Sudsy wrote: ↑Tue Jun 11, 2024 4:28 pm
MaxPC wrote: ↑Tue Jun 11, 2024 2:43 pm
Sudsy wrote: ↑Tue Jun 11, 2024 12:58 pm
I personally don't care for the term we often use at church meals called 'potluck'. I prefer 'fellowsip meal'. There are various religions that believe in luck, good or bad, but Christianity does not believe the world is a big game of chance. Scripture talks more in terms of election, foreknowledge and predestination. Just a preference of mine to avoid being associated with chance.
I believe this is the first time I have been able to use the puzzled emoji.
I am unsure of the connection between election predestination and whether or not I can get in line fast enough to the potato salad before it is gone. In my pic, it depends on how fast on my feet I am that day; compared to the little children who scoop up the last bits of favorite dishes faster than a mid-life crisis car driven by a granny scooping the yard sales on Fridays.
Forget about the hot buttered rolls or a decent serving of crab salad. Gone. Kaput.
We had a pastor at the MB church who would be the last to get in line at a 'potluck' meal as he believed he was following Romans 12:10 - 'Be kindly affectionate to one another with brotherly love, in honor giving preference to one another' and whatever was left by the time he had opportunity to fill his plate, that was fine with him. I suppose if we all took that approach, none of us would get to eat.
The reference to election and predestination was with regard to the belief that nothing happens outside of God's will. So, when I get to fill my plate and what I like the most is gone, then in some way that was God's will and not some other overriding force.
https://catholickey.org/2023/02/06/on-t ... f%20chance.
Interesting. In my perspective I find that definitions can change in morphological constructs to reference to a larger concept.
In Catholic World, while we do not teach belief in luck per se and rather instead to trust in God's Will, we also recognise the cultural aspects of linguistic nomenclature. If we reference a "fellowship meal", that is an event that includes some form of teaching and prayers and often includes a planned menu. Conversely "potluck" is a term that references a social gathering involving food brought by others instead of a definitively planned menu.
Like the term "free-for-all" does not necessarily mean a literal "free of cost" definition but can mean an unruly, chaotic event. While I have attended community potlucks that devolved into a free-for-all chaos, I can attest that it was my guardian angel that stood between myself and harm on those occasions.
All in all, our parish potlucks (we do enjoy that alliterative title to be sure) are rather sedate events but there have been times when families who neglected the lessons in courtesy and manners for their children have created problems for the older parish members. In order to keep a congenial social setting, the ladies of the kitchen have arranged for the older parishioners and the priest to be able to process through the buffet of delectables before the children. The priest often does not stay long before he is having to leave on a call to the sick or to attend to a person who is having a crisis. Another method employed by the ladies of the kitchen is to create a separate buffet for the children so that all of the adults may be able to access more than broken crackers or Aunt Fanny's questionable black-eyed peas for their meals.
At the end of the day, I accept God's Will but I also accept the willingness of others to act as God's agents and let me through the buffet first. After all is said and done, I think Matthew 6:1 does inform my position. In short, I do not make a fuss nor sermon from it.