League of Inveterate Poets

By Mark Traphagen on May 21, 2009

One of my favorite bloggers is back in action. My dear friend Joel Garver has returned to blogging at Sacra Doctrina after a hiatus stretching back to last September. Joel has done enough of these (and his blog is still well-followed by many) that in our corner of the Web, to disappear from blogging for a time is known as “going Garver.”

Joel is able to break the continuity rule and still maintain a good audience for his blog because when he’s on duty, it’s always fascinating reading. “The Sacramentality of Food,” one of the first of his new round of posting keeps that tradition alive.

Responding to Michael Pollan‘s book The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Joel makes a connection of food to story. Pollan relates the experience of eating a meal that consisted entirely of ingredients he had personally grown, killed, gathered or foraged. For him, each piece of the meal was inextricably bound up with and connected to the place in which and means by which it had been procured.

Joel then draws us toward the Christian’s ultimate meal experience, the eucharist. The bread and the wine, he posits, each represent a part of the story of human experience and God’s participation with us int it. Indeed, he says, they take us from the very beginning to the very end, as sany good story does.

To see how he gets there, read “The Sacramentality of Food.”

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Category: It`s All About Me
Tags: blogging, eucharist, food, joel garver