hunger
emptiness
ache inside
void
wish and wanting
food
fasting
i am not at my best when i don’t have my food. HANGRY is an actual word in the dictionary now and i think the person who put it there must have followed me around when i have had low blood sugar. i don’t shop for clothes, makeup or shoes. i don’t get my nails done or spend money on spa treatments. but i love my food. and because i have literally been starving in my life, i try to avoid it at all costs. it takes me back to a dark place of poverty and neglect. i don’t like it.
i use food to show my love. i try to make sure people eat well, often and loads when they are with me. i want people to feel FED! and right now i am not feeling fed at all. i literally hurt from lack of food. and it has barely been 24 hours. but i am fasting for a test later today and under doctor’s orders to not eat or drink (except water or clear liquid, which is basically water right?) until after the test. i also have to drink some gross and awful stuff that is masked as a super salty diet 7-up that has gone flat. like 2 liters of it! not good. i am not a happy camper right now!
so i am trying to change my thinking, and look at this in a positive way. the doc is doing his job, trying to help me feel better physically. though at the moment it feels worse, like torture. since the beginning of october, on this day, i do a foodie fieldtrip friday. one of the highlights of my week (and those who watch my snapchat too). duh, that ain’t happenin’! but somehow when we are kept from something we so desire, so need and want, it makes us appreciate it even more, don’t you think? when i am allowed to eat, which will hopefully be this evening all things going well, i will be completely mindful, in every bite. often times i think we eat aimlessly and don’t even think about the movement of the hand to the mouth. we eat while we drive, watch tv, surf the net, talk on the phone. but to really engage with our food and take time to chew each bite and indeed savor it, that is being grate FULL!
i also think that the stomach’s response to hunger, the actual “rumbly in the tumbly” as winnie the pooh calls it, is really just a metaphor for something greater. we are humans, living beings like the animals and other inhabitants of this planet. but as i shared with you on thanksgiving, we are also special. we have opposable thumbs (this makes sense if you read the part of the post on FAITH). so we naturally have a longing for our CREATOR. but that longing, that hunger is in our soul. and when we aren’t fed, when we are fasting, our soul hurts. it is just manifested differently.
our SOULS might not have a physical pain as such, but there are pains, and you see them in the world today. people who are addicts and inflict pain on themselves through alcoholism and drug addiction, have starving souls. people who are violent and hurt others clearly have a void in their souls. if they lash out in pain, like what we see and read about in the news, they are not, cannot be, connected to their loving creator. a wishing and wanting, a longing gone unfulfulled will manifest itself somehow, someway. but sadly, it is not in a productive or positive way. even the 12-step recovery systems, which are non-denominational, recognize that it is important to engage with a “higher power” and the 1st step and 2nd step are reflective of that.
the strange thing is this folks. real food, edible food, which though seemingly readily available in our fast food, mega super market world, actually isn’t. we know that because even in rich cities people are malnourished. and in poor countries people are literally starving. but food for the soul is available anytime, day or night, past or present, here and now, forever ETERNAL! and interestingly enough, even poor people without food know that and are perhaps those most closely linked in their souls with their creator.
a perfect example of that is a story once told during mass by our then priest who was originally from Ghana. he shared a personal account of how their country was going through a famine and each night their mother would put a pot of food on the fire and tell her children to gather around her for story time. she would go on for hours telling great and wonderful african stories into the wee hours of the night. until finally all of her many children would be sound asleep at her lap. only years later did father linus discover the truth that in the pot was not food but water. his mother put water on to boil and lulled the kids to sleep with her love. that was in essence the most important thing they needed. it gave them COMFORT in the midst of chaos.
it is there for all of us folks, to give and receive. LOVE. i go on about it all the time, i realize that. the #lovefest contest was an example of it. thank you for reading/listening/humoring me. but just know that when people expect some bit giant flashes, explosions with fog machines and strobe lights, with pipe organs playing and choral voices for background music as their ‘soul moment’, that is what fiction tries to tell us. but it is the quiet, soft moment when someone shows you a bit of care, tenderness, respect and you say, “A-HA” love, that is it. that is GOD, my creator. that is what is gonna feed your soul, keep you going back for seconds and thirds etc, and in which you will be forever CONTENT.
love,
ydp
