Good morning!
I’m Tom McGrath and I believe that mealtime is a great time to experience the presence of God. Since social scientists say the family meal is on the endangered list my friend Bret Nicholaus and I decided to do our part to bring fun back to the family meal by creating The Meal Box: Fun Questions and Family Faith Tips to Get Mealtime Conversations Cookin’. Regular readers of People for Others have seen samples over the past few weeks.
Bret Nicholaus LOVES creating questions that help family members and friends learn fun and fascinating things about each other. He’s been writing question books for the last16 years, so this “interest” is nothing new for him. As for me, I’ve been creating resources to nurture family spirituality for decades.
In my years exploring family spirituality, I came to realize that Jesus was onto something when he invited us to break bread in memory of him. Research study after research study has contributed to a mass of evidence showing how regular family meals (5 or more times a week) are good for what ails us. They offer stability during stress and transition. They lower the risks of cigarette use, alcohol use, drug use, and sexual activity in teens and pre-teens. They lower the risk of eating disorders in teens and increase the likelihood of success in school as well as socially. Regular family meals increase children’s health, self-esteem, personal identity, and academic achievement. And though I’ve yet to see any research data on this aspect, I’m convinced regular family meals are also a powerful way to pass on a living faith and communicate a family’s values.
Bret and I both believe that mealtime affords one of the best opportunities to help families grow in their love for one another and in their faith—and a helpful way to do that is to begin with a FUN question!
So let’s get started with a question from The Meal Box. Post your answers—your HONEST answers—and we’ll get the conversation going! Together, we’ll have fun learning about one another and discovering ways to serve up a little faith at mealtime!
Almost everyone, adults included, has a favorite “place” in their mind to “go” when they need to get away from reality for a moment or two. What is your favorite place to daydream about?
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{ 19 comments… read them below or add one }
Tom 06.25.09 at 7:09 am
After my longwinded intro, let me concisely answer the question. When I’m in the dentist’s chair I have an out-of-body experience where I travel back to when I was 17, lounging on a lounge chair on a warm afternoon at a resort in South Haven, Michigan. As I lazily drift off to sleep I hear kids laughing and splashing in the pool. I don’t even feel the drill (mostly!). How ’bout you, Bret?
Michelle 06.25.09 at 7:56 am
I’ll bite. My favorite place is a chair outside on a warm summer’s evening – with no mosquitoes and a gentle breeze. The view varies, in fact – but the rest is pretty reliable.
Having grown up with a sacrosanct family meal tradition (nearly every night, no TV, no radio, no answering of the phone, and no eat and run!), I’m committed with my own kids to setting the same pattern. It’s definitely an experience of “detachment” since I never know what might happen, or be discussed at the table. I would say the experience is formative, in the same sense I might use the word formation to describe how someone enters into a religious community. Many things are communicated across the dinner table, not all of them use words.
Tom 06.25.09 at 8:08 am
You offer much wisdom in your comment, Michelle. “Many things are communicated across the dinner table…” Ah, yes. It seems to me that we bring all of our hungers to the table–physical, emotional, social, spiritual–and each of these hungers can be satisfied when two or more gather and break bread. And I agree that detachment from expected outcomes is a must–and is one of the joys of breaking for lunch or dinner because I love times when there are no expectations and anything can happen. And when my daughters were little and their friends often joined us, that’s pretty much what we came to expect.
Michelle H 06.25.09 at 8:12 am
Funny you say that Tom b/c I do the same thing at the dentist chair. I go to Hawaii
I’m all about water to calm me down….
Bret Nicholaus 06.25.09 at 8:39 am
Where do I love to go? Well, as a creative person, I actually “force” myself to daydream on a regular basis. It helps clear my mind and allows me to function much better in my writing and creating. I have several spots that routinely come up, and, like the others that have weighed in, mine revolve around spots where I love to vacation. So, in my mind, I find myself in:
Door County, WI
Disney World in Florida
My uncle’s dairy farm in central Wisconsin
A very specific scene in my memory from a resort we stayed at in Colorado when I was 13 years old.
I once read that psychologists say that THINKING about something is 70% as good as actually EXPERIENCING it. I’ve told this to my nine-year-old several times, and he doesn’t buy it (we have fun talking about it). But I wonder…there is something to that, I bet. And, of course, THINKING about something in your mind and putting yourself in the situation is SO Ignatian.
Bret
MemoriaDei 06.25.09 at 9:02 am
At 58 now, instead of going to sunny Florida in my mind’s eye, I now…being home bound taking care of my elderly dad w/o respite….I go to the presence of Jesus in my mind’s eye. In a few different ways, but also in my mind, Adoration. Thank you for all you do ! God bless you.
Tom 06.25.09 at 9:10 am
When I read the end of Bret’s post about how Ignatian using one’s imagination is it dawned on me that ever since a recent 8-day Ignatian retreat my daydreams have taken me back to St. John’s church at Creighton where I experienced a profound outpouring of God’s love into my own heart. It seemed to surpass the 70% ratio you mentioned, Bret, and I believe more was happening than simply me thinking about God’s presence. Memoria Dei, your message underscored the invitation to cultivate the habit of practicing the presence of Christ throughout the day. And thank YOU for all you do, tending to the Body of Christ in the ways that you do.
Michelle 06.25.09 at 11:16 am
Bret, Tom and MemoriaDei, your posts made me think of this paper “The musician’s brain: functional imaging of amateurs and professionals during performance and imagery ” which showed that when professionals think about playing the violin, the same places light up in their brains as when they actually play the violin. At the time I first read it I thought about Ignatian imaginative prayer, and wondered if in experienced pray-ers the same would be true: the brain processes the experience as if you were there.
Tom, I liked your image feeding all those hungers at a shared table (though maybe it’s that I’m sitting down to lunch now and am hungry?!). Last winter, I made the Spiritual Exercises during a 30-day silent retreat. In terms of the silence, one of the very hardest things for me was the silent meals. I didn’t miss TV, newspapers, Internet – but I did miss table conversation (particularly with my kids and husband!). Over the course of my retreat, I gradually become more aware of the conversations that we could have without a sound. The deacon who noticed my empty glass and would fill it with water, the shared glances with my corridor mates over dessert, the sense of God present and surrounding us easier to hear when the volume was turned down.
And when I returned home? My sons brought me the cake they had baked and we all sat and ate and talked…
Maureen 06.25.09 at 11:55 am
Great discussion on “get away” places. I mentally go to the woods across the street from my house when I was a kid. I know exactly where the trail is, where to hop over the log and which way takes me to the creek. I feel protected by the tall, shady trees. Even now, at 55, I feel most at home in woods.
Tom 06.25.09 at 12:17 pm
Michelle, I’ll bet that cake tasted wonderful. And I agree that mealtimes–especially dinners–were the hardest on the silent retreats I have experienced. And yet it was always my meditation time after dinner when I seemed to bring that longing to the fore and I was often met with a profound sense of divine presence.
And Maureen, thanks for taking us along on that very visual trip down the trail, over the log, and down to the creek amid the tall trees. I can feel the warm breeze and see the dappled sun on the banks of the creek. Who was it that said, “The past isn’t over; it isn’t even past!” I agree.
Denise 06.25.09 at 12:31 pm
I like to daydream about different trips I’ve taken, some to nearby places and some faraway. I think about the special moments shared with travel companions and about the moments of solitude that also enhanced those trips. I remember on my trip to Spain I experienced a very special day of surprises. We had the itinerary, but the free time that day brought several surprises—walking by a church as a wedding let out, sitting in another as guests gathered for a different wedding, snatching a bit of quiet alone time in the midst of the crowd, wandering into a courtyard with friends to find a live performance of a local legendary tale. It was a memorable day, but just one to dream again about. Now I look forward to dreaming about the next trip I’m planning.
Eric 06.25.09 at 12:52 pm
I go to a completely imaginary place. It is a meadow surrounded by woods. There is a large stream that flows through the meadow. There is a cliff to my right and a waterfall that plunges down the cliff. It is the source of the stream. When I go there I find Jesus sitting by the stream and I sit down along side of Him. We sometimes talk. We sometimes sit in silence together. Occasionally, Jesus in an instant presents a striking image that presents an aspect of Who He is or of His relationship to me. I do use other forms of prayer, but when I find myself easily distracted or have that “nothing’s happening feeling” I go to this place and just sit with Jesus. I have a terminal illness, ALS, but when I am there with Jesus the illness feels gone. It is as though I am meeting Him in the eternal realm rather than the current temporal realm. Sometimes we make agreements about what I am to do while still in the temporal realm.
Eric 06.25.09 at 12:56 pm
I also want to add that my wife and daughter and I had regular meals together. She and her husband are living with us because they want to help my wife care for me. Their jobs require frequent evening work, but when they are home in the evening it is very important to them that we have dinner together.
Bret Nicholaus 06.25.09 at 1:00 pm
Denise,
You bring up an interesting point. You mention daydreaming about a past trip, but people also tend to daydream about trips that they are going to be taking. I wonder what percent of people tend to daydream about UPCOMING events and what percent of people tend to daydream about PAST events. Hmmm……..
Bret
Bret Nicholaus 06.25.09 at 1:12 pm
Eric,
Thank you for your wonderful post. First of all, I love that you are one of the few today to mention that your daydream place is completely imaginary. That’s great! Adults tend to eschew total imagination, yet it is so essential for so many reasons.
Your comment about Jesus gets right to the heart of a quote I love from Einstein: “Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life’s coming attractions.” Spending time with Jesus NOW is simply a foretaste of the feast to come, a foretaste of the time someday when we we will be able to spend eternity in the presence of Christ and in God’s new creation. By meeting Jesus in your special spot, you are experiencing a bit of the future heaven in the midst of this present reality. That’s awesome. Thank you for sharing such a wonderful thought, and what a blessing it sounds like your kids are for you!
Bret
Paul 06.25.09 at 2:42 pm
Everyone,
I am thrilled at the conversation that is going on in my absence. I am in California at a gathering of “mid-life” Jesuits (which is proving to both challenging and comforting) and have been in session all morning.
I don’t have a place, real or imaginary, to which I escape. (Tom, I certainly wouldn’t risk going somewhere while someone had a drill in my mouth.) I do have strong memories of places and experiences, but I don’t think I ever consciously seek to conjure them up. Does this make me strange?
Paul
Tom 06.25.09 at 3:07 pm
I just got out of a long meeting so I’m just catching up. Thanks for the great additional contributions, Denise and Eric. I’m finding this exchange very rich and consoling. It’s been opening up so many graces for me all day long. Thank you to all of you who have been so generous with your sharing.
Tom 06.25.09 at 3:49 pm
Paul,
Paul: Bret and I thank you for your kind hospitality today. It was a very satisfying experience and I came away feeling inspired, encouraged, and edified by all the comments of your devoted blog followers. And as for your question, “Does that make me strange?” I’d say (tongue firmly in cheek) “No, there are plenty of other things that make you strange.” And of course I hope you know I’m kidding but you can’t give me a straightline like that and expect me to have the self-control to walk away from it. Besides, the things that make you unique are also what make you such a lovable bloke.
Paul 06.25.09 at 9:59 pm
Bret & Tom,
Thank you for stopping by. I’m thrilled that you had such a rich and robust exchange with some of the folks who hang out here with me. I am proud of them.
God bless your good work.
Paul