Graham, Cara and
their parents sharing a meal in Granada, Spain
I learned the Spanish word, sobremesa, at a meal in Granada a couple of days before Graham and Cara's wedding. I feel like it's a word I knew in my heart and had experienced throughout my life, but it became real on that day as we lingered for hours over a delicious meal. It gave me language to express the experience.
Literally it means “over the table.” It refers to that time after the meal has been served when there is maybe some dessert or some more wine and a lot of ongoing conversation and storytelling. You don’t want the meal to end! You don’t want your guests to leave. You don't want to ask for the check or if at home, start the dishes. Not yet. You want to enjoy and savor this particular time and linger over it. I realized that it's more than a vocabulary word: it's a socio-cultural commitment and it's hard to do in North American culture which is always ready to move on to the next thing.
Tomorrow marks the Feast of the Annunciation in the Church's liturgical calendar. No one else was there, of course, when the Archangel Gabriel came to visit Mary and she consented to be the Christ-bearer. But through Church history, after making the assumption that Jesus would (of course) be born right on time, the liturgists assigned March 25 as this feast day, which is exactly nine months before Christmas.
The Annunciation is on my mind in the reverse direction today, however. My last worship service was on Christmas Day at St. Michael's Church in Bristol, so, precisely three months ago. That is how long I have now been retired. Three months.
I have not been bored, and especially since we have welcomed our second grandson, Daniel Darcy, into the world. I have been considering these words, from Evelyn Underhill, as I am finding my way into this new chapter of my life:
We mostly spend [our] lives conjugating three verbs: to Want, to Have, and to Do. Craving, clutching, and fussing, on the material, political, social, emotional, intellectual—even on the religious—plane, we are kept in perpetual unrest: forgetting that none of these verbs have any ultimate significance, except so far as they are transcended by and included in, the fundamental verb, to Be: and that Being, not wanting, having and doing, is the essence of a spiritual life.We get a lot of practice during our working lives on wanting and having and doing. What I am trying to work on in retirement is being. So far, so good.
I think sobremesa is a good word to learn toward this end: it's about being, not doing. It's about accepting, not controlling. It's about savoring and listening and embracing the sacramentality of the present moment. The invitation is always there, but it's harder to embrace when your inbox is full and you have meetings to fill your days.
Just holding a week-old child who is sound asleep is also a good practice for being, and not doing. Parents are busy nursing and changing diapers and making sure older brothers still feel loved, but a grandparent can simply savor the time.
In April, which is just around the corner, I have accepted some work commitments. I'll be covering a sabbatical for a priest who is taking a few months away after Easter. I'll be leading a CREDO conference and helping out on a few other things as well. I'm ready for these things, but I want to avoid falling back into wanting and having and doing too much. I want to be able to do these things while still taking time to simply be. I'm not anxious about it but I want to keep first things first, because I'm really enjoying this stage of my life.
