My work this year has centered around hospitality: both in the Thai and Midwestern food cultures that have formed me, and in Divine welcome of the Eucharist.
I grew up in the American Midwest. But it was only when I lived in Thailand, my mother’s land, that I began to appreciate the purpose and strength of the classic Midwestern table. Roast beef, fruit salad, green bean casseroles—it’s the calorie-rich nod to a vanished age of manual labor, adjusted easily to accommodate a crowd. At its best, it incorporates local, seasonal foods, served with warmth and little pretense.
The Thai table is a performance, a feast of color for the eyes and nose and tongue. The dishes and delicacies work together: I’ve known my aunt to change her dinner order to better fill out the range of texture and flavor combinations for the benefit of the whole party. Food from the common pot is shared between plates, and in this way the table becomes a vehicle for honoring and serving loved ones across the age-based hierarchy.
For me, the influence of these different expressions of hospitality converges at the Christian Eucharist. There I am welcomed to the Lord’s Table, and from there I am sent out again in joy and thanksgiving to give generously to others. In the face of God’s welcome, I can worry less about the perfection of my home décor. In the face of God’s welcome, I can concern myself with the wellbeing of my friends and neighbors—and with those not yet around my table. In the face of God’s welcome now, I can look and work in hope toward the table God has promised to set at the end of time.
On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples
a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine,
of rich food full of marrow, of aged wine well refined.
And he will swallow up on this mountain
the covering that is cast over all peoples,
the veil that is spread over all nations.
He will swallow up death forever;
and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces,
and the reproach of his people he will take away from all the earth,
