One recent evening, I stayed after
my closing shift in the hospital kitchen, to do some baking. This is something
I’ve become know for: baking cookies, at least once a week. This time, though,
rather than cookies for that night’s staff, or for sale the following day, I
was making scones for the operating room nurses and surgeons, who had eight
extra surgeries scheduled the next day. They’ve been huge fans of my scones,
preferring them over my cookies.
I was somewhere amid the mixing of
ingredients and forming of the dough when I realized that what I was doing was
something that wouldn’t be allowed, anywhere else I’ve worked. (Too many
problems with someone staying on after their shift, not to mention the
food-costs of making something not on the menu.)
In this small river-valley where I
live, there’s a sense of close-knit community that sets it apart from even
other small towns. It’s one of the things that drew me to repeatedly visit, led
me to eventually move here. I’ve come to accept it, expect it—having forgotten
what a distinguishing characteristic it is.
Just because something has been so
for nearly a decade doesn’t make it any less a thing of grace. And it is likely
its own act of grace, recognizing grace. When I realized how I’d been blest to
work in a place that allows me to do a simple act like baking, I prayed thanks
for that blessing, and also the blessing of being able to see it as so.
This story, to close. I learned to
bake—cookies, scones, muffins, and such—at a local café that’s since gone out
of business. Five or so years ago, during my early days there, one of the
co-owners was a retired Catholic priest and monk. Invariably, every time I’d
have him taste-test something I was working on, before taking that taste, he’d
intone, “Body of Christ.”
