Today’s find: Simple

A simple meal: that’s the guideline we’re provided for our couples’ faith-sharing group.

Each monthly gathering is built around a kind of “pot-luck” dinner – the host couple prepares an entrée and everybody else provides a side dish. And for the most part, our Team couples are pretty good about keeping to the “simple” thing. There’s really no competition to out-do last month’s meal, no one-ups-manship among us.

That said, there’s nothing simple about preparing a meal for a dozen folks, is there? “Mission creep” inevitably sets in: Extra appetizers make their way onto the menu. More glasses and serving dishes appear. And the specialty flatware comes out from its hiding place, too – a pickle fork, a cheese knife, the relish spoons.

Then comes the mystery, the morning after the simple meal. 

As I unload the dishwasher, I realize I don’t know where to put the pickle fork … so we can find it again next time. Heck, on some level, I find myself grappling with the very existence of the pickle fork. I’m not sure I even knew we owned one, much less where it needs to be stored for an effortless future retrieval.

I don’t know, but I know my Sweetie does. And that’s a very good thing. 

Yes, not only is my Sweetie a great Mom (Happy Mother’s Day, BTW), but she knows how to host, how to pay attention to the details that I so often find mysterious. I’m happy to assist, but without my Sweetie’s “hostess DNA,” our simple friends-and-family gatherings would never be as meticulously wonderful as they always turn out to be.

And so, this time around, as I unload the dishwasher … I am given a subtle insight. We two have become one. Not all the time, perhaps – but at dinner time, for sure. We complement each other in our ability to offer hospitality. A simple meal – prepared for friends – provides unexpected evidence of God’s grace at work in our lives.

And not only grace perhaps, but God’s indwelling in us. God’s very Self, shared with us. “On that day,” Jesus says in this week’s gospel passage, “you will realize that I am in my Father and you are in me and I in you.”

That’s not quite the same as “we two have become one,” but it’s at least in the same Zip code I’d say. Perhaps God is working in me, in us, through the simple things of our lives … working to reveal God’s deepest desire for us – that we each and all become one.

Let us pause now…to recall that we are in the presence of the Holy & Merciful One.

IHS