The need to feed

‘I’m fed up’, must be the most popular saying of the moment!  No great surprise there.  But perhaps we need to take another look at becoming fed well in the face of feeling so fed up.

I say this because I love food, I love eating and I love to think of life in these terms!

I’ve often reflected of late that food is one of the few pleasures to escape the restrictive grasp of Covid.

We can still order takeout, buy food from the supermarkets, watch cookery programs and attempt new recipes.

Great, right?

And yet sometimes, as someone who doesn’t want to be eating too much take out, food preparation can become a repetitive drag.  Before Christmas I was utterly over the whole thinking about what to eat, buying the food, prepping it followed by the relentless rounds of washing up that accompany making food from scratch.  The monotony, the necessity, the never ending nature of it had become another pesky chore amidst the grind of daily lockdown living.  All of which screamed, ‘I need a break’.

Post break, my creative drive to experiment with new recipes has returned with a vengeance.  For this I am grateful.  Yet I still don’t want to have to go through the ritual of food preparation every single day.  Sometimes by the time I finish work I don’t have the desire or the drive to get creative in the kitchen.  I’m on empty but lack the fuel to create good fuel!  Other days I am immersed in creative projects which I don’t want to divert from to make a meal.

As I listen to others, I realise that many people feel this way.  It is thus not unusual.  But I do believe it is exacerbated by lockdown life.  For me at least, back in the pre-Covid days, I would regularly catch up with friends over a meal in a restaurant.  I love eating with friends.  Despite also loving to make food for myself and others, I love it even more when someone else has cooked and cleaned up, whether at their house or in a restaurant!  I savour the treat of being fed by another.  

Back in the good old Covid free times I also used to book regular breaks where the food was prepared for me.  I miss this luxury. Sigh.

And so at the moment, aside from the odd takeout, the cooking comes down to me.  Mostly this is ok but every so often I lose my enthusiasm.  If this builds, I end up wanting to shout, ‘I want someone else to feed me’!

Of course on a practical level it is entirely possible to batch cook thus giving myself the regular gift of a cooking free evening.  But sometimes I just want someone else to feed me!  Whilst I make a point of trying new recipes, I still have my old trusted favourites yet when I go to someone else for dinner or to a restaurant, my eyes may be opened and my stomach blessed by something entirely new to me.  I love to benefit from others ideas converted in to culinary creations!

As I was pondering these matters this week, I happened to hear several messages on line offering support and encouragement for co-habiting with Covid.  (Not necessarily literally)

These reminded me that whilst we must take responsibility for feeding ourselves nutritious foods for our bodies which then feeds the mind and heart, we must also take care to feed our spirit and souls.

It would seem that the message of the moment regarding our physical diet is that the Mediterranean emphasis on fruit, vegetables and good fats is in favour.  

Could it be that the presence of Covid reminds us that the equivalent diet for our soul consists of plentiful portions of encouragement, support and kindness.  Not a new concept but perhaps one worthy of a revisit.

Now I’m the first to admit that I like to bang on about this stuff.  But how much more relevant is this to us all right now?  These are challenging times to say the least.  When facing such long term restrictions as now, our need to feed our souls with extra helpings of support, encouragement and kindness is greater than ever.  And in order to share it with others we must first receive it ourselves.

I thoroughly enjoyed being fed by the various different messages that I have heard and digested in this past week.  Others were doing the equivalent of feeding me their favourite soul foods whether opening up a scripture or offering some other form of insight to lift me up to keep facing the prolonged challenge of living in lockdown.

I much prefer feeling fed well over feeling fed up!

And this got me thinking about how easy it is when times are hard to overlook the increased need to feed our souls.

There is a lot of junk food about to feed on right now of which complaining and blaming are top of the menu whether found on social media or the news.  I think it is necessary to stay abreast of the basic if ever changing information of what is going on, but if we consume too much of it, we risk becoming so full that we have no appetite for the uplifting.

There is nothing wrong with an honest admission of feeling utterly fed up, terrified, worried, disillusioned or whatever it is.  Nothing wrong at all.  But when we feel that way, we must recognise our need to be fed well rather than gorge on junk or consume more distressing news.

We must learn what and who feeds us well.  This may be a trusted friend with whom you don’t have to feign positivity every time you open your mouth for fear that they can’t cope with anything else, it may be an online Church service (these offer banquets of such food even on line!), podcasts or other on line messages or even newspaper articles or films or whatever it is that leaves you well fed.

As I say I have been fed through my own Church as well as other encouraging on line messages, a book a friend sent me and even a newspaper article about the uplifting work of the artist Charlie Macksey.  Like all good up lifters, his illustrations do not seek to gloss over the struggle or suffering but rather to highlight the truths of goodness to be found within them.  I recommend his work.

Anyway, having received the gift of being fed by others, it has given me a kick up the backside to start something that has been on my heart since the first lockdown (but got lost in all things house move related), which is to start doing something similar to this but using the spoken word.  

To start with at least, I will call these snack bites.

As I finally overcome my battle to reduce my intake of salty snacks of an evening, I am going to look at what is helpful to snack upon.  And I’m not talking about the gut but that in such prolonged times of stress, the need for regular healthy snacks for the soul.  I may share something I have seen or heard which contains some point or truth to chew upon and apply to lockdown living.

First I’ll have to wrestle with the technology required to do so but … watch this space.