Eating My Way to Heaven, or, cultivating mystical foretastes

Licking the corners of my mouth, I retrieve the creamy remnants of a chocolate éclair. It is everything that the North End promises in authentic, overstuffed Italian pastries. With the taste of heaven still on my lips, and a sip of tea soon to follow, it occurs to me that Café Vittoria might be something of a training ground for spiritual formation.

I know what you’re thinking. Here she goes turning secular decadence into religious blasphemy again. But hear me out.

One of the most popular expressions at divinity school is the term spiritual agility. It is used to describe the ability of the minister to attend to different people and circumstances with considerable flexibility. A spiritually agile individual will not only read the pulse of a room, but remains nimble enough to respond appropriately. And as a virtuoso of the soul, who seeks to bring out the best notes in others, she is constantly retuning her own instrument in search of the divine pitch. In short, you work with your own soul to better respond to others.

Why then do I need to sample every last morsel of Italian sweetness to become spiritually agile? Because, as my rich revelation would have it, the hungers of the belly are not all that different than those of the soul. Over a different meal, not too long ago, I was speaking with Sr. Nancy Kehoe, psychologist, nun, and author of Wrestling With Our Inner Angels, about the many dimensions of the spiritual life. It was there that she said, “You know, our spirits are like our bodies—they need different kinds of foods to thrive.”

We don’t eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for every meal, so why would you feed your soul the exact same prayer regimen and expect it to be perfectly satisfied? While there are probably a number of staple ingredients to a good spiritual diet, we are not static creatures, and as such, need nutritional variety. The hungers of the soul, I suspect, are very much dependent on the dynamic climate of our lives.

We have the good sense to eat pasta, rather than salad, before running a marathan, to lay off coffee in the afternoon, and to hydrate especially well in the heat. But do we allow for such variance in the care of our own souls? Do we account for fatigue, stress, heartache, excitement, complacency, grief, boredom, or joy as we gauge the needs of the spirit?

It’s an important consideration for me, particularly when I’m feeling burned out or disconnected with a spiritual practice. Rather than stomaching a tediously bland routine, why don’t I take a minute to become more aware—of my life and its peculiar circumstances—and to then ask : At this particular point in time, what nourishes my core being? And then pause… for those tell-tale grumblings usually have lots to say.