Diocesan
Life Columns
Bishop Paul V. Marshall
Bishop Paul's writes a monthly column for the Diocesan Newspaper, Diocesan
Life, edited by Communication
Minister, Bill Lewellis.
For more features from the life of our diocese, check Diocesanlife....ONLINE; and Bethlehem
News.
On Food and Festivals
Pot roast, potato dumplings, soft pretzels and soup beans
By Bishop Paul V. Marshall
[Diocesan Life, May 1998]
Nostalgia has hit cyberspace. There is a Worldwide Web site for
people who grew up in Pennsylvania's coal country and now live
elsewhere. It gives the location of coal patches, provides a dictionary
of coal country slang, and sings the praises of local beers and
various ethnic foods, especially kielbasa ("Polish sausage").
With all the changes that have taken place in our lives, this
web site has a strong theme of "you can't go home again," to which
it seems to add another theme, "but you can have some pleasant
memories and feel connected again with Yuengling in your glass
and kielbasa on your plate."
It's true, too. Pot roast and potato dumplings put me back in
my grandmother's house in the 1950s. Soft pretzels put me at the
Square in Lancaster waiting for the bus with my friends. For Diana,
soup beans and dumplings bring back memories of a warm kitchen
and a gathered family. And so on. You have your list, too, I'm
sure.
But this isn't just about food. Hardly anyone of us gets particularly
teary about food we ate alone. The other ingredient in a nostalgic
meal is the people we ate it with or the occasions on which we
ate together.
For some reason, human beings find pleasure and meaning in eating
together, and many books have been written about how, when, and
why humans eat together, and what (even whom!) they eat when they
do it. Meals have meaning. Sometimes that meaning has to be repaired.
I know of a troubled family going to a family therapist and pouring
out their concerns, seemingly without end. The therapist told them
to come back in 60 days; in the meantime, on each of those days,
they were to have at least one meal with all family members present.
They were desperate enough to change a few schedules, give up
a few sports practices, and alter the commute in order to try to
eat together. With great effort, they missed only a few meals.
It was no miracle cure: eating together made them deal with each
other, made them name some of their problems, and provoked long
encounters between various members of the family outside of mealtime.
But coming together at least once a day at a time when they were
nourished together changed the context in which their relationship
took place.
Unfortunately, this is not a fairy tale: in 60 days their problems
were not gone, but they had become a community again. Eating together,
or better, not eating alone, was changing how they understood themselves.
It made them realize that, despite the pain it sometimes entailed,
coming to the table was healthy. Even if they had stomped out of
a room a few hours before, a meal that they "had to" attend gave
them an automatic re-entry into the family.
All members of the family were struck by one event that seemed
to change their expectations about this process. About half way
into the experiment the night came when they laughed together.
At first it took them by surprise, was a bit embarrassing, and
it certainly took some getting used to. The truth was, though,
the more that happened, the better they felt. They had bonded again.
I think this is why Jesus calls himself "the bread of life," why
he inserted the "remembrance" of himself into the Passover meal.
Sharing him calls us out of isolation, makes a place where we must
meet each other, gives us an awareness of being sustained by the
same thing, and occasionally makes us laugh.
In place of the illusion of self-sufficiency, we are sustained
by a Lord who calls "many from the east and the west" to his table.
There is a larger difference between our sharing the Bread of
Life and other meals. Like nostalgic meals, sharing the Bread of
Life recalls the past: our personal experiences of religion, and
even more, the story of our salvation by Jesus the Messiah. But
unlike nostalgic meals, sharing the Bread of Life is not focused
on the past alone, because salvation is at work in the present.
We share Jesus in song and story, in word and sacrament, because
the future is Christ's.
Our coming together soon as a diocese is about one thing: there
is life in abundance when we share the Bread of Life. In a world
full of spiritual junk food, we come with thankful hearts to the
table of the food that really sustains, directs, energizes, and
is so delectable that we cannot possibly keep ourselves from sharing
it.
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