Imagine the scene.
Women and girls have worked hard to prepare their best dishes for the potluck.
They’ve arranged these delicious offerings on nice serving trays and together,
dozens of women have set out stacks of plates, silverware, napkins, and cups.
Multi-gallon pots of coffee are brewed. Everything is set up. Time to eat.
Men and boys rush to
line up and pile food onto their plates. They take their heaping plates to a
table and wait for their wives to bring them coffee. Other men crowd in with
plates of their own.
Where are all those
women who have prepared this feast? Where are their daughters, who’ve eagerly
helped? They stand back until all men and boys have helped themselves and taken
the best seats. Some women bring cups of coffee to the men.
After the men and boys
are served, seated, and eating; the ladies begin to line up. The food is
getting cold, the favorite dishes are running out, and the seats at the tables
are taken. That’s okay, because they’re not expected to sit with their menfolk
to eat. A woman sitting down at a men’s table would be scandalous.
I didn’t think it was
odd. I certainly didn’t like it, but like so many other rituals which were set
up in favor of men and boys, I had no power to change it. It just was.
Now imagine what
potlucks and church events are like outside the FOC. Women and men prepare food
to share – mostly women, but many men enjoy cooking and happily add their best
dishes to the feast. When it is time to eat, and leader calls everyone to
attention and prays for the food. Then people line up and fill their plates.
People are not segregated by gender, though sometimes by age. Elderly folks are
often invited to go first, or children. But I always get my food with my
husband – not for him (he likes to serve himself), and certainly not after him.
And we sit together. He would hate to be forced to sit at an all men’s table.
How boring!
“…but whosoever will be great among
you, let him be your minister; and whosoever be chief among you, let him first
be your servant”
Matthew 20:26-27
