Sacred Meal

The Mystery within...

I felt uniquely blessed being remembered and thanked by Sisters Sylvia and Mary Alyce with a home cooked meal at their home. Last year I helped a friend throw a party to celebrate Sister Sylvia’s 60th anniversary of her vows as a School Sister of Notre Dame. She and Mary Alyce promised the two of us a thank you dinner. They honored me when they acknowledged my request many months earlier to please keep it simple. I now realize simple is sacred and sacred is simple.

We began with some red wine that Sister Sylvia made and a tiny plate of cheese and crackers so as not to spoil our appetite. Though I don’t drink alcohol anymore I made an exception and had a little of her wine. I wanted to compare it to my late husband homemade wine. It was delicious and felt sacramental. I wondered what awaited the plain white plates on the wooden dining table. It was mouthwatering to watch pork ribs, slow cooked in homemade sour kraut, being spooned onto our plates to which we added mashed potatoes, homemade applesauce and a roll. There was mention of dessert and I could hardly wait to find out what it would be—pineapple upside down cake, baked in a cast iron pan, topped with whipped cream and cherries soaked in whiskey. You could feel, and almost taste, the love that went into the preparation of our thank you dinner.

It doesn’t get much better than sharing a lovingly prepared simple meal with friends. It makes me wonder what else I could simplify in my life to more easily realize the sacred.

What if we could all know the sacred in the simple and the simple in the sacred?