How close can you be to God through taste?
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 ...