Calling Humanity to the Table by Brenda Bishop

....and an invitation to write with us

In the old ways, power was never loud. It did not scream or demand allegiance. Power lived in hands that knew how to feed others. Power lived where fire was tended and ingredients were honored.

My grandmother once said that anything could be solved at a table with a good meal, along with a slice of apple pie the way you like it warm from the oven smelling of cinnamon and vanilla, hearty foods. Not erased. Not forgiven. But softened enough to be faced. Hunger sharpens fear. Nourishment lowers defenses. When people eat, they remember themselves.

So, the table becomes an altar. The pot becomes a cauldron. The recipe becomes a spell passed down, not written.

Butter Bean Curry is made for winter nights when the world feels brittle and split at the seams. Creamy coconut milk holds together butter beans and butternut squash, tomatoes brightening the darkness, homemade curry and masala spices warming everything it touches with fresh ginger and garlic. This is food that does not ask who you are before it feeds you. It adapts. It welcomes. It sustains.

Butter beans are steady and pale, unassuming, holding their shape without demanding attention. The squash brings sweetness and earth, softness without surrender. Then add the stewed tomatoes canned fresh from last summer’s bounty, still tasting as if they were just picked, along with a dab of tomato paste for thickening and color.

Different textures. Different flavors. One pot. One flame.

The magic works because nothing is forced to disappear.

In 1978, more than 900 people in Jonestown drank poison Kool-Aid laced with cyanide. They gave it to their children. They trusted a voice that promised transcendence and delivered annihilation. No warning could reach them. No evidence could compete with belief.

And here we are, again. The far-left drinks its version of Kool-Aid. The far-right drinks its version of Kool-Aid and everyone in between watches in horror helpless to do anything. Each side convinced the poison is medicine. Each side certain the other is already lost.

The danger is not difference. The danger is devotion without discernment. Leaders at the extremes thrive on chaos, power, and fear. They feast while neighbors turn on one another, while the table sits empty and cold.

Once the onions and red bell peppers meet the sizzling oil, you add finely chopped chilis, then something ancient wakes up. The air changes. Sweetness rises. Heat blooms. The nose fills with promise as raw ingredients melt into something deeper, richer, intoxicating. The spell requires presence while simmering—attention given freely, patience practiced like prayer as you slowly pour in the coconut milk then adding the remaining ingredient as something sacred.

Stir. Breathe. Wait.

What was separate becomes whole.

Steam carries memory.

Spice lifts the spirit.

The cauldron heals as it cooks.

No slogan survives a shared meal. No enemy stays abstract while passing a bowl. The fire teaches patience. The pot demands care so not to burn. This is not food that argues—it invites, with a slice of toasted sourdough, a warm tortilla, a chapati, or even day-old challah to scoop up all the deliciousness. It is a manifesto disguised as dinner.

The hope—quiet, stubborn, radical—is that the shouting stops long enough for chairs to be pulled close, a superpower of knowing what everyone brings to the table. That hands reach for spoons instead of weapons. That people remember what mouths were made for besides repeating lies.

A good meal nourishes the seeker, it’s real, it’s ancient, a quietly radical superpower learned long before it was named.

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Brenda Bishop holds an undergrad in journalism and an MFA in creative writing. She has been granted three Excellence in Journalism awards on the environment. She respectfully lives along the Redwood Coast in the PNW alongside 4-5000 year old virgin redwood trees located on the unceded ancestral land of the Wiyot, Yurok, Hupa and Tolowa Tribes whose land has belonged to them for time immemorial.

Brenda attends the LITerati Academy weekly Sunday writing community. LITerati Academy’s spring 6-week writing series begins mid April. Email Laurawriter@me.com for information on Beauty, Hope & Reclamation: Stories for a Changing World.

Painting by Henri Matisse.