Cook Rice, Serve Rice
Sometimes love does not arrive as a grand gesture. Sometimes it is simply a pot of rice, a pair of hands, and someone doing what they can with what they have. Perhaps this is what holiness looks like when it becomes ordinary.
When the Smallest Act Becomes Love
There are moments when the whole mystery of love seems to become very small. A pot. Some rice. A pair of hands.
I watched a priest from a village in Nepal being interviewed on the news. Before he had said very much, there was something about him that stopped me. An utter humility. Nothing performed. Nothing about him seemed to be saying, Look what I am doing.
People were arriving with nothing. And when he was asked what he could do for them his answer, through his tears was almost painfully simple: “We cook rice. We serve rice.”
That was all. And yet it was not all.
You could sense that he wished he could do so much more. Perhaps he wished he had medicine, shelter, money, blankets, some great abundance with which to meet the enormity of what was arriving at his door. But he had rice. So he cooked rice. And he served it.
There is something here that I do not want to hurry past, because we live in a world that constantly measures the size of things. How many people did you help? How much money did you raise? How much did you accomplish? How great was the intervention?
And yet love has never been particularly interested in scale. Love asks a different question: What is here, now, that I can give?
Sometimes what is here is only a bowl of rice. But rice cooked with love is no longer only rice. Someone has washed it. Someone has stood beside the pot. Someone has watched the water. Someone has carried the bowl. Someone has looked into the face of another human being and, perhaps without saying a word, has communicated: You are here. I see you. You matter. Eat.
And perhaps that is why I found myself wishing I could have been there. Not to do anything grand. Simply to stand beside him. To wash the rice. To stir the pot. To fill the bowls. To place one into somebody’s hands.
Because somewhere in that small act, the distinction between the one who serves and the one who is served begins to disappear. There are simply human beings together: hungry human beings, tired human beings, frightened human beings, loving human beings, and a pot of rice between them.
Perhaps we have made service too complicated. Perhaps we sometimes imagine that unless we can solve the suffering, there is little point in what we have to offer. But the great traditions have always whispered something different.
Give the cup of water. Break the bread. Wash the feet. Visit the lonely. Sit beside the grieving. Cook the rice.
Not because these things will repair the entire world, but because, for one moment, they refuse to abandon it. And when they are done with humility—without the need to be seen as generous, good, spiritual, or important—something extraordinary enters the ordinary.
The cooking becomes prayer. The serving becomes blessing. And the rice becomes love made visible.
Perhaps holiness has always looked more like this than we imagined. Not thunder. Not revelation. Not some dazzling spiritual achievement. A tired man in a small village, standing over a pot, doing what he can with what he has.
“We cook rice. We serve them rice.”
And perhaps somewhere, quietly, Love says: Yes. That will do.
Love is the unseen ground of being, quietly holding all things together.
Nigel Lott teaandzen.org
Meditation Sans Frontieres 501 (C) 3 Registered Charity Tax EIN 81-3411835
May the work offered here serve peace, serve healing, serve remembrance, and serve the quiet dignity of being alive. May this sanctuary belong not to one person alone, but to the field of life itself.
And may all who encounter it feel, even for a moment, that nothing is missing and they are not alone.
