Autumn Morning

The Taste of Grace

 We enjoyed a caprese salad last night with dinner.  You know, fresh tomato slices, fresh mozzarella, basil, olive oil and balsamic vinegar?  There is really nothing especially novel about the dish, other than the fact that we had it, in mid-October, with tomatoes and herbs fresh from the garden.  By this point in the season our tomato plants are typically spent.  Indeed, we have been working in the garden, these recent days, pulling, clearing and readying the beds for winter.  There are cover crop seeds to plant, after all.  That, plus we have sorely neglected the garden this summer - abandoning it mid-season to tend to family matters out of state.  True to expectation, the weeds and grasses went wild, like children once the adults have turned their back.  The garden became an embarrassing jungle.  

But leaning back into the care of it in recent days - yanking and hoeing and shoveling our way into the choking foliage - we discovered...

...generosity.  Abundance, still.  Patiently, forgivingly flourishing food - peppers, leeks, onions, carrots and beets, chard and kale, collards and, yes, tomatoes.  There are even sweet potatoes lurking beneath the ground, and more than a few missed potatoes from the digging last month.

It was an humble feast, then, crowned with the garden’s forgiveness.  Tomatoes, yes, along with those errant potatoes; collards and peppers, leeks and onions and garlic and herbs.  And apple crisp for dessert, because the orchard would not be outdone.  

It was nourishing, of course.  Our bodies smiled with sated appreciation.  Even moreso, it was delicious - the very taste of grace.  Unmerited, unexpected grace.

Of course, that’s what grace is:  unmerited munificence.  Goodness where you had no reason to find it.  No, abundance where you had every reason NOT to find it.  

And so it was that we chewed more mindfully, tasted more exactingly, savored with conscious and lingering intentionality.  Nourished, yet again, by what we did not deserve.     It was, as I say, the taste of grace.  

It is, of course, the taste of everyday - blessed and nourished by what we don’t deserve.  

Maybe “caprese” should become our secret code word for “pay attention, grace is being served.”  You know, for those times we might callously, or distractedly forget.