretto