The
longer I grow into my passion for good food, the more I realize it was pretty
much inevitable. I was raised in the
South where hospitality is not just a formality, where you can always smell the
kitchen from the street. My mother is a
well-rounded cook with a particular expertise in baking things from
scratch. This doesn’t mean you add fresh
ingredients to a mix, this means pancakes require the measuring of baking soda
before the buttermilk and the homemade rolls are a day-long process as the
yeast has to have time to rise.
Twice. My Sundays and Wednesdays
were spent at church where we gathered around the Table on Sundays and the
table on Wednesdays. The luncheons at
church on Sunday were a feast for the eyes and tummy – deviled eggs, four different
macaroni and cheese varieties, green bean casserole, chicken yumminess, gelatin
salads, and curried fruit mixtures.
There were vats of sweet tea and white paper table covers. We ate ourselves into naptime around round
tables while the girls in smocked dresses chased the boys in their penny
loafers. Sometimes the gatherings took
place under oak trees in the back of White Bluff or on the oceanfront in St.
Simons – church cookouts with chili and hot dogs or barbecues with Granny’s
famous slaw. And more sweet tea. It’s really no surprise the longer I think
about it, that fellowship, hospitality, and ministry are inseparable from a
Table of food.
As we approach Thanksgiving, I am
struck again by the enormous reconciliation that happens around a table in our
own American tradition. In 1621, the
Pilgrims, fresh from Europe had been depleted in number from various diseases, and
were befriended by Squanto and the Wampanoag tribe. Squanto taught the Pilgrims, weakened by
malnutrition and illness, how to cultivate corn, extract sap from maple trees,
catch fish in the rivers and avoid poisonous plants.[1] After their first successful corn harvest,
there was a celebratory meal wherein the pilgrims brought fowl and the
Wampanoag brought deer. Fellowship,
food, and joy. That’s what we anticipate
and celebrate at Thanksgiving time.
This
nostalgic celebration of ours preserves a time of harmony between settlers and
Native Americans that was fleeting. We
would rather dwell in the pretty moments of peace and relative plentitude
instead of tell the rest of the story, which could put a damper on the
mood. The part of the story which tells
of how we got up from the table and started a trajectory that lead to the Trail
of Tears.
Issues of justice and
injustice are underwritten into an uplifting story of the meal in our
Thanksgiving holiday. Just so, potential
for great reconciliation as well as surreptitious injustice greets us at every
table and every meal in which we partake.
Christian folks gather at the Eucharist table confessing our sin and
bringing our hungry, broken selves to the body broken and the blood shed in an
ultimate act of reconciliation and hope.
In our day-to-day lives, we sit down for meals with our family and
ingest injustice when we eat food that was grown and harvested by exploited
workers or when we eat food that traveled thousands of miles to reach us,
harming our planet on its journey.
I have a history of
loving tables of food. America has a
history of loving tables of food. Muslims,
Christians, and Jews have a history of loving tables of food. This thanksgiving, I encourage you to think a
little more critically about the reconciliation that happens at tables. I encourage you to seek healing in the
relationships of those you share Thanksgiving feast with; I encourage you to
seek healing by choosing local foods that support health of the earth and
wholeness of communities; I encourage you to give thanks for the way our
Creator warms seeds from the soil to our tables and warms our tables that we
may be nourished seeds of joy in this world.
Blessings to you all this holiday season!
Love,
Kate Buckley
*If you are in the Atlanta area and would like to
add local seasonal foods to your Thanksgiving Table, here are some ways to do
that!
Local,
pasture-raised turkey:
(through Sunday, November 20, 2013)
Whole Foods, Atlanta (404) 853-1681
Produce
(sweet potatoes, radishes, carrots, collards, etc.) and pork, beef, eggs:
Decatur Farmers Market Sat am
9:00-1:00
Riverview Farm’s Farm Mobile (stops all over ATL!) http://www.grassfedcow.com/farmmobile_schedule.html
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