Archive for the ‘Spiritual Practices’ Category

Cooking as a Spiritual Practice/Experience

July 14th, 2009

Today Christine Sine posted another entry in her blog series What is a Spiritual Practice? Today’s entry was contributed by John O’Hara and was entitled Anyone Can Cook: Spirituality in the Kitchen. He shares some great thoughts:

“Somehow I feel that we have lost our way in the fog of our industrialized efficiencies. Quick trips to the super warehouse mega store to pick up a slab of this and a pound of that – or more threateningly, something food-ish that has already been prepared, packaged and preheated and frozen in a factory before it reaches us – reduce us to a kind of two-dimensionality, to the vocation of a consumer, when instead we are so much more complex and beautiful creatures who were designed to participate in the food chain, not just feed off the top of it like some glorified trough. What we gain in convenience through supermarkets and fast food, we lose in the quality and tenor of that relationship to what we consume. In the preparation of food, in choosing foods that are local and in season, we are fractionally returning to a more vibrant stewardship over creation. One cannot help but imagine that doing so enhances our worship relationship with the Creator.”

I like this idea of food preparation and cooking as an act of worship. I like the idea of choosing foods consciously, making good stewardship choices when it comes to the food we eat. I like the idea of being more aware of what is in our food and more connected with where our food comes from. To me this seems like a healthy way to enter into worship through food. I also think that there is more to be said about how cooking and food preparation and eating are a spiritual practice. I just had a few more thoughts on the topic and decided I would throw them into the mix as well.

For as long as I can remember my dad has loved to cook. He reads cook books for fun. He makes elaborate gourmet meals. He’s taken cooking classes in France. Some of my best memories of my dad are cooking with him in the kitchen. I grew up knowing that good cooking couldn’t be rushed. You didn’t buy it in packages, it came from fresh ingredients prepared just right. Cooking isn’t just a necessity for survival, cooking is art. And I think I realize more and more now that cooking is also spiritual.

I believe that we are physical beings and God chooses to meet us in our physicality. In some ways as human beings I think we come closest to spirituality and experiencing God during experience that are most tangible and sensual. Cooking is like that. Cooking is incredibly tangible, and kinesthetic, and sensual.

The feel of dried beans running through your fingers

The sound that lettuce makes when you tear it

The smell of sauces cooking on the stove top

The feel of garlic as the peel slides between your fingers

The beauty of a ruby red ripe tomato

The rhythmic action of chopping onion

The smell of fresh parsley

The fragrance of dried herbs

The action of mixing unique individual ingredients into a creation that engages all of your taste buds.

Cooking is an act for the senses. It engages the body in a way that reminds us physically of the life and beauty all around us. In cooking we experience God’s provision, God’s creativity, God’s life and beauty and we experience it tangibly with our senses. Our bodies and senses experience that which our mind often forgets.

I think it’s interesting that so many religions have feasts attached to their holidays, and sacred celebrations. Somewhere within we know that there is something sacred about cooking and eating together. As we cook we join God in his creative action and as we eat we take that which is living into ourselves and from it derive life for another day. Cooking and eating is the simplest and most daily of actions, but to me it seems that it can also be one of the most spiritual and holy. What do you think?

Rejoicing in the journey -
Bethany Stedman

Photographs by Beth Stedman

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Crying as a Spiritual Practice

June 24th, 2009

Recently Christine Sine at Godspace asked the question “What is a Spiritual Practice?” This and another post “Reimagining our Spiritual Practices” lead to her inviting people to join her in talking and writing about Spiritual practices and ways that we connect with God in everyday life. I was intrigued by the thoughts she shared and have been thinking about what are ways that I personally sense God’s presence and engage in a spiritual practice?

I think I grew up thinking that the only real way to connect with God and the only real spiritual practices where reading your Bible and praying, maybe I would have also considered going to church (and listening to a sermon) and Bible study with other believers to be spiritual practices as well, but that was pretty much the extent of it. As I got a little older my repertoire of spiritual practices expanded just a little to include some other classic standards like solitude/silence and fasting. But, I think deep down I knew that I also encountered and experienced God in numerous other ways that didn’t fit into the box of traditional spiritual practices. And it wasn’t until I got even a bit older that I felt free enough to allow myself to engage in spiritual activities and spiritual practices that didn’t fit the normal model I’d grown up with.

Here’s how Christine Sine defines Spiritual practices for her: “for me a spiritual practice is any routine I perform on a regular basis that connects me more intimately with God and God’s purposes.”

I like that. It got me thinking about what things in my regular, everyday kind of life connect me more intimately with God and God’s purposes. There are quite a few things that have come to mind and maybe I’ll write about some of the other one’s in the weeks to come, but for today I want to talk about crying.

For me crying is a spiritual practice, a spiritual experience that changes me and takes me closer to the heart of my Father. Allow me to explain and expand a little… To start with, understand that I’m not really the type who cries at the drop of a hat. You have to be a pretty close friend to have seen me cry as I usually only cry around people I feel really comfortable with. But, I do cry fairly regularly and when I cry I really cry. It usually starts with some little trigger and then grows until I’m crying about everything that I possibly could cry about.

But, there’s something that almost always happens at some point during my crying which I’m not sure is normal or not, maybe it shows my own weakness of faith, but almost always at some point my crying escalates and get’s turned on God. Suddenly it isn’t just about whatever it is I’m crying about, suddenly it’s about me and God and all my insecurities in my relationship with God. Suddenly, all of my doubt, distrust and fear, and all of my anger and accusations come out to play. Suddenly I’m face to face with all my ugliness, all the ugly deep thoughts and feelings I have towards God. Suddenly my sense of God’s sovereignty comes into play and it’s all His fault. Sometimes this moment leads to more tears and sadness, sometimes it leads to guilt and my disappointment in myself for my own distrust of God (which also leads to more tears), sometimes it leads to anger and outright yelling at God (again more tears).

The answer to these moments is always silence. In these moments God has never once defended himself. He hasn’t defended himself through someone else who was with me, or through bringing to mind scripture that I know, or in any other way. It’s always silence. But, I can feel him there, sometimes it’s so heavy that I feel like he’s standing right in front of me just silently looking at me, absorbing all of my accusations and confusion and doubt and just waiting.

But, just as surely as my crying sessions lead to that moment they also lead to another moment. Eventually I get to a place where I’ve cried it all out, where there is no fight left in me. I eventually get to a place where the sadness and anger and fear have run their course and I’m left feeling completely empty and vulnerable. My tantrum has run its course. My tears have done their job and have cleansed out of me all that ugliness and I sit there with it all exposed before me and God. There isn’t anywhere to hide anymore. It’s in this moment that God really comes close. Again he doesn’t answer my questions, ease my fears, or defend against my accusations. He just comes close and holds me in all my vulnerability. And in that moment I feel peace.

That is why crying is a spiritual practice for me. We all need moments like that. Moments that expose our ugliness. Moments that break down our defenses and leave us vulnerable. Moments that cleanse us and bring us to a new place of surrender to a God that we don’t understand. For me those moments happen when I really let myself fall apart and cry.

Rejoicing in the journey -
Bethany

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