Several times a year I go away for several days for alone time and solitude in order to refresh and renew my being.\u00a0 I was reading and reflecting about agape love, that unconditional love that Jesus invites us to embrace, as well as the Spirit of Agape.\u00a0 As I returned to the mountain village where I was staying for an evening meal, I became intentional about \u201cbeing love\u201d to anything I encountered and to be in the Spirit of that love.<\/p>\n
The voice inside me spoke and guided me away from the restaurants I was considering earlier in the day.\u00a0 Walking a mile from the heart of this village, in the rain, seemed so absurd.\u00a0 There, the last hotel and restaurant in town seemed to draw my feet and soul.\u00a0 When I glanced at the menu, my jaw dropped.\u00a0 On it were items from the Swabian Alps in Southwest Germany, where my paternal ancestors resided before coming to America.\u00a0 These dishes are a cultural heritage, yet not seen outside of that region.<\/p>\n
I sat alone at a table.\u00a0 The waitress approached and asked me to please be gentle with her because it was her first night on the job.\u00a0 I told her we would get through this together.\u00a0 I asked her before she offered me any water, to please inform the chef that I was taken by the menu selections.\u00a0 In a matter of moments Chef Joe poked his head out of the kitchen, found my gaze upon him, and lifted up his thumb in gratitude.\u00a0 An energy and synergy was in the air.\u00a0 To my surprise, it was not the waitress that brought me my German dinner delight, it was Chef Joe!<\/p>\n
The next day I was led back to the same restaurant.\u00a0 This time I asked the waitress to ask the chef if he would prepare a meal with two of the other Swabian Alp menu offerings onto one plate.\u00a0 Chef Joe came and asked me if I liked red cabbage.\u00a0 I replied, \u201cyes.\u201d\u00a0 Then Chef Joe replied, \u201cI\u2019ll take care of you.\u201d\u00a0 The level of energy between the chef, the waitress and myself was so noticeable that the hotel manager came to me and asked if I she could take a photo of the meal prepared for me by Chef Joe.\u00a0 She wanted to get her corporate boss to get approval to add this dish to the menu.<\/p>\n
Chef Joe personally brought me my meal of three different Swabian Alp delights.\u00a0 I then told him what had me so appreciative of these dishes-I had travelled three years ago to the Swabian Alps region to frequent the region of my ancestors.\u00a0 He then asked me if I wanted to know anything about him.\u00a0 I\u00a0 learned that he knew all about this region, that he was trained to be a chef in the Pearl of the Swiss Alps, that he and his team won the Olympic Chef Gold Medal. The connection between us, the waitress, the management was so spirit filled with love for the invisible reality that makes up our very being and nature in this time and space.<\/p>\n
What a difference awareness of being agape and in its spirit makes.\u00a0 Without it I would have simply sat at the table, had a meal, watched the TV, paid the bill and departed \u2014 never connecting with anyone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I was reading and reflecting about agape love, that unconditional love that Jesus invites us to embrace, as well as the Spirit of Agape.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[88],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1063","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-spirituality"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9HFgk-h9","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/samaritanps.org\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1063","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/samaritanps.org\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/samaritanps.org\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/samaritanps.org\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/samaritanps.org\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1063"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/samaritanps.org\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1063\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1064,"href":"https:\/\/samaritanps.org\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1063\/revisions\/1064"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/samaritanps.org\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1063"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/samaritanps.org\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1063"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/samaritanps.org\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1063"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}