Cooking as Practical Prayer

Experiments in food and faith

Welcome to God Soup: a novel, alchemical approach to cooking and eating. I am your humble apothecary, ‘Enter The Vessel’, here to mix up potions for the soul. My role in this is not to prescribe a cure-all, or give dietary suggestions, or even to advise on cooking technique. I come only to pose the question: What does food have to do with faith?  

I don’t have the answers, only ideas.

1. Food is the most literal point of contact between beings; it is an everyday reminder that there are entire ecosystems of 'independent' life living within us. Bacteria, fungi, viruses and nutrients... So many worlds to which we are not consciously privy are contained in the human body.

2. This makes the idea of human independence, exceptionalism and separation from nature seem a bit foolish. How can we separate ourselves from 'the environment' when we are the environment? Literally. Inside our bodies. 

3. The things we consume become our being. We physically become one with what we eat, but we also unify with food on a psychological, social, and spiritual level. Pleasure, desire, community, communion; all are part and parcel of cooking and eating. 

4. Cooking immediately and perceptibly exemplifies the ((profound)) capacity for transformation contained within all matter. Why does the right balance of heat and pressure and ingredient mixture result in something delicious? Even though the plant or animal itself - now dead - may have no evolutionary reason to do this? This, here, is the original mystery of Platonic Beauty. 

What is beautiful about cooking is that while the methods are repeatable - taking on an increasingly familiar and intuitive nature with each iteration - the results are always a little unique. Exactly like in the spiritual practice. This blog will extrapolate on this observation with the intention of melding ritual and routine, mundanity and sanctity. 

The goal is quite simple, but also a great undertaking: to make the humdrum holy.

This journey invites a number of related lines of inquiry. How is it that we can make even the most menial of tasks spiritually meaningful? How can we find God among the soulless mediocrity of modernity? Or against the grain of capitalism's insistence on productivity? How can we reignite the magic of the everyday? 

Simultaneously, though, this blog will be about undoing food compulsions and aversions. An important aspect of the method/madness of God Soup is to develop intimacy with divinity through deepening and strengthening the relationship with food.  

Throughout, I will be working with three main theoretical claims: 

1. Metaphysics is medicinal. 

2. All action is contemplation. 

3. Every "thing" is alive. 

These statements inform my entire approach to creating and consuming, and will be explored in further detail down the line. For now, though, they are just something for you to chew on. 

Posts will generally be divided into four segments: theory, alchemy, practice & prayer. The idea is that each meal made will constitute a spiritual journey, an act of worship, a simple and unremarkable ritual. 

As for the ‘recipes’ - follow at your own discretion. Though I did work as a line cook for some time, and have a basic understanding of cooking principles, I am not a trained chef or someone with considerable expertise or even passion in this area. I am an everyday person just trying to make my everyday meals something to look forward to, and maybe even to remember. 

1. Theory 

This section will deal largely with the problems, questions and opportunities for inner inquiry that food evokes in me. Themes such as conquering neuroses, theology and religion, and chronic illness may be incorporated into this. This may also look like: expounding upon whatever I'm currently reading, autopsychoanalysis, and meme exegesis. Who says a cooking blog can't have a thesis? 

2. Practice 

This part is just the recipe. I may take some creative liberties. 

3. Alchemy 

This is kind of like the discussion section of a lab report. It asks: what went well, what went completely awry? How did the ingredients transform with time and attention? How did they meld together to create something new, something unexpected? What was the psychic aftermath of its consumption? Explorations may dip into the metaphysical and should be taken as neither literal nor metaphorical. Or, alternatively, as both literal and metaphorical simultaneously.  

If the 'theory' section can be considered a 'call', this section is the 'reply'. For each problem that food has brought up in me, my resolution will be found through the transmutation of flavours and textures. I am particularly interested here in taste as a form of metempsychosis. The central question of this alchemical experimentation is how we can approach food not as an inert equation of chemicals, but as an extension of our own soul.  

How the meal itself turns out is functionally irrelevant. It could be totally burned and flavourless for all I care. Because it can still offer a taste of divinity. 

4. Prayer 

Theology and metaphysics put into practice: this part of the experiment will delve a little deeper into the central spiritual or theological themes or takeaways from each cooking experience. It will offer an interpretation, and then guide in contemplation. The method here is explorative and developmental, leaning into trial and error. Don't expect anything particularly academically rigorous.

Throughout, a particular emphasis will be made on the physicality of creation, as a mirror to the idea of a Creator-God. When anthropologists look for the beginnings of human intelligence, it is evidence of our capacity for creation that is most relevant. In this sense, the Genesis Origin Myth, present within but also outside of the Abrahamic canon, of being "made in His image" comes right to the heart of humanity. Creativity is what makes us… Us.

To make and break bread is to be ignited by the spark of the divine.