A Eucharistic Thanksgiving
Four songs that have accompanied me this week
Words I’ve learned while reading The Opening of the American Mind
- Dramaturgy (noun): the theory and practice of dramatic composition.
- Verisimilitude (noun): the appearance of being true or real.
- Bucolic (adjective): relating to the pleasant aspects of the countryside and country life.
- Pogrom (noun): an organized massacre of a particular ethnic group, in particular that of Jewish people in Russia or eastern Europe.
- Nadir (noun): the lowest point
- Meretricious (adjective): apparently attractive but having in reality no value or integrity.
- Pabulum (noun): bland or insipid intellectual fare, entertainment, etc
- Potemkin (adjective): having a false or deceptive appearance, especially one presented for the purpose of propaganda.
You Are What You Eat
As I approach my 23rd birthday, I’ve been asking my elders at the coffee house “if you could go back in time and give advice to yourself when you were 23, what would you say?” This weekend the first three people I asked (John Navarro, Brother Lou, and Robin McAvoy) each independently answered that they would tell themselves to be present, not to be swept away by the tempestuous demands of adulthood, the anxiety that accompanies the future, or the depression that haunts the past. I was struck by their answers, especially in light of my devotional scripture reading this week; Moses teaches Israel, in chapter 25 of Exodus, that they are to “set the bread of the Presence on the table before [him] regularly.” This bread of the Presence, an anticipation and foreshadowing of the Eucharist, is what it looks like to give thanks to God. What I feel God was communicating to me through their collective answers was a confirmation of a suspicion I’ve had all year, most acutely this summer: that the table is the source and summit of our Christian worship. What a blessed epiphany to have during Thanksgiving week.
To quote Alexander Schmemann; “Centuries of secularism have failed to transform eating into something strictly utilitarian. Food is still treated with reverence…To eat is still something more than to maintain bodily functions. People may not understand what that ‘something more’ is, but they nonetheless desire to celebrate it. They are still hungry and thirsty for sacramental life.”
