I had Coffee With Jesus recently, it had been a minute, and we needed to catch up. After our usual pleasantries, we ordered our coffees, mine black, like Goth black and for Jesus, this time was an Americano, he said he with a wink that he liked the way the water made it taste more like coffee.
It is beginning to look a lot like pumpkin spice season up here in the Northern parts of America and leaves are starting to turn. Our conversation today wound its way to whether Jesus was a pumpkin spice kind of guy. He rolled his eyes at me and made the comment that he is not the basic white Jesus many Christians envision he is.
As he often does, he got quiet for a second, took a deep breath and offered a story about the time he taught the disciples about the list of how folks should live and how we must become like the salt of the earth. After he finished his story, he turned to me and asked me, “what are you doing to enhance or make richer the lives of others?” This week, I want to challenge you reading this with the same question, “What are you doing to enhance or make richer the lives of others?”
Pondering Jesus’ question, I came up with these thoughts:
Pumpkin Spice and Everything Nice
I have made pumpkin pies on several occasions forgetting salt, sugar and or salt. If you have never eaten canned pumpkin from a can, it is pretty bad. We usually make our pumpkin goods with fresh, roasted pumpkin and while it is marginally better, it is not as pleasant as a pumpkin pie made with all the seasonings and the whipped cream.
Pliny the Elder is credited with once saying “without salt, by Hercules, one cannot have a civilized life”. Arab traders told an apocryphal tale of cinnamon that went like this:
Nearly 2,500 years ago, Arab traders told stories of the ferocious cinnamon bird, or cinnamologus. This large bird made its nest from delicate cinnamon sticks, the traders said. One way to get the cinnamon was to bait the cinnamologus with large chunks of meat. The birds would fly down from their nests, snatch up the meat, and fly back. The precarious cinnamon nests would collapse when the bird returned weighted with its catch. Then quick-witted traders could gather up the fallen cinnamon and take it to market.
So important was salt and spice to the ancient world that Jesus inhabited that wars would be fought, and these spices would carry their weight monetarily.
Salt and Spices give a richness and a depth to many foods. Try simple foods like dark cacao (100%), alone it is terrible. Add some salt, vanilla and some sugar along with the basic ingredients for a cake or cookie and you can have decadence. Try a curry without the curry powder and you have a big pot of sad.
Salt and Spices can be great teachers of how to cultivate our spiritual posture and how to carry ourselves. These ingredients brought the world together and using the lessons we learn from them can bring our communities together.
Salt and Spice Teach us How to be more Spiritually Minded
Being present
Sometimes a good spice doesn’t do anything but sit there. You don’t really know it is there, but if it were not there, you would say something is off about the dish. When we are present, we are in the moment with the situation we are in. When we are present, we live in the moment and enhance others experiences by just letting them have the experience they are having.
Attention
Properly spiced food gets our attention. Spicy foods awaken our senses and can even make us feel euphoric. A good comfy stew seasoned nicely on a cold winter evening settles us and comforts us. The spiritual practice of attention enhances our awareness. When we are attentive of ourselves and of others, it paves the way for other spiritual practices such as hospitality and kindness.
Hospitable
I love a good hearty chili, especially after it has been sitting in the fridge for a day. Warm and inviting, it can take the chill out of your bones after a long day outside. It certainly makes a football game more inviting. When we practice hospitality like in the case of chili (we all have that one spice that does not belong in chili), we cross boundaries and dismantle barriers to engagement. Everyone is invited.
Kind
Vanilla often gets a bad rap. It is rather unfair. It is so open to every ingredient you pair it with. We really would not have pumpkin spice season without it. Make a pumpkin pie without vanilla and you will see. When we practice kindness, we enhance others’ lives sometimes just by cheering them up. Kinda how vanilla does when done right.
Finishing his Americano, Jesus offered as we all know that too much spice can overpower a food and ruin it. In the same way, when one exhibits too much of these spiritual practices, they can be overbearing. We can either be the peacemakers or we can burn the spices and ruin the dish.
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