Searching for Soul Food

The strawberries I’ve eaten this summer have been a big disappointment. Though bright red and as beautiful looking as ever, they taste weak and watery, not delivering that massive hit of flavour which should leave you reaching for the next berry, the one after that and so on, a conveyor belt of pure strawberry pleasure.

It reminds me of my experiences attending church. I usually go with great expectations, but if I’m honest, services generally don’t hit the sweet spot I’d hoped for. It doesn’t really matter how hard I try or what style of service it is either, other people around me always seem to be getting a lot more out of it than I do, as if their bowls of strawberries are packed with flavour, whilst mine is not. Some of these people appear to be in a state of ecstatic rapture, some exude an aura of quiet holiness, others have the intense look of desert hermits but unfortunately, I’m not as transfixed. It’s not the fault of those leading or taking part in the services and I have the best of intentions, genuinely wanting something profound to happen, but invariably I end up distracted by a wandering mind or I’m just plain bored. Inevitably I feel rather shallow and unspiritual as a result, but somehow, inexorably, I’m drawn back, week after week.

I was helped enormously with this problem by a friend in Twelve Step Recovery who talked to me in passing about an AA meeting he’d just attended. “It was awful,” he said. “I wanted to walk out, listening to some of the ridiculous stuff that was being said.” This intrigued me because neither he nor anybody else I know who attends meetings had ever said anything like that to me before. My friends in recovery are all wise, honest, perceptive people and I imagined the meetings they attended would be full of sassy folk like them, pouring out words of understanding and insight from loving hearts. I probed, wanting to find out more. He laughed at my naivety. “You’ve been to meetings,” he said. “You know its not all love and enlightenment. A lot is quite boring and there’s a fair bit of unchallenged nonsense spoken too. Whatever my feelings may be though, I stick around and continue to turn up at the meetings because it’s all I’ve got, and somehow the five percent that’s really good helps me to stay clean and sober.”

I thought about my church-going experiences. The parts which pass me by or I miss through not concentrating and mentally drifting off certainly aren’t nonsense, but perhaps it’s okay for me to stop worrying about them. Maybe there’s never going to be an earthquake, wind and fire, or at least, until there is, why not concentrate instead on listening for the still small voice in the five percent that does do something for me. On the days when I can’t even get as high as five percent, I need to remember that always, always I come away feeling better in mind and spirit than when I arrived. Something happens deep within. The still small voice may not be audible, but I’m reminded that I am connected, part of a motley shoal of people that is swimming against the prevailing current. I get fed with tiny morsels of spiritual micro-protein and wisdom. I recognise the need to be still and to receive God’s love whether that is through sharing the Peace, receiving the Eucharist or conversations over coffee afterwards.  Jesus said “I am the Bread of Life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry.” I know that I’m hungry and need food from the table, provided by the Bread of Life, so I’ll just keep on turning up to receive this in any way I can and in any place where I find it. As they say in Twelve Step meetings, “Keep coming back, it works if you work it.”