"You are fortunate that your chef has stayed with you," I commented to Innkeeper Dave as we finished coffee after breakfast. Jason, the chef, had come to this Vermont inn from Napa, having already cooked for royalty in the Colorado mountain resorts, according to Dave.
"He's doing what he loves to do," was Dave's simple response.
What he went on to describe was a network of relationships the chef has developed with local farmers, ranchers, distributors and customers. He has come to know the preferences of repeat guests -- no salt for this one; extra spicy for that one -- and visualizes the faces of those for whom he prepares each plate. Different from cooking for a series of tickets the machine spits out in the large restaurants, this is personalized cooking based on the people involved. He knows exactly where his food has come from and by whose efforts, and onto whose place-setting it will be handed, and assumes respectfully the sacred part he plays as creative culinary intermediary.
He could be in a "mega-restaurant," but life and satisfaction for him are apparently in the personalization made possible in this more intimate setting.
It reminds me of a comment I recently heard made by Sam Wells, Dean of the Chapel at Duke University. After introducing us to the story of a couple facing significant challenges, he concluded that "what they need is the church. And I pray they find one small enough to meet their needs."
Not one large enough, but one small enough.
Like the kitchen of a small inn in Vermont, where the chef knows the farmers, the food they produce, and the stories of those who will eat it. I'm thinking that Chef Jason could teach a few things to churches, businesses, civic leaders...
...and, of course, me.
1 comment:
7 years later, a seeker stumbles across this ancient living Word of Blog and offers up this gift:
Reading your post and thinking of the blessing of smallness reminds me of this quote from Parker Palmer seems to be making the rounds of the United Church of Christ:
[T]he mission of the church is not to enlarge its membership, not to bring outsiders to accept its terms, but simply to love the world in every possible way--to love the world as God did and does.…If we are able to love the world, that will be the best demonstration of the truth which the church has been given.
And this quote from your present author circa 1982: I don't believe that a church that is growing in membership is one that must be doing something right. It seems more likely to me that it's doing something wrong.
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