This blog has, and will continue to be a place to share about food, the sacredness of the table and how powerfully I feel the call of the need for senses to be awakened. In this place of nourishing our bodies (or at least that is what we are meant to do with food), conversation, communion and fellowship is to also nourish and stimulate the heart, the soul and mind.
The Fast Food industry has deadened our taste buds to the sensations food offers, it has decimated the idea of lingering at the table to converse, and the beauty of a mealtime has been lost in the isolation of the table. Is it just Fast Food? Not at all, but I do find that the Fast Food industry most clearly illustrates the extreme loss of all the holy sacred table was designed to be. The wounding of dysfunctional relationships pushes us apart so that dining together is not safe, rich, or anywhere near the holy experience Jesus modeled for us in this ordinary routine necessity in keeping us alive.
Much of my upbringing was regulated, rigid and legalistic. While the family table was always a safe place, guests meant that children and women were to be silent and not question or attempt to comment. Sensuality was considered “evil” and hence the message was that to be “approved” women must hide every evidence of their femininity. Firstly, sensuality is not related only to sexuality, but it is our senses are attuned, awake and aware of life around us. The feel of the wind, the sound of the birds, the scent of the ocean, flowers, or the burning pile, the feel of the sun, and the vision of the morning being born.
As my senses have come awake so has the awareness that this is how one can be fully present. Being fully present brings me to a place where I can be in Holy Presence and know how my senses take it in: how I hear, see, smell, feel, and taste the presence of the Almighty, of Jesus, of the Spirit. And so, blended with my passion for the culinary art, I have been exploring the Sacred Table as a place of Holy Obedience. In obedience I must create and prepare and invite others to the table, and there with the banquet of colours, tastes, textures, fragrances and others voices, the Sensual Table is a place the Spirit can nudge, coax or whisper to the guests…”come, explore, open your senses and restore life and vibrancy and passion to your soul”.
The journeying has been long. It is no longer just about preparing good food anymore – it is about purposefully preparing and setting the atmosphere and lighting, speaking of this sensual pathway, this pathway of Holy Obedience, and more than anything living in a state of gratitude and awe. The Sensual Table is now a reality! I am inviting friends to the table at Linwood House Ministries to sit at the table and see what the Spirit will bring to the banquet. Any funds raised are used to then go to downtown Vancouver and prepare the Sensual Table for the women we have become friends with, who struggle with addictions and prostitution. Two churches on this Coast have booked an evening of The Sensual Table for members of their congregation, which also involves verbally sharing what the vision for this new venture is all about.
There is such mystery to this calling of Culinary Ministry and the Sensual Table! But then isn’t love a mystery? Isn’t love what calls us to live vibrantly, passionately?
I find this a scary journey at times because it is a mystery! I have no idea where it is going, and at times I wonder if I have the creativity it will take. Yet when an idea starts to flow…wow it is exciting. I find I sit at the piano more to let unwritten notes flow. Ideas for different combinations of foods are coming and my recipe book has new ideas added all the time.
Through this time at the sacred table, the silence and shutting down of the past is not only being redeemed, it is coming to life in a way I had never imagined was possible, in a way that is “other centered sensuality” as Dan Allender says in his definition of living in "awe"