Gazing in the Mirror

April 23 - Nourishment

We must never stop dreaming.
Dreams provide nourishment
for the soul, just as a meal
does for the body.
~ Paulo Coelho

Is there anyone who does not
have a soul hunger ? Does not
the spirit of man thirst after
knowledge and understanding,
yearn for Truth and Reality,
as blind men yearn for light ?
~ Ernest Holmes

It may be that one of my earliest experiences with nourishment was scarcity. My mom took the baby bottle away from me and gave it to my baby sister. Even though I lacked the maturity to interpret that in concepts it must have felt like not enough to go around for me. Grocery day was always exciting. Mom came home with bags of stuff and it was mostly not too interesting but there were always some treasures amongst the less exciting stuff. I continue the tradition with my boys. Those treasures never lasted too long – there is never quite enough of the special stuff to last very long.

Things shifted a bit in high school. Too much body was not desirable. Now I practiced "dieting", depriving my body of nourishment intentionally, to reduce my body size to what was deemed desirable among my peers. Anyone remember Twiggy ? I grew up with that annual religious practice of fasting for Lent. I never really understand the relevance. Was giving up something "important" to me enough to placate God for humanity having killed Jesus ? Actually, that wasn't what I ever felt it was about. I think "discipline" and "will power" describe my perspective more accurately. I always gave up candy and I rarely made it all the way to Easter without eating it. Easter was when the candy gods distributed abundant sweet stuff no matter how miserably my Lent fast had failed – maybe the lesson was that humble man can't ever succeed without divine assistance. I don't know if even that was the purpose. For me, it was a simply a "religious tradition", so we did it.

Next I experienced poverty. I got married. My husband had an addiction that was more primal in his hierarchy of needs than feeding his family. Creatively, I found ways to always have something nourishing for my young daughter but there was often very little to eat for my own self. At least I didn't need a fancy diet to keep my weight in check. I left that husband thinking I might be better able to support my daughter and I, if we were cut loose from his habits and their drain on my income. It did help but as a young, single woman living on the Mexican border and competing for work against Mexican nationals with green cards, who could live on a lower income across the border, I struggled to make ends meet. I left my daughter in the care of her paternal grandmother to go in search of adequate financial support for both of us. I was never able to get her into my own daily life after that. Life moved on for all of us and her dad remarried and gave her a family. I knew "family" as something emotionally nourishing and so I was not going to deprive her of that.

Have you ever stopped to consider what a central role in any day's livingness breaking bread together with other people is ? We share meals together as families or with friends to get better acquainted. Meals form the cornerstone of holidays and special events. We feast at fairs and festivals. We feed those who don't have enough to eat due to unfortunate circumstances because we recognize the necessity of food as life-affirming nourishment. Our companionship in each of these examples is part of what nourishes us.

Philip Pullman is quoted as saying – "After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world." Our world abounds in stories these days – in entertainment media, in books, in blogs and in shared discussions. My essays here abound in stories. I have come to realize that writing them nourishes my deepest self. Sharing stories connects us to one another in both common and contrasting experiences. The connections are nourishing and part of what companionship gives to us. Stories have dominated human sharing and have been passed down throughout generations of human beings for thousands of years. It is how our brains are wired to understand information. We stay more engaged when we have a story rather than just the dry facts.

Nourishing the Life that is us involves making choices that honor the body that houses our Presence. It means honoring the Soul with what we mentally are willing to consume. It means honoring companionship by being nurturing friends. It means caring for the young and the elderly in ways that nourish their Life Force. Through years and years of contemplation and reflection I found balance in realizing that basic foods nourish me in life-affirming ways and that moderation keeps my body comfortable and my sense of self-worth intact.

~ perspective

In mindfulness I seek to be
more conscious about the food
I eat, who I am eating it with
and the environment I am eating
in; even though these conditions
may not change and I am simply
being more aware of what is.
I hold sacred my role in my
household of procuring and preparing
food for my family with a loving spirit,
adding in that secret ingredient of
care to the physics of the matter
and energy embedded – one can feed
oneself in that same spirit.
Tending plants teaches one much
about nourishing life.
I nourish the self within me by
holding precious that which gives me
consciousness.
My soul sees Life like a banquet,
full of too many choices, to
consume them all.

#addiction #balance #body #companionship #dieting #enough #excess #moderation #poverty #scarcity