By Becky Scott
Becky Scott (a mother, wife, sister, daughter and a professor of social work at Baylor University) has been part of Hope Fellowship in Waco for almost 15 years. In 2024 the community was able to have its first Easter retreat—a 20-year tradition that is an annual highpoint of its life together—in five years due to the pandemic and the loss of a beloved retreat center. Becky sent this email to the fellowship on Easter Monday.
Dear HF Family,
I enjoyed Easter retreat immensely. Today it is still a gift that is giving. The timing and type of lower back mishap I had Friday morning deeply impacted me as it intersects with who Christ and the community of believers are. I was in so much physical pain and disappointment on Friday morning that even when Joel rallied many of you to help take over tasks, I sobbed a lot (and also yelled a lot at him).
The deal is, I deeply love the process of making food happen for a lot of people. It hits multiple points of satisfaction for me: mentally, spiritually and physically. But the movement restriction set me into Becky-Scott-slow-motion, a mode of operation I regularly avoid. At first I was mad and then discovered I received immense blessing from some of the following:
I had to accept help (thank you Joel, Allison, John A, Maggie, Sara Beth and Bridgewaters who quickly showed up and took some things over).
I couldn’t participate in the kitchen work all weekend as I had imagined (I had literally day-dreamed about sorting food into meal-pods, with lots of label-making that didn’t happen).
I had to slow down. And when I did, I absorbed some of the following:
A shared look of joy, risk and security between James and Sara Beth as they belted out Moulin rouge in karaoke.
The 100 times I saw Reeve, in full view or periphery, tenderly responding to his children.
The patience and laughter I saw from Lydia when she helped with young children Saturday morning.
Chats between people who are close. Chats between people who barely know each other.
So many moments when I saw Sam smile or talking with someone.
Mike sitting with us, even in physical pain, during Sunday morning worship.
Multiple moments where I saw John A moving among us with what appeared to be joy.
Everette and Samuel playing ping pong for a focused 45 minutes during which their joy of friendship was evident.
And 1,000 magic moments down at the creek before, during and after Jonas’ and Annabelle’s baptism.
This morning I coincidentally read a chapter from “Cloister Walk” (thank you John R) in which Kathleen Norris reflects on the rhythm of monastic meal prep and shared meals together.
Joel and I reflected last night that the retreat provides an uptick in the practices we espouse to in shared life together - rhythms, shared work, rituals, yielding our individual preferences for the sake of community. We see the blessing of that to the degree that we were like “what if we did 4 Easter retreats a year at HF?!!!” (just joking, Nathan and Allison)
In reading the chapter on Benedictine Rule of life this morning, I see that much of what creates that experience is the prep, eating together, and cleaning up after of meals.
Norris writes: “to eat in a monastery refractory is an exercise in humility - one is reminded to put communal necessity before individual preference.” And that family-style management of large groups of people results in raising “inefficiency to an art form.” When we refuse to “bow down before the idols of efficiency” we experience the “difference” of Christ’s community.
Enter the potato:
I personally felt responsible for the potato (near) crisis of 2024 (having forgotten to share with the relevant meal team leader that I couldn’t be sure how long the oven would take). It bothered me that I dropped the ball. I knew my lack of focus had imposed on the meal team and some hungry young tummies in 100’s of ways that I could have avoided. I wanted to apologize a lot.
And then I didn’t. In my slower-pain-induced-muscle-relaxant-motion, I waited and watched and saw the gift of [my] inefficiency: calm prevailing in the kitchen: long chats between kitchen "staff" as they waited for potatoes to soften, and quick and loving solutions such as making quesadillas for eager children.
Norris reflects that a monk once told her that those living at the monastery were different in so many ways, “but our biggest problem is that each man here had a mother who fried potatoes in a different way.” And so do we. Not one of us would have set up the same menu/food preferences. We all have different ways of preferring and prepping our food. Many of us prefer to not be in the kitchen at all.
It is of note, however, that not one person could be heard grumbling about a salad for lunch (even if they didn’t prefer it), being new or a visitor and being assigned meal prep (Lisa, John and Judy), or getting up at 6:30 on Sunday morning to cut bread and wash berries.
And Lonni cut the onions for the potatoes differently than I would have. And James, with some butter consultation from Gregor and Evan, prepped those potatoes very, very differently than I would have. And they were the best, once too hard, now very soft, breakfast potatoes that I had ever tasted.
I literally felt moved to tears that the potatoes that had caused frustration to me had turned into something so different without any input from me. I experienced them as resurrected potatoes. (So you can imagine how the little Holy Spirt surprise this morning of reading about potato preference differences really caught my attention).
Unrelated, but totally related, I wrote “control” on the confession-rock I put at the foot of the cross yesterday.
But not giving up control so much that I won’t remind you that we have a shared meal planned for this coming Wednesday, April 3rd. And it feels providential that we (through Ruth’s good idea) set that meal to be the same offering once a month: a ritual, a rhythm that is more about community and less about favorite foods.
Food hosted by Pepe, Joel L, Lawsons and Allemans.
See you at the meal 6:00; child care available starting at 6:15.
love,
Becky