In My Beginning Is My End

Or, "What's the point of another millennial pastor starting a blog?"

Take. Eat.

So, if you’re on this page, you’ve taken the initial step of investing some of your time and attention into this project of mine. Maybe you’re a friend, a parishioner, or someone who haunts the theological corners of Substack in your spare time.

Regardless, it’s not lost on me that there is something deeply ironic about yet another millennial priest (or pastor) starting a blog. It can, and probably should, provoke the same sort of eye rolls elicited when your friend announces they’re launching a podcast.

So why bother? What am I after?

For nearly all my life my relationship with food and the act of eating has been contentious.

In elementary school I was bullied for being the, “fat kid.” Whether it was true or not, I carried that sense throughout high school, always convinced that this descriptor was the first thing that came to mind when people thought about me.

In college I decided I was tired of that, so I lost about 70lbs by sheer force of will, and a diet which consisted of nothing but granola bars, Diet Coke, SunChips and turkey sandwiches. That is, with the exception of a once a week, “cheat meal” wherein I ate whatever I wanted…normally until I couldn’t breathe.

In my mid 20’s, I jumped from fad diet to fad diet, fluctuating up and down in weight. I also encountered the wonderful killer of bank accounts known as Uber Eats, which at first was leveraged to traverse the limited cuisine of the Golden Arches, but increasingly became a way that I got to know the distinctive restaurants in the city where I had spent my whole life.

To paraphrase Tozer, “What came into my mind when I thought about food was the most important thing about me.”

And in all of these ups and downs, I was struck by the fact that eating is at the very same time a tremendous grace, and a terrible burden for people this side of Eden.

Two Times Food Made Me Cry

I make it sound like my relationship with food has always been negative, malformed, or fraught. That’s not necessarily true. On two different occasions, something I ate produced an emotional reaction, one that was deep, moving, and left a permanent impression.

The first came a few months into the pandemic. Newly married, my wife and I were living in a tiny mother in law suite I’m told was purchased out of a sears catalogue in the 20’s. In those first few weeks, during a tiger king haze, most of us weren’t really sure what we were dealing with. So we hunkered down.

Days became weeks, weeks became months. And we had settled into the routine of masking, and sprinting through the grocery store to grab things before headed home. All restaurants were closed, including the coffee shops we had frequented in pre-pandemic life. Until one day we heard a shop nearby had opened for takeout.

We sat in the parking lot and ordered online. The building wasn’t open yet. We followed the procedure the business had set: order online, come knock on the door, we hand you the coffee. No small talk. It felt like a drug deal.

But as I sat in the car with my latte and took the first sip, I had a visceral reaction. Not because it was the best coffee I’d ever had, not because it was even my favorite coffee shop in town. But because of the way that it took me back to a litany of moments that felt remote.

My wife and I sitting in the shop on a day off, talking.

The hours of writing sermons running up my tab as I ordered cup after cup.

The friends I’d made because they happened to notice the book I was reading, and struck up a conversation.

All of that in a cup.

The second time came later, probably 7 or 8 months into the pandemic. On Friday, my dad had received a preliminary cancer diagnosis at 59 years old. We were shattered. That Sunday, I made plans to attend a friend’s Episcopal church. Already I was feeling a draw towards the Anglican tradition which would lead me to the priesthood.

At that point, I just needed the stability of the liturgy to steady myself as my world began to spin out of control. After the homily, we celebrated the eucharist, the first time I’d received communion since the world closed down. As the priest handed me the wafer and offered the cup, I fell apart. Sobbing into the cup and trying to swallow the bread.

But in that small meal, for the first time since my Dad’s phone call announcing his diagnosis on Friday, I felt God’s nearness. Christ was there, in the elements, and in the midst of the darkness that had visited my family.

This was all around the time I began to explore what it might mean to think about food theologically. How is it that this fundamental requirement for life went so wrong? And how might it be restored in the economy of the Gospel? Why is it that of all the actions required to sustain life this one is given sacramental significance?

In short, I’ve spent the last few years grappling with a question first posed by Norman Wirzba, "Why did God create a world in which every living thing needs to eat in order to live?”

What I’m After

I’ve been thinking it through now for years, on multiple fronts. As I sit in our Parish food pantry, and help those who are experiencing food insecurity trying to meet their basic needs.

As I hunch over an old cook book in an attempt to learn the recipes my Yaya passed down

As a priest in the Anglican Church, when I hold out the host and the cup to others who are similarly shattered by life and speak the same words that transformed me:

Take, eat, this is my body. Drink this, all of you, this is my blood.

That’s what I want to explore, at least for now. This central act, which is common to all creatures, so damaged by the fall. But also somehow subsumed by the sacramental reality of the incarnation and transfigured into a means of grace.

This is the beginning, the first post of many. But that’s my end, what I’m after, which is learning what it means in Christ to take, and eat.

If you want to join me at the table, hit the subscribe button.

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