Eating Liturgically

I’m a planner. I like calendars. In case my having a whole thing about mindful meal planning around the Episcopal liturgical calendar wasn’t a big clue.

But sometimes life, she is a lot, and I wake up and go “oh my gosh, today is a Feast Day!”

Like, yesterday, I had a really busy long Sunday and when I woke up on Monday, I looked at the calendar and – woah! – it was the Feast of the Holy Cross!

I sort of spun in circles for a moment. I remembered something about basil being a thing, I remembered that I had a cross cookie cutter in my stock and considered making cookies, I looked at my calendar that day and saw that it was pretty full and I wouldn’t have time to go buy any ingredients for anything…

…and so I made my usual breakfast smoothie that I do on Fierce Days. It was delicious. I gleefully made nachos for lunch, which I wouldn’t usually do on a non-Feast day. I prayed the collect and scriptures for Holy Cross at evening prayer. I made mac and cheese for my family, which was already the plan, but I used whole milk instead of 2% for the cheese sauce, and it did in fact taste more rich and special.

Does this count? Did I Keep the Feast? Can you Keep The Feast if you don’t Plan The Feast?

These days, here’s where my spirit is with this kind of thing. What’s the alternative? If the whole point is to make Feast Days special, to use my eating to reorient my spirit, then going “bah, I messed up.” and not doing anything special surely isn’t helpful. I prefer an ordered ritual (shocking, I know, says the Episcopal priest.) I prefer the planning because the planning is part of the prayerfulness for me. I prefer the anticipation because I think it heightens the moment when the Feast arrives.

But if I sort of missed that planning window?

God shows up no matter what we do, my friends. None of this is a magic incantation we say a certain way and everything works out in life. Feasts and famines come our way without us having much control over them. And so, I think this kind of “oh it’s a Feast Day!” feasting is meaningful in its own right.

But next year I’m making Basil Mojitos!