Sugar and Honey from the Rock

Sugar and Honey from the Rock

“… with honey from the rock I would satisfy you” (Psalm 81:16)

“Don’t do any task in order to get it over with. Resolve to do each job in a relaxed way, with all your attention. Enjoy and be one with your work.” ― Thích Nhất Hạnh

Given the amount of sugar our guests put into their coffee it is no wonder that they are sweet.  Each morning we set out two tables in the backyard.  On each table there are two sugar containers, along with two containers of powdered creamer, and two mugs filled with water and stirring spoons.  Once we open, guests line up and are served coffee.  From the coffee line they walk to one of those two tables and mix in sugar and creamer.

Our guests love their coffee (we usually serve 350-450 cups each morning).  They also love sugar and creamer in their coffee.  New volunteers assigned to make sure the sugar and creamer stays available to our guests throughout the morning are always surprised at the amount of both our guests go through.

On Monday and Tuesday, I am typically the one who gets to Manna House early to start the coffee.  On most of those mornings, before others get there, I also do a few other jobs to get Manna House ready for hospitality.  One of those jobs is filling the sugar containers.

This past Tuesday, as I stood in the kitchen, filling sugar containers, I reflected on the number of mundane tasks that have to be done well if hospitality is to be done well.  One of those tasks, filling the sugar containers, is quite simple, but also requires attention.  Attention is not required because of the complexity of the work.  Attention is required because otherwise the work might not be done well, and might not be done with an attitude of openness to God’s loving presence in the work of hospitality.  Without this kind of attention, filling the sugar containers (or any of the other multiple mundane tasks at Manna House) can easily become just one more damn thing that has to be done.

Attention means making sure the sugar going into the containers isn’t filled with lumps.  Attention means making sure the sugar container lids go on gently, so they don’t get stuck.  Attention means not dropping a sugar container on the floor.  Attention means remembering that all of this work is for our guests, and that our guests bring to us the very loving presence of God.  Attention means remembering that our guests are God’s “sweet honey in the rock.”  Attention makes filling the sugar containers a prayer, a time of openness to God’s loving presence.

            In prayer on Tuesday, before I started filling the sugar containers, I was intrigued by that phrase in the Psalms, “honey from the rock.”  What kind of honey is that?  What kind of sweetness comes from a rock?  One biblical commentary said the phrase, “evidently means ‘honey of the best’ –native honey, stored by the bees in clefts of the rocks.”  It makes me think of our guests, with very rocky lives.  Yet when we pay attention to do the work of hospitality well, a place emerges in which our guests are willing to (in Kathleen’s phrase), “bring us their best.”  They offer us their sweetness.

            Somehow everything comes together:  the sweetness our guests pour into their coffee, the sweetness our guests offer to each other and to us at Manna House, and paying attention, which makes for a sweet time putting sugar into sugar containers.