Food, Glorious Food...

Day 19: "Anyone's entitled to be ugly but some people abuse the privilege." - Benny Hill

Today has been a day of huge feasting, which is to be expected, I suppose. There have been SO many sweet and wonderful people bringing food to my mother's house, and I don't want to insult anyone by omission, so I will just say THANK YOU to everyone who has come. It has been most appreciated.

I have been contemplating the motivation behind bringing food when someone dies. I suppose the basic goal is to save the family from having to worry about cooking or going out to eat...but I wonder if it doesn't go deeper than that. Food is symbolic, of course, of life. Is the unspoken message "life must go on?" Is there some spiritual "feeding the body feeds the soul" philosophy here? Or is it simply one of those kindnesses that have become so ritualized that nobody really knows the origin?

...or are people just essentially nice, good, and caring?

I'm opting for the latter. Any cynicsm I ever had about the basic goodness of Man (capital deliberate) has evaporated over the past few days.

In today's News From The Motherland...Sudan shows a remarkable moment of sanity.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8244339.stm

Cheers!
FLT3