Soul Food

Well everyone, I don’t usually write about race. I prefer to express my appreciation for people in different ways.  But I think I will post this post about something I have been thinking about during quarantine days which is the idea of “soul food.” I am eating some peach ice cream right now and have been noticing that as I cook what is yummy and easiest to stock up on turns out to be food that is very southern. A lot of it is in the category that gets associated with African American “soul food” like cornbread, biscuits, grits, macaroni and cheese, fried chicken, collards, shrimp, and creative variations on rice and beans. Besides noticing that it is some of the yummiest food I have ever eaten, it also makes me think about something I have organized my prayer life around which is the idea that a lot of things in life are a food of some sort, and I am usually just asking God to feed everyone all kinds of happy comforts when I pray.  I am talking about things like education, attention, exercise, love, talent, and almost anything else that can make life worthwhile.  And to me, one way of describing that would be as “soul food.”  But that term has already been used as a label for actual food.  And I just find that to be very profound and theological in a certain way.  It suggests kind of a spiritual integrity where what feeds the soul is actual food. Maybe people already knew this as the term became commonly used, but I think it really matches a lot of Jesus’s teaching in many ways.  Even though Jesus said that man does not live by bread alone, he also spent a lot of his time and miracles on feeding multitudes, and he explicitly told people to feed the hungry.  And as tempting as it is sometimes for people to aspire to provide things that are less tangible like teaching, philosophy, and a lot of religion, going ahead and zapping people with some real food is just funnily what could end up not only being one of the highest services but could also end up being the most lofty intellectual concept that is also fulfilled completely in physical reality as the most honest food and life there is.