Bread and Wine: A Love Letter to Life Around the Table with Recipes

by Shauna Niequist

Food is a language of care, the thing we do when traditional language fails us, when we don’t know what to say, when there are no words to say. And food is what we offer in celebration—at weddings, at anniversaries, at happy events of every kind. It’s the thing that connects us, that bears our traditions, our sense of home and family, our deepest memories, and, on a practical level, our ability to live and breathe each day. Food matters.

but part of becoming yourself, in a deeply spiritual way, is finding the words to tell the truth about what it is you really love.

When you eat, I want you to think of God, of the holiness of hands that feed us, of the provision we are given every time we eat. When you eat bread and you drink wine, I want you to think about the body and the blood every time, not just when the bread and wine show up in church, but when they show up anywhere— on a picnic table or a hardwood floor or a beach.

That’s how I am today, still kind of mesmerized by last night, by the taste of Amanda’s butterscotch budino and the little pile of baby clothes for the boy who will be born later this month, by the laughter and the baby noises, by the faces of my people, feeling like this is what life is for, this is what Sunday nights are for, this is what the table is for.

What matters is that one of the ways we grow up is by declaring what we love.

I want to cultivate a deep sense of gratitude, of groundedness, of enough, even while I’m longing for something more. The longing and the gratitude, both. I’m practicing believing that God knows more than I know, that he sees what I can’t, that he’s weaving a future I can’t even imagine from where I sit this morning.

But I have also long held the belief that one’s tears are a guide, that when something makes you cry, it means something. If we pay attention to our tears, they’ll show us something about ourselves.

The heart of hospitality is about creating space for someone to feel seen and heard and loved. It’s about declaring your table a safe zone, a place of warmth and nourishment. Part of that, then, is honoring the way God made our bodies, and feeding them in the ways they need to be fed.

She teaches me, through her words and her actions, that if you take the next right step, if you live a life of radical and honest prayer, if you allow yourself to be led by God’s Spirit, no matter how far from home and familiarity it takes you, you won’t have to worry about what you want to be when you grow up. You’ll be too busy living a life of passion and daring.

And when I talk to them, I tell them the story of my mom. I tell them there’s still so much time and still so much to be done. I tell them it doesn’t have to be full-time, or all-or-nothing, or all-at-once. I tell them what my mom tells me—that you just have to take one step, and that when you do, the next one will appear. I tell them the path doesn’t have to be a straight line, and that often it only makes sense when you look back at it. I tell them that when my mom was my age, she was a stay-at-home mom. She wasn’t yet an oil painter or a potter or an AIDS activist or an expert on peacekeeping. There’s still time, I tell them and I tell myself. There’s still time.

the very things you think you need most desperately are the things that can transform you the most profoundly when you do finally decide to release them.

But entertaining isn’t a sport or a competition. It’s an act of love, if you let it be. You can twist it and turn it into anything you want—a way to show off your house, a way to compete with your friends, a way to earn love and approval. Or you can decide that every time you open your door, it’s an act of love, not performance or competition or striving. You can decide that every time people gather around your table, your goal is nourishment, not neurotic proving. You can decide.

When you offer peace instead of division, when you offer faith instead of fear, when you offer someone a place at your table instead of keeping them out because they’re different or messy or wrong somehow, you represent the heart of Christ.

We tend to believe that what we’ve done is too bad—that our sins and mistakes are beyond repair, and our faults and failures too deep and ugly. That’s what shame tells us. But if we take a chance and come to the table, and if when we are there we are treated with respect and esteem and kindness, then that voice of shame recedes, just for a little while, enough to let the voice of truth, of hope, of Christ himself, get planted a little deeper and a little deeper each time. The table becomes the hospital bed, the place of healing. It becomes the place of relearning and reeducating, the place where value and love are communicated.

My friend Shane says the genius of Communion, of bread and wine, is that bread is the food of the poor and wine the drink of the privileged, and that every time we see those two together, we are reminded of what we share instead of what divides us.

I believe the bread and wine is for all of us, for every person, an invitation to believe, a hand extended from divine to human. I believe it’s to be torn and handled, gulped. I believe that we can practice the sacrament of Communion anywhere at all, that a forest clearing can become a church and any one of us a priest as we bless the bread and the wine.

And I believe that Jesus asked for us to remember him during the breaking of the bread and the drinking of the wine every time, every meal, every day—no matter where we are, who we are, what we’ve done.

The broccoli, obviously, is the least exciting item on that list, but after the eggs and before the cookies, we cut up one crown into bite-size pieces, tossed it with olive oil and sea salt, and put it into a 425-degree oven for 12 to 15 minutes, tossing once.