19 Quotes by Mary DeTurris Poust

not every breakfast needs to be something worthy of posting to a food blog. Sometimes food is simply fuel, something we eat to live. But with TV ads and billboards and in-store displays saying otherwise—in colorful and provocative ways—that can be a hard case to make.

We’re hungry for acceptance—from ourselves even more than from others—for love, for fulfillment, for peace. We’re hungry for a life we think we don’t deserve or can’t have, for the person we know we can be if only we’d give ourselves the chance.

Only by emptying ourselves out before God will we find fullness within ourselves.

prepare your food in keeping with monastic traditions—simple, basic, healthy, balanced.

So often, even when we stop to say a blessing before a meal, we’re mentally preparing to spoon some pasta or potatoes onto our plates. We’re not usually focused on the present moment, simply placing ourselves before our food and entering into the still, slow space where eating is done for eating’s sake and not something we do simply to get to the next thing on our list.

By becoming aware of God’s Spirit, by slowing down and paying attention to the tastes and sounds and smells of the food we make and eat, we infuse our meals—and by extension our hearts—with a sense of awe, a depth of prayer that cannot help but transform our mindless eating into moving meditations.

Even if you can’t be totally mindful at every meal, if you can say a blessing, silently if necessary, or offer up a prayer for someone, something beyond yourself and your food, the prayer helps to transform eating into something that affects not only our hunger at that moment but the greater world.

Food and eating often mask our pain, our inner longing for God, for acceptance. It is key to know our motivation for eating as well as for other actions. Why do I eat? Am I tired, am I bored, am I stressed and tired? A good practice is to live in the present moment, aware of the reality in which I am immersed.

When we link our eating and our prayer and begin to see food as part of a much bigger picture, rather than the focal point of our entire lives, we reshape the way we think, the way we act, and the way we interact.