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first, “God is great, God is good, and we thank Him for our food” was
an adequate prayer. My family joined hands around the
table. I enjoyed my dad’s Mediterranean-warm palm and my sister’s
tiny one, and felt proud to recite the words. I kicked my legs to
the sing-song rhythm. We never prayed together otherwise, unless
you count church, and even this was hardly prayer, really, just a
chance to circle ‘round as a family, pause, and repeat a poem.
The “amen” was punctuation, familiar and final. Then we could dig
in. We always ate dinner together and we always prayed, and the routine of it all wrapped around my childhood years like a receiving blanket. Until adolescence, when I awoke to how inane the words were, how embarrassingly sentimental the little rhyme, and I chafed under what was now an expectation that I repeat it daily in front of my parents. With my burgeoning consciousness, the little prayer had become emblematic of the rote (and therefore empty) relationship between my parents and God—between all of religion and God, for that matter. Sure, we go through the motions, but what does it mean?! When we sat down for dinner I poked my sister, passing off the responsibility. “Why me?” she complained. In my twenties I yearned for spontaneous prayer, spoken from the heart in a rush of great feeling. I yearned to break out of the Protestant mold that so properly formed me and to finally pray, giving the great movement within my being form in words and offering them up to my loved ones and the source of my existence. But with my family, or with anyone else for that matter, I was too shy. A prayer of gratitude for spaghetti and meatballs and a salad made straight from the garden—for this abundance and stability I’d known— uttered aloud was far too intimate. Everyone would see through my gratitude to the whirling confusion of my spiritual life. I’d be exposed. Instead I found more sophisticated, inclusive, and socially conscious graces to recite. “Lead us from death to life, from falsehood to truth…” I felt like a fraud. Only once I met the woman who is now my partner did I throw caution to the wind. Emily had made a fancy pear squash soup and sliced some crusty bread. We held hands across a round oak table. I figured that if I could pray aloud in front of Emily, then perhaps I could become the person I most wanted to be with her, and so I faltered through a humble, self-conscious grace. She squeezed my hand in thanks. In the years that followed we prayed before meals in silence, a pause that swelled over our steaming food and busy days and contained more than words. Occasionally one of us would offer a spoken grace when the need was pressing. We also sang “Johnny Appleseed” and “In Back of the Bread” and Taize chants, and when little Gwyn arrived she loved the singing best, so that’s what we do these days at mealtime, we hold hands and put what’s in our hearts into our voices. When she first began sitting at the table, Gwyn refused to eat until we sang. I see the ritual of our table wrapping her like a receiving blanket. This gratitude is what she knows. The other day, sharing dinner with our Quaker friends, we all joined hands and sat quietly. We eat together weekly, and out of the silence we each usually offer up a “thank you,” such as “Thank you for the broccoli” or “Thank you for Snoopy stickers” or “Thank you for this good company.” I’m grateful for the loose form of this prayer that allows for the Spirit’s movement without undue pressure to be eloquent. This time, though, the four-year-old (whose name happens to be Grace) burst out: “God is great, God is good, and we thank God for our food!” She prayed with such enthusiasm and conviction, such pattern-breaking spontaneity, that I laughed aloud at how much transformation is possible in this world and shouted with everyone at the table, “Amen!” |
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