A THANKSGIVING MEDITATION

FOOD SUSTAINS THE BODY AND INSPIRES THE SOUL, and should properly be respected and honored for its life-supporting, soul-inspiring capacity. So too the sources of food should be respected and valued. We should be ever mindful of the ranges and plains, fields and gardens, rivers and oceans and bays, the very earth and wind and water and heat that provide room and bed for the food we enjoy. We should remember also the creatures, great and small that make their living flesh part of our being, and treat them with dignity and compassion.

We should give thanks when the harvest is set down before us at table, however abundant and diverse or plain and scant it may be. It is the fruit of human labor, yet it comes from Hands beyond our human self. We did not create the order of being we enjoy, we only live and move within it. At every partaking, we owe therefore a bow of obeisance and a word of gratitude in humble acknowledgment to the Other without Whom we would be less than nothing.

From food properly received and properly prepared and properly presented, there is meaning and purpose in life. In such proper honoring is both thanksgiving and communion, the practice of universal religion. The food sacrifice in multitudinous customs and habits of celebration, according to diverse climates and peoples around the globe, in every time and place since the beginning of human consciousness, acknowledges the One from whom all blessings flow.

Since life is a great good there attends therefore a measure of sacredness in the planning, provision, preparation, presentation and partaking of food, wonderful food. In the sacred knowledge and understanding of food, how one eats is at least as compelling as that one eats. All eat to live and as life is sacred, so too is food. Better to go hungry for a day or two than to eat mindlessly without appreciation or even awareness of having eaten.

Food brings forth more than mere physical maintenance. Within its play upon the senses, food has the capacity to succor, palliate and pleasure and uplift the soul. Beyond nutritional values, beyond tastes and textures, color, balance and heat, there is spiritual meaning and purpose. A whole world of social order and divine principles is there either in potential or at risk on every plate of whatever one brings to the table! Nothing to be taken for granted or lightly therefore is food. Food, wonderful food, the sacrament and mystery all the more complex, complicated, chaotic, confusing and even contradictory for the flesh and fellowship and fine living within every fork and spoonful.

Feast daily therefore as a regular part of your being, however simply or refined, doing well with whatever and whomever you have before you. And remember this, food is for sharing. By its nature of production and distribution, by its very nature in creation, the food you have before you is itself a measure of prior sharing by another, and by the Other. You are under a bounden duty therefore to share as well and as generously, with others. This is the cycle of civilized life.

To do anything less, as for example keeping to one’s self all of whatever food is before you (or of any other good for this matter) is an unthinkable act of ingratitude, selfishness, sheer laziness or indulgence or proof of distrust that God will indeed ultimately provide what is needed.

And know that food is to be shared but not only in what generally is known as "good" company. No reading of the sacred scriptures in any translation conveys the encouragement to be with family only. Christ bids us to feed the hungry. "What is it if you only invite others knowing that they will respond by inviting you?" We are called to reach out to those who cannot return the favor. In them we meet Christ. The good Christ would have done makes the ancient sacrifice both present and living. " We are to meet one another in a mutual hospitality that embraces the stranger, this being different from our common fellowship which only celebrates family and friends. We are to meet in the company of the truly needy from whom nothing more is expected than that God’s good will is satisfied.

And in this latter regard, beware, for giving - even giving generously - without grace and gratitude is a sin and no less a sin than outright withholding. In both offenses the spirit of commonality and communion is diminished or degraded. Generosity and grace, well mixed, has the combined power to uplift and inspire another to live a better life, a life more worthy of the Great Provider, and this blessing redounds to the uplifter and inspirer as well as the uplifted and inspired. Bare mind of what the wisdom of the needy proclaims, "If you come only to be charitable, we don't want your charity; yet if you come to learn and share with us, we welcome you in good company."

And do not neglect humor in your food fellowship. There is great joy at the heavenly banquet table and even the slightest treat, however discreet and modest the provision may be, is to be celebrated with delight. All is a foretaste of the same heavenly banquet in any taking, blessing, breaking and giving of food at the earthly table. Be a model of companioned graciousness.

May your table spirit be large and welcoming, neither withholding nor begrudging of substance, or self. No crying over spilled milk (or wine for that matter). Have a pet nearby or better yet a child to remind you in both of the baser needs and instincts from which you have grown and the higher good to which you are called and should aspire.