In Praise of Meal Trains

Our congregation, in common with many I have worked with, puts together meal trains. Even if perhaps you call it by some other name, I guess that you know what a meal train is: a schedule of people bringing meals daily to someone (or a whole family) who is suffering something that makes it hard to keep their normal routine.

One parent in a household recovering from surgery or going through chemo treatments. One spouse enduring the loss of the other and navigating the season of a funeral, family visitations, paperwork, and reorientation. Someone losing their home to fire and living in temporary quarters.

Many different life events could trigger a meal train. And there are people who have a particular gift for keeping their ear to the ground and standing ready to organize a blessed cavalcade of provision for others in a time of suffering.

I think meal trains serve as a beautiful reminder of the kingdom of God.

They involve provision of basic need: daily bread. I have been joyfully surprised, however, to find an over-the-top gourmet meal delivered by meal train: cooking is some folks' spiritual gift! They are embodied love: We need to show up on someone's doorstep, and often come into their home, to deliver the goods. They foster relationship: It's hard not to have some kind of conversation when you're giving and receiving a meal-gift. They serve as an opportunity to pray: Making a meal for someone keeps them front of mind, and receiving someone's labor of love brings gratitude to the surface.

When you get an email, a text, a notification, or maybe even an old-school phone call from someone inviting you to participate in a meal train, do it. It realizes so many facets of God's love for us and our Christian call to be in meaningful community.

Thank God for the meal train!

love,

emrys

Ironies of Freedom

Yesterday we enjoyed the festivities of America's 250th in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Downtown Cheyenne hosted an expansive series of events yesterday, one of which was the performance of the Wind River Dancers. This troupe featured dancers from the Arapahoe, Ojibwe, Lakota, and Shoshone tribes. The leader, Lone Bear, of the Northern Arapahoe, did a good job of introducing the background of each dance and some of its significance for tribal culture.

Lone Bear took a moment at the beginning of the program to call for recognition of military veterans in the crowd, of which he himself is one. He expressed appreciation for the service of veterans which has "given us the liberty to come and go as we please." I heard those words, uttered immediately before Lone Bear's introduction of dancers who live on a reservation, and heard a cacophonous irony. It was the US military, during the 19th century especially, which crushed the freedom and bounded the territories of indigenous peoples. It was the federal government whose will is enforced by the US military that established treaties with native tribes only to disregard those treaties to gain more land.

Yes, American military might successfully defends liberty of a certain kind; but it seems to me that so much of what I saw in the Wind River Dancers is a culture choked off by the consumption of expansionist culture inherited from Europe. What to do about that restriction--that clear affront to freedom--is a matter of broader consideration and debate.

But I thought it important to point out that irony, whose presence might cause us to strive at greater length to realize the fact that all people are created with rights to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.

love,

emrys