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.”
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