What if prayer was a meal?

Often people talk about struggling to stay awake while they pray, or feeling their mind wander. We live in a culture that has so divided physicality and spirituality that it’s easy to feel like prayer is this ethereal, intangible thing.

But what if instead it engaged all the senses? What if it satisfied?

Rev. Danielle Cummings developed a liturgical dinner called “Courses of Prayer” to lead us in this experiment. She structured the courses in the apropos acronym BREADS:

Be still: Hand-washing
Revere: Smoking mulled wine
Expose: Unwrapping fig-leaves to eat stuffed dates
Appreciate: Potluck foods to thank God for certain
times and people
Desire: Dark chocolate almonds
Serve: Olive oil benediction cake

Reverence: Smoked Mulled Wine (Like incense)

We wanted to let Alyssa Vega, one of our Alliance members, share her experience of the night:

“Speak gently. Take your time. Let silence, scent, taste, and texture become part of your prayer. That was the opening statement. It set the tone of the evening.

Before we did anything else, I think the cleaning of our hands and laying down the day—whether good or bad—was the best part for me.

We came before God and emptied ourselves of swirling thoughts, regrets, and achievements, and just brought a gift of stillness. Not just physical stillness, but…a slowing of the thoughts and emotions that get stuck on repeat.

To this perfectionist who struggles with feeling like “enough,” laying everything aside and accepting how Christ saw me brought such peace. It still affects my approach to prayer daily.

It was also an equalizing beginning so that we all began at the cross—admitting that all we had (good and bad) was not what defined our worthiness.

Having the liturgical structure of call-and-response as a group, coupled with dialoguing through Scripture-based prayers, physically demonstrated communing with God. [The voices going back and forth] was helpful to structure my own prayer life.

I love how physical acts embodied the spirit of the prayers and courses that were shared—that we can make tangible that which is abstract. The unwrapping of fig leaves [used to hide shame in the Garden of Eden] to act out confession. The sharing of a dish during a course of gratitude. The symbolic partaking of an almond [which means keeping watch] when giving our longings to God.

Gratitude: Shared food and stories behind them

Similar to the Old Testament, where prophetic words were illustrated with physical demonstrations, we acted out physical expressions of our confession, gratitude, and longing.

Isn’t that like art making, though? Opportunities to bring into the material world that which is abstract inside of us?

In October, I attended another art conference in the city where one speaker said, “Prayer is a creative act, and the creative act is prayer.”

This night gave us a chance to live that out… And as artists, [we did so] with greater appreciation.”

– Alyssa

We sent all the artists home with their own cake mix after praying the benediction over them, so they could bake an olive oil cake and bless someone else, and Alyssa made hers the very next night for a potluck.