Nourishing Flourishing Communities: Food and Eating in the Provision of Just Care 
Victoria Behm, Duke University, Durham, NC, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC; Brewer Eberly and Heather Plonk, Duke University, Durham, NC; C. Phifer Nicholson, Jr., MD, MTS, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA; and Chris West, The Conservation Fund, Raleigh, NC

In the first hours of human life, the most basic elements of care are expressed – we are held, we are cleaned, we are clothed, and we are fed. Holistic care for those on the margins of our communities may begin with these fundamental acts of care. Christ frequently enacted healing and restoration by eating with those on the margins of society. For Christians, eating is not just a means to a medical end–whether optimizing health, preventing disease, or elongating life. Food does more than simply fuel the human body–it transforms our bodies and our relationships. Eating marks our belonging to the body of Christ and invites us to participate fully in the work of the Church toward the flourishing of all creatures. Throughout history, humans have employed crops, animals, ingredients, dishes, and rituals of eating or abstaining from food to express aspects of our identities, creating meaning and membership, and enacting hope in times of great distress and upheaval. Food and eating orient us to the world around us and enhance awareness of our place in creation, as stewards of God’s good gifts. Our relationship with food emphasizes our total dependence on the Earth's gifts and the provision of God, who holds the power of life. Food itself serves as a locus of memory and hope in the Christian tradition–we remember Christ through Holy Communion, a foretaste of the feast to come in the eschaton. A high view of the Eucharist and eating together prepares the eye to recognize our neighbor as somehow being Christ before us. With eyes to see the image of God in those who are not easily reached by medicine or religion, care might be first enacted through the provision of food and eating together. The late Catholic liberation theologian, Gustavo Gutiérrez has inspired a reimagining of medicine as accompaniment–solidarity and a revisioning of healthcare rooted in companionship with the “other,” especially the poor and marginalized. The breaking of “bread” (or tortillas, injera, pita, or naan) provides a paradigmatic framework for just care and the embodied practices of care that extend the table beyond the altar, to the corners of the earth.

This panel, moderated by a theologically trained nutrition researcher, will gather a minister/ social advocate, physician-poet, medical resident, and chaplain for conversation around the theological, moral, social, and clinical dimensions of food as social and spiritual nourishment, and eating as an enactment of hope and Christ’s call to service. We will explore how distinct actions related to food (its cultivation, harvest, preparation, ingestion, service, distribution, storage, and clean-up) are profoundly marked by our theologies and map onto our particular calls to justice and service: in communities, in medicine, and in the moral formation of those with vocations to health care.