Defining a Feast

Defining a “Feast”

When the word ‘feast’ is used is seems to most often be connected to a sumptuous amount of food, a large gathering of people and a meal that is eaten over a fairly long period of time.   It is most definitely connected to food and is often connected to too much food, almost gluttonous in content.  That seems to put a negative spin on it.   So what is a feast?

The Free Dictionary describes it as: east, commemorative banquet symbolizing communal unity. Generally associated with primitive rituals and later with religious practices, feasts may also commemorate such events as births, marriages, harvests, and deaths. The principal Christian feasts of the Western Church are Easter , Pentecost , Epiphany , and Christmas . The greater number of feasts (excluding Sunday, the weekly feast) fall on the same day of the month each year (e.g., Christmas) and constitute the temporal cycle. Some of the more important liturgical observances are movable (e.g., Easter) and are part of the sanctoral system. Among the Jews the chief feasts are Rosh ha-Shanah , the Feast of Tabernacles , Purim , Passover , Hanukkah , and Shavuot . In the Muslim world the Islamic feasts vary according to country and locale, although there are several feast days of universal importance. The most widely celebrated are the little and great feasts following the fast of Ramadan and the feast commemorating the birth of Muhammad. In Buddhist countries festive celebrations are usually associated with the birthday of Buddha, his attainment of Nirvana, or enlightenment, and his death. In India there are many national and regional Hindu feasts. One of the most important is the feast of Holi. See also vigil  and fasting.

According to my old Webster’s dictionary a Feast was:

1. a religious festival
2. A rich and elaborate meal
3. to delight  ie: to feast one’s eyes on a sight

In the Christian tradition the Eucharist is considered a feast.  The “sacrament’ is derived from the words that mean “sacred feast’ and ‘mystery’.

Nicola Fletcher writes “There is no simple way to define a feast because so much is due to the state of mind of the participants  (pg 3 Charlemagne’s Tablecloth).  She writes that “Holding a feast to enhance power or social standing has not disappeared, even though nowadays many are held ostensibly for charity (pg 4).    Feasts became a way of including those in the circle by inviting them and excluding those who did not fit by withholding an invite or participation in a feast.   In the early Persian culture their feasts were legendary and their ‘delight in indulgence impressed and seduced those who experienced it’ (pg 9 Charlemagne’s Tablecloth).

In the book Feasting with God: Adventures in Table Spirituality, author Holly Whitcomb writes that feasts were sensuous banquets filled with joy, a place where tears were wiped away.  They were a reminder of the sacredness of eating and celebrating, a feast to remind us that even though death happens, we are meant to be alive and to celebrate that life.  Whitcomb writes that feasts were places of joy and inclusiveness and could be a place of changing the world when one had a vision of “heaven on earth”.

From these various explanations ‘feasting’ was also an event where your senses were involved and clearly today a feast is still an event where your senses are enticed to participate.   In the early feasts there were the smells of the food that tantalized you, your palate tasted all the various flavours infused with rich exotic spices.  Your eyes took in the abundance of colour that was not only the food, but the rich and lavish fabrics of the garments people wore.  Entertainment was a part of early feasting, therefore inviting you to hear this part of the feast.  The conversations too would have added to the cacophony of sounds.  It could well have been sensory overload!

Armed with all of this information I sat down to write out what feasting means to me, today, in my culture, in my community, and with the history around it in my own life.

1. A feast involves good food.  It may be a full meal, or an assortment of small tasting plates, or it may even be a beverage and some delicious homemade treats/snacks.  It involves your senses.
2. Food is prepared and served that will nourish our bodies, our souls and our senses.   When our senses become involved we are invited more fully into a state of being ‘awake’ to all life around us. 
3. Company of friends, family and strangers together, in conversation that elicits laughter, honesty, authenticity, tears, wisdom, and life giving hope.  These are the intangible ingredients to a feast.
4. A setting that fosters equality and honour for all who gather.
5. A feast is marked by the reality that there is enough for everyone.  It is about abundance and sufficiency and not about excess and gluttony.  This could perhaps be an ingredient in also providing the sacred space for conversations where differences of philosophy and point of view can safely be shared and honoured. 
6. We all have something precious to bring to the table.  It will season the gathering in a unique way.
7. The feast always holds the reality that the celebration and the lament will always be with us. One does not exclude the other. These two, in my mind, are never separate.
8. It is becoming more clear to me that each feast holds a definite social justice ingredient.

There are most certainly more ingredients to any feast.   These are the ones that come to mind at present but as I explore this whole concept of feasting, and as I experience it more in the time ahead, I long to understand it more fully.  There is a longing within me to understand how the feast becomes a more inclusive and rich moment.  I yearn to find the Holy One in each sacred opportunity of feasting, and to experience a deeper sense of communion with God, and with each person at the feast.

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A Word for 2014 - Feasting

A Word for 2014 - FEASTING

The word that has found me, and now will take me on a new journey through this New Year, is the word “Feasting”.    Does this take any of you by surprise?   Actually it has taken me a bit by surprise!   The words over the last few years have been ones that suggested I be very intentional in how I hold them, act upon them, and let my heart be open to them and they were new ideas.   Feasting seems natural in one way, knowing how hospitality is my life theme, and bringing people together at the table is how I express that.  Yet feasting seems too connected to the materialism and gluttony of our culture today, in deep contrast to my desire to live more simply, to be more proactive in being careful with food sources, making the meal table a place of equality for everyone, and moving away from the thinking of excess.  Which then means that there is a new way of looking at ‘feasting’ for me in this next year.  It also suggests that my adventure will be putting those new ways into action here in my community and sharing them here on Eat, Savour, Linger, Live.  That will surely be a huge part of the adventure of 2014!   

There are a couple of books that I start this search with and I am sure more will be piled up on my desk as the year progresses.  

Feasting With God:  Adventures in Table Spirituality by Holly Whitcomb.   My husband gave me this book the second time I met him.  It was one he had and thought it might be one I could use!  One of the reasons I knew this man ‘saw’ me at the beginning of our relationship.

Charlemagne’s Tablecloth:  A Piquant History of Feasting by Nichola Fletcher.   A fabulous gift from my friend Angi in 2005 when I visited her.

Bread and Wine: A Love Letter to Life Around The Table, With Recipes by Shauna Niequist.   A Christmas gift from my husband this year.

I will share the following two pieces that speak to Feasting and hold wisdom that I want to incorporate in my way of seeing this subject.  I have shared them before and hope that as you read them for the first time, or a repeated time, that they will speak to you too.

“The feast is an opportunity for community.  We are inviting those around our table to share everything that is in front of them with one another.  A feast invites a celebration of abundance over scarcity, of community over individualism, of distribution over hoarding.  A feast invites us to celebrate that our God-given gifts are meant to be shared.”  (I cannot remember where I found this quote but I love it)

Feasting and Fasting by Jim Burklo, found on progressivechristianity.org

“So let us feast on simple pleasure, and fast from all that gets our bodies and souls out of balance.

Let us feast on kindness and fast from sarcasm.

Let us feast on compassion, and fast from holding grudges.

Let us feast on patience, and fast from anxiety.

Let us feast on peace, and fast from stirring up needless conflict.

Let us feast on acceptance and fast from judgement.

Let us feast on joy and fast from jealousy.

Let us feast on faith, and fast from fear.

Let us feast on creativity, and fast from all that deadens our souls.

Let us feast on social justice, and fast from negligence of the most vulnerable.

Let us feast on service to others, and fast from selfishness.

Let us feast on delight and fast from despair.

Let us feast on bread and wine in spiritual communion, and fast from all that keeps us from communing deeply with one another so that our lives might be sufficient, fulfilled, complete, whole, enough.

Amen

The Close of This Year

A year has come and now on this last day of 2013 I am still a bit in denial that we are at its end!   It is hard to believe that today is New Year’s Eve.    Looking at the title of this blog, “Eat, Savour, Linger, Live”, those words are so appropriate to how this year began, how it was lived out, and how this last day is unfolding.   We will light candles around the labyrinth in our garden, and together with a few friends, we will take this meditative walk to finish our year.  There will be food on the table, as we come in out of the damp dreary day. We will linger at the table, with the inside fire on keeping us warm.  Laughter, gratitude and words of life will be shared as we sit down together around the heavy oak dining table that is now well over 80 years old.

The words that have come at the beginning of the last few years – “listen”, “pilgrimage”, “transformation”, are all part of the theme of my life, hospitality.   Hospitality it seems is so much more than just gathering people around your table for a meal, or sharing coffee with a friend.  I find myself looking at how much deeper it goes, connecting so many pieces of life, mine and others, their stories and mine.  Do I offer myself hospitality, that welcoming within, in my times of solitude?   Am I willing to be open to the surprises and unexpected changes that come along the way?

There are so many more questions than answers as I continue to hold what these words, Listening, Pilgrimage and Transformation, are opening up and showing me.  Clearing away ‘stuff’ that surrounds life, I am more drawn to a simplicity of life that finds delightful surprises and wonder. 

It’s a bit like clearing away all those dead leaves that have been lying on the labyrinth.   David has been gently raking it today, in the fog and drizzle, so that the stones that mark all the paths are visible.  Now its simple path, that is meant to be walked slowly and meditatively, is visible and ready for us to walk tonight.

We will continue to eat and nourish our bodies and souls.   We will continue to savour the moments, the flavours, the colours, the sounds and the smells of life.   We will linger more over conversations and be surprised by what we find.  Most of all, we will continue to find those places of life that speak of abundance, beauty, hope and simplicity.

To Life!

Seasoning with Silence

I have begun to think of silence as a seasoning - one that has a depth that infuses my soul  with Holy Presence and changes how I taste life. I can’t always define this ‘taste‘, that je ne sais quoi, but I feel it there and I long for it to my life hold an essence flavours actions and thoughts.  Those herbs or spices we add give us a beautiful flavour that we may not be able to identify but we know there is something hidden revealing a unique and even extraordinary presence.   While silence, the place of being still, at first may seem to have little connection to seasonings that release their flavours into food in the cooking process, for me they are inexplicably connected.   My heart longs for the deep places of silence where I “feel” the tangible presence of the Almighty,  my God who sees, knows and speaks to my deep longings.   My passion for cooking has me constantly searching for new ways to take an ordinary dish and let it become something grander through the addition of herbs and spices. 

Seasonings can be tricky ingredients - if you add too much it is overpowering.  Should you not add enough you may have a meal that is insipid, bland and unpalatable.   With most seasonings you add them in the initial cooking process so they infuse into the food and their flavour is expanded.   As flavours blend and meld together they become something more than what they would be on their own, and there is a richness to the flavours that come together.

There is that exquisite moment of silence at communion as I wait for that Holy moment when I receive the bread, am still, and then receive the wine.   It is a powerful potent life giving silence where we each partake of this sacred feast and in partaking of it we purpose within us once again to live, and love, as Jesus showed us.  I think it is a bit like adding precious strands of saffron and a pinch of turmeric to rice that will become the fragrant and vibrantly coloured bed upon which tender chicken pieces, spicy pungent chorizo sausage, salmon, prawns and mussels are combined to be my version of paella.  Paella symbolizes abundance, where this is enough for all at the table but we each must choose to partake of it and join in this ritual of eating together and finding life. The fine strands of saffron are highly flavourful and yet, by weight, they are one of the most costly spices, being harvested by hand, in the quiet of the day.  The moment of powerful inner silence waiting for communion, or the richly colourful and aromatic strands of saffron; both add a deep intense fragrance.   Seasonings such as cumin, curry blends, cardamom, or chilli, infuse colour and flavour and a glimpse of the exotic as they become one with  the foods to which they are added.

Silence can, and does, become a unique, even essential ingredient that moves my life more deeply into the space that gives a rich kind of aroma that feeds, nurtures, and transforms the inner part of us.   Those spaces within us where we let go and sink into the silence that changes the way  we view life, taste it,  feel it, mysteriously begin to ‘know’ how it flows and then trust the One who makes those spaces full of beauty. 

Benedictine monk, David Steindl Rast writes“Each one of us is called to become  that great song that comes out of the silence, and the more we let ourselves down into that great silence, the more we become capable of singing that great song.”

Silence has not always been my friend, just as it is not a welcoming friend to many of us.   Silence that isolates, humiliates and  can result in the destruction of another, is like a bitter herb, like seasonings that do not draw flavours together.   There are the spaces of creativity that go silent, and pieces of our heart retreat.   They may not be life giving spaces or they may be places of waiting and resting where the quiet inner work within us continues.  I am deeply grateful for those who have helped open spaces that have encouraged me to experience the sweetness of silence, a sweetness that has exchanged bitterness for gentle tender places that hold silence as a Holy place.   It becomes a place where our lament came become that great song that Steindl Rast writes of.

From a cooking point of view one could compare the exchanges to the sourness of the taste of lemon and yet if you finely grate some lemon rind, and add a touch of lemon juice into certain dishes, it will result in a gentle but noticeably exquisite flavour.  I have had the privilege of working with a wonderful Chef who creates amazing sauces by adding one or two special ingredients and then slowly and gently reducing the sauce until the flavours are not only perfectly intertwined but  have such a depth to them that they become extraordinary!

From a spiritual taste perspective, taking the painful places and sitting honestly with them in the silence of Holy Presence,  their bitterness can be exchanged with the love that we could not see within the stormy places.   If we are willing to allow it to take on a different form, it can be like the gentleness that has been hidden within the bitter places, the seasoning of courage and love that begins to change the flavour of those silent places.

Silence is a seasoning in my own life pilgrimage that walks my heart into becoming more spacious.  We experiment with seasonings to find new and rich flavours in the food that nurtures us.   As Macrina Wiederkehr writes, silence becomes our invitation to leap into the unknown mysteries that God holds out to us.

“Silence is like a river of grace inviting us to leap unafraid into its beckoning depths.
It is dark and mysterious in the waters of grace.
Yet in the silent darkness we are given new eyes.  In the heart of the divine we can see more clearly who we are.  We are renewed and cleansed in this river of silence.
There are those among us who fear the Great Silence.  It is a foreign land to us.
Sometimes it is good to leap into the unknown.
Practice leaping.”
Macrina Wiederkehr

“

"God of true abundance, in whom nothing is lost and all are fed: liberate us from meager rations of scarce and grudging love for which we must compete; show us another kingdom which stills our all-consuming fear and fills us with new hope; through Jesus Christ, the peace of creation. Amen"

The wind of the Spirit is speaking to my soul gently, constantly, about the fact that food, feasting, the banquet table is for all, not just those who can afford to eat well, but for all to eat well and for love and laughter to be a generous seasoning at the table.  I am listening, waiting, open, to understanding what action these words, this One asks of me. 

A beautiful liturgy that keeps whispering to me is:
"May we who have fed at Wisdom's table take her welcome out to where tables are reserved and doors are closed; may the Spirit drive us to bread our bread on the altar of the world."

Rainy Days, Memories and Cookies

Rainy days arrived along with autumn and we get out the clothing that goes with the rain and mentally prepare for this season where the sunshine is a very rare occurrence.  Dreary - just really dreary is how it feels when I look outside.   Then suddenly there are leaves fluttering down, gently waltzing their way down to the ground, becoming part of the new multicoloured carpet that covers the wet grass.  These are the days where the cold and damp makes me wish summer was coming soon when in truth it has only just left.  I have to confess that I am a warm climate person and love the hot summer weather but at the same time I love living in a place where we have the variety of the four seasons.    So along with the cool rainy weather I find myself craving comfort food, the slow cooked kind of food that fills the house with warm inviting aromas that hint at flavours to be savoured, and wanting to curl up by the fire and hibernate for the next number of months.

While rainy days of autumn and winter may conspire to keep one indoors,  I find these days open up my memories.  Most of those memories that awaken are comfort memories.   Comfort memories, for me, revolve around the preparation of food.   Our winter food is most certainly more of the comfort food variety.  The one who really taught me to cook is my maternal Grandmother.   She lived not too far away and so as a little girl I spent a lot of time there.  None of my Grandparents were financially well off but they had a wealth of time and love to share with us.   Whether my memories are of the kitchen in Canada or the kitchen in Ireland there are warm comfort memories of preparing food with both Grandmothers.   In fact, these “Grandmother” memories will have a lot to do with how my little Granddaughter and I spend time together in the future as she grows up.  

My husband is a great baker and I love leaving that task to him while I enjoy preparing the savoury side of our meals.   But I have to confess that  those old cookie recipes from Grandma’s recipe box that I have are ones I would love to teach my little Granddaughter.   Grandma had this one cookie recipe for Snickerdoodles.  They are a simple cookie rolled in cinnamon and just the name sounds fun.  This is a recipe that she used since I was a very little girl.  When our Granddaughter is old enough to stand up, together we are going to have a lot of kitchen time on rainy days.  

If it is a rainy day where you are, go ahead, get out the mixing bowls, make some cookies and  let their fragrance waft through the house.  May good memories be attached to this aroma.

Snickerdoodles

Mix together thoroughly:
1 cup soft shortening
1 ½ cups sugar
2 eggs

Sift together:
2 ¾ cups flour
2 tsp cream of tartar
1 tsp baking soda
½ tsp salt.

Mix dry ingredients with the shortening, sugar and egg mixture.  Chill the dough.

Roll the dough into balls the size of a walnut.  Roll in a mixture of 2 tbsp sugar and 2 tsp cinnamon.

Place about 2 inches apart on an ungreased baking sheet.  If you have parchment paper put that down on the tray first.  Bake until lightly browned but still soft.

These cookies puff up at first and then flatten out with crinkled tops.

Bake at 400F for 8 - 10 minutes
You should get about 5 dozen 2” cookies.
 

The Dance And The Tears Of Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving Monday morning this year was gray and overcast with a light rain falling as I headed out on a morning run.   Running along with the steady rhythm, the pace becomes a beat to an inner music.  This space of time brings a solitude that creates a place of meditation and reflection.  There were many memories that rolled across the screen within my mind and vision this particular day.  They became a collage of memories that brought a deep thanksgiving and gratefulness for those poignant moments that have danced into my heart, that have walked through my consciousness and left their prints and created spaces for seeds of life to be planted and grow within my soul.  I read somewhere that gratitude and thanksgiving opens us open to the good memories we hold in us.

Thanksgiving has brought back one strong memory - that of a young woman dancing barefoot through the aisles of a church in Bulgaria.  The floor was cold hard cement, the pews were benches with no back, high windows were broken and it could have used some paint on the walls.  Yet the beauty of this place was in those who had gathered to worship, to come away from their harsh life in a nation that was awakening from an anesthetized soul under a regime of control.  Watching our friend, this beautiful dancer, move through the room, very tenderly touching  the faces of many women who lived a difficult life in this place of a struggling, newly emerging society, gave a very visual reality to how tenderly and gently the Spirit moves with us, between us and around us.  This holy moment of beauty opened the space for tears of pain, tears from hearts that had been held tightly closed for so long.  Tears  flowed, were given permission to flow, from the barren places of the soul that had been denied their existence because simply to survive in the harshness of a difficult life feelings were repressed and tuck away.   As she danced the words of an ancient, yet very present blessing  flowed around us all.

    May the Lord bless you and keep you
    May the Lord make His face to shine upon you
    And be gracious to you.
    The Lord turn His face toward you and give you peace.

How is it that deep beauty and tears are such tender companions that we so often wish to keep apart?  Tears are the salt that heals us as we let them flow and they are the prism through which our eyes and heart will see new dimensions to beauty and to sorrow.  They are the very human way in which our joy, our pain, our brokenness, and our healing mingle tangibly, ever so gently, and persistently, inviting our emotions to rise to the surface and be set free.  

F. Alexander Magoun writes:   “Tears have a wisdom all their own. They come when a person has relaxed enough to let go and to work through his sorrow.  They are the natural bleeding of an emotional wound, carrying the poison  out of the system.  Here lies the road to recovery.”

Thanksgiving this year was more profound for me because sorrow and gratefulness have never been entwined so tangibly.  I think their dance together, this movement of beauty and grief, and the tears that flow for both, have brought a new aspect to ‘Thanksgiving’.    My morning running has been a space where I have held both the deep gratitude for all the gifts I have, including all the nieces and nephews that I have had the honour of loving and spent time with and a new granddaughter I will be spending time with.  The morning rain has mingled with my tears as I hold the deep sorrow of loosing a precious niece this summer.   I hold the sorrow that her parents and brothers feel - a sorrow I cannot begin to imagine.  Yet I also hold the deep gratitude that she was loved, and gave love in return, for all she gave to her friends and family and for the times I spent with her when she was little.   How do we continue this dance of life, the dance of a deep inner life, when pain is so deep and tears are abundant?  Perhaps the daily motion through that day, this day, is where movement becomes  a very slow dance, where the soul moves the heart even when it cannot consciously find the energy to do so.   This feels, for me, like the wind of Sophia, the wind of the Spirit, that moves me when I have no strength to hold on and I must lean into what I cannot see and trust the embrace. When I am urged to let go and lean into the place of not seeing and not knowing the road but continuing to believe that the road is still there and I am not alone, we are never alone.

As we gathered together after the funeral of this beloved young woman, a precious member of our family, we came together  for a meal my Mother had organized.   Another aspect of our life dance is the table where we gather to be nourished, to share and to sit close together creating a circle of love.   Grief and celebration both call us to the table.  Even as we are nourished by this necessary ritual of eating, we open space for conversation, honesty and yes, for tears to season and nourish the soul.   Mom had prepared an old family favourite, a chicken with rice dish.   It was real comfort food when we were children, and it is still a kind of comfort food now in adulthood. 

How can I continue to dance if I do not hear the deep mournful tones of the requiems along with the comforting tones of the cello that the musician holds in a deep embrace, or that quickening liveliness of classical guitar melodies that sing so clearly of exuberant life?  How can I keeping push through the struggle of those hills that slow down my run, if I do not exalt in the lightness that comes when the stretch before me is straight and easy?   How will I hear the music life offers and its invitation to dance if I deny the tears that wash across my heart, bathing the path with salt that seasons and heals my soul?   How will I sing in the morning if I do not also honour the time to wait and rest that the night offers?  How will I hear the harmony of community if I keep myself from sitting down to dinner with others?

Thanksgiving Day, the holiday is past and we enjoyed a wonderful meal with friends. Thanksgiving as a way of living is growing.  Within me is expanding a wider way to hold gratitude together with grief, loss, love and hope.   



Aproz Con Pollo - Chicken with Rice
Serves 12 - freezes well.

3 broiler chickens cut up or  enough chicken pieces for 12 people
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon sea salt
1 teaspoon pepper
1 teaspoon paprika

5 cups of chicken broth (use 2 McCormick chicken stock or veggie stock cubes)
¼ teaspoon of saffron
1 cup chopped onion
2 bay leaves,
1 tablespoon chopped parsley
2 teaspoons sea salt
2 cups uncooked rice
1 small package of frozen peas
8 oz of chopped green olives

Heat oven to 350F
- place the chicken pieces, skin side up, in a large pan or 2-9x13 pans
- brush the chicken with the olive oil and season with salt, pepper and paprika
- bake the chicken for 30 minutes

- bring the chicken broth to a boil and then add the chopped onions and the 2 tsp of salt..
- remove the chicken from the pan and drain off the oil
-add the rice evenly to the 2 pans or 1 very large pan. Put bay leaves in each pan.
- add the chicken broth and seasonings
- cover and bake the chicken and rice for 30 minutes or until the broth is absorbed and the rice is tender.

- cook the peas.

- remove the chicken from the pan, add the peas and stir into the mixture. 
- remove the bay leaves from the rice
- add the chopped olives and stir into the rice and pea mixture.
- place the chicken on top of the rice mixture
- garnish with the parsley and serve