For years I greeted my family, returning from the annual camping trip with Dad, with huge homemade pizzas. They’ve camped for two weeks while I’ve been ‘on retreat’ in our home, alone. By the time they hit the road for the ten-hour journey home, I can’t wait to get them back into my embrace. Such highly charged moments are, for me, the stuff of poetry.
In this case, the thought of people eating mini-pizzas alone in restaurants moved me nearly to tears, in contrast with the image of the impending family feast. I imagined the great big, hungry, muscle-flexing men and the vitally alive, healthy daughters I was about to serve, and their physical and spiritual need for ‘Man-full’ food.
We lived on a ‘farm wannabe,’ that might have been known as a ‘small-holding’ in days of yore. I’m mindful of the reality that it takes land, ground, sunshine, rain, and a community to do all the growing, animal-raising, and cooking for even just one meal – a reality that gets lost in a world of fast food and sterile grocery stores. A loaf of bread, or a pizza is, in its way, symbolic of the Bread of Life, the Eucharist, and the Church where He is truly – not just symbolically – present for us to consume.
This ode – read aloud, of course (do try it!) – now precedes that annual feast of ours, and you are welcome to it for yours (homemade, large, preferably round pizzas, please!)
Ode to Pizza Pie
How pitiful a mini pizza pie.
Its inhumanity could make a grown man cry.
Mere shadow of a great and noble thing:
True Pizza Pie, that heavenly offering.
A pizza should not whisper, “Basta, Basta,”
but rather shout, “Amore!” & “Abondanza!”
And round, full-round, the pizza pie must be
to echo all that vast infinity
of Love, whence comes the abundant life we see
through luscious all-sufficiency.
This culmination of a thousand lives –
the makers, growers, husbanders and wives –
this Substance of the Life that draws us round
and sends us forth supplied for battleground,
this pizza pie, like Bread that sets men free
is source and summit of our artistry.
A dozen small, symbolic pizza pies
don’t equal one True Pie in might, or size.
One crumb of True Pie sings festivity,
and truly feeds small-held community.
The mean and mewling mini is a lie.
And so, for my house, Man-full Pizza Pie!
I love this :) I can almost taste the pizza and feel the warmth of your kitchen!!