Smells like charcoal

     This past Sunday I spent a couple of hours helping cook for our church's Rally Day, which is the end-of-summer-back-to-school kickoff whose main purpose seems to be persuading new members who don't know any better into serving in various groups and committees. Older members know to steer clear of the seductively pretty tables adorned with pictures and slogans and glossy photos just like clever insects stay away from Venus Fly Traps...
     Or maybe not. I have served on my own share of committees and in groups. Willingly, actually. Gladly, even. But it makes a catchy metaphor.
     The meal was simple, burgers and dogs and beans and such spread on a few tables, community picnic food.
     It reminded me of how much of our community life is spent around the table sharing a meal.

     My first few years at St. Francis, the first church to really become a family to me, were spent on the outside looking in. I attended more or less regularly, but I knew no one deeply or even socially, so I stuck mostly to myself and didn't really take part in the deeper church community. That all begin to change one summer at Parish Retreat, which is a midsummer vacation weekend at Camp McDowell in Nauvoo, Alabama.
    We attended that year out of duty and hope, determined to "get to know" some of the folks we saw in church each week, but it wasn't until the second day, Saturday afternoon, that someone's stunning miscalculation of the amount of charcoal needed in a grill created a crisis which put me in the thick of things.
     Wes, one of the he-men of St. Francis, did a quick guesstimate and decided to cram about a hundred pounds (really) of charcoal into a standard 55-gallon drum grill, and lit it off to a chorus of “oohs” and “ahhs” from assembled children. As might be expected, 15 minutes later, the coals had reduced to a blazing incandescent inferno that heated the grill grates to a color that went straight past red and verged on the bluish-white normally found only in the core of a star. Some brave soul tossed from about five feet away a couple of steaks onto the grates, which promptly burst into flames as the grates charred into them with a horrid acrid smell of burnt meat. Not able to let food go to waste (Egad!), I waded through the waves of heat up to the grill to rescue those steaks. This action everyone obviously decided must be the cue to start handing me food to load up. No one else dared approach the grill, so they stood a safe distance away and handed me what they wanted put on. Steaks, burgers, chicken, chops, with the flames licking all around and my eyebrows smoldering.

      You know, when your eyebrows are smoking, at least it keeps the sweat from running into your eyes. Just a handy tip.

     I suppose it only took about 15 minutes at around 900 degrees to cook enough food for the entire parish, but it felt like a whole lot longer. No one else was stupid enough to get closer than two feet away, so I stood there, a set of tongs in each hand, flipping and turning furiously, hunting for the cool spot of the grill more desperately than the conquistadors hunted for El Dorado, with my smoldering eyebrows and charred fingertips, feeling like some demented symphonic conductor. I was far from the BEST cook ever to touch that grill, but I definitely was the FASTEST cook EVER that night.
    That cemented my place in St. Francis. For months people would come up to me and remark upon the facts that 1) I showed remarkable courage in standing so close to a raging blaze 2) although they had wanted their steaks medium rare, the well done shoe leather I finally managed to chisel off the grates for them was actually quite tasty and 3) my eyebrows sure grew back nicely. Food always brings people close together, as does risk of bodily danger....

    From that beginning I started to join groups, volunteer, participate. Sure, it was several months before my fingertips had prints on them again, but that was a cheap price to pay for looking up from the flames licking someone's breaded chicken patties into a fiery bitter char, to the crowd that formed three feet away behind me to see if I would, indeed, spontaneously combust, and realize I had found my HOME.

     This Sunday nothing caught on fire and no one got singed. Well, maybe a little blister from touching a hot grill. But the same smiles and spirit of community were present. It is not coincidental that the primary ritual of Eucharist or Lord's Supper or Mass or Holy Communion or whatever you call it is based around breaking bread and sharing the cup together. Food is nurture and comfort and inspiration and family all in the same bite. When we eat together we lay down our weapons both physical and emotional, look each other in the faces, and share experiences.

    So I'll see you at the next picnic or meal or dinner party or banquet. I'll probably be the one with burns on my hands and singed brows.