The Kitchen Sink
An occasional piece of paper
January 24, 2010
Vol. 13 no. 04

Everything But...

Is it a coincidence or a happy congruence that the Sunday when first celebrate communion in the new year we also eat pie? Afterwards, of course, not during communion itself. The dates were set independently, but perhaps we should consider them together.

The enduring nature of communion or the eucharist is that it reenacts the Last Supper of Jesus using the simplest of elements found everywhere. There are extremely few cultures without bread (rice is a good simple equivalent) and the fruit of the vine seems to be found in most places. Occasionally, some in the church have ventured whether coffee and doughnuts, tea and crumpets could function as substitutes, so common to the lives of ordinary people. To pun badly, no one ever really swallowed it. Bread and wine may not be absolutely universal, but you can find them almost anywhere. The big question is: are doughnuts and crumpets a form of bread?

Pie invites all of us to indulge together, for it tends to be a communal dessert, no one eats pie alone. Well, no one normal! Pie in its diversity, its catching colours, its different textures, tends to engage us in our diversity and make us all feel like one.

Food is not as obvious as it may seem. We have basic definitions of food, but after all, food is eaten for different purposes and moods. Food needs to be eaten for nourishment and strength, yet a lot of our eating is for pleasure, so taste and appearance of a particular food is critical. We eat many a food to symbolize an idea or a spirit - turkey at Thanksgiving, haggis for Robert Burns, lamb for Passover, bread for communion. Is our hunger satisfied at the same time? Haggis?! Well, no doubt about pie.