(Just) rice and potatoes

What you bring -- and who you are -- is enough.

Photo by Liana S on Unsplash

I wrote in my last post about spending a week in PEI at my aunt Elaine’s house (with Allison and my brother Alan) after she died. One day around suppertime her next-door neighbours dropped by. They are a young couple with small children; I’m not sure where they were from originally, but they are Muslim (their names and the early-morning singing I heard one day through the open window would have confirmed that, if I hadn’t already known).

They expressed their sympathy about my aunt, and they also brought us some hot food. After they left, we opened the containers. One was full of plain brown rice, and the other contained cubed potatoes, still in the water they’d been cooked in. There was no meat, no vegetables, no sauce, no spices.

Alan said, “I have a feeling they’re not very well off.” Apparently earlier in the summer when he was there they had brought over a pie purchased from Dollarama.

We were pretty hungry by that point, so we heated up some frozen meatballs and found some sauce in the fridge, and we ate that with the rice and potatoes. It was so good.

As you can see by the fact that I’m writing this post over a month later, I am still thinking about this couple’s kind gesture. They may not have had much, but they offered what they had. It was simple, but it was satisfying. It didn’t have the extras, but it had the essentials — more than enough to build a meal around.

This was a good lesson for me on a couple of levels.

The first is the literal one. I make no claim to being a talented or creative cook. I admit it: I’m basic. Even when we have church potlucks I confess to sometimes thinking, “I wonder if my food is too boring” — which is kind of a ridiculous attitude to have about church. In one of our most beloved Bible stories Jesus feeds thousands of people with a boy’s small offering of bread and fish. He doesn’t say, “Uh, thanks, I guess — now can anyone throw together a flavourful cilantro/olive oil/lime sauce to really take this fish to the next level?” Simple food is fine when the goal is to make people feel satisfied and cared for — and that’s true whether it’s a crowd of Jesus-followers or a church-community feast or a grieving family.

But the lesson underlying the literal one is equally important: it’s not just about food, it’s about sharing ourselves. Can we just be who we are and trust that that will be enough? It’s not always as easy as it sounds. To be honest, not only do I wonder sometimes if my food is too boring — I wonder if I’m too boring. Too basic.

But if my aunt’s neighbours had any misgivings, they weren’t held back by them. They showed up, as they were. Maybe I can do that too. Maybe just the simple gifts of myself and what I have are all that’s required.