You shall call His name

My grandmother told me that since she was widowed mealtime has been difficult for her. It’s not unusual for her to ask for someone to run errands with her at a time that happens to end close to lunch, which she loves to buy for her driver.

I think I can sympathize a little, since I know I have a hard time fixing meals for just myself. I don’t often plan ahead, and by the time I’m hungry, I want something that I don’t have to wait for, and end up snacking until the hunger is gone. I’m sure cheese plays a disproportionate part in my diet. It just doesn’t seem worth getting a lot of dishes messy to sit at a table alone. When I was younger I avoided eating even in fast food restaurants alone, conscious of being the only person without conversation to salt the fries. I was sure everyone was staring at me, and I was ashamed.

A few months ago I read a play in which one character says to another, “There are a million things in marriage, but companionship is at the bottom of it all. . . Do you know what companionship means?”

The other responds, “How do you mean? Literally?”

“The derivation of it in the dictionary. It means the art of having meals with a person.”

Of course I hadn’t thought of that before, for all my having studied Latin. Cum, with, and panis, bread. A companion, someone you share your bread with, maybe sitting around a fire at the end of a long day’s travel.

Lord, I said. I think I have learned by now that you do not withhold what I need; that I must not complain, because I know that you are good, and you love me, and you do what is best. And yet I can’t help feeling a longing for bread-sharing.

And He responded, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven.” And, “Behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

And I knew that was love, that He would not only share bread with me, but become bread for me. Be my bread and true companion. With Christmas fast approaching, that prayer has changed to wonder at the name Emmanuel—God with us.

I went to a Ladies’ Christmas Tea on Saturday. I was exhausted and hungry after being out all morning, and didn’t really feel like going, but I’d already bought the train ticket, so I went. The theme of the tea was “The Names of God,” and each table had a name written on a miniature chalkboard stuck in a poinsettia. I looked at the name on my table. Immanuel. I knew some of the organizers were American, and was amused that while all the other names were in Italian, this one had accidentally been written in English.

My friend Margie brought the main speaker, Sue, over to our table. She didn’t speak any Italian, and I was the only other one who spoke English, so I had to overcome my usual timidity-around-important-people and converse with her. Sue was gracious, kind and beautiful, a woman clearly ready to love others. When she got up to speak, she told us she was nervous, and that her testimony wasn’t a traditional Christmas message, but about God’s message in her life. She went on to relate a story most of us didn’t expect from this elegant woman in her upper 50s—a childhood with parents divorcing, attempted suicide, drugs, a violent boyfriend who got her pregnant, an abortion, a foolish marriage, divorce, and finally finding the love of Christ.

When she sat back down, the women nearby smiled shyly and murmered “Grazie.” One woman said she wished she could speak English to talk to her. So I ended up translating for her, and then another with a story to tell. I found myself speaking about husbands who had been unfaithful, negligent, and abusive, about angry children, about having no parents or family to turn to. Mostly about feeling all alone, as if there was no one who saw, or understood, or loved. In the other direction I was hearing words go through me about persevering in faith and prayer.

God-with-us, be with us.

I’d stayed long enough to miss the train, so Margie let me come home with her, Sue, and her single friend, and loaned me pajamas and slippers. We drank tea and ate chicken salad. “I passed out the mugs randomly,” the other single woman said to me. “That’s why you got the one with ‘Mom’ on it.” “Well, I have a Mom…” I laughed, and thought that I was glad that didn’t hurt like it might have once. More are the children of the desolate, for unto us a child is born.

Born of a virgin. God is with us.