On warm summer Saturdays, we Mellemas don brimmed hats and sling roomy tote bags over our shoulders to make the twelve-block walk to our neighborhood’s weekly farmers market. We amble along at a leisurely pace, as our four young children make frequent stops for the important work of ant-hill-examining and flower-admiring.
When we reach our destination, we weave in and out of the white-topped tents and the morning crowd, clutching our youngest one by the hand despite her protestations. Every week we buy a pastry (or three) to share, a bottle of freshly-squeezed fruit juice, a perfectly imperfect vegetable or two to add to our dinner, and a small bouquet of wildflowers for our table.
But for the prized peaches, we must wait.
Georgia calls itself the “Peach State,” and as a proud Midwesterner-turned-Coloradan, I take issue with that. Colorado’s Palisade peaches, grown in the harsh climate of the Western Slope of the Rocky Mountains, are all the sweeter for the struggle to survive, and are—dare I say it?—a superior peach to those grown in any other state. Our Palisade peaches are so perfect in every way, I cannot bear to buy a grocery store peach when they aren’t in season. I am forever ruined for all other peaches.
All summer, we pass by our peach stand. They sell honey and fruit preserves in the weeks before the peach crop is ready to harvest. We buy a jar of cherry jam and wait. As mild June gives way to July heat, the first peaches arrive at the stand, but we stay our eager taste buds. We know the peak season is still weeks away, and well-worth the wait.
Finally, sometime in mid-August, word begins to spread in over-the-fence conversation with neighbors, photos shared by friends, and the sight of giant boxes being unloaded from the back of dusty trucks: the peaches are in their prime and have arrived on the Front Range in all their juicy, sweet, sunset-colored glory.
We make a beeline for our favorite peach stand the very next Saturday, packing more tote bags than usual to fit as many peaches as they can hold. We haul them the twelve blocks back home, shoulders aching by the time we make it to our front porch. We smile at each other in anticipation. The next day will be one of our favorites of the year, a high holy day in our household: Peach Cobbler Day.
The kids scamper off to spread the news down the block. “Tomorrow is Peach Cobbler Day!” they all shout in unison at the first neighbor to appear on their porch to beat the afternoon heat. “Anytime from three to six o’clock,” I call out with a wave while watering the plants. “Bring a lawn chair.”
A text message with the same information goes out to friends from church, fellow members of our local arts guild, and Matt’s childhood pals across town. I peel and slice each peach, juice running down to my elbows, while Matt picks up the vanilla ice cream and the kids tiptoe in and out of the kitchen to try to sneak a slice. Bourbon and warming spices, peaches and buttery biscuit dough combine to make our house smell heavenly. I step out to our modest herb garden and snip what we need to make my fresh basil glaze to top the cobbler and ice cream.
Just before the appointed time, we carry out the still-warm pans of bourbon peach cobbler to the folding table set along our front sidewalk and line them up next to the ice cream in the cooler, a bowl of fresh whipped cream, and the glossy basil glaze at the ready in my grandmother’s crystal milk pitcher. The kids unfold the chairs, carry out our cornhole boards, and wait.
Neighbors begin to trickle down the sidewalk, friends park along the street, and soon the merry feast day of our own making is humming with the carefree enjoyment of a beautiful summer afternoon. Dear ones from all facets of our lives get to know one another in the shade of our 100-year-old ash trees or try their hand at cornhole. The kids run around in our small side yard playing tag or catch in between requests for seconds or thirds. We ask strangers passing by if they’d like some peach cobbler. Most politely decline, but a few give a surprised “sure” and stay to chat for a minute.
World-weariness gives way to light-hearted merriment in the warm summer sun as we eat Palisade peaches, celebrating a gift that is a part of our identity as Coloradans, something good we did not cause to grow, but simply get to enjoy. Like our Peach Cobbler Day, there is another feast we get to enjoy here in this world being made new, a celebration of something good that is fully ours by grace and is making us fully each other’s: the Sacrament of Communion. This special meal, also called the Eucharist, which means “thanksgiving,” is a grace, an unearned gift given in love, a feast that the Host has invited us to simply receive with joy and gratitude. As we receive it, God opens up our guarded hearts to a merriment that is more than mere giddiness, but a soul-deep revelry in God’s goodness that is able to honor the presence of both sorrow and joy in our human experience.
While we must not receive the Bread and the Wine—Christ’s broken body and shed blood— lightly or flippantly, we must also remember the inherent joy of this feast that unites us to Him and to one another.
In the Eucharist, all that Christ has done to redeem this broken world and all that He will do to restore all things meet. Receiving the Bread and Wine is a foretaste of life as it is meant to be and will be again in the New Creation. The surety that this communion feast offers—the assurance of God’s love, the tangible promise that all that seems dead will burst into life, the hope of the Great Feast when His Kingdom comes in its fullness—gives us courage to accept God’s invitation into merriment, to feast with joy on His good gift of life in all its facets, even in the face of all that is yearning to be made right in our broken world.
Giving ourselves to the grace of merriment on feast days and average Tuesdays, and then offering it to others, trains our souls for that Unending Merriment that is our inheritance, kept for us by Christ to be revealed in the day when we are at last one with God and one another.[1] In every merry celebration, including modest front-yard gatherings in honor of Palisade peaches, His presence with us and our gratitude to Him makes our merriment an echo of the Great Feast. As we lift our revelry to Him in praise, Christ Himself gathers all our merriment and carries it into eternity, to its true home in His Kingdom.
[1] 1 Peter 1:4-6; John 17:21; 1 Corinthians 12:12-13, ESV
The featured image, “Companionable Rockers,” is courtesy of Lancia E. Smith and is used with her glad permission for Cultivating.
Danielle Mellema is a contributing writer for Cultivating Magazine and occasional guest host on the Anselm Society’s Believe to See podcast. She writes about welcoming the kingdom of God in our everyday lives and experiencing the presence of the risen Christ in the cracks and crevices of our days.
She lives in a quirky 120-year-old Victorian house in Colorado Springs, CO, with her husband, four young children, and mini Aussie Scout. She loves reading and talking about books, exploring her wonderful and weird neighborhood, long conversations on her front porch, and recommending just the right local restaurant to friends (and strangers who did not ask). She is endlessly grateful for the privilege of receiving and releasing the gospel that heals alongside the wonderful people of International Anglican Church, where she serves as churchwarden.
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