Start With Lunch

The Spiritual Practice of Making (and Eating) a Sandwich

“Until I began to fathom my deep emotional connections with food, I had always thought that the ceremonial eating of the communion wafer, a symbol for the body of Christ, was a strange, almost barbaric, pagan ritual. However, now it may well be the only aspect of Catholicism that makes any sense to me at all. If you love someone, you just want them inside you. (I know what you’re thinking, but let it go.) How many parents hug and kiss their kids and say, ‘I love you so much I just want to eat you up!’ Love can and does enter through the mouth.” - Stanley Tucci, Taste: My Life Through Food

Photo by Aigars Peda on Unsplash

When you’re at the end of your rope, what do you do? Do you tuck yourself under a favorite blanket with a novel or take a hot bath? Do you speak very kindly to yourself like you would a small child or a friend?

Or do you, like me, criticize yourself for not having a longer rope, for being tired and grumpy, for not having a better attitude. If you’d been more prepared, you might tell yourself, more organized or more disciplined, you could have seen this coming and avoided it in the first place.

When I’m at the end of my rope (which has been A LOT in April), when life feels unmanageable, the spiritual practice of making lunch is saving my life¹. I put on an episode of Paw Patrol for the kids and spend a few minutes (seriously less than 10 minutes) putting together something delicious, something nourishing. In this small way, I begin to treat myself like someone I might yet come to love.

Feeding people is an act of love. When someone we love is sick or has a new baby or lost someone, we bring them a meal or a coffee from their favorite place.

The quiche² my cousin Candace brought us was still warm. A newborn James was in my arms when I met her at the door and received her gift like it was communion. We ate the blueberry muffins all week long, shoveled the ripe berries from the container into our mouths by the handful with the fridge doors open. That was almost three years ago but I can still taste the goat cheese and sun-dried tomatoes, still remember what the last crumbs felt like when I picked them up and dropped them on my tongue.

When there’s not time for a weekend or even an hour away, when the margins are slim and time and money are limited, start with lunch. The practice of making and eating lunch is a tangible way to communicate to our bodies and souls that we are safe, and that we are loved.

And now, I offer you my first attempt at video³ starring my left forearm and my go to lunch lately, a Sun-dried Tomato and Pesto Turkey Sandwich on Sourdough.

Paid subscriptions increase access to quality mental health services.

A portion of every paid subscription provides free and reduced fee counseling to those in need.

1. Thanks Barbara Brown Taylor

2. I still make this all the time and it’s always a hit.

3. Calling Food Network. I may not know how to look at the camera but my hair was made for TV.