From the UCC Network: Devotional for 11/06 "Mushroom"

Mushroom

Excerpt from Exodus 3:13-20 

But Moses said to God, “If I come to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.” God said further, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’”

Reflection by Donna Schaper 

The giant 13-pound chicken mushroom on the altar table was found along the side of a road, in the Putnam County, New York, woods, facing north in the autumn’s sun. In about an hour’s worth of time on the phone and email, we sold her to a very high-end Manhattan restaurant for $100.  She was soup by the evening.  For the morning service she sat on the altar, looking like a brain, with pink and coral and orange folds lit by the filtered light from the east-facing Tiffany window.  From 11 – 12  that Sunday, she traded her country place for a sacred space. 

When I brought her to the restaurant, in a laundry basket, replete with a tablecloth to hide the plastic of the basket and accent the color of her folds, the custodian shouted upon her entry,  “The mushroom’s here.”

For all I know it was wrong to take her.  She was what she was.  She is no longer who she is.  Instead, like God, she has taken a place in literature and broth, changed from one thing to another, in the twinkling of an eye, which can see only one day’s light.  She had been consumed, become soup, like God’s choice of bread and wine. I am what I am and then I am more. Thus says the Lord, who changes in an unchanging way.

Prayer

You, O God, are the great twinkle of being.  Amen.

About the Author Donna Schaper is the Senior Minister of Judson Memorial Church in New York City.  Her most recent book is Sacred Chow: a Guide to Holy Eating.