Let's Break Bread, Instead of Heads

It's 4 a.m. and I'd hoped to still be sleeping, so excuse me if I feel like pointing fingers.

But something is clearly wrong here.  Like rainless summers and tornadoes in November, the evidence is mounting and I want to know why.  Why did Trinity McDonald die?  Why did Sara Piccolo lose it one morning in early October?  Why do I kind of feel bad for Bo Pelini?

And, while I'm at it, why can't that mayor in Canada see the forest through the trees?    Why did a baseball bat end two lives this past summer?  And who on earth wants to go shopping on Thanksgiving?

These are unrelenting times and I'm not sure humans can thrive in such conditions.  When "floodwaters" is our go-to position, the detritus of such raging power gets personal.   It's as though our culture is having one massive nervous breakdown and a billion hand-held devices are recording our collective downward spiral on tiny two-inch screens in glorious HD detail.

Stop the presses.  I want to get off.

And, while I'm at it, I also want to gather up all the cell phones, close down the 24-hour restaurants, and shut off the wi-fi for awhile.  Seriously.  Every single one of these things only adds to the unrelenting pressure to always be "on."

Hungry?  Eat.  Mad?  Post.  Bored?  Kill.

Who, in the midst of such floodwaters, has the time to sit down and discuss such things around the dinner table?

And yet . . . .

I am sure many will consider this quaint and laughable, a solution far too simple in such cynical times, but I really do believe that a little more table time would do us all some good.  Like my friend Barry said at dinner last night, our culture seems to have forgotten the power of coming home each day to a place filled with family and food and the utterly dull but incredibly powerful routine of a little dinner with people we love.

There's a reason that the basics are called "meat and potatoes."  And, yes, I know that we should cut back on our red meats and starches.  But that doesn't mean we should forego regular time with those we love, those routine pauses in our days when we can finally breathe a little.  Breathe and recollect the mundane, the overwhelming, the tests and trials and tiny joys that made up the moments that led up to this one.

If you want me to get all Biblical on you, it might be good for us to recall that the last thing Jesus did with his peeps before he died was to break some bread and share a little wine with them.  And it sounds like it wasn't even much of a meal.

And yet,  it meant everything to them, this pause amidst the unrelenting waters of their lives.