If love unfolds, it unfolds here. Here where Heaven shows its face. ...Ignorance mixed with longing, intelligence mixed with hunger. The sacred in the planting, the wading in mud*. Eating what is here. Fish, bread, tea, rice. Fish tea rice, Linda Gregg (* paddy fields!)

Photography by Catriona Hook

When he was at the table with them, he took bread, gave thanks, broke it and began to give it to them. Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him, and he disappeared from their sight. They asked each other, "Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?" Luke 24:30-32

Connecting heart and sight

The post-resurrection encounters with Jesus are about seeing, or rather not seeing. Jesus is the same but different and a recalibration or retuning is encouraged. The disciples on the road to Emmaus do not recognize Jesus yet their 'hearts warmed within them'. Visual(?) recognition came later and at the meal table. Connecting the two, this inner stirring with the physical Jesus they knew, is the transition that they were faced with. To let go of one external form and move towards recognising him internally was their path. So with Cleopas and his companion similarly for us: the marriage of outer and inner, noticing the presence of Jesus within and between us in the everyday actions of eating pasta and talking shop.