To read Part 1 of the Micah 6.8 series: Never productive enough.

“Our kitchens and other eating places more and more resemble filling stations, as our homes more and more resemble motels. ‘Life is not very interesting,’ we seem to have decided. ‘Let its satisfactions be minimal, perfunctory and fast.’ We hurry through our meals to go to work and hurry through our work in order to ‘recreate’ ourselves in the evenings and on weekends and vacations. And then we hurry, with the greatest possible speed and noise and violence, through our recreation – for what? To eat the billionth hamburger at some fast-food joint hellbent on increasing the ‘quality’ of our life? And all this is carried out in a remarkable obliviousness to the causes and effects, the possibilities and the purposes, of the life of the body in this world.” – Wendell Berry

“Sauvignon Blanc, Pinot Noir, Merlot…” my eyes scan the labels of the tinted bottles of glass lining the shelf in dazzling array.

It is rum I am looking for, not that I ever buy rum for that matter. But this time I am on a mission to buy rum. For my matcha tiramisu, that is.

For someone who tries to shop mostly in the fresh produce section, I had spent the past 15 minutes floundering in the “breads and cookies” aisle, trying to figure out if ladyfinger biscuits was more a bread or a cookie.

It ended up being nestled between packages of graham crackers.

Now, though, I am firmly in uncharted territory, staring blankly at names of wines I vaguely remember from that one wine-tasting session my sis had brought me to as her plus-one.

Each round, they poured us two half-glasses of wine and we had to guess which one was more expensive. Feeling like the most uncultured one in a room full of Bain consultants, I tried my hardest to detect the oakiness, any hint of a “full body”.

Yet, I still chose the cheaper one 80% of the time. A woman of simple tastes I am.

I spot a stock clerk busy unpacking boxes of club soda. Time to call a friend. Or a store clerk.

“Um, excuse me, where can I find the rum? All I see are wines,” I ask.

He hardly looks at me as he replies matter-of-factly, “Oh, we don’t sell rum. We aren’t allowed to sell that kind of alcohol.”

There is a slight pause as part of my brain tries to compute what that means, while the other part hurries to make clear that I am not an irresponsible teenager trying to get drunk on rum.

“Oh, uh, I just need the rum to make tiramisu,” I hurry to cover my tracks.

This time, he pauses, slightly puzzled.

“You know, we sell tiramisu, right? It’s in aisle 6.”

I recount this short but true vignette as an example of how food is viewed more as a product found pre-packaged and sold in grocery aisles, its values measured in calories and cents.

But, as the first instalment of my #micah6.8 project (read the series introduction here!) in which I explore what it means to walk humbly before my God in the ordinary routines of everyday life, I chose to start with food, a most basic human need.

In thinking about this post, I toyed around with a couple of ideas: why I decided to be a chill vegan at the beginning of this year, my 6 months of going off carbs and sugar in China and what that taught me about feasting and fasting, or even my journey of growing various kombucha, sourdough and kimchi cultures in my kitchen.

But I think there is lots on the Internet on those topics (although if you are still interested, feel free to ask me!), and often, reading posts like those only leave you feeling guilty that you’re not vegan, or for the double-scoop ice cream you just ate or that you’re not an avid fermenter.

And to be honest, this month has actually been one of the worst for me in terms of “being good about food.”

I’m currently on the Megabus coming back from a church retreat in Scarborough, Ontario, with a Styrofoam container of Korean bulgogi and Jap Chae sitting atop a box of Uncle Tetsu’s green tea Japanese cheesecake in a paper bag beside me.

I also had a double scoop ice cream before boarding the bus, and completely neglected all my cultures this past weekend (poor scobies). To write such a post would make me a very blatant hypocrite.

So, if you love your meat, carbs and sugar, you can relax. This is not going to be one of those posts.

Instead, I want to write about the spiritual principles behind food and let you decide how those principles will govern the way you choose to eat and think about food.

Granted, I am not the ultimate authority on food and spirituality. My thoughts are more an amalgamation of what I have read from authors who have written prolifically about this subject, namely Wendell Berry and Norman Wirzba, dear friends with whom I have bounced ideas off of, and just my personal experience with loving cooking, eating and many other things food-related.

Hopefully, this post will only be the beginning of you contemplating your own complex relationship with food and eating.

Maybe it will spark some interesting dinner conversation.

Maybe inspire you to cook a new recipe, grow a new vegetable.

Maybe you’ll read a Wendell Berry book (scroll to the end for resource recommendations!).

And if anything, maybe it’ll make your pre-meal prayers just a bit less rote and a bit more meaningful.

Food

Food is deeply spiritual. If you just pause to think about it, we don’t have many common experiences with the people we read about in the Bible. I mean, how many times have you raised a dead girl back to life, commanded fire from heaven, heard the voice of God in a wind?

But if there’s one experience Elijah and I have shared, it is the joy of waking up to freshly baked bread (see 1 Kings 19).

And so if food is one thing that weaves through the entirety of history, a shared experience we partake of with the rest of humanity multiple times a day, then surely God must have intended it to be part of the way He communicate His character to us.

Surely there must be a reason why “breaking bread” is mentioned more than “prayer” in the Acts description of the early church. Or why, apart from his healings, Jesus was most known for how he ate with sinners.

In my meditation on food and spirituality, I’ve settled on three concepts that I relate to most, namely – communion, delight and mystery.

Communion

Perhaps when people first think of the intersection of food and spirituality, they think communion.

The passing of the shallow metal dish speckled with perfectly round gluten-free wafers that melt into nothingness, followed by the tray of plastic cups filled with deep red grape juice.

My hand wobbling as I attempt to pass on the tray onto the stranger beside me, trying simultaneously to procure myself a cup while trying to stop the tray from slipping from my small hands, the metal clattering to the floor in a pool of spilled blood.

My mind, on the other hand, jumps to the communions I have partaken in outside of North America.

The time during my very first mission trip in China when two teaching teams were merging into one, we took it as a symbol of unity.

Us teachers sat cross-legged on the floor in the ratty light blue camp t-shirts we had been living in the past few weeks, barely awake and physically exhausted.

We broke off a piece of the red bean bun, the taste familiar yet this time sacred – the body of Christ broken for you.

A giant plastic bottle of blackcurrant Ribena, its saccharine juice divided into flimsy plastic cups – the blood of Christ shed for you.

This ritual passed down the centuries is a powerful one. It reminds us that what is commonplace and everyday is supposed to point us back to Jesus.

Do this in remembrance of me, Jesus says.

Not just once a week with gluten free wafers and grape juice, but as often as we eat this bread.

Communion is for remembering – that we are human, limited and dependent on another’s sacrifice for us.

More than the ritual, however, I think of the more broad definition of communion: an act or instance of sharing, as Merriam-Webster states. 

Eating fosters sharing, the building of relationship that transcends boundaries.

The night of New Year’s Eve, the tradition at Hidden Treasures Home was to host a dumpling party for the staff once we had put the kids to bed.

And so we sat around with our knees bumping up against the plastic table top, me the Princeton grad across from the woman who had been rescued from temple prostitution.

The teenage boy who knew what it was to be an orphan next to the American teacher who knew what it was to be raised in a family of ten.

All of us with floured hands and happy hearts, now this is the kingdom.

My clumsy hands fumble the thin wrapper skin.

My classroom assistant leans over to show me how she deftly maneuvers the skin into a leaf pattern.

“What about this?” I squeeze the top of my dumpling together in a last-ditch effort to stop the minced pork and scallion filling from exploding out the sides.

She smiles and nestles my dumpling amongst the others in the bamboo basket.

When they come out of the steamer, we all dive in with our chopsticks, soaking each plump dumpling in black vinegar and chili oil. You can hardly distinguish my dumplings from the others.

Food is indeed the great equalizer.

I love that Jesus ate with sinners and prostitutes (Mark 2:13-17).

There’s something intimate about the dinner table, that sharing it with someone else is akin to accepting them as a person.

It’s us saying – yes I receive this offering and it is good enough for my body.

Today, I will choose to be dependent on the food you have prepared for me.

Communion – this sharing of common food – reminds us that food was meant to be relational and not transactional.

Delight

If a woman could see the sparks of light going forth from her fingertips when she is cooking, and the energy that goes into the food she handles, she would realize how much of herself she imbues into the meals that she prepares for her family and friends. It is one of the most important and least understood activities of life that the feelings that go into the preparation of food affect everyone who partakes of it. This activity should be unhurried, peaceful and happy because the energy that flows into that food impacts the energy of the receiver.

– Maya Chohan

Don’t you love that food is to be delighted in?

Brendan, my sis’ boyfriend, was telling me a few days ago about Soylent, a popular drink that contains all your nutritional needs for a meal.

Imagine a world where you didn’t have to worry about cooking or meal-planning and all we did was down bottles of Soylent whenever you were hungry.

And yet, we have distinct cuisines and flavours – the sweet spicy of gochujang pork being worlds apart from the earthy spicy of a Malaysian fish head curry – that is a good thing.

Not only that, but the preparation itself is to be delighted in.

This is where my Mom and I differ.

She always goes for functionality. That means looking up something on Allrecipes requiring the least amount of ingredients and whipping it up in record time.

Usually that meant a tuna casserole with canned tuna, mushroom soup and cooked pasta baked for 30-40 min at 350F.

But from a young age, I had my head buried in recipe books, intrigued by the ingredients whose names I could not pronounce.

What would asafoetida change the flavour profile of a dish? Could xantham gum really be the secret ingredient to make vegan ice cream taste like the real thing?

So, cooking for me is an adventure.

It is an act of creating something new.

And no matter the product at the end of the adventure, it is good because it was created by me and I delighted in creating it.

When I think about why Jesus said he is the bread of life (John 6:35), I think about the delight that bread brings.

And that as much as the common perception is that religion strips you of freedom by giving you a bunch of rules to follow, I think the opposite is in fact more true.

He came so that we would delight in Him.

That His joy may be in us and that our joy would be made complete (John 15:11).

So then, there is something spiritual about sinking my fingers into the doughy elastic of a rising sourdough, deeply inhaling its aroma as it is being baked, and marvelling over the caramelization of a crust transformed by heat.

Because this delight is a shadow of that which the bread of life brings.

You make known to me the path of life.

In your presence there is fullness of joy. At your right hand are pleasures forevermore.

Psalm 16:11

Mystery

This last one I’m not sure I understand, which is probably why it’s mysterious.

All I know is that the process of eating somehow leads to transformation.

That when I eat this piece of bread, it is digested by my stomach, absorbed in its base form into my cells and changes my body to feel certain ways.

It becomes a part of me, in a way.

So when Jesus says that whoever eats his flesh and drinks his food has eternal life (John 6:54), it tells me that knowing Jesus doesn’t mean simply analyzing his character at various angles.

Because as much as you can scientifically analyze the components of bread, you will never truly understand it until you take a bite yourself – the crunch of the crust melting away into soft yeasty nuttiness.

Only those who eat the bread (of life) can be transformed by it.

And yet, this bread-eating is such a mundane act that we forget the mystery of how it sustains us, how it is slowly transforming us day by day.

And so Jesus, the bread of life, invites us into that mystery.

To eat of Him and see that He is good.

To remember to commune, delight and lean into this mystery.

Every time we eat this bread and drink this wine, Jesus said. (1 Cor 11:26).

Every time.

To reflect on:

1. How can I eat in a way that invites people Into it? Make meal times more meaningful? Invite strangers to my table? Use food to cross boundaries?

2. How can I delight more in my food? Contemplate it before I eat it?

3. How can I step into the mystery of transformation, starting with the way food nourishes and transforms me, but also how Jesus the bread of life is to indwell in us? How we are to know him intimately and enter into a mystical union with the divine?

Afterword:

This piece took me a long time to write – food is such a common experience, and one that I love, so I wanted to do it justice.

And yet, my writing will always fall short of fully capturing the glory and beauty of what it is to eat and be human.

I know I’ve been telling many of you about this post as I’ve been writing it and in a way, writing and meditating on the words of this post has been an incarnational, transformative experience, and I only hope that in writing, I can also encourage myself to step into the communion, delight and mystery that eating invites.

As always, I would love if you sent me a message about any thoughts you had on my above invitations, or if you would like to simply share your favorite recipe to cook or meal to eat, I’m open to that as well!

And for those of you who are interested in a more personal update, I survived the Alta Via hiking trip in Italy and am currently in Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia, before heading over to Strasbourg where I will be for the next four months!

Today was the first day of getting back online after many days without a phone or computer, which felt strange and weirdly liberating at the same time.

Keep posted for my next instalment of the series, which will be on beauty (a reflection on clothes, fashion, makeup and other pursuits of beauty – so boys, you will not be left out :D)

Resource Recommendations

Books

• “The Art of the Commonplace,” Wendell Berry – a collection of agrarian essays on how Christians should relate to the earth

• “Food and Faith: A Theology of Eating,” Norman Wirzba – an amazing meditation on why we eat and what is thoughtful eating.

• “Slow Church,” Christopher Smith – a comparison of the industrialization of agriculture to that of the church and how we can take principles such as terroir and apply it to the church

Articles

• NPR: “Why slave labor still plagues the global food industry.”

• Wendell Berry: “The pleasures of eating”  – the readers’ digest form of Wendell Berry’s theology on food

Cookbooks

• “Bread” by Jeffrey Hamelman – apparently the Bible of bread-making..I stole a few sourdough classic recipes from here!

• Salt, Fat, Acid Heat by Samin Nosrat – goes through the principles of cooking in a colorful, fun away interspersed with lots of recipes!

• Cooking for Geeks by Jeff Potter – for the creative, innovative ones who want science-based cooking hacks

• The Homemade Life by Molly Wizenberg – more than a cookbook, this book details the story behind each recipe, reminding you of the heart behind cooking