Food is Love

I am living at the Christine Center now, after having done several personal retreats here in the last couple of years. I am about a month into my 2.5 month program of living here and exchanging work for room and board. While I am doing many things while here, like working on my dissertation, in addition to my duties on-site, one thing has become clear to me: preparing food is love!

I can recall a time when making food seemed like a chore---a task for which there was never ample time (or resources). I look back on fights with my then-partner about who would cook, who would do the dishes, or even, who would pick out the recipes? both of us dreading the effort required. And me, as a feminist, refusing to budge: after all, I was not a housewife! We could just make frozen burritos? Fry some Asian-food-store-bought dim sum? Those solutions never lasted because I was chronically ill, and strongly advised to follow a careful diet high in protein and vegetables, but gluten and dairy free. That is not so easy in the frozen foods aisle. Nor could we afford such luxuries anyway. So we would complain and avoid. For a while, we even tried cooking two weeks of meals at a time and then freezing everything. It worked, mostly, but was also exhausting. We'd lose a whole day to grocery shopping, and another to prepping, and then be too tired to do anything else.  I loved the act of sitting down to a meal together, but prayed for a personal chef who was also an excellent dietitian to take over for me. Or maybe some kind of ideal partner who would, in his spare time, take on all house-wifely duties so I'd never have to cook or clean anything? Because... that didn't seem hypocritical at all!

Looking back at all of that resistance, I marvel, because at the Christine Center, I am an assistant cook, dishwasher and sometimes cook, and I love my jobs. Here there is time set aside to eat, so it is not a matter of making or finding time. There is a daily rhythm, which I have fallen into. I love poring over cook books, looking for what will fit well with the seasonal ingredients we have on hand. I enjoy trying more new recipes than I might be able to at home. I even relish the quiet clean-up in the evenings, alone in the kitchen, slowly restoring everything to order and cleanliness, hanging up my apron and walking out with a sense of satisfaction not often found in dissertation writing.

It is not just that the manual labor gives me a break from time in my head thinking or writing or researching. It is also that I find the act of providing a cooked meal for my companions here to be an act of joy and love. It is a small thank you. It is a way to nourish and support them in their own journeys. It is the giving of a blessing in their days. We all need to eat. And here, for the first time, I have finally discovered that underlying that need is an opportunity. I show my gratitude for my time in this community in the quiet preparation of a meal. And this, for me, is love.