Superstition and the gift of food

The context is the end of a thanksgiving breakfast meeting. Light-hearted conversation will commence, the more delicate topics emerging as the crowd thins and formal shoes are kicked off. Someone will comment on the Ofada stew that Mrs. Lagbaja brought. How well turned out it was, and how nice it went with the boiled yam. Really? Another person will query, but who asked her to bring it? Everyone will shrug, some women will look down and up and around the room, as if the answer is suspended in the air and then someone will concede that it was a nice thought, but you know, God forgive me, I don't eat that kind of food. In fact, I didn't eat it! What kind of food? Another person will ask. You Know! Just turn up with food when no one has asked you to...that kind of food. Only God knows who is serving Him, you know, one can't take these things for granted... Anyway, no weapon fashioned against us shall prevail and every tongue raised in judgement...! And everyone will resound Amen o! Someone will throw out a useful suggestion for diplomatically handling spiritually questionable food: Me, I always pray over my food. You know Mrs. Lagbaja's husband left her last week. You can just never tell who is happy for you.... I will sit, as still as a phantom, listening, pondering about the day when I will be the designated outsider who has brought the gift of food, has had the sort of misfortune that life dishes out without prejudice...is having my gift disdained and my person maligned. Such days in the context of "here" are never long anticipated - I went into a fast food restaurant and on my way out remembered I had a houseguest. As an afterthought, I bought her a meat-pie. When I entered the house, she was watching television. I handed her the meat-pie, and she said thank you. I watched as she transferred the meat-pie to her left hand, held out her right hand over it, closed her eyes and said a long prayer. I was so furious with her that I wanted to demand that the meat-pie be returned. If it needed prayers, then she might as well not eat it. But dear reader, if you understand this our context like I understand it, you know, as I know that that would have been the worst thing to do. Why? Because in the final analysis, it would have told like this...She gave me a meat-pie, and something said to me (small kiss of teeth to indicate that the next sentence is of utmost importance) pray over the meat-pie...just lay hands on it for a few minutes...so I did and lo and behold she started to "manifest" and she demanded the meat-pie back. The Lord is good! One day, having heard one too many of these concoctions of diseased minds, I confronted someone and asked her what she felt was so important about her that warranted her being dispatched with good food? Was she royalty with some family members vying for her title? Had Arnold Schwarzenegger been sent from the past to ensure that she did not save mankind's future? Really what were all the delusions of self-importance about? Dear reader, I must admit that the superstition of others has broken something in me - I give no more spontaneous gifts of food. I rarely give food to strangers. I won't take food to close friends' homes. I especially won't give food to friends' children, unless their parents specifically ask for it. And so it is clear that in avoiding suspicion, I have also become superstitious and guarded. The reasoning behind all these precautions should be already apparent: If a friend's child came over to my house, and I gave her a piece of cake and she went home and woke up two days later feeling ill, in this our unique context, all the fingers might point back two days. If I take a bowl of curry to someone's house maybe on the occasion of a small gathering and God forbid someone in that gathering is in a car accident a few days later, suspicion may fall on my poor curry. The most interesting fact of all will be that there will be no physical evidence of my guilt. It will all be indicated spiritually and as the spirit moves... So this person whom I confronted, had I really expected her response to be logical or humane? This was her answer "People are just wicked and they want to destroy your starthere is no logic to these things." Well said, I thought. "It is the minds that come up with the worst of superstitions and suspicions that are the most wicked and vindictive. You are only holding up a mirror to your own soul. You are the one with the capacity to lure and harm children with the gift of food."