You Are What (and How) You Eat

[cedar_grove]

The crowd gathers, scattering across the lawn in couples to begin the festival. Some set up camp, some pitch tents, and others make temportary houses of reeds and togas. Warm with sun and wine, they try to drink as many cups as they would have years on this earth. Men drink as many cups as Nestor's years, and women would have to live as long as Sybil to make up for their intake. Everyone sings, clapping their hands.

--Ovid, Fasti

To our wise foremothers, intoxication was a divine act, notto be undertaken lightly. It was a ritual, a serious although pleasant way to honor the divine force. How might our attitudes toward addictive substances be transformed if we saw ingesting them as a religious act?

I come to this meditation feeling somewhat of an irony to begin with, as I was earlier reading about an actor checking himself into rehab for treatment of prescription pain meds (following a shoulder injury). Yet another one... at least though he had the good sense to nip it in the bud... thank goodness.

As far as the quotation goes, alcohol, addicitive substances - why stop there? Why not treat the ingesting of anything or even everything into ones body as sacred. How much differently would we, as humans, view life then?

I used to be mostly silent when eating meals, and when drinking. Why? Because I spent that time thinking, feeling and consciously eating what I was eating and drinking. On the life that had been given that mine could continue, on the connection between us and on the honour we both gave to the Old Ones in continuing the circle as we were.

I don't do this now, at least not as much as I should. I dont' think may people do so now. People used to think I was strange, or maybe worry or something, I don't know - maybe ignorant, because they'd talk to me and it would take me a while to answer them because I would always finish at least the mouthful I was eating before answering.

On the other hand of that of course is the fact that eating and drinking are social activities, in some cultures, even family building ones. So maybe what I should be considering is how to combine the both - the sacred quiet of honoring whatever it is that enters my body to give me energy and life, and the equally as sacred communtiy of sharing sustenance with another.

Is it modern society that has robbed us of the sanctity of mealtimes, the sanctity of remembering sacrifice when we partake of something to sustain ourselves, of simply our own growing self-importance? Certainly mealtimes are more hurried now. Less a time for family and more something to be gotten out of the way so that we can get on with something else, and in losing that time we have, I think, lost so much else. Even those of us that sit down as a family to eat together often do so in front of the television - not giving time to each other, let alone to the food we are eating. What has driven us to this, I cannot say. I look at my own experience in respect of a shift from the time when our famiy would sit around the table to eat, away from the television, just sharing time as we ate, to a time where we all ate from TV trays in front of the television - the perfectly good dining table sitting just around the corner, a repository for papers and folded laundry and other such things. I cannot even identify when it happened that way, let alone why.

That's not to say that dinner and a movie is necessarily a bad thing, not when it's done consciously in that fashion. In such cases dinner and a movie is helping to reconnect with the community side of sharing food. Yes, dinner and a movie seems to me to be a positive, modern ritual of sharing.

I don't have answers to the questions I pose, just leave them as things for us all to ponder, things to think about at the next mealtime, perhaps.

Comments

[mirrani.livejournal.com]

And yet, when I keep saying that I want to keep the kitchen table useful... this perplexes you... and never happens. :p