Blessed Feast

We are a part of an intricate web of physical relations, which are at the same time moral relations. How we eat and drink, how we sow our land, how we get food to our plates, how we use other bodies, other human bodies, in getting food and drink to sustain us. These are moral issues which cannot be separated from very basic physical questions.Ellen Davis, Yale School of Theology

If we can eat with mindfulness, consideration for our bodies, and those whose work brought the food to our table, eating becomes prayer. In eating slowly, allowing flavors and textures to dazzle the tongue, spark the imagination, fuel the body, we affirm our aliveness and place in this world. As Ellen Davis writes, the very act of eating connects us morally with the earth and all its inhabitants. When we harm ourselves, by eating food that was cultivated or manufactured with toxic chemicals, we also harm the earth and those who work brought them in contact with the toxins. In eating well, we are telling God, "Thank you for my life, for my neighbors, friends, and enemies, my spirit."

Of course, eating is never as easy or straight forward as this. Eating well, with slowness and nutrition takes time and money which has been squeezed out of modern and not so modern lives. It also takes self-compassion and love which can be hard to muster many days.

My father's mother stopped eating when she was only thirty and died from her thinness. I have often wondered why she chose to stop feeding herself, to move the food around her plate but not to her mouth even as she cooked all day for her family. How did she resist the richly thick tomato sauce she simmered on the stove, the fresh bread Louie brought home from the bakery, the sweet tangerines in summer? What became more compelling than garlic, olive oil, and salty cheese?

It is a question for many of us why we stop eating well, just enough, and with attention. What prevents us from connecting with ourselves, the Earth, our neighbors, and God three times a day in the blessed act of feast?