Grace
Today is World Environment Day, with the theme “Seven billion dreams. One Planet. Consume with care.” The theme is a call to cut down on consumption, given the strain that more than 7 billion people place on the planet’s resources.
Playing a major role in this year’s global Environment Day celebrations is the Slow Food Movement, which advocates mindful eating—meaning a consciousness of, and appreciation for, the food we consume. It’s meant as a counterpoint to the fast food that has become a marker of our troubled modern times, food that’s often unhealthy and made worse by being gobbled down, on the run.
It makes sense to move toward slow food preparation and consumption as part of a larger concern for the environment, and I thought that part of this mindful eating should be bringing back grace, a generic term to refer to prayers before or reflection with meals.
Fallen grace
Grace has, sadly, fallen from grace, and one reason is that we’re always in a hurry to eat. If someone suggests saying grace before a meal, there’s awkwardness as people stare at one another, waiting for someone to take up the task.
Someone might laugh and joke: “Grace. Okay, let’s start eating.” Others will rush through the prayer taught to Christians from childhood: “Bless us, O Lord, and these your gifts, which we are about to receive from your bounty. Through Christ our Lord. O, kain na!”
I’ve wondered if the decline in saying grace contributes, as well, to the erosion of graciousness in other spheres of our social life. A Filipino term, “lamon,” describes the way nonhuman animals eat—a voracious and rapid consumption of food. Humans are different, eating tamed by civility. Grace enhances the human aspect of eating, transforming it into an activity marked by patience, thoughtfulness.
Dispensing with grace also comes with the idea that it’s too religious, that it might offend people’s sensibilities. But the practice of grace with meals crosses all faiths. The Jews perhaps have the most elaborate, with their “Birkat Hamazon,” a blessing on the nourishment, which can include singing over the food. The Birkat Hamazon is so integral to Jewish life that benchers—little booklets with the prayers—are used as gifts during festive occasions.
Gesture of thanks
Grace is meant as a gesture of thanks for the very fact that we’re eating, that we have food on the table. The Scottish “Selkirk Grace,” adapted by the poet Robert Burns from an older prayer, saves parents from having to lecture their children about other children going hungry in the streets: “Some have meat and cannot eat. And some would eat that want it. But we have meat, and we can eat. So let the Lord be thanked.”
Vegetarians can change “meat” to “food.” A Scottish writer, Richard Medrington, has a naughty version of Selkirk Grace that does add a stanza for vegetarians, and another one for the drinks that go with a meal: “Then filled wi’ fruits o’ field and vine/And feelin fairlie frisky/The One who water turned to wine,/We’d ask to bless the whisky.”
The Buddhists use the Five Contemplations (“Wu Guan” in Chinese), which transform a meal into one heavy reflection. It starts out recognizing food as a gift of the whole universe, which means we need to eat in mindfulness to be worthy of the food.
The late poet and Catholic mystic John O’Donohue has powerful grace before meals calling on us to “become aware of the memory carried inside the food before us: the quiver of the seed awakening in the earth… the kiss of rain and surge of sun…”
To be worthy of the food, the Buddhists emphasize eating in moderation and taking only foods that nourish us and prevent illness. No junk foods here.
The Five Contemplations also ask that we do not use the meal for angry and unkind thoughts, or talk, which gives perfect timing for students who need to show their parents their less than exemplary grades.
The Buddhist prayer ends with a reference to love and understanding, a call to nurture compassion and a sense of community, which could encompass, on this World Environment Day, the 7 billion people on our planet, each with their dreams.
Eating is probably the most important convivial activity, a time for people—family and friends especially—to get together. Just saying grace is an opportunity to quiet down, to acknowledge one another’s presence. Some Christians use another prayer after meals which even acknowledges “the souls of the departed.”
O’Donohue also has grace after meals, thanking all at the table for their presence, and the opportunity to “sense the subtle lives behind our faces, the different colors of our voices… the circle of love that unites us.”
The poet and mystic ends: “We pray the wise spirit who keeps us, to change the structures that make others hunger, and that after such grace we might now go forth, and impart dignity wherever we partake.”
Restoring grace
If you’re reviving the practice of grace at meals, or want to transform it, draw on existing ones that incorporate thanks for life, and for the world, then encourage family members, especially children, to occasionally make their own.
Just acknowledging the ones who were responsible for the meal—farmers, livestock raisers, the people in the market, the cooks—helps the young to cross class barriers and recognize the dignity of labor, especially to make a meal.
Don’t forget to remind the kids about parents and family members who work hard as well to make a meal possible. Make your own verses about money not growing on trees, or hatching out of ATMs.
Grace should not be excessively long; brevity is being graceful, too. The Japanese simply utter one word: “Itadakimasu,” which means “I humbly receive,” accepting the meal from all who made it possible.
Do encourage the use of Filipino and our many other languages, each with its own cadence setting the tone for a meal. A Filipino “Tinatanggap namin ito …” followed by a long pause, will say it all.
I’d be curious to hear from readers about their grace.
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