Healing Fissures by Breaking Bread

Some of the greatest moments of spiritual connection come when people eat together

A Pastoral Visit, Richard Norris Brooke, 1881

Upon returning home to Virginia for the Christmas holidays, I decided to visit some of the historical landmarks that had surrounded me as a child but that I had never gone to see. Though I was intellectually aware of Virginia’s history as a southern, slave-holding state, this pierced me in new ways as I visited pre–Civil War chapels in a nearby town and learned about my own town’s relationship with slavery. I was especially struck by my visit to Thomas Jefferson’s home at Monticello. As we approached the peak where the house is located, the surrounding Blue Ridge landscape grew clearer and clearer, with its silent peaks and leaf-bare forests contrasting with the building’s bustle of activity. Together, these scenes gave the impression of holiness and of importance; among these trees and, later, inside these walls, Jefferson read, thought, and conversed about the ideals that would come to underpin the United States. It was the home of, and now the resting place of, the one who proclaimed, “All men are created equal.”

At the same time, it was undeniably solemn, as Jefferson’s success as a political thinker and statesman hinged on the enslavement of hundreds of people. Their suffering seemed to echo from peak to peak as we walked down Mulberry Row where they spent their entire lives working, sleeping, eating, and perhaps dreaming of freedom. Today, tour guides tell their stories alongside Jefferson’s story, showing the paradox that Jefferson and others of his day lived in. Born into a system of slavery and oppression, they were left to advocate for independence while freedom remained far away for many. After visiting, I felt simultaneously ashamed of Virginia’s racist past and indebted to these imperfect men whose ideas later led to liberty.

A few days later, I visited the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., and, with all of this racing in my mind, was immediately struck by one of the first paintings I came across, Richard Norris Brooke’s A Pastoral Visit.  Painted in 1881, Brooke’s is one of the first paintings done of black subjects that portrays them as regular people, not exaggerated or caricatured in any way. It was done on subjects in Warrenton, Virginia, just an hour away from my home and another hour from Jefferson’s home at Monticello. In the painting, the pastor comes to the family’s home, presumably to preach or somehow spiritually help the household. However, the table is set for dinner, a banjo is out, and they are engaged in conversation. Instead of a stiff ecclesiastical visit, the pastor is being treated as a member of the family. I could not wrest my eyes away from the pastor’s Bible in this scene, tucked away behind his chair and on top of his hat. It is an afterthought to the meal and the engagement between the people. It is bookmarked but closed, showing that although the pastor is ready to give an uplifting word, he primarily wants to engage with the family personally. He came not just to lecture or moralize, but to commune and minister with beloved people of his beloved congregation. Of all the daily moments Brooke could have painted, he chose to show them eating together.

Not only is this Black family painted in a realistic style, but they are also shown in a common, everyday scene that both black and white people could find themselves in in the nineteenth century. At this time, faith was as essential to daily life as eating, and the painting shows both. It asks the viewer to recall when the disciples invited a stranger to their table on the road to Emmaus, Jesus’s dining with publicans and sinners, and ultimately, Jesus’s last supper with his apostles. In the modern day, this scene evokes scenes of LDS missionaries eating with a family in the congregation, getting to know them, connecting with them, and only then sharing their explicitly gospel message. Some of the greatest moments of spiritual connection come not as great sermons are taught, sinners are punished, or miracles are wrought. They come when people eat together.

This painting offers an invitation to a twenty-first-century audience with diverse religious beliefs and racial backgrounds. We do not inhabit the same contradiction as Jefferson, who preached equality while relying on the enslaved to liberate a nation. We are, however, presented with the tension of who we will accept at our own tables and in our own personal communities and communions. Will we invite the preacher into our home as the family in the painting has done? Will we accept them awkwardly at the door, or will we lay out a full table, eat together, and sing together? Will we allow our children to take part in this loving reception? Would we let just our own pastor in, or would we let a Muslim, a Catholic, a Democrat, a Republican, a gay person, or an estranged member of our own family in? We know intellectually the proper answers to these questions, but the challenge lies in the living of it.