Last week I announced my upcoming book, Pilgrim Principles: Journeying with Intention in Everyday Life, and shared with you a free preview from the first section of the book, focused on the first Pilgrim Principle: “A pilgrim looks for the Sacred in the Quotidian.” Read it here.
The book won’t be released until January 6, 2014, but while you wait you can find a free preview from each section of the book every Wednesday until Christmas, giving you a taste of all seven Pilgrim Principles (and hopefully leaving you yearning for more!). This week’s preview is of the second Pilgrim Principle, “A pilgrim practices somatic spirituality,” and explores how you can even experience the Sacred through your sense of taste (go figure!). Other categories explored with this principle in the book include the other four senses: hearing, touch, smell, and sight.
PRAISE FOR THE BOOK
Early reviews of the book are starting to roll in! Here’s what Ronna Detrick, writer, spiritual director, and provocateur (read our interview with her here) had to say:
“Lacy has the provocative ability to blend the sacred and the practical, the spiritual and the everyday, in wisdom-full and passionate ways. In Pilgrim Principles, she takes you by the hand (and heart), gently guiding you with prose, prayer, and praxis; inviting and compelling meaningful ways of integrating faith, hope, and love with the everyday stuff of life. You can trust her. Buy the book. Take the journey.”
Ronna Detrick, ronnadetrick.com
Without further ado, another free preview. Enjoy (and pass it on)!
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pilgrim principles free preview: taste
Food is commonly understood as a necessity in life for our physical nourishment, but it has long been a source of spiritual nourishment as well. I’m not talking about that tub of ice cream you pull out of the freezer at the end of a bad day or the bag of chips you completely devour while sitting on the couch. Whether we want to admit it or not, I think we all know that any nourishment we get from such over-indulgences is false. While the first bite might taste divine, our thoughts inevitably take over and we eat absentmindedly. In such instances we are not present, we are not aware, and we are warding off spiritual nourishment rather than receiving it.
When I talk about the spiritual nourishment that comes from food, I’m thinking of long dinners at the table surrounded by friends. I’m thinking of making rich simmering soup for your family on a cold winter’s night. And I’m imagining the taste of a blackberry picked fresh from the wild bush in the summertime. Each of these instances can nourish the spirit, and each involves taste in some way or another.
The pilgrim is quite familiar with taste–in the metaphorical way, at least. To even have set off on a journey, the pilgrim must have tasted something of the Divine, leaving him longing for more. Often such a taste can be fleeting, but it awakens the senses and sparks desire. For the pilgrim committed to his journey, this is only a foretaste, for it is a glimpse of the goodness yet to come along the road.
To savor these tastes, the pilgrim must exercise the senses, and in a way, that’s what we’ve been doing all week. By connecting to the Sacred through touch, sound, smell, and sight, we have been sharpening our senses, manifesting externally what we long to experience internally, and we can do that through tasting, too. When we taste something–savor it, slowly and truly–we inhale its goodness and by it are blessed. Surely, as we learn to savor the simple blessing of food, we will learn to fully savor life’s Sacred Encounters as well.
PRACTICE
Perhaps the greatest thing about practicing somatic spirituality–using our bodies and our senses with the intention of Sacred Encounter–is that when we are engaging the senses, we can be fully present. Today, find a food you love and taste it; fully, slowly, silently savor it, being present to your every delight, and know that where you delight and savor, you will truly taste the Divine.
REFLECTION
What was it like to be present while eating, savoring both the moment and the flavor of your food or drink?
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This post was an excerpt from
Pilgrim Principles: Journeying with Intention in Everyday Life,
releasing January 6, 2014.
Come back next Wednesday for another free preview!
