October 29, 2024
Breaking Bread With Our Brethren: Why It Matters
By Pamela Alexander
If I had a sandwich, and I knew you were hungry, I'd give you half.
– Henry Rollins
When my oldest daughter was 3, we had a mail carrier who always seemed grumpy. So she took it upon herself to help him by giving him a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Unfortunately, she chose to deliver the gooey sammy by dropping the whole, unwrapped treat into the bright, blue mailbox on the corner outside our house. As you can probably guess, this did not improve the mail carrier's demeanor.
But that desire to share food with our fellow beings runs deep in our blood, our bones. It starts early in us, and it is so important to break bread together.
Sharing common meals builds the bonds of family far beyond the ties of simply mother, father, sister, brother. When we all sit together and eat, suddenly, “family” expands to include the Grandparents, the Aunties, Uncles, Maidens, Gallants, the whole tapestry of humanity begins to be woven into the simple act of eating, together, a meal prepared by willing hands, with reverence, and love.
So, many years ago, we, here at Four Quarters began to serve free feasts at every event. A time away from the day's activities for us to sit in community and share a meal, blessed by prayers offered by ceremonial leaders of many traditions, and simple folks speaking from their hearts. And we found it to be a Very Good Thing.
So, in 2023, we took a much bigger step, and began including all meals at no additional cost for Beltaine, (Earth Skills Revival-yes or no-I can't recall) Stones Rising, and Samhain. It was a big step. Our spiritual events do not make any real financial contribution to the ever-rising costs of operating Four Quarters, and buying food to feed hundreds of people each season at no cost was a serious commitment on our part.
But it is so important to our process as humans that we decided that we had to feed each other in order to continue to build to strong bonds of community, tribe, and family that are at the core of our values here.
So how does all of this relate to Samhain?
Good question.
In many cultures, all around the world, people have a tradition of sharing food with the dead. And at Samhain, we carry on this tradition with the Reflective Feast, our variation of the traditional “Dumb Supper.” We take our meal Saturday night in silence, listening, not to our usual dinnertime chatter, but instead, for the small still voices of the ancestors, as we contemplate three different topics relating to our own beloved departed. This is a time for a few tears, but, for many of us, we find it a time of blissful reunion.
At the end of the meal, we return to speech, and we seem to walk away, speaking to close friends in hushed voices, anticipating the ceremony to come, but, always looking back over our shoulders for one last glimpse of the meal with the ancestors. Because when we take a meal together, we hunger for more than food. And when we take a meal together, that hunger for more than food is satisfied. But when we eat in deepest communion with Those Who Have Gone Before, we have an insatiable hunger for one more fleeting moment with our beloved departed.
The food satisfies our need that we will go on. The communion soothes our souls that They will go on.
So Mote It Be.