Faithful Practices: Everyday Ways to Feed Your Spirit - Softcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Erik Walker Wikstrom is the author of several books, including Serving With Grace: Lay Leadership as a Spiritual Practice; Teacher, Guide, Companion: Rediscovering Jesus in a Secular World; and Simply Pray: A Modern Spiritual Practice to Deepen Your Life. He has served as minister for congregations in Yarmouth, Maine; Brewster, Massachusetts; and Charlottesville, Virginia.

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Meditation helped me slow down, but my love of cooking brought me back to my heart. My spiritual home must actually be somewhere baked into my kitchen. Here, as an adult, I unexpectedly discovered the power of mindful vegetable chopping.

As a child, I was into sugar and flour and decorating. Vegetable chopping seemed incredibly boring to me. But all of a sudden, a butcher knife stopped being just a dusty tool in my drawer. I could feel its handle and shiny, wide blade as my hand guided the knife to puncture the celery and land with a thud on the cutting board. I bought brand-new smooth bam-boo cutting boards, a sharpening stone, and glass bowls with lids to properly store the vegetables, which were like colorful gems. I became entranced by familiar but unexamined tools: a fancy new peeler that fit on my middle finger and allowed my whole hand to graze a potato or peel an eggplant. Metal waves along a forgotten chopper made ribbed coins out of bright orange—or sometimes purple or yellow—heirloom carrots. New hand tools made springy spirals out of zucchini and ribbons of fresh red beets. And the joy of rinsing the vegetables in cold, cold running water would lead me to do an extra wash as dust dissolved and the color emerged, shiny in my hand. I would open the tap to run water around and over and through the broccoli crowns, inside the cut red peppers to rinse away the seeds, and over the torn leaves of lettuce or spinach. But my favorite thing was to unwrap a big, white, beautiful head of cauliflower.

When I shared my newfound chopping spiritual practice with my class, I gave each of them a large kale leaf, drizzled with olive oil and a sprinkle of sea salt. I taught them to massage the leaf and to really feel the wonder of this ridiculously healthy food, grown organically, and now serving as a gift to each of us. We commented on the dark-green color, the deep nourishment it provided, and the gratitude we had for the people who worked in the fields to cultivate this beautiful plant. We tore the leaves into small pieces; some brave class members ate their own massaged leaf while remarking that this was indeed a very unique spiritual practice. They still tease me occasionally in good fun.

As this regular and intentional spiritual practice became an important part of my life, I sought out sources of unique and organic vegetables and kept my knives sharpened. I joined a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) cooperative and found freshly picked vegetables on my doorstep every Friday morning. I began listening to inspiring podcasts while creating recipes based on these mystery bags of fresh and local vegetables each week. I bought a juicer, a dehydrator, and then a Vitamix to process all the vegetables I was chopping and chopping and chopping. I doused green smoothies, cauliflower soup, bean dips, and spinach puree with my personalized savory treatments that began in recipe books and ended with a pinch of cumin or a handful of parsley. But the key for me is that each dish begins with a chop of my knife through a crisp vegetable.

One of my favorite parts of returning from a vacation is pulling open the refrigerator doors and checking for any rogue vegetables that are now limp or shriveled. No matter the condition, I often carefully clean and chop them. If I can use them, fine, but if they are too far gone, my carefully chopped cubes of mushy zucchini or strips of browning spinach might go straight to compost. My need to feel the skin of each vegetable, to feel the resistance of the knife against the flesh, and to see the inside of each vegetable where the seeds or stalks lie has become my spiritual practice. Eating it has become secondary.

My childhood practice of baking seemed to be about nurturing my family and the friends who frequently dropped by our house or business. But now I realize that it was more about the repetitive—some might say boring—nature of stirring and measuring. This has morphed into the chop, chop, chopping that seems to bring me inner peace and a sense of being enough to just be chopping vegetables. I’ve found each chop brings me closer to eating mindfully and taking better care of our planet.

The rhythmic chop, chop, chopping and the deep understanding that I am using these vegetables to connect my body and spirit to the natural world brings me great peace. Mindfully chopping vegetables to feed myself and my family helps me feel and give love. The practice also deepens my appreciation for the earth and connects me to the people who toil to grow and provide the parade of colorful vegetables to my home, galvanizing my spiritual self every single day.

—from “The Spiritual Practice of Chop, Chop, Chopping” by Linnea Nelson