Reflections 4/11/11

"In eating the bread and drinking the wine, they are to remember him. Jesus tells them, and to remember him not merely in the sense of letting their minds drift back to him in the dim past but in the sense of recalling him to the immediate present. They are to remember him the way when we remember someone we love who has died, he is alive again within us to the point where we can all but hear him speak and our hearts kindle to the reality of his presence."(F. Buechner "Listening to Your Life" p. 96)

I don't know if my love for food has parallels to my love for communion.  I will say that I have very vivid memories of the churches that I spent significant time in. All of them were eucharistically centered.  Most did not use baked bread. There were the places that used such thin wafers that they stuck to the roof of your mouth. Some wafers had a little more substance.  The wine ran the gamut of decent port to muscatel.  What is probably even more true is that in all of those places it was even more the people that I recall the most.

Same with real food too.  Many of the important and beloved folks in my life have some signature recipe, that if I had it outside of their presence I would remember them. 

Of course there are other triggers that bring beloved people back from just a memory to being very present to us. What brings your most beloved back to the forefront of your mind and heart?  Are there "signature dishes that when you taste and see, you say "just like he/she used to make?"

Blessings,
Ed