Taste and See

My adult Sunday school class divides the year into quarters and asks the members of the class to sign up to manage the lessons for each quarter.  In the past, I was in the summer group, which was problematic because my grandchildren often came to visit then, plus my ability to travel to Seattle was thwarted by the teaching responsibilities.  This year, my quarter is NOW.

My team has an ordained minister leading a couple of months of class, teaching from Rev. Dr. Adam Hamilton's book on Simon Peter, the "rock" on which Jesus founded his church.  Meanwhile, I volunteered to teach from a book in June called Taste and See, which is a study of the foods of the Bible and how God provides for our needs, both spiritually and physically.  The first lesson in the study of Peter, the presenter went into great geographical detail about where the action takes place.  The next day, I started reading the book that I would be teaching.  Our presenter could have been teaching Chapter 2 of Taste and See!

But let me leave that for a moment and focus on things in the T and S's book's introduction.  The author, Margaret Feinberg, talks about how she and her husband attended a dinner party, hoping just to endure and get it over with, only to be shocked at what an enriching experience it was.  She goes on to discuss other dinner parties...then, when drawing it all together, she describes an evening when attendees were asked to talk about their happiest, most fulfilling dinners.  She then drew conclusions about the experiences.  Her description really hit home to me.  Please indulge me as I quote from her book:

"I saw a pattern unfolding before me that I couldn't ignore.  The stories were different, but the theme remained the same:  God had been intentional in each gathering.  He used these encounters to uncover a deep need and satiate a deep hunger.

"Driving home, I became curious whether it was all a fluke.  Were my friends and I uniquely vulnerable during meals times or were our table experiences shared by others?  Was there a connection between spiritual and physical hunger?

"I couldn't stop thinking about it.  Digging even deeper into my story, I realized that there were layers below the surface of the charcuterie and the thirty-six hour roast.  My deepest hunger was my longing for connectedness and friendship.  I was raised by hippie-like parents who moved to new remote locations every few years.  Few children ever lived nearby, so I spent much of my youth surrounded by adults and ached to contact with others my age.  The few hours I spent with schoolmates in class never felt like enough, and I carried a deep loneliness during childhood.  As an adult, I still ache for the rich relationships and the rootedness that comes from knowing and being known.  And although my story is unique, I have a suspicion this hunger resides in each of us."

BINGO!  That spells out my military childhood in a nutshell.  When I was living it, I wasn't aware of the holes in my soul, but when I became an adult, it all came home to roost.

My father was born into poverty.  He lived hungry and was in survival mode most of his young life.  My mother was a farm kid.  Her family didn't have money, but they did have food.  My parents met in college, married, and had kids.  It was a union made in Heaven.  Dad made sure that we never, ever went hungry.  Much of my youth was fashioned around food.   Many, many times, we gathered around the farm table of my grandparents with entire meals provided by the garden and the chickens that roamed the yard.  We weren't fat.  We were healthy.  Bib lettuce, swiss chard, new potatoes and peas, green beans out the wazoo, radishes, green peppers, huge tomatoes, sweet corn on the cob--all products of my father's green thumb and desire to feed us all from the land.

Dad wasn't a church-goer.  He expressed his faith by working hard in the military, in school, and growing things in the land--all to provide his family with a better life than he'd had.  I believe, 25 years after his death, that he and God were satiating a hole in his life.  The rest of my family has always considered family meals as manna from Heaven.  We do what we do as part of filling the holes in our own souls.

Our big meal of the day--evenings during the week, early afternoon on Sunday, whether we were at our grandparents' farm or not--were all family meals.   We ate together, without fail.  It was a time to gather at the end of the day, to touch bases with each other.  My then-husband's family did the same thing, but with a difference.  My ex would enjoy the meal, then would say, "Thank you for dinner" and leave the table.  Polite.  Thoughtful.  My family, however, didn't just eat and thank the cook.  We celebrated the food.  We oohed and aahed over it.  We discussed how the cook had outdone him/herself.  We commented on it, savored every bite, and bragged about how good it was, grunting our approval as we partook of "the necessities of life".  At Thanksgiving, my father would special order a fresh turkey from the market--usually a 25-pounder or more--then practically hover over it in every step of its preparation.  Dad was the true appreciator of every meal.  And Mom was a good cook.  Our meals weren't fancy, but they were food for the soul.  (I would kill to have some of those meals and the fellowship that went with them again!)  After the men folk left the table, the women stayed and gabbed, taking extra little bites of what was left in the serving dishes, until we finally decided it was time to put the food up and get started on kitchen duty.  We were, in a word, satisfied, in more ways than one.

God bless the family gatherings around food.  God bless the food.  God bless all who believe that we have what we have through divine intervention.  It's hard for me to even consider my father's impoverished youth.  He worked tirely to make sure that his family would never suffer the way he did.  He never talked about this.  I just know this about him.

I've veered off from the message of the book I am reading, but true to my aging brain, I make associations to real life.  If it fits, it feels good.  I can't wait to delve further into Biblical foods, their symbolic meanings, and how they nourish the body and soul.  On to the next chapter!