Category: FOOD

  • Take example the person who fasts. In his fast he may perhaps abstain from many foods, yet he cannot abstain for one particular food, which he desires. What does such a person gain from his fast so long as he is weak and lacks the power to control himself at the point when he is being attached with the desire of food? Do we not say that if he abstains from this food in particular, he will be successful in his fast and in his spirituality? However, if he falls in this, then he has fallen in all. The Bible reminds us of this, saying: “For whoever shall keep the whole law, and yet stumble in one point, he is guilty of all” (James 2.10). What is the meaning of this statement by the apostle? How should we understand it? You will understand by answering the following question: Do you love God, so that nothing can keep you away from Him? If you find anything at al, then this is the problem in your life; it is your point of weakness.

    —H.H. Pope Shenouda III, The Life of Repentance and Purity

  • Do you practise this abstinence from food and drink? And do you reach a stage of hunger and you endure it?

    …

    When you become hungry, you feel your weakness so you do not show off your strength but rely on God’s strength to support you. And when you become hungry and endure hunger, you acquire the virtue of endurance and self-control. Therefore do not eat whenever you feel hungry during fasting but persevere and endure. Take the blessing of feeling hungry, persevering and enduring it. Also when you experience hunger, you will feel the pain of the poor who have nothing to eat, so you will be sympathetic towards them and give unto them… This is what is meant by abstaining for a period of time during fasting.

    —H.H. Pope Shenouda III, The Spiritual Means

  • If we have demonstrated such greed at the table of the body, imagine how we would have behaved at the table of spiritual things, if we had felt ourselves attracted by it.

    Letters from the Desert
    by Carlo Carretto

  • Clinging is a product of a scarcity mindset. It’s a belief that joy is limited, that there’s very little of it to go around, and that you never know when, or if, you’ll get more of it. Savoring, on the other hand, is the manifestation of an abundance mindset. Savoring acknowledges that joy is fleeting, but seeks to capture as much of it as possible, while trusting that joy will come back again.

    ARE YOU CLINGING OR SAVORING?
    by Ingrid Fetell Lee

  • The food barely filled me. I could have eaten forever, and I wouldn’t have felt a thing.

    Jami Attenburg, Protective Measures [from the book Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant: Confessions of Cooking for One and Dining Alone]

  • It is neither the quality nor the quantity, but the devotion to sensual savors; when that which is eaten is not a viand to sustain our animal, or inspire our spiritual life, but food for the worms that possess us.

    Walden
    by Henry David Thoreau

  • A puritan may go to his brown-bread crust with as gross an appetite as ever an alderman to his turtle. Not that food which entereth into the mouth defileth a man, but the appetite with which it is eaten.

    Walden
    by Henry David Thoreau

  • He who distinguishes the true savor of his food can never be a glutton; he who does not cannot be otherwise.

    Walden
    by Henry David Thoreau

  • I believe that water is the only drink for a wise man; wine is not so noble a liquor; and think of dashing the hopes of a morning with a cup of warm coffee, or of an evening with a dish of tea! Ah, how low I fall when I am tempted by them! Even music may be intoxicating.

    Walden
    by Henry David Thoreau

  • This hunger must be natural, not artificial and provoked.

    —Rev. Jeremy Taylor (1613–1667), The House of Feasting