Food for the Soul

Man does not live by bread alone.

We know this. We have known it for millennia. And yet it is curious how carefully we feed the body while expecting the soul to subsist on remarkably little. Mind you, some of us seem perfectly able to do so. Others cannot.

Perhaps we do not always recognise spiritual hunger for what it is. We call it restlessness, emptiness, disquiet; that vague sense of something being not quite right. We look for distraction, occupation, company, entertainment — when perhaps what is wanting is nourishment.

The soul wants feeding too

Where we find that nourishment is deeply personal. In beauty. In music. In silence. In friendship. In thought. In faith. In that peculiar alchemy of people, words, ritual and shared belief which somehow produces more than the sum of its parts.

And perhaps that distinction matters. Because food can be plentiful and still fail to nourish.

A church can be open, the words can be spoken, the ritual faithfully observed — and yet something may be missing. A community is more than people occupying the same pews. Music is more than notes correctly played. Faith itself can perhaps be practised without quite being lived. We recognise the difference when, after an absence, we again encounter what truly nourishes us.

Today, after the long summer pause, the Dockhead Community comes back to full life. The choir returns. The organ will sound. Familiar faces will reappear in familiar pews. And a new shepherd will begin another stretch of the road with us, inheriting not merely a parish, but that fragile and rather extraordinary thing: a living community.

Perhaps that is why I woke before I needed to this morning. Apparently, the soul knows when breakfast is being served.