A few years ago I was able to participate in a collaborative project with Bellwether Arts reflecting on the sabbath and creating meditations through all mediums. This was my favorite illustration from that project and I wanted to partner with Silk Screen Marketing to make this 4 color screen print come to life.

12 x 12 inches - Edition of 50 prints

4 color screen print on beautiful French Paper Company 100lb paper

Here is a meditation I wrote during that time:

When I think of the Sabbath, I long for tables full of the garden’s harvest filling hungry stomachs with the nourishment of the week’s toil. Where bread and wine are offered in abundance, and where laughter fills the space between. Sabbath, a day for gathering neighbors, strangers, and families to feast on the goodness that the Lord has offered to us at the table.

Lately, I lament the empty chairs and empty bowls in this long season of social distancing, keeping those who may need the comfort of community at a distance.

This past week I picked up a favorite book, Food and Faith: A Theology of Eating, by Norman Wirzba. Wirzba offers a beautiful reflection on how sabbath practices should permeate our view of eating, “When people learn to become prayerful in their eating by practicing the spiritual exercise of attention and reflection in the kitchen and around a table, the opportunity exists that they will begin to realize - through their touching, smelling, tasting and seeing - how every bit leads them beyond themselves into the worlds of plants and animals, fields and forests, farmers and cooks. Eating demonstrates that we cannot live alone. Growing food reminds us that we do not create life. Food connects us to the memberships of creation and to God. Thoughtful eating reminds us that there is no human fellowship without a table, no table without a kitchen, no kitchen without a garden, no garden without viable ecosystems, no ecosystems without the forces productive of life and no life without its source in God.”

God calls creatures made in his image to be people of hospitality, to participate in Christ’s reconciling ways with the world (Col 1:20), to eat with justice and mercy, and in doing so to participate in the divine hospitality that first brought creation into being and daily sustains it.

As we are called into this daily work and enter into another ordinary week, may we feast our eyes on the simple act of eating as a way to practice sabbath. Though our days may be filled with the mystery of uncertainty and a lingering lack of _______ (inserts all that is seemingly lacking), my prayer for this strange time comes from a poem series titled, Recognition’s of the Lord, by Mary Oliver:

“Oh, feed me this day, Holy Spirit,

with the fragrance of the fields

and the freshness of the oceans

which you have made,

and help me to hear and to hold in all dearness

those exacting and wonderful words

from our Lord Christ Jesus, saying:

Follow me.”