Yesterday I spent part of the morning at the Museum of Anthropology. (I’m staying nearby while John recovers from major surgery at UBC Hospital.) I didn’t want to be outside in the rain but inside, I was deep in the weather, ceremony, beautiful cosmology of the Indigenous people of the Northwest Coast. The rain pattered on the roof while the scent of cedar filled the Great Hall. It felt like a privilege, it was a privilege, but it made me profoundly sad. One glass case contained many sacred objects with a note saying that in the villages they’d come from, they’d have been put carefully away between use.
It was the feast dishes I spent the most time with. They reminded me that in this time we’re living through, we’re asked not to gather in groups, not to serve food for others to share, and I wondered when we would be able to feast together again. To prepare food to eat in community, in celebration of the things that ask us to commemorate them together. The feast itself as living symbol, our dishes the carriers of our fellowship.
And I thought, as I read a Kwakwaka‘wakw potlatch song recorded in 1895 by George Hunt and Franz Boaz, that we have corrupted the notion of power. Instead of adding zeros to sums beyond my wildest imaginings, net worth in the billions and (even) trillions of dollars, the richest among us could be demonstrating their wealth by sharing food:
Too great is, what you are doing, our chief. Who equals our chief! He is giving feasts to the whole world.
...Theresa Kishkan 
I was a bit behind, reading your posts, and am now caught up. Often I feel a deep kinship with the things you write about. Sending healing and thoughts and prayers to your husband John, for a quick recovery from his surgery. My own husband had one hip replaced just over a year ago and is doing well. It has given him a new lease on life. Stay well, both of you. Violet.
Thanks, Violet. Hoping for a good recovery (though there’s a wrinkle at this point).
I wish we could pinpoint the moment in time when the concept of wealth changed focus from generosity to hoarding, so that we might go back to change it.
It was good to be reminded of the beauty of generosity — those elegant feast dishes with their ladles, the big house posts, the doors, a whiff of wood smoke (or maybe that my imagination).
“The feast itself as living symbol, our dishes the carriers of our fellowship.” Oh yes, so very true. I too dearly miss the gatherings. It’s been such a meaningful part of our lives. We have had a couple over and have been invited over to enjoy a meal and conversation as well, but it’s those small group gatherings that we long for. There is a magic in ‘breaking bread’ and all that falls from those crumbs when conversations weave among us like a bee seeking nectar.
I hope those times will return!