Shalom

I spent most of Saturday with an old(ish), dear friend. If there's one person besides my spouse with whom I can be genuinely, authentically me, it's she. Her children are textbook adorable. Her back yard is a vast (to my eye) organic garden, a picnic area, and a quiet lake. She doesn't have a microwave, and her children think that plain yoghurt is delicious. She finds it perfectly ordinary that I bake my own bread, drink wine, read Greek, believe the Bible, and don't consider myself to be subordinate to any male. Ahhhhhh.

We cooked and ate dinner together: grilled hamburgers with homemade rolls, roasted yams, grilled zucchini, tomatoes, onions, chianti, blueberry pie. At a different time and in a different place, a shared meal was an intimate circumstance. For me, in some ways, it is this. As a teenager, living with various families who didn't care for or understand me, I snatched every opportunity to skip the family meal and eat alone. I thought I was afraid or aloof, but now I understand that I was simply defending my private self, the self reserved for the inner circle. Today, I consider cooking for someone to be a gesture of love, an offering of my self in the form of bread, tomato sauce, fruit tarts, grilled meat, soup, and green salad. I won't offer up a meal that does not nourish: love is nourishing. I want to be nourishing to others. 

Part of the meal that I shared with Jeannie and her family was a gift from two other friends: a box of vegetables. To me, there is nothing common about a box of vegetables—food that nurtures the bodies of friends who feed the soul. Nothing can bring shalom to a day marked by sharing like a gift of health and fullness. The lake serenaded us while the baby nursed, and it was very good.