These thy gifts: Chicago photographer Lloyd DeGrane captures the holy act of eating.

The sharing of food is the holiest of human arts, far older than history, and the finding and gathering and cooking and presenting of food, and giving thanks for it, and sighing with pleasure over it, and singing the praises of the cook--these acts of prayer are offered by the billions every day in every corner remote or riotous on the planet--an amazing thing to contemplate.

How many hands rolling dough, dipping rice, opening fruit, tending the fire! How many mouths savoring the miracles of water and wine, milk and meat, loaves and fishes. How many babbling rivers of table talk, swirling and whirling, the chaos and hubbub, the laughter and arguments, the new children swimming in new scents, the old men remembering foods of the past. Meals are such memory machines.

Food brings back the dead, food is a teacher, food gathers the clan, food binds the tribe, food stitches the family, food forges friends, food is a savory, spicy, redolent, necessary, nutritious, sweet, wild, holy prayer.

But how very many people eat alone today, seated at their silent tables, standing in the yard, sitting on the riverbank, curled in bed, eating alone. What shouts "Alone! Alone!" more than eating alone? And how very many people do not eat at all tonight or do not eat enough? How many have air for dinner or a mere shard of a meal? How many? I will tell you how many:

In my state, 100,000 children hungry tonight.

In our country, 20 million children hungry tonight.

On this poor, wild, lovely, green, rich, pained, bruised, genius miracle gift of a planet, 200 million children hungry tonight.

And here comes tomorrow, quick as a starving cat, its ribs showing through its skin like desperate fingers.

The moments and gestures and poems and chants of a meal: the hands cupped around bowls, the skein of stories, the passing of the pepper, the cutting of food into pieces for children, the telephone books on chairs so that they are lifted up into the sea of stories, the chapels of hands clasped in prayer, the passing of plates one to another, the wisps of rising circling swirling steam, the creaks and whispers of chairs, the clatter-rattle of plates stacked for the sink, the humming of the dishwasher be it machine or mother, father or daughter, clan or neighbor, priest or poet.

Consider the Mass as meal: bread and wine, stories and prayers, comment and counsel, songs and silences, meditation and murmuring, arrivals and departures, children and elders, sitting and standing--and the guest of honor arriving suddenly in the midst of us in the middle of the meal, there in the bread and the wine, the miracle of the moment.

And the shocking miracle of food, the rich salty seas of soups, the brawny burly honesty of bread, the cheer of beer, the startling greenness of beans and peas, the hilarious fluorescent orange of carrots, the steaming ears of corn in the shape of summer, the meats that muscle us, the sweet holy perfect water we sip. And that is the most basic, ancient, wonderful, necessary food of all, water that has run in rivers and swum in the sea and been drawn magically into the air and cast down again gentle from the sky. We drink it and give our gardens to drink and give our animals to drink and every once in a while, on a misty morning maybe, we stop for a moment and are as amazed as infants at the genius of it all; such agape amazement being purest prayer.

Meals bring us together. Ever it has been so, ever it will be, by God's grace. From the corners of the house or street or town or nation we gather for the meal, which commences with prayer, in thanks that we are here to gather, that we have food to eat, that we are not under attack this day, that we are not huddled and alone. We offer grace for the grace we have been offered, which is everywhere evident and endless, as free-flowing as water, as necessary, as refreshing.

Consider a monk's day: vigils, lauds, Mass, breakfast! lectio divina, terce, work, sext, lunch! none, work, vespers, prayers, supper! study, compline, and then to bed as light flees your half of the planet. Do you think maybe his meals are moments of particular joy and wonder, his honest food earned honestly by an honest man? Think maybe a monk really savors the pearness of the pear?

The first foods of a child are moist, and the last foods of the dying are moist. In the beginning and at the end our food approaches the water our species came from and is mostly made of.

We are here so briefly, brothers and sisters, and our daily task is this: See clear, bring your best self to bear, be the sweet sharp sword of the Lord, fan the heat of holy, carry mercy in your mouth, pray with your ears and eyes, sing the sacrament of what is, do not tire, do not despair, do not sell your one wild life, lift the children, puncture the tie, face the bully, wash clean the foul, be relentless, be merry, shape your pain into sacrament, pry the pain from others, call the powerful to account, be alert, be attentive, for there is holiness all around us like an ocean, holiness in pain as much as in joy, holiness in every moment, for no moment is mundane, every moment is a miracle, every moment a meal.

LLOYD DEGRANE is a photographer living in Chicago. BRIAN DOYLE is the editor of Portland Magazine at the University of Portland. He is the author of five collections of essays, among them Leaping: Revelations & Epiphanies (Loyola Press, 2003).