We have been in a series on establishing healthier systems to care for ourselves as we head into Fall Kick-off season. The last two posts have focused on rest, but I also want to take a moment and offer a word of grace towards another one of our complex relationships: food. 

I know this is controversial territory in a cultural environment that is very concerned about excess in American diets. But the signals from our bodies are just information, and if you are craving something, it is a way your body is telling you it needs something. In the same way that being unable to focus at 2pm might be a sign that you need more rest than you are getting, an 8pm craving for calorie-rich foods like chips or ice cream might be a sign that your body wants more food than it’s gotten that day. Just like we do with rest, we tend to try to rationalize food, breaking it down into its component nutrient parts and then try to optimize it. 

As though food was only the nutrients that made it up.

Just as prayer is more than the activation of alpha and beta waves in our brains, and singing together is more than the synchronization of the vibration of our vocal cords, food is more than its chemical composition. At the end of a long day, after the kids go to bed, when you pour yourself a bowl of Cap’n Crunch, what you are craving may be the iron, or the sodium, or it may be the memory of being cared for that eating a bowl of your favorite childhood cereal brings to life, and that is ok too. 

I think of the opening stanza to Mary Oliver’s famous Wild Geese,

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

Mary Oliver, “Wild Geese”

It’s ok if food is more than fuel, it’s ok if food provides emotional and mental comfort, and a way to connect with your loved ones. Food isn’t just about nutrients, it’s about love, relationships, culture, and yes, faith. 

Food and being fed is a key metaphor for the way God loves us. The word of God nourishes us, we gather around the table for communion, Jesus cares for the crowds by feeding them until they have had their fill. Just like our mothers and grandmothers, Jesus’s expression of love often ends with tupperware containers (or giant woven baskets) full of leftovers.

In my years working with teenage girls I became acutely convinced that it does not serve God for you to hate your body, no matter what it looks like or can or cannot do. We are not obligated to spend our energy punishing ourselves for being exactly the soft animal we were created by God to be. You are not a machine to be honed, but a living, breathing creation to be cared for. God calls us to the table, as a refuge and a place of reconnection with God, with our community, and with our own bodies. 

As we go into this school year, we have to tend to our physical bodies the same way that we tend to our souls. We were not created to be heads in jars, but live in bodies that have been fully redeemed by the incarnation and resurrection of Christ. These bodies are part of our testimony, and when we treat them with love, with reverence, with care, not just for what they can do or what they look like, but simply because they are, we demonstrate to our communities that they too are worthy of love and care regardless of what they can or cannot do, have done, or have left undone. 

This week, try to treat the soft animal of yourself a bit more gently, granting yourself the rest, the connection, the comfort, and yes, the delicious church donuts, apples and peanut butter, and late night cereal that your body tells you it needs. You of course can chart your own course for whatever you feel is best for you, but allowing yourself to be cared for and loved can be a radically transformative thing, and sometimes the person God is most calling to love you that way is you.

Tell us what comes up for you (recipes encouraged).