shared meals – 2

“To the oriental every table fellowship is a guarantee of peace, of trust, of brotherhood. Table fellowship is a fellowship of life.” Joachim Jeremias

For most people for most centuries past eating together was a sacred act that would bind one life to another. It was covenantal. What has eating become for us? In my own experience and with just a casual observation of pop culture, how we eat is an almost perfect picture and barometer of our culture as a whole: fast, isolated, and unnatural.

Fast: We eat fast both in the obvious “fast food” phenomena that has come on the scene in recent years (historically speaking it is very recent) but also we gobble our food down quickly. Well most of us. At least me. We eat quickly so we can get on to more important tasks and sometimes we even multi-task while we eat. We eat while driving. We eat while watching TV. We eat while working or reading. It is rarely enough to ‘just eat.’ To savor a meal for the meal’s sake and deeply experience the pleasure of food. There are some allies out there tackling this problem in the slow food movement.

Isolated: We often eat alone. Drive-throughs.  TV dinners. Hey, I’m guilty of going through the drive through and eating in my car en route to whatever is next more often than I care to admit. Eating at its best however is a social event, a time of being together. A time of celebration.

Unnatural: Many of us rarely even eat food. We eat things that are food-like. If its got more than one or two ingrediants listed on the label, it’s probably not even real food. Good advice is available on this topic in Michael Pollan’s writings.

So my advice and plan of action with regard to food is simple: slow down, never eat alone, and eat real food.