The casserole dish

"Bear one another's burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ." — Galatians 6:2

Helen Marsh brought a casserole to the house on Tuesday evening. She did not call first. She just appeared at the screen door with a Pyrex dish and a look on her face that said she had been thinking about doing this for two days and had finally just done it. Green bean casserole, the real kind, with the cream of mushroom soup and the French-fried onions on top, which is not health food and is not pretending to be.

I was not sick. Nobody had died. There was no occasion. She said she had made a double batch and thought of me, which is what women in this town say when they have decided someone needs feeding and do not want to make a fuss about it. It is a kindness dressed up as an accident, and I have been on both the giving and receiving end of it enough times to know the difference.

I took the dish and invited her in and we sat at the kitchen table for the better part of an hour and talked about nothing in particular. Her daughter's new job up in Roanoke. The road construction on Route 11 that has been going on since March and shows no sign of finishing. Whether the church rummage sale should be in September or October this year. We did not solve any problems. We did not address any burdens by name. We sat at the table and drank iced tea and let the evening come in through the open windows, and when she left she said she would pick up the dish on Sunday.

I have been on both sides of the casserole dish. I have carried chicken and rice to doors after funerals and banana bread to doors after babies and soup to doors during winter flu. And I have been the one opening the door, standing there in the same clothes I had been wearing for two days, accepting whatever was handed to me because I could not think clearly enough to feed myself. The weeks after Earl died were like that. People brought food and I ate it and I do not remember what any of it was, but I remember the doors opening and the faces and the dishes warm in my hands.

The dish is the point. Not the food, exactly, and not the recipe. The act of carrying something warm to someone's door and standing there until someone opens it. That is the whole theology of it, if I can call it that. See a need. Make something. Carry it over.

The green bean casserole was good. I ate it for three days. The dish is washed and waiting on the counter for Helen to collect on Sunday.

Lord, help me to carry what I can to the doors that need opening.