See Thy Gifts, See That Bounty

These days when our family sits down at the dinner table and we join hands to say our blessing over the meal, we are often led in prayer by the youngest in the family, three-year old Tristan, who does his best to repeat the words as he has come to understand them. To me it sounds something like this: "Guess this Lord. See Thy gifts? See that bounty? Amen." and he finishes with a big smile and a round of applause, and we all dig in to supper.

Someday in the not-too-distant future he'll learn the words correctly, or he'll be too shy or too cool to show such joy in saying grace, and I know already I'll forever miss the feeling of abundance he brings our family at the start of every meal. The only thing I can do about it is enjoy it while it lasts, I guess. Such is life.

Even though the words of the prayer are not officially "See Thy Gifts, See that Bounty", it's really not a bad piece of advice from a three-year old. After all, how often do we really look at our food, at what it is we call nourishment? How often do we think about or demonstrate respect for what it is we put in our bodies? I think a closer relationship with food is a good and healthy thing.

My wife insists on cooking a large Sunday meal and does so almost every week; it's a traditional family meal that ends one week and begins the next week, and requires that our family sit around the table for longer than is possible in the ebb and flow of busy week days. Sitting down for a meal is a priority in our family, and we are able to manage it almost every night. But Sundays are the best. She doesn't take short cuts as she cooks, and the food tastes better for the love and effort that goes into the making of it. I could write pages and pages about her soup, for instance, and every page would be another love letter. (But that's another story!)

This summer at the Holocaust Seminar I had the opportunity to partake in a traditional Jewish meal at a synagogue, and we were taught the Jewish custom of L'chaim, a short blessing before a meal that literally translates "To Life". Food is life. The lack of food is death. It makes sense that a people that wandered hungry in the desert with Moses for forty years would thank God for the gift of life every time they ate. It would be wise of all of us to take this approach. There are so many people working hard to provide us our food, and there are so many people who are hungry, even starving, that every meal is truly a blessing, though it can be hard to recognize it in this fast food, mega-store, big gulp culture, where food can be a little too cheap and easy.

Sometimes after our Sunday meals I'll say a short prayer with my family written by Wendell Berry, a Kentucky poet and farmer, called "A Prayer After Eating", and it goes like this: "I have taken in the light/Which quickened eye and leaf/May my brain be bright with praise/Of what I eat/In the brief blaze/Of motion and of thought/May I be worthy of my meat."  My kids giggle at the last line, but it means a lot to me, and if I'm lucky they'll come to understand it someday: what I eat gives me the strength to move and think. I should live with respect for that, and with gratitude. A meal is a blessing, and food is sacred. May I be worthy of my meat, indeed.   


Note: This blog post is from a series originally published as personal essays written for the Van Buren County Advertiser from 2008-2014 by Corey Harbaugh under the title It's All Good. The It's All Good columns were written to feature and celebrate life in and around Gobles, Michigan.