The Story Behind the Dish

As with many people who offer themselves in service to the Church and the world, I like to think of myself as being on a perpetual journey. This journey has had its fair share of fits and starts, including a couple of rounds through the diocesan formation process, ordination to the diaconate, and anticipated ordination (God willing and the people consenting) to the priesthood. It is a journey which has taken me into and out of two monasteries, one as a novice monk and the other as a long-term guest. It is also a journey which has plunged me into the heights and depths of authenticity, love, romance, and belonging. 

This journey has also taken me to places where I never in a million years anticipated going: New Haven, Connecticut for the Episcopal Service Corps; Los Angeles as a deacon-intern; and most recently to Rapid City, South Dakota, where I am serving as the Diocesan Curate (transitional deacon-in-charge) at St. Andrew’s and the Program Director of Thunderhead Episcopal Center, the summer camp of the Episcopal Diocese of South Dakota. For a Minnesotan—raised as I was, from infancy in the land of pine trees and sprawling prairies—the mountains of Rapid City and the surrounding Black Hills are anything but ‘home.’ 

You have to understand that Minnesotans are, by constitution, the type of people who want to live and die in Minnesota. Some of us migrate to other states, but there is a perpetual yearning in our hearts, minds, and souls for the land of ten thousand lakes, ten thousand pines, and—truth be told—ten thousand hot dishes. Being so far away from ‘home’ (even though all of my belongings were unpacked haphazardly in my apartment) triggered some intense homesickness. 

This feeling of homesickness was magnified by the fact that I began my new cure on the Third Sunday of Advent, December 15, this year, only ten days before the great Feast of Christmas. I have always been home for Christmas, even during college and seminary. The prospect of spending Christmas Eve and Day several hundred miles away from home, in a city and state unfamiliar to me, and alone, raised some doubts: had I discerned the right call? Would this be the pattern for other—all?—future holidays? 

I was spared this kind of intense reflection and homesickness when two dear parishioners—Obie and Vaud—invited me to spend Christmas Eve with their family. Then, three other parishioners—Shelli, Doug, and Shelli’s mom, Joan—invited me to spend Christmas Day with their family. All of a sudden, I was surrounded by people and submerged into the traditions of two families which, a mere ten days prior, I hardly knew. 

Of the varied and sundry traditions which I encountered during that great Feast of Christmas, the one which reminded me most of home was Vaud’s Potato Knephla soup. Vaud grew up in North Dakota and attended college in Minnesota (the same college I attended, as it turns out) founded and staffed by Benedictine nuns. As I took the first spoonfuls of Vaud’s soup, memories of home flooded me—memories of all the other tables around which I had enjoyed similar soups, memories of the holy women and men who had grown potatoes and onions, milked cows, and made similar soul-satisfying soups in the past. I began to weep, covertly, I hope, as there’s nothing quite like having to explain to your grandkids why the new pastor wept into his soup on Christmas Eve!

I realized on Christmas Eve that, though I was far away from home and in a city I had only just  begun to explore, I was never actually alone. Sitting around Vaud and Obie’s table that night, and Shelli, Doug, and Joan’s the next night, and sitting at so many other tables since then, I have come to understand in a tangible way that the Word did, indeed, become flesh. The Word was—even then and there, surrounded by grandkids and knephla soup and twinkle lights—dwelling right in our very midst and would be doing so for ever. 

Above is Vaud’s recipe for potato knephla soup, which her family serves every year for Christmas Eve (alongside spare ribs, the addition from her husband’s traditionally Lutheran family). She credits the recipe to her mother, Lorraine Utter, who no doubt credited the recipe to her mother. And so it goes on down the line, perhaps even to God herself who also surely calls Minnesota her home.