4. Too Busy to Eat

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CHAPTER ONE:     IT’S TIME WE TOOK THE TIME

Arrhythmic Lives……..As an exercise physiologist, nutrition professor, and wellness educator, I have long been intrigued by the notion that God’s gift of time envelopes us in a regular, rhythmical embrace of hours, days, weeks and seasons. From the primal rhythm of each heartbeat to the predictable pull of the moon on tides, from the daily need for sleep and food to the coming of winter after harvest, our bodies and our communities are shaped and framed by time. So, we shouldn’t be surprised when our responses often affect our health.

When it comes to physical, emotional and spiritual health, it is important to pay attention to these God-created rhythms.   Our non-stop activities put us in perpetual fight-or-flight-response mode, causing hormones like cortisol, designed specifically to help us respond to immediate threats, to course through our veins for hours on end, keeping us literally wired for action. Consequently, our blood pressure rises.  Our gut tells our brain to eat more high-energy carbohydrate.  Insulin response to rising blood sugar is blunted, and our sleep patterns become disturbed. As a result, our bodies don’t get the regular, rhythmic rest they need, and we find ourselves self-medicating with sugar, caffeine, “energy” drinks, fast food, TV/internet surfing, and sleeping pills to keep the “on” button lit like a pilot light.

So, we live rather arrhythmic lives, pulled out of step by a culturally subtle but very real centrifugal force that thrives on flinging us helplessly outward into a world where time is compressed, and the great unspoken assumption is that we can control it. Time is no longer gift, but an increasingly frustrating commodity in a warped economy with a currency of minutes and hours; just like money, we never seem to have enough time. On a daily basis we live the dual lie that being busy is virtuous (because we all know that the opposite, idleness, is a vice), and that accomplishing everything on the endless to-do list is necessary. What’s worse, we unthinkingly adopt the idolatrous notion that the calendar is the true center of our lives. Commitment to God is reduced to three-minute “devotions”. We slot prayer into the commute to work, we over-schedule and over-manage our children to ensure their successful launch into this perverted world, we skip meals and eat on the fly, and fall into bed too exhausted for nighttime prayer or the delight of intimate physical union with our spouse. We run not the good race, but the futile one. We don’t flourish, we survive, and our filled time leaves little room for making the Lord the center and focus of our lives.

Of course, we must not forget that for each one who experiences the stress of rationed time, there are others with unwelcome time on their hands. For some, one’s heartbeat seems slowed to a crawl, and the hours drag. Those out of work, the aged and alone, and those suffering illness can find that time slows into long, often boring and lonely stretches of hours and days. This is just as stressful as time famine.

In either case, we become unsettled. Restless. Even as the church calendar weaves its liturgical rhythm through our days, we find ourselves surprised and breathless- it’s Advent already? How did Christmas get here so fast? We don’t have time to ask ourselves, “What’s the hurry, why so rest-less?” I often find myself asking how I am supposed to work, and create a stable home life, and be a faithful presence in my church family and local community, and take care of growing children and aging parents, my spouse and myself without losing my way? How do I spend time with God- really seeking his presence- when each day is already so full? More importantly, how do I ever find enough time to respond lovingly and selflessly to the needs I see all around me, praying for those needs and for the salvation of others? Conversely, how can people with too many painfully empty hours view time as God’s gift? I think we all intuitively know God’s answer: “Be still and know that I am God.”  

After all of this, you won’t be surprised to learn, as we dig into the meat of Shared Meals, that eating together on a regular basis immunizes against slavery to time.

May you find that lingering with others over a good meal brings rest, clarity, peace, and togetherness.  Go ahead!  Plan a meal.  Invite others.  Share.  There’s a simple rightness to it all.

~Julie A.P. Walton, Ph.D.

3. The Shared Meal as Full & Faithful Presence

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As we saw in the last post, the shared meal with Jesus was where life, belief, and behavior collided head on with the at-hand kingdom of God.

Likewise, meals bookend the biblical post-resurrection account, starting with the risen Christ’s breaking of bread with two disciples along the road to Emmaus, and culminating with the triumphant wedding feast of the Lamb. Acts 2 tells us that the first believing communities were devoted to the shared breaking of bread as they gathered to hear the apostles’ teaching, to worship, and to pray. Without an institutionalized church, early believers met in homes and dining rooms, and shared what they had, including food, in common.

But, times change. People change. Expectations change. Societies change, and their cultural practices do too. A fundamental question to ask, then, in seeking to understand today’s meal practices in the context of those of Jesus and the early church is whether our relative inattention to the shared meal at home, at work, in our neighborhood, and in our church family is even a problem. Perhaps our evolution toward social networking and digital communication is simply a new and different way for people to create those growth-conducive environments for living out a shared faith. In this light, we must address the apparent conflict between our assumptions that “time-expensive” face-to-face interaction has value, as well as the post-modern notion that we can create flourishing, vibrant community through electronic, virtual, time-saving means in which people are not routinely bodily present to one another. We should also note that this suggests that we need to re-think how much we actually value community over and above self, and whether or not we have confused community with communication.

Yes, as time moves forward, change is to be expected, and not all change is bad. Jesus certainly wrought radical, even deviant change on the Roman-occupied Judean world of his day. Yet, God does not change. Jesus came eating and drinking, ushering in a new covenant with an earthly ministry in which shared meals were a common focal point, leaving us with a memorial in this time of his absence which takes the form of a meal, and promising us a great feast upon his return. The unchangeable I AM still, in our day, desires our time, our hearts, our obedience, and our love, both for him and for our neighbors.

I believe that lack of time spent fully and faithfully and regularly in one another’s real (versus virtual) presence is a detriment to our collective means for growth both in our families and as a community of believers, and that a simple focus on the shared meal, both common and sacred, can help a church family and people at home set an anchor in a cultural sea buffeted by time obsession.[1] As a result, this blog attempts to provide practical ways we can encourage regular, shared meals in homes, neighborhoods, and at church functions. Furthermore, it will explore the role and responsibility of the local church to heed the hunger of its neighbors, and to teach and encourage its members to adopt hospitable, just and sustainable food practices.  May you find sustenance and hope and encouragement here to spend time with others, lingering together over the God-given blessings of daily bread, and so nourished, that you may be called and sent out to challenge and inspire others to do likewise.

[1]For a timely and thought-provoking treatment of the theology of faithful presence, see James D. Hunter’s To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010).

2. Why are our tables empty?

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A shared meal isn’t always enjoyed by everyone. Many of us can bring to mind times around a table when life was sour or empty, when anger, conflict, abandonment, sickness, sadness or fear made the food bitterly inedible, when dining companions seemed more like tyrants and enemies, when our physical hunger deserted us so that gathering around the table was torment.

And what of the many people who live and eat alone? For those who have no table to speak of? For some, there is little or no companionship. Others have little or no food, and life is lonely, hard and hopeless. An empty table shouts of hunger, need, longing, and abandonment, when people feel alone, forgotten, unwelcome, unloved, unforgiven, unwell and unfed. This table is misery, and we must keep this in mind as we learn to host and accommodate friend and stranger at our table, making room for those whose lives are malnourished in every sense of the word.

No matter the reason, our time at the table in one another’s company has dwindled in our day, one sign of an obvious shift in the way we view time itself. God’s gift of time is degraded to commodity in the post-modern era.   The fifteen-minute meal, the microwaveable dinner, the pre-packaged convenience food, and the fast food culture in general have trained us to submit to hunger as only something to be fueled then forgotten, the more quickly the better. As a result, our eating is utilitarian, and nearly always self-concerned.

The practice of an unhurried nightly family dinner, of the days when wholesome fresh foods found their way to the table, when families and neighbors prayed together even as they ate together is nearly extinct. In one sense, this reflects the instability of the modern family. But, in another sense, we have simply abandoned the common meal, such that our tables have lost their cardinal purpose for uniting people. Many tables hold more mail and school papers than food. For families with children at home, after school lessons and sports push a shared dinner to the sidelines. More and more, cars suffice as the dining rooms many homes no longer have or use. At work, we toil alone at our desks, multitasking job and lunch. Or, we simply skip meals altogether for the sake of saving time as if it were money we could bank, because meals are no longer about setting aside time to meet God and the needs of one another, thankful for this daily provision.

Neither have our church families remained immune to this effect of time famine. The common, shared meal at church, whether picnic, potluck, or banquet has diminished in importance and in practice. Gathering together takes time we can’t spare. Really, we are thankful if we can manage to get ourselves and our families to weekly services, prayer-meetings, Bible studies, and youth group on time. Meeting at church for a meal, not to mention helping prepare or serve it, means yet another commitment a lot of us avoid making.

But there’s hope for positive change, as people begin to rethink the importance of sharing meals.  A look at the meal stories of Jesus, and a study of the centrality of the shared meal in the first century church makes it apparent that meal-making and sharing are regular and critical practices for creating an environment conducive to learning and growth, both for individuals and the faith community at large. Jesus ate with Pharisee and tax collector, at weddings and funerals, in homes, on hillsides, and over beachside campfires. He used meal times to confront people’s assumptions and prejudices, to stand the religious and social practice of his day on its head. Jesus’ full presence at meals model for us those faith practices we can emulate: attentiveness, testimony, witness, thanksgiving, service, forgiveness, encouragement, confession, and hospitality. For Jesus, the shared meal was an epicenter where life, belief, and behavior collided head on with the at-hand kingdom of God.

~Julie A.P. Walton, Ph.D.

1. Why Eating Together Matters

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Most of us can fondly recall times we gathered with family or friends around a table for a wonderful meal. I think of my dad’s famous pot roast and mashed potatoes with gravy, always the centerpiece of family celebrations. Of my husband’s and my first Thanksgiving away from home, shared by charitable strangers soon to become fast friends from church. Coming together for a meal, to a table laden with food is one of life’s unsung blessings. But, it is also an increasingly lost opportunity.

The table itself is both place and metaphor. It is a fixed place to come, hungry, expectant, and grateful, made ready for us, a safe place to learn to try new things. The table is sanctuary. It gives us the opportunity to be fully present to the people in our midst, where we have and can take the time to share our lives, a lived-out story, a testimony. The table is school, for it is at the table we learn, face to face, loving ways to accept and forgive one another, to confront pressing issues, and to practice reconciliation and civility. Most importantly, the table is a place to leave filled, satisfied, challenged, and sent. The table gives us room for fellowship and learning ways to share our faith as a fundamental place for sharing the gospel; the table is mission. And, it is journey shared routinely with those we love most.

But, we live in a time focused on individualism, a concept that is contrary to the communal nature and nurture of the Christian faith.  And so,  Continue reading →