Monks, mushrooms and the sacramental nature of everyday eating

Don't miss Fred Bahnson's post from Duke Divinity's "Faith & Leadership. Here are a few morsels...

"But as I wander the monastery gardens I find myself thinking not about the feast days but of ferial repasts. These are the everyday meals which, without a rich sacramental  life to accompany them, become bleak affairs signifying nothing more than the intake of nutrients.

What was the connection between those consecrated elements and the pumpernickel I ate for breakfast or the oyster mushroom risotto I had at lunch? Perhaps our sacramental bread is less a representation of our daily bread than something that actually gives shape and meaning and coherence to it. Eucharistia, in Greek, means thankfulness."

Fred writes of the overflowing goodness of the sacraments that circles around in love -

"During the four years I directed a church-supported community garden ministry we would often hold Eucharist in the garden on our Saturday workdays. I came to learn what was confirmed at Mepkin: that the sacrament of Christ’s body and blood doesn’t end at the communion table. It spreads outward into the streets and fields, the creeks and rivers, the gardens and mushroom buildings, the Thanksgiving feasts and the monks’ Spartan tables and back again to the lifted elements. Had we the “conviction of things not seen” we would recognize this seamless flow of nutrients both visible and invisible, profane and holy. And we would be changed."

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