How close can you be to God through taste?

By Anonymous -


People claim to have heard God’s voice, even see Him. People feel God’s presence. It is the rare person indeed who claims to have tasted or smelled God. However, as Rachael Fulton suggests in her writing of The Flavor of God in the Monastic West, taste is vital. She states that “reading texts and looking at images may transform us intellectually, emotionally, or even spiritually, but eating food   This difference is thought to be due to all of the slight variations and meanings of words, but this book really looks into those that believed they truly experienced the taste of God.
might poison us…” (173). The most repeated quote in the reading was “’Taste and see that the Lord is sweet’” (Ps 34:8), which in many other translations is translated to be “Taste and see that the Lord is good”.


One example came from Beguinages and convents of northern Germany, most famously thirteenth-century Gertrude of Helfta. I found her descriptions to be frankly shocking. I quote

“I am hoarse in the throat of my chastity, but the sugar of your
sweet mildness has made my throat to sound again so
that I can sing thus: Lord, your blood and mine are one, untainted.
Your love and mine are one, inseparable. Your garment and mine are
one, immaculate. Your mouth and mine are one, unkissed . . . by any
man but you alone.” (179)

When I first read this I was somewhat off put by its claim to feel so intimate with God. I think it strange that she would  make it sound as if she has achieved this level of piety that she is practically on the same level as her God.  How can she claim that her blood and God’s are one and that she is now unattainable? She claims that it is the Lord’s sweet mildness that has made her throat sound. Does taste mean that she believes she understands God’s nature and through that understanding she has reached a level of oneness? I can accept that one would feel a part of God and  Despite my trepidation about her claims about her relationship with God it is clear that she believes the taste of God is what has led her to be so close to Him. Perhaps one can gain oneness with God through the sensations of His creations. For Gerturde, the taste of honey and all things sweet lead her to a complete and totally understand with God that there was no separation.

 

Comments

  1. Jonathan Brumberg-KrausMarch 1, 2015 at 8:16 PM

    With such accounts of mystical experiences like Gertrude's, the big question is whether her description is metaphorical or actual. Was it metaphorical (did she mean what she experienced _was like_ tasting of kissing something sweet, or did she really taste the sweetness and feel the kiss of the Lord? (or of something she understood to be the Lord, if you're skeptical about the reality of supernatural beings). But your point and it think hers too, is that she did somehow experience - feel and taste - something ostensibly far from from her intimately on or inside of her.And what are we to make of that?

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