Apr 142010
 

This is from one of the current top ten non fiction bestsellers. I found the title interesting as I have close friends who struggle with food issues, and with finding meaning in their lives. The very first chapter is called “About God.” The experience that is described is the typical religious mystical one, despite the author’s non-belief in God or religious mystical experiences:

And somehow, by deciding that I was no longer going to collude with the belief in my own degradation, something I never would have called me showed up: the presence of loveliness, the awareness of kindness, and the unmistakable knowledge that I belonged here.

I had no name for this kindness. I didn’t believe in God or mystical experiences, but there was no denying that I was having the direct experience of a nameless something that was bigger than my mind, my childhood, my stories of what was wrong and right.

The only way I can explain this now is that my suffering reached a critical mass of desperation: either I was going to kill myself or a completely different way of living was going to be revealed. And while I realize that in many cases human suffering does not lead to revelation, in my case it did.

… it was the pain of my relationship with food that opened the door.

— From Women Food and God

 Posted by at 5:31 am

Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.