Category Archives: breaking bread

Preparing a Welcome

21 Wednesday Mar 2018

Posted by in breaking bread, grace, hospitality, listening, Uncategorized

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welcomingfireplace I love to inhabit the place where people come to visit. Each week people come into my living room to sit and reflect on the places here the Holy has been apparent in their lives and what challenges have presented themselves. Each Thursday my granddaughter comes over after school to do homework, to create a new project, to snack on Doritos and catch up on conversation. And every so often, people come from far away to spend a night or two with our home as a base of operations. I am always in need of preparing the space for each visitor.

I have the memory of a bustling mother who hosted many in the homes she inhabited over the years. She with my father were, in their stateside missionary years, hosts for missionaries in transit from their fields of work abroad to their homes for furlough. The dinner table was long and set with many inexpensive dishes that fed a crowd. My father ferried people from train, plane and boat to the home and back again. Besides food and transportation, they were busy with helping find medical resources, shopping and assisting in making connections to the next points on the itinerary. All this was done in between the rhythm of daily prayers and ongoing helpful conversation.

Another icon of hospitality for me was my first spiritual director. Her home in my imagination was a Hobbit House–cozy, warm, and full of icons of Spirit, some classic, some personal signs of her own. More important than the place was her presence. She was always smiling and welcoming, and as we talked, for over 20 years, she brought to me an attentiveness, supported by an accumulated memory of who I was and where I had been. I was not just a generic guest, but I was a particular visitor, in that sacred moment and place, whose journey was worthy of all the time and listening the hour afforded.

As I turn into Holy Week this weekend, I am drawn to the occasions when Jesus was offered hospitality–the supper where his feet are anointed by a woman who did what she could; a Passover meal in an upper room, where he welcomed his beloved one by washing their feet; a sharing of a loaf of bread and a cup of wine, his icons of himself, given to those around the table. On each occasion, someone prepared the material of the meal and the place for eating it in readiness for the welcome. And in each, someone, Jesus, became the host in attending the the deep need of Spirit, for a sacred space and sacred moment in which to experience the Spirit.

In this Holy Week ahead of me, I would like to exercise hospitality of Spirit–by welcoming those who are brought to me, prepared for what they might need–a cold cup of water, a listening ear, a shelter from the storm. And I would like to offer my presence to each one–listening for words or no words, receiving their stories with Grace. I also ask for an awareness of how the Spirit is the container for each visit, and be able to have eyes to see and ears to see how the Spirit is moving and prodding and comforting each one. so that I can join that movement in grounding us in energy, imagination and Love.

The poet Rumi tells us, “This being human is a guest house. Every morning a new arrival…Welcome and entertain them all!…Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.”

I pray for an open door, an open ear and an open heart this Holy Week!

 

 

 

 

 

Seeing What’s New– at the Table

12 Sunday Apr 2015

Posted by in breaking bread, Easter, seeing

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diego-rodriguez-de-silva-y-velazquez-kitchen-scene-with-the-supper-in-emmausI love the vignettes that follow the Resurrection story in the gospels as this reality of a New Life began to sink into the consciousness of the beloved ones of Jesus. I especially love the story of the wandering ones making their way to Emmaus, wrestling with their previous expectations and understandings of of what Jesus said was going to happen and how it fit the paradigms of what they thought they already knew. Jesus joins them, but they are so preoccupied with their questions and presuppositions that they never recognize him. Until they broke bread together at the table. And we read that it was in the breaking of the bread together that they saw him.

Diego Velasquez has an acute lens on that moment in his painting called ‘The Serving Girl,” in display at the National Gallery of Ireland. In the upper left corner of the painting, one can see Jesus and the two questioners sitting at the table about to break bread. But the foreground is filled with the image of the Serving Girl who is providing them with the food, and surely will be washing up afterwards. The two seekers have yet to get it, but she already has recognized that this is Jesus–risen from the dead, walking and talking with them, nourishing them with his very Presence. What is there about sitting at table with another that allows to see deeply and truthfully into the identity of another?

As I have shared meals with other in this first week of Eastertide, some festive celebrations, some intimate tete-a-tetes, some casual coffees, I recognize that knowing and loving another is a full body experience at its best. It is multi-sensory–ambiance matters, from setting to decorations. Tastes sharpen our palates when we share bread–and cheese or jam or pate. “There is communion of more than our bodies when bread is broken and wine drunk,” says the late food writer M.F.K. Fisher. I love the moments when one at the feast says to another, “Here; have a bite of this!,” or “May I just taste your dessert?” Aromas of good cooking that we share allow us a sense of a deep comfort we might call “home,” whether or not our own home had such a great culinary menu.

However, it is the Serving Girl who brings the one thing necessary to the soul-knowing that gives life. She is paying attention. Although no one seems to pay attention to her, as one whose skin color pegs her as an outsider, as one whose status in the household gives her no privilege, as one whose only viewpoint is that from afar–she knows, she trusts, she believes and she smiles in the New Life that she witnesses. All things are new now! Christ is Risen!

I am paying greater attention to those with whom I share a table this Eastertide–making sure that my cell phone is put away, listening for the words spoken and unspoken, taking note of where we meet, of where beauty attends us, of how well we can hear each other. When someone comes to my house, even just for tea, I want each table tryst to be a holy moment, so that I can see with fresh eyes the new creation sitting with me and before me.

And my prayer is that my heart will be that continually open one to the old friend, the new friend, the grieving one, the rejoicing one, the baffled one and the the baffling one. “Come in and stay with me, Lord Jesus.”