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| Grape Harvest, Joaquin Sorolla, 1986, Valencia, Spain |
I drank at every vine.
The last was like the first.
I came upon no wine
So wonderful as thirst.
(from Thirst, Edna Our culture is addicted to sugar. Global sugar consumption has tripled in the last fifty years, with Americans leading the way. Current
Recent studies show what I’ve found in my own experience:
sugar is addictive. The more we have, the more we want, and the more difficult it
becomes to say no. And sugar is closely interlinked with our emotional
histories in ways that fuel our cravings. In my own family history, sugar is
closely linked with nurture, belonging, fun. It’s the approved mode of dealing
with stress, the accepted ingredient of any party, the secret reward for any
sacrifice.
Which is why, every Lent, I give up sugar and artifical
sweeteners, completely. Which has come to mean I give up most processed foods
as well, anything with sugar/fructose/dextrose/sucrose or that ubiquitious corn
syrup in the top three ingredients. So no ketchup. (Sugar is ingredient # 2).
No Honey Nut Os. (#2 again). No barbeque sauce.
Since I can’t drink coffee without sugar, I also give up
coffee. The caffeine withdrawal headache lasts a day or two. The sugar
withdrawal takes longer.
So is the point to punish myself? It feels that way for a
week or two. Then something wonderful happens. I start to taste food in a new
way. I find myself appreciating the subtler sweetness of real flavors: carrots,
walnuts, bananas, red peppers. Raisins are almost too sweet. A single date is a
delicious dessert. A cold glass of water has flavors I’d forgotten.
Sugar, in the quantities we normally eat, clouds our palates,
shifts our blood chemistry, puts our energy levels on a roller coaster, and
contributes to illness and emotional instability. Yet we consume more and more,
searching for that happy high the soda and energy drink ads lure us toward.
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| Vineyards with a View of Auvers, Vincent Van Gogh, 1890, France |
I will sing for the one I love a song about his vineyard: My loved one had a vineyard on a fertile hillside. He dug it up and cleared it of stones and planted it with the choicest vines. He built a watchtower in it and cut out a winepress as well. Then he looked for a crop of good grapes, but it yielded only bad fruit.
The prophet recounts God’s provision on Israel ’s behalf, and Israel
Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.
Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes and clever in their own sight.
Looking at old Hebrew words for “sweet,” I came across this
word: towb. Occasionally translated “sweet,” it’s more often translated as
good, pleasing, right. As with some of the other ancient Hebrew words I’ve come
across lately, we have no word that stretches as wide as this one. Towb is good
in the broadest sense: beautiful, agreeable to the senses, morally right,
pleasing, pure, splendid, sweet, happy, delightful, precious, gracious, full of
grace.
The “good” of Genesis 1 is towb: not just good as we
understand it, but beautiful, sweet, delightful, harmonious, full of grace. Woe,
says Isaiah, to those who lose their taste for towb, who substitute other
things for the real sweetness we’ve been given.
This goes far beyond sugar. I recently spent the day with
several preteen children who had decided that “good” and “fun” were defined
in entirety by video screens. As we headed out of their house for the day, I
suggested they leave laptop and handheld video game behind. They objected,
strongly, and I cheerfully insisted: they were going to experience a
screen-free day. And they would survive.
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| Summer Afternoon, Edward Dufner, 1916, New York |
I tasted towb again just a few days ago when my husband and
I sat together at the end of a long hard day, talking quietly before dinner
over a small glass of chardonnay. He had been catching up from a week of travel, preparing for
another season of travel and speaking in the weeks ahead, with some difficult
complications thrown into the mix. I had spent the day registering voters at a
nearby high school, then helping a friend in the middle of a challenging move.
Tired as we were, we were thankful for the grace to engage
in the world in real and significant ways, for the chance to sit and reflect at
the end of a busy day, for the sweetness of wine before a simple dinner. For
towb: shared glimpses into God’s gifts of harmony, beauty and goodness.
We are masters at deception, lying to each other, but most
often to ourselves. We tell ourselves we can have it all: sweet with no
calories, non-stop video with no loss of life skills or real relationships, all
the goods and services we want, with no impact on the globe, no harm to our own
inner selves. We spend our time reaching for more: more food, more fun, more
stuff, more money, telling ourselves just a little more will give us that sense
of satisfaction we’ve been hungry for.
“Seek towb,” God tells us through his prophets: be still,
slow down, deny yourself. That craving can’t be filled by sugar, or by anything
else bought or sold on the market. We’re hungry for the gifts already given: goodness,
harmony, graciousness, beauty, a sweetness that lingers, with no bitter
aftertaste.
But we can’t taste it until our palates are clear, our
hearts alert and quiet. Fasting is a good way to get there: fasting from sugar or tv, from wanting our own way, from the full closets, cupboards, schedules that dull our senses and scatter our attention. Slow down, be still, then taste and see.
Taste
and see that the Lord is towb:
sweet, good, pleasing, gracious.
Blessed
is the one who takes refuge in him.
Fear
the Lord, you his saints,
for those who fear him lack nothing.
The
lions may grow weak and hungry,
but those who seek the Lord
will not be lacking
in towb: sweetness,
harmony, grace, goodness, beauty. (Psalm 34)
This is the fourth in a Lenten series:
As
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