Kitchen Meditation

I'm experiencing a little melancholy this morning. It's just a bitter little signal from my soul that implores me to listen up. Slow down. And pay attention. So I don't of course. I get busier and more restless and avoid the unmistakable call of Jesus to my spirit that lets me know he has something to say.

And in the practice of my avoidance, I come to Modobject at Home and see Christian's pictures of spinach leaves in a colander in her kitchen sink. I wonder, no marvel, at the beauty of their pink root-ends. And He catches me.

I'm sure I've written about it before at Answered Prayers for Owen Meany, but I spent two of my high-school  summers working in the kitchen at a camp for girls in Tuxedo, North Carolina. It isn't your average camp kitchen. The "kitchen manager" (quotation marks because I think you can safely say "chef")  graduated from Le Cordon Bleu and apprenticed with Frank Stitt here at Highlands Bar & Grill before coming to North Carolina. Like his mentor, he picked the freshest local produce he could find to feed the campers and I chopped and peeled and diced and sliced for about nine hours a day for ten weeks. This is where I learned to cook.

One afternoon, I sliced open a cantaloupe and stopped in absolute wonder at the rows upon rows of seeds suspended by tiny creamsicle threads in the middle of the melon. The order and design was a world unto itself. All the beauty of God's creation lay hidden in darkness until I opened it to the light. I began to marvel at the universe inside a bell pepper (don't you love to find those strange little tender bits that attach themselves to the stem inside?). I began to notice the world of beauty in the dimpled skin of a fresh strawberry. I became intoxicated by the smell tomato stems make when you get them just a little bit wet. And I began to consider what kind of God makes such beauty solely for our bodily consumption.

Is this not a kind of Communion? To ingest the beauty of a living God and feed upon it in our hearts with faith and thanksgiving?

At the end I write these words as my testimony and as the song of my heart to all of you who read it. I have looked upon the beauty of the Lord. He has taken me to the banquet hall and his banner over me is Love. All of my black dogs slink into shadow when his presence fills the temple and sings rejoicing over the works of his hands. Amen.