Why Do We Dine?

We dine because a community that does not eat together is dead. God gave us eating as the way for us to become one with Him and to become one with each other. He made it necessary for our physical life in order to show us the necessity of it for spiritual and communal life.

Thus the first purpose of food is not nourishment, nor is it pleasure. The primary function of eating is community, and community is the highest good.

Throughout history and across cultures, rituals of hospitality have formed the bedrock of identity and social unity. The ways in which we celebrate the privilege of eating together and the ways in which we demonstrate the oneness it creates are as numerous and diverse as communities themselves. Sharing bread in traditional cultures is sacred and creates a bond that bestows duties.

Eating creates more unity than simply those joined at the table, however. The foods that find their way to the table come from the soil.

Pre-modern identity was communal, and the land you lived on was seen as a part of that identity. You belonged to the place as much or more than it belonged to you. At every meal, you shared life with each other and with the land.

Prior to globalization, the food of a people came from the land they lived on. The palette of flavors with which they crafted their cultural palate was drawn from what was available locally or could be got by trade with other peoples. The recipes handed down from generation to generation bore the imprint of their national identity and of their relationships with other nations. Their story, their defining epic, was tasted as well as told.

The wine, the living apotheosis of rainwater filtered through soil and root and branch and grape, becomes the blood of the people.

The bread, the paschal grain buried and risen again to feed the world, becomes their body.

In our age of rootlessness and fusion cuisine, this seems foreign, alien, and perhaps even boring. We crave variety, the world as our buffet, the unlimited freedom to choose what to eat, where to live, and who we are.

And in our restlessness we condemn ourselves to wander like tumbleweeds, dry and dead. Ghosts without a home, hoping that by chance a seed or two might fall from our brokenness to leave a small legacy.

Yet every time we rest ourselves at a table with others, and eat together — ideally from the fruits of a local farm — we restore a bit of identity. We put down a few roots.

A few warnings, though, for when you next find yourself at a table for dining.

Efficiency and speed are the death of community. Fast food is not food. Eating alone may take up the duration of a short YouTube video; eating with one person might take the span of an hour and a half if you enjoy their company and their lunch break is generous; but eating in community is an evening-long affair. Anything under three hours is rushed, if you are dining properly. In the old world, five hours is a short time to linger with this, the most important thing.

Conversation is the breath of the life of the table. We ought never to eat hunched over our plates, fixated on consumption. Rather, our focus ought to be across our food towards our table companions. The table thus mediates our attention to each other, rather than consuming us as we consume it. Pleasant, intentional discussion is as essential as wine for a complete meal. We unite our minds through talking, while we unite our bodies through eating.

Etiquette is the elevation of dining to an art form. Just as cooking and preparing food is an art and ought to be beautiful, so ought our eating of the food be likewise artful. The most important things in a culture are the most adorned with ritual, wooing our attention. The constraints of etiquette are like the constraints of poetry. Their rigors are the birthpains of beauty. Many who are unused to etiquette fear it as putting on airs and as being fake or inauthentic. There have indeed been abuses of etiquette. But at its heart, etiquette is merely consideration of those around us and choosing to act for them more than for ourselves. The specific rules help us match our behavior to each other and to the food we share.

With those exhortations, we can now move forward into the dining itself. But like all the best things in this world, it is better to learn in person.

Come, join us at a table.