Our brokenness in giving. Giving through meals.

I love meals, and shared meals… and would often choose a shared meal with friends over going out and doing something specific(though they are fun too!). Reading further through Henry Nouwen’s book, Life of the Beloved, I came across this, which really blessed me, because it rings so true! Over a meal everything levels out and you know who and where you are and where the fellow meal-eaters are at.

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Our brokenness opened us to a deeper way of sharing our lives and offering each other hope. Just as bread needs to be broken in order to be given, so, too, do out lives.

Isn’t a meal together the most beautiful expression of our desire to be given to each other in our brokenness> The table, the food, the drinks, the words, the stories: are they not the most intimate ways in which we not only express the desire to give our lives to each other, but also to do this in actuality? I very much like the expression “breaking bread together,” because there the breaking and the giving are so clearly one. When we eat together we are vulnerable to one another. Around the table we can’t wear weapons of any sort. Eating from the same bread and drinking from the same cup call us to live in unity and peace. This becomes very visible when there is conflict. Then eating and drinking together can become a truly threatening even, then the meal can become the most dreaded moment of the day. We all know about painful silences during dinner. They contrast starkly with the intimacy of eating and drinking together, and the distance between those sitting around the table can be unbearable.

One the other hand, a really peaceful and joyful meal together belongs to the greatest moments of life.

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It reminds me of many meals shared, the good, and the hard, but yes, a really peaceful and joyful meal shared among good friends and family truly becomes a beautiful collection of the greatest moments in life!