What satisfies?

Andrea Demchuk on cooking and wholeness

aking my turn on Sunday dinner* at our corps means that I have to get up from bed earlier than usual and that I have to be somewhat more organized. Anything less than a prayerful approach will make for a meal that is less than whole – a less than suitable offering.

And this wholeness, this suitability does not extend merely to the quality of food and the manner in which it is prepared and served (though these are both salient); it extends also to the attitudes I bring to my work and my workmates; it continues through my participation in the other parts of worship; and it lasts right up to and includes that time amid the clanging and banging and hissing of the stainless steel clad industrial kitchen when we clean up, tidy up, pack up, say good-bye and wish each other well for the coming week.

In case anyone reading this thinks that I’m making a meal to curry favour with God, this work IS the blessing I have sought after so long. Sometimes when I’m caught up in the making of the meal I feel as though I just don’t want it to stop with the meal. I want everything I do, every day of my life to be just like this one when even picking slimy food scraps out of the kitchen sink drain feels wonderful.

It gives me new breath just writing this.

There’s no easy, smooth, polite way to make this transition to my point. Now that I know what it is to live my life as a sacrament (albeit in my flawed human way), I could never pretend that a discrete activity that I undertook on a periodic basis could give me the glimpse of glory that I have seen in being a servant.

*Post-worship, communal meals (serving 100+ people each week) are the norm at Corps 614 Regent Park.