Vocation

I recently heard a rabbi give some advice during a sermon. Someone once asked him, “How can I have a religious experience?” His answer was as follows: Take an apple, and eat it with your entire body.

His answer was so simple that I had some difficulty wrapping my head around it. He stated this in the context of a sermon about the first commandment in the Torah. That commandment was, “Eat.” When God created Adam and Eve, he commanded them to eat the fruit in any of the trees in the garden. Except, of course, for the fruit from one particular tree.

This commandment highlights the extreme significance food plays in our lives. No matter where you live, what cultures you belong to, or what you personally believe in, you must eat to be sustained and to survive. It is one of the basic necessities of life, so fundamental to our existence that most people devote three times a day to it (more or less, depending on the season of the year or who you talk to). Food also brings entire communities together, from a family eating dinner to a neighborhood celebrating a festival to a religious community across the globe, sharing in a meal on a regular basis.

The rabbi, though, wasn’t talking about food in that particular context. After all, you can only find so much community with others in eating an apple by yourself. And yet, a deep connection can arise from the simple act of eating an apple. The connection exists between you, the apple, and the source where it comes from.

I’ve left out an important part of the rabbi’s advice. It wasn’t just to eat an apple, but to eat an apple with your entire body. This isn’t a concept I’ve ever thought about, so I’m not entirely sure what that process entails. I think, though, that it means to be fully aware of yourself and the apple when you are eating. To be conscious of the life within you and to focus all of it on  bringing one small source of life into yourself. To attend to the act of eating, how your mouth moves to chew and consume this piece of fruit. To pay attention to the apple’s texture, its color, its smell, its flavor, and the sound of eating it. This is what I think it means to eat an apple with one’s whole body.

You may be wondering what on earth this has to do with having a religious experiences. In some ways, I think, the act of being aware and paying attention itself brings on a religious experience. One of my favorite poems by Mary Oliver talks about not knowing what a prayer is, but knowing how to pay attention, to fall and kneel down on grass, how to watch a small grasshopper eat sugar from her hand before flying away. Simply being aware and paying attention can become a sort of prayer, in that you become deeply connected to the life that surrounds you.

Eating an apple with your whole body involves a similar process. By being conscious of yourself and the apple, you become more deeply attuned to it. And in that way, you also become attuned to something that lies beyond yourself, and your connection to that thing. Some people might call that thing God or the Divine, others may call it community, others still Nature. Your connection to that thing, I think, is deeply meaningful, regardless of what you may call it. The next time you eat something (it doesn’t have to be an apple), I encourage you to be mindful of some of these things, whether or not you agree with them or believe them. Try to eat something not just for sustenance or to satisfy hunger, but to for the purpose of eating it with your whole body. Just some food for thought.