When looking at ‘Heart’ processes to help us transition through difficult futures we could do worse than consider commensality encouraging shared meals.
Commensality – the sharing of food at a commmon table – is a transaction which involves a series of mutual obligations and which initiates an interconnected complex of mutuality and reciprocity. Also the ability of food to symbolize these relationships as well as to define group boundaries surfaces as one of its unique properties. Food exchanges are basic to human interaction. Implicit in them is a series of obligations to give receive and repay. These transactions involve individuals in matrices of social reciprocity mutuality and obligation. Food exchanges are able toact as symbols of human interaction. Eating is a behavior which symbolizes feelings and relationships mediates social status and power and expresses the boundaries of group identity.
Lee Klosinski in John Dominic Crossan’s The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant. p341