Gate A-4:”It Was Like a Sacrament”

Check out Naomi Shihab Nye’s short story about her experience of community forming across boundaries at an airport gate in Albuquerque.  She understands that there is something sacramental about sharing food with people who had been “other” just moments before.  What struck me as I read the story is that the situation she describes wasn’t just like a sacrament, it was the kind of startling, numinous experience of community and sharing that lies at the heart of Jesus’ ministry of meals. It may be that the moment in the airport she describes was actually more sacramental that many of our eucharistic rites.