Do you say grace before eating?
Last option, and a good one at that. Finally a poll where I can’t claim the pollster left out an option. Stats I saw recently stated 49% in my county were ‘religious.’ 25% Baptist, 15% Catholic, the rest ‘other.’ I’ve never been to any meal where ‘grace’ was said, unless it was some idealistic person trying to fake their way through what they thought Christmas or Thanksgiving should be. It turned out fake and forced. And when I was there for that, I kept my eyes open, and snuck a bite.
For most meals, I don’t say anything out loud, but I do try to pause a moment before I eat and be mindful and thankful for what I have. I don’t always remember to, to be honest.
When it’s a special occasion, I say “grace,” but it’s generally something like, “Let’s take a moment to be grateful for our family and friends sharing this meal, and those who can’t be with us today. I offer thanks for the earth that grows our food, the air that spreads the seed, the water that nourishes and the fire of the sun that ripens. Thanks to the plants and animals that give their lives so ours may continue, and thanks to the farmers in the fields and the great cooks among us.”
I’m generally in mixed company, asked to say something that won’t offend anyone, but I do sneak my little neopagan homage to the elements in there.
ETA: I’d like to click the first two options in your poll, but I can only choose one, so I’ll click the second, since your poll assumes “grace” mentions God.
If someone else is saying grace, I’ll keep respectfully quiet, usually with my eyes open. And I might sing grace if everyone else was (if I were visiting a Christian summer camp, e.g.). But I don’t say grace at home. I don’t have “fuck that shit” feelings about it, though.
I’m a godless heathen, and this is actually OK with me.
However, I do know quite a few people who would be extremely offended that there was no mention of Jesus and Our Heavenly Father and how they are directly responsible for the food on the table. I live in the Bible Belt.
Grace? She died over thirty years ago.
Yes, I do.
Yes. I’ll say “Someone say grace” and someone will say “grace”.
We haven’t done anything like that since I was a kid and all the older relatives insisted on it.
Does Friday night kiddush count?
I was raised Protestant but have evolved into at most an agnostic.
I will say one of the two following, with apologies to my born-again son-in-law:
“Over the lips, over the tongue, look out stomach, here it comes. Yeah, God.” ( I actually learned that in summer church camp.)
“Given that we live so blessedly,
Hearth and home and friends and such,
Let us say like Elvis Pressely,
‘Thank you. Thank you very much.’”
I’m not sure I appreciate the difference between the last two options, so I didn’t vote yet.
-D/a
I listen politely while my wife says grace (which we in the South generally refer to “blessing the food”), all the while admiring her graceful wrists, musical voice, and general grooviness.
I don’t say grace, but I suspect it might be good even as an atheist or agnostic. Not as a prayer to God, of course, but simply to acknowledge the fact that we have something to be thankful for.
If anyone at the table wants to say grace, I’m happy to oblige them by holding my hunger at bay for a short while and being respectful – even though I think they’re just being superstitious.
What I find silliest is when someone rushes through a stock prayer so they can dig in. What’s the point of that? Of course, there’s the understandable exception: when it’s a nonreligious person, getting it over with and avoiding an argument.
FTW
This. I grew up with my dad saying grace at special occasions, even though I knew he didn’t go to church, and as far as I ever knew was never religious in any way. So I don’t say it myself, but there’s no harm in it.
omG, I am so saying that next time I’m at my dad’s, if he asks me to say grace.
No, unless my religious cousins come to visit. Then I let them have their fun, but after they thank their invisible sky daddy for not killing them, I ask them to thank the person who unquestionably contributed the food, me.
And they always do.
There should be a “sometimes” option. We do at large family meals and on holidays, but not as an every day thing.
I don’t really think “Fuck that shit” but the fact remains that God has no place in home. That doesn’t mean I am angry with god, though. I just don’t need him.