What The Mystics Know About Groceries
The saints were never in the churches.
They were at the register, sliding cans of beans
across the scanner, bagging bread with hands
that understood: this is the body, broken.
Every grocery store is temple.
Every act of feeding, eucharist.
The woman counting coins for milk—
she’s performing ritual older than cathedrals,
the magic of turning money into nourishment,
the alchemy of caring whether strangers eat.
Watch the stockboy stacking oranges at dawn—
he’s building altars to vitamin C,
arranging offerings in pyramids of citrus light.
His minimum wage is tithing.
His sore back, genuflection.
The mystics know: God lives in aisle five
between the pasta and the tomato sauce,
in the exact moment someone puts back the name-brand
to afford the generic, then uses those two dollars
to buy formula for a neighbor’s baby.
This is transubstantiation—
flour and yeast becoming bread becoming life.
This is the miracle they forgot to write down:
one person handing another the means to continue,
the small combustion of kindness
that keeps the species burning.
The checkout girl who doesn’t question
the food stamp card, who smiles and says
have a good day and means it—
she’s practicing resurrection.
Communion was never about the wafer.
It was always about the passing,
hand to hand, the breaking open
of what sustains us, the sharing of it,
the quiet insistence that no one
should have to starve alone.
The mystics knew this in their caves and deserts:
that holiness is feeding your enemy,
that prayer is checking on the elderly neighbor,
that the sacred text is written in receipts
for soup kitchens, in the ledger where the grocer
marks paid beside the name of someone
who couldn’t pay.
I’ve read the scriptures.
They all say the same thing
in different robes and languages:
feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty,
clothe the naked, shelter the homeless—
not because some god commanded it
but because we are the gods
and this is how divinity manifests:
in the handing over of an apple,
in the sharing of salt,
in the moment someone puts groceries
in another’s cart and walks away
before thank you catches up.
The mystics lived on nothing,
gave away everything,
and learned what the rest of us
keep forgetting:
that every meal is sacrament,
every hunger met is prayer answered,
every act of feeding is the closest we get
to what we’ve been calling holy
all along.
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