Where I live, blueberries ripen mid-August. For the past few years, I’ve had a tradition of taking my kids to pick berries. This year I wasn’t looking forward to it since I have a toddler who dawdles and puts everything in his mouth, and we’d be hiking halfway up a mountain. My older two children were also not into it. We hate hiking, they said. We could just buy berries at the store! It was also wet from recent rain.
We went anyway, small buckets in hand. Climbing on the tundra, toward the ridge line, we peered around hillocks of grass and brush on the lookout for berries. “Mom! I found them,” my seven-year-old said with delight. My 10-year-old bent down and began to pick. Even my toddler surprised me by picking a few berries without squishing them. We lasted longer than I thought, savoring the day.
Back home, as is also our tradition, we mixed berries with sugar and cornstarch, rolled a pie crust from scratch. After the pie came out of the oven, we ate it together. Somehow it felt like a holy meal, a sacred communion.
This message is excerpted from “Let’s eat!” by Lisa A. Smith in the March/April 2024 Gather magazine. Today is the Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost.
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