Tonight, as I cut up fruit for tomorrow's funeral, I am reminded of Barbara Brown Taylor's An Altar in the World. The book is about how we needlessly segregate life into the sacred and the secular, dangerously separating the spiritual from the physical and thereby missing out on living as a whole person, worshiping with our whole lives. I reflect on how the slicing of each juicy piece of fruit is its own kind of prayer. That God gave us skin to feel and a nose to smell and a mouth to steal bites and that all of this is worship. I am reminded of all before me who have prepared food for a funeral luncheon. This is also church tradition, as vital and important as the Apostles' Creed. The feeding of the grieving, a ministry of love so powerful it is its own sermon. As I look for the masking tape to write my name on the bottom of the bowl I wonder how many times this scene has been repeated down through the generations. I think of my mother, grandmother, great grandmother  - all scrawling their name on the bottom of casserole dishes and cookie plates. (I bet they had trouble finding the masking tape too.) I feel connected, grounded, holy not in some bright, shining, self enlightenment sense but in a deeply rooted way.