Wednesday Meditation: Food For Thought

Central American Lord’s Prayer

Our Father

who is in us here on earth,

holy is your name

in the hungry

who share their bread and their song.

Your kingdom come,

which is a generous land

which flows with milk and honey.

Let us do your will,

standing up when all are sitting down,

and raising our voice

when all are silent.

You are giving us our daily bread

in the song of the bird and the miracle of the corn.

Forgive us 

for keeping silent in the face of injustice,

and for burying our dreams,

for not sharing bread and wine,

love and the land,

among us, now.

Don’t let us fall into temptation

of shutting the door through fear;

of resigning ourselves to hunger and injustice;

of taking up the same arms as the enemy,

but deliver us from evil.

Give us the perseverance and the solidarity

to look for love,

even if the path has not yet been trodden,

even if we fall;

so we shall have known your kingdom

which is being built for ever and ever.

Amen.

Finding Affinity, Whole Community, Sharing Food

The book I have on the window ledge here in the studio is Take This Bread by Sara Miles.   It seems sensible to read it as I come for morning quiet to begin this day.

Sara writes about her time in Central America during the time of the Sandinistas.  What has grabbed my attention is where she is describing the feeling of total community,  the feeling of affinity.  “It was a feeling of total community with others, whether or not I was like them, through the common fact of our mortal bodies.  We all had bodies that could suffer…we all had hearts that could stop beating in an instant. …I looked at other, different people, and saw them, face-to-face - and, seeing them, felt a we.   Never was that feeling stronger than when people fed me, which they did constantly.   In El Salvador, a priest gave me cookies; in the Philippines, a peasant woman gave me fish.  Over and over, despite poverty of the places I visited, despite the danger my presence often meant, strangers fed me, freely.  Food took on a new meaning for me in the war years, as I searched to make meaning amid suffering.”(pg. 39,40)

Reading these memories from Sara, awakened my own memories of such giving and feeding.   I remember my travels into Eastern Europe over a number of years - to Bulgaria, Hungary, Moldova and Ukraine.   Travelling with a group of women from Linwood House Ministries, we visited various towns in these countries and in those towns spent time with women from various churches.   In the years I visited these countries, not so very long after the political climate had changed enough to allow Westerners easy access to travel,  most people were desperately poor and had only the bare essentials for living.  Yet what was freely and liberally shared with us was the invitation to come and share food with them.   It was not an us and them, but as Sara Miles writes, it was we.  We were all women with stories, with suffering, carrying the inner wounds of those life journeys.  We were women who loved, laughed, cried, and felt most at home when we could share the life sustaining essential of food with each other.  We are all equal, we are all one in this journey.  

While there are many special moments my mind holds of these travels, there are several that are prominent in my memories.   When it was time to leave, on several occasions, women would arrive early in the morning with freshly made traditional foods for us to take with us, to enjoy on our journey.   One morning, at the home a friend and I were billeted in, our hostess was up well before her 5am departure time for work.  In the very early hours of that morning she had spent 2 hours baking a delicious and very generous amount of a pastry and cheese dish.  It was beautifully wrapped up, still warm, and presented to us to share with our whole group.   These women had so little, stretching it to feed their families as best they could, yet they gave us their love and friendship in the form of nurturing, life giving food.   In the Ukraine, when we left our last city, Chisinau, we headed to the train, for the 17.5 hour trip back to Kiev, and then homeward.  Our host and his wife, presented us the some homemade wine and several bottles of water.  At the market by the train station we picked up several loaves of bread.   This would be our food for the long ride back to Kiev as there is little food sold on these trains, only tea and coffee and small packets of biscuits.  As the train rattled and swayed, the 9 of us travelling together, crowded together in one of our 3 compartments, filling the top 2 bunks and the bottom 2 bunks.  We shared our personal highlights, our struggles and fears that had been overcome.    Then, in the ancient, yet present day, tradition, we shared bread and wine together, honouring this life giving Christian way of being present with the Holy One and with each other.  We were present with each person we had met on our journey and carried their stories within us as we shared bread and wine together.  A community, and communion, shared.   We had shared  the life giving symbols of bread and wine at the Communion Table.  These gifts, symbols of Jesus journey through pain and suffering, and Jesus love that gave everything,  reminded us of his promise to always walk with us.  It was the reminder to never stop sharing this essential part of our journey as followers.  We were, we are, all one in this journey.   These are memories I visit often.

As a young child, growing up in a very strict exclusive fundamentalist group, I remember my mother preparing food for a table full of guests from our church, or being invited to dinner at the homes of other members.  What is very clear in that period of my life, was that food was never to be shared with or prepared by, anyone other than our exclusive group.  If you were not in favour in the church, or had left the group, you would never again be allowed to come to the table, communion or dinner table, at any time ever.   This became its own kind of starvation to those who were excluded.     In the years that have passed since this early childhood chapter, I have experienced the gift of sharing food with families in many places in the world.   I have shared the Eucharist in many places in the world.    All of these Holy spaces have deepened within me how life giving sharing food with another is.  All of my life experiences have gathered together deep within me the truth that the life essentials of food and water, and community,  are to be available, and to be shared by all. 

My soul calling, and my heart cry, is “Come to the table, come and share, come and live.   Eat.   Savour.   Linger.   Live.”

Looking for the Light

This morning when I awoke it was raining, still raining, but the sound of it on the metal roof was soothing and I fell back asleep.  When I awakened a little later the rain had stopped and fog had rolled in.   Our “Sunshine Coast” is actually a rain forest area, hence we have more rainy days than sunny ones, especially in the winter months of the year.  On those days I miss the cold sunshine filled winter days of Alberta where I lived 26 years.   And, it has been raining for days on end this winter!  I have been yearning for sunshine, brightness, that glorious warmth that beams into my whole being.  These dark overcast days of winter get tiresome and I forget that there is much that is happening, just hidden from my view.

I have just begun to read a new book by John Philip Newell, and this morning read my way through the chapter “Reconnecting with the Light”.  This particular chapter had several beautiful pieces of poetry by Mary Oliver, and in this one she wrote about the Light at the heart of life.

"When I am among the trees,

especially the willows and the honey locust,

equally the beech, the oaks and the pine,

they give off such hints of gladness.

I would almost say that they save me, and daily.

I am so distant from the hope of myself,

in which I have goodness, and discernment,

and never hurry through the world

but walk slowly, and bow often.

Around me the trees stir in their leaves

and call out, “Stay awhile.”

The light flows from their branches.

And they call again, “It’s simple,” they say,

“and you too have come

into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled

with light, and to shine.”

So, even though it was still raining, very gently, it seemed that the joy of a morning run would provide space for me to be aware of the Light within in spite of rain.   Mary Oliver’s words were a gentle push this morning to get me out into the rain to  feel the joy of running alone. This time of solitude gave space for the inner Light to remind me to keep on moving through this darker space knowing the light, the season of sun, will be back.  In fact, Light is always there, all around, if I would just linger and wait for it.