The Wonderful Secret to a Healing Table (Healing Table Series PART 1)
(NOTE: Ever wondered what we mean when we say “healing table”? This three part series should give you a pretty good idea. This is Part I. Look for Part 2 and Part 3 at the bottom of this blog post!)
We’re blessed to live in a land of abundant food. But very few of us have healing tables anymore. I’d like to talk about why.
First, may I tell you a story?
When my daughters were very, very little, there was a humanitarian crisis in Somalia and the airwaves were flooded with images of starving people and children so thin it looked as if you could break them with your little finger.
I did my best to shield my children, but they saw enough. Enough for them to realize somewhere in their little girl hearts that not all was well with the world, that not everyone got to come home to a good meal and a loving embrace, and that not everyone got to eat enough to live to the next day.
One morning, my oldest daughter asked me to show her where Somalia was on the globe. I did. Later, I pulled the globe off the shelf to see that she had drawn a stick figure of a child with knobby, protruding knee-bones, cut the little thing out, and pasted it on the globe —right where the famine was in Africa.
That’s the kind of thing that will break a mother’s heart.
It also made me grateful in a way that I needed to be. We weren’t doing too well ourselves that year; in fact, we were struggling a bit. My husband is an entrepreneur, and in our early days of familyhood money was often elusive. I counted our grocery purchases carefully, sometimes sadly putting things back on the shelf at ALDI because I knew I couldn’t afford them. We did without the extra things. But I missed them.
That paper figure of a hungry child, so different from my own bright-eyed little girl, put things in perspective. We weren’t rich. But we loved each other, and, well, we were eating.
Being born human, as we saw on the news then and still see today, is no guarantee of having access to enough food and water to survive.
I have enough, though. If you are reading this article, there’s a pretty good chance that you are also in the very, very blessed percentage of the earth’s population that has enough.
This fact shouldn’t induce guilt, but it should encourage us toward gratitude. The ability to eat should be cause for celebration every time we sit down to a meal.
All too often, though, we don’t even sit down. We rip open boxes, shove food into the microwave, and throw food into our bodies without even pausing to catch our breath or consider what it all means. If we eat with other people, half of the time we don’t even look at them. The whole thing is done in under five minutes.
“Eat to live,” indeed. We have all this abundance that we treat as if it were dust. This doesn’t sound too much like living.
It’s not particularly good for us, either. Problems in our head affect our digestion. Stress, anxiety, and anger can have a drastic effect on our body’s ability to assimilate and use food — even very healthful food.
That means that you can have the best food in the world and if you’re not grateful for it, if you shove it down without a second thought, if you eat in a spirit of anger and anxiety, you may very well accomplish nothing good.
Take that and ponder it for a while, because it’s important.
You cannot simply cook your way to a healing table. You must foster and protect the right spirit: a spirit of love, peace, and gratitude.
A healing table is possible. It is possible. It will never be perfect, but it is something you can walk toward.
And, truly, a healing table is well worth the journey.
For the guiding principles of a healing table — and some practical tips — click here for part 2.