Food and Hospitality by Tode Oshin

My reading today is a portion of a statement from UUA President Reverend William G. Sinkford, made earlier this week in response to the killings in Knoxville two weeks ago:

"Unitarian Universalism is a faith that is not based on a particular creed. Instead, it is grounded in a few deeply held principles. First among these principles is "the inherent worth and dignity of all people," a belief that compels us to speak out on important justice issues. This has been part of our mission since the early days of abolitionism, continuing through women's suffrage, the civil rights movement, and our current advocacy on behalf of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender persons. We truly are a church of "all souls," not just some souls.

"It will take time for Unitarian Universalists to mourn and to heal. But let me assure you that we will not change our beliefs or compromise our demands for social justice. Fear will not prevent us from standing on the side of love, and we will continue to open our doors and our hearts to all people. This Sunday, just like any other, more than one thousand Unitarian Universalist congregations will be open for business, and our business is to welcome the stranger, to love our neighbor, to nurture the spirits of our people, and to help to heal our wounded world".

When I was a young man, I traveled extensively, mostly hitchhiking, mostly around the US and Canada. The high point of my adventures, however, was a seven-month journey in 1973, through Europe and the Middle East.

Early in that trip, in late April, I took a ferry from Piraeus, near Athens, to Haifa, Israel. The ferry took a couple of days, stopping at several of the Greek islands, and, at one point, on the southern coast of Turkey. This port visit lasted several hours, and passengers were allowed to go ashore. While most of the passengers shopped in the small village, a friend and I decided to hike a ways out of town, in search of a beach.

After going down a small road a while, we decided to cut through a farm field in the direction of the water. And as we made our way over a slight rise, we came across a group of people, having lunch under a gnarled old tree. With neither a moment's hesitation, nor any concern that we were trespassing on what was probably their land, the picnickers motioned for us to join their meal.

It was a simple spread - and a delightful feast. Salty olives, feta cheese, bread, - I think maybe some wine. The details have faded - but their warmth and their generosity has stayed with me for 35 years. They did not strike me as particularly wealthy folks, and certainly they had no reason to expect any return - what they did was pure, unselfish, human goodness.

Hospitality is a common, perhaps universal, attribute of humanity. Cultures the world over pride themselves for the way they treat strangers. Try a Google search using the word "hospitality" and any national or ethnic description - you'll get tens of thousands - even millions - of results. Offering a traveler a place to stay, and food to eat is commonplace. Evolutionary biologists have posited that feeding strangers is a way to bank surplus food in the form of goodwill.

Hospitality - specifically, feeding and housing strangers -is also a common value in the world's religions. Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, Jewish and Islamic traditions all call for generosity towards strangers. I'm sure other religions do as well, though I have not carried out the research to confirm that.

This hospitality, unfortunately, is not without exceptions - in many instances, feared or hated "others" are not given a place at the table. The term "southern hospitality", for instance, might have a decidedly different connotation to an African American than to me. This failure to be hospitable is clearly contrary to the religious teachings - but people fail to live up to religious teachings all the time.

Living up to one's ideals is not easy, or even possible. Culture, upbringing, and experience can all lead us astray. There are some people whose circustances and demeanor can make us uncomfortable - and offering hospitality can become a challenge. Our heritage demands that we make the effort.

I certainly do not intend to hold myself out as an exemplar - I'm as human, and fallible, as the next guy. One of the reasons I'm here is that I think this community supports me, and helps me to be a better person - to come a little closer to the mark.

One of the things our Wy'east congregation does often, and, I think, well, is sharing meals. Even before we we were formally chartered as a UU congregation, while we were discussing the formation of what would become Wy'east, we ate together. The very first event I attended within this community, not too long after the first organizational meetings, was a potluck picnic in Willamette Park.

Early on in our history, we used to have "sharing suppers" - meals hosted in our homes, where small groups of families would gather several times each church year. The "restaurant adventure" program, where interested congregants gather for a restaurant meal after the service, has been a monthly tradition for many years. And we've always had the occasional potluck, as well as our annual canvass dinners, which have ranged from potlucks to more elaborate affairs.

We've even replaced coffee hour - a UU tradition of such stature that coffee has been described as a UU sacrament - with food.

In recent years, we have instituted our current schedule. The first Sunday of each month we have a potluck meal after the service; the second Sunday is a "Soup Sunday" (or, in these summer months, "Salad Sunday"), with a couple of our members preparing the meal from ingredients brought by the congregants; and the third Sunday is the Restaurant Adventure.

Eating together is, to my mind, a very primal setting for community. The variety of settings in which people share meals is nearly endless. Eating dinner together - once an honored tradition, but now, at least in this country unfortunately fading - is a way to strengthen families. A dinner date is a staple of courtship. (Dinner for one at a restaurant is the quintessential symbol of loneliness...) We celebrate weddings, and often the passing of our loved ones, with food. Picnics and barbecues, business meetings and awards banquets - the list goes on.

Food also has a role in religious rituals, and has so for as long as religion has existed. From the food offered up on ancient altars, to placate the gods, to the Christian host, food has often served symbolic purposes.

In the Passover Seder of Jewish tradition, a meal, a history lesson, and religious instruction are woven together. The Passover matzoh, unleavened bread symbolic of the Jews' hurried flight out of Egypt, is offered up with the words "This is the bread of affliction that our fathers ate in the land of Egypt. Whoever is hungry, let him come and eat."

Not eating - fasting - of course has religious meaning as well. And some of our biggest celebratory meals - such as Easter dinner, and the Eid al-Fitr at the end of Ramadan - come at the ending of fasts.

We often use words such as hunger and feed to mean much more than just actual food. We do so, for instance, in our chalice lighting statement. These words become such potent metaphors because the actual food and hunger are so basic.

Thinking about this topic over the past few weeks, I found myself focusing on the image of primitive humans eating around a fire. People have been eating together, and forming communities in the process, for upwards of 100,000 years... It seems to me that our chalice flame evokes that communal fire - and it occurred to me that we should have a chalice on each table for our communal meals. After discussing the idea with several of our members, and consulting with Reverend Maginn, I have purchased some small glass tea light holders to serve the purpose. We can give it a try, starting with tonight's meal, and see how it goes.

As part of our service a few weeks ago, Barbara Smith-Thomas invited us to share our aspirations for Wy'east. One of the things I said, I want to say again, and elaborate on: I want Wy'east to make a real difference in the life of every person who walks through our door.

It thrills me whenever a newcomer to our congregation tells me, often over one of our shared meals, that he or she felt immediately welcome at Wy'east. It is not accidental that visitors find us welcoming. This is, after all, one of our goals - to be welcoming to all. It grows directly out of our first principle - the inherent worth and dignity of every person.

The promise implicit in the first principle - that you are welcome in our community - is at the heart of of who we are, as a congregation, and as a denomination, As Bill Sinkford put it, in my earlier reading:

"...our business is to welcome the stranger, to love our neighbor, to nurture the spirits of our people, and to help heal our wounded world."

This is how we can, and do, make a difference to those who join us each week - by welcoming, accepting, and honoring each individual person.

When we eat together, we are engaged in an activity that is prehistoric - one could argue, pre-human. It is also an activity that can be profoundly welcoming. We are not in a position, as a community, to offer shelter to a newcomer - at least in the physical sense. We are in a position to offer food.

The potluck, especially, can be an instrument for welcoming new congregants - and for transforming them into members of the community. If you show up at our door, we say "Come, eat with us". If you like what you find here, a month later, you can bring food - and suddenly, it is you who are extending the invitation.

Because it is so welcoming, so primal in its ability to build community, (and because I love to cook, and love to eat...) I welcome every opportunity we have to break bread together. I would like to do it even more often than we already do.

I have had some conversations on this subject - with mixed response, I must admit. I want to put forward a proposal for general discussion, that we change our schedule to include a second potluck each month, on the 3rd Sunday, and move the Restaurant Adventure to the 4th Sunday.

One of the themes which emerged quite strongly in the aspirations shared during Barbara's service was the desire to engage, as a congregation, in social action within the larger community. The Ministry Committee, of which I am a member, had already started to address this desire. We held a series of dinners... to discuss with congregants what form our social action might take.

Out of those discussions came "Feed the Spirit" - a proposal to organize a series of actions, in the coming church year, focused on feeding the hungry. Mark Alter and I have discussed three possible events - some sort of gleaning project this fall, participation in a program to feed families in a homeless shelter during the winter, and working with the Oregon Food Bank during one of their food collection drives. This last one, we have done before, with great success, some years ago,

We hope to make the events family friendly, so that all members of our community can participate. In addition to participating in the events themselves, we are looking for volunteers to help organize our efforts. Please talk to Mark or myself if you are willing and able to help out.

Some people apparently find it necessary to draw a distinction between humans and other animals. Those that do have spent a lot of energy, over the years, trying to delineate the things humans do that animals don't: We make and use tools - but it turns out that chimps and some birds do as well. We use language - but again it is clear that other species do also. We lie - but even here, there is evidence that other species, if not exactly lying, engage in deceptive behaviors, in interactions with other members of their species.

Now, I'm not usually one to make such distinctions. It seems to me that where we differ, it is more in degree than in absolutes. Our tools are more complex; our language probably also, at least in most cases. Other species will sometimes kill members of their own kind - but never on the mass scale we manage with some regularity.

However - I don't know that I've ever heard of another species that cooks. Again, perhaps it is still a matter of degree. Other species wash their food, peel fruits, choose their favorite portions of game they've killed.

We humans, on the other hand, have devised a staggering array of techniques for preparing food. Many, such as threshing and grinding grain, soaking beans, and the basic application of heat, are methods for extracting nutritional value from our food sources. Cooking also renders edible some plants which are poisonous when eaten raw. And some techniques, such as salting, smoking, drying... canning, refrigeration, freezing, freeze drying, vacuum packing, etc. - are ways of preserving the nutritional value of our surplus.

These methods, however, barely scratch the surface of our food preparation. Most of what we do - the combination of different ingredients, the use of spices, the boiling, steaming, baking, roasting, broiling, sauteing, the slicing, the dicing, chopping, mashing, grating, and a thousand other techniques - enough to fill the more than 19,000 cookbooks sold on Amazon.com, as well as some I'm sure have not yet been documented in cookbook form - these methods are means of improving flavor and texture, and appearance. They are aesthetic choices - art, or at least, craft.

They are also one of the primary means of delineating and transmitting culture. One of the reasons I love our melting pot of a nation is the wonderful variety of cuisines immigration provides to us. Every new nationality or ethnic group to arrive promptly opens restaurants and groceries - and being the glutton that I am, I love them all!

Food -what we eat, how we prepare it - helps define who we are. Sharing our food - with each other, with the seeker who appears at our door, with those members of our society who have trouble feeding themselves - can help us to become what we wish to be.