The two Grangers that should be giving this talk about foodmy wife and my daughter,

Sophiaare in Istanbul this evening. They are visiting Hagia Sophia and the school
where Mary grew up and the relics of St. Panteleimon before leaving tomorrow for
Jerusalem and the Holy Land. You get stuck with me, because they cant make it.
With their permission, however, I will share with you notes from the opening to Sophias
book, Eating with WisdomCooking with Sophia: Understanding Food and Meals as
Echoes of the Eucharist.
Let me start with the obvious. There is no subject more difficult to discuss or as important
as right eating, and, perhaps, there is no [one] less qualified to speak about it than myself.
It is the most difficult subject to speak about with any success because of the profound
resistance of anyone and everyone to any instruction contrary to their beliefs about food.
I have been talking about food privately and publicly for about twenty years. I can talk to
a group of Harry-haters about Harry Potter, and its nothing like the resistance that there
is to food. Our core ideas about ourselves and what it means to be humanour identity
that we first accepted at our first meals as childrenis meshed with our food beliefs. It is
a rare person, short of serious illness, that is able to consider an alternative view. To make
an impossible task worse, I do not have the certification necessary to strike you as an
authority on this subject. Not only am I not a nutritionist or medical doctor, but what I am
the Hogwarts Professor and dean of Harry Potter scholarsis more than likely
something laughable or at least something you discount.
As unlikely as it is that any of you will be able to take seriously what I have to say
tonight, because of the profound attachment that we all have to our food beliefs, and
because I dont have the authority of even being a good cook, not to mention a student of
calories and nutrients, I will risk your rejection of my wifes and daughters message
about food with the faith of a child who cried without guile that the emperor was wearing
no clothes. The emperor here, of course, is nutritional science and our cultural food
beliefs.
The central idea of my daughters book is simply this: The prevailing ideas about food in
America today, the ones common to every diet planthe Atkins Diet, radical veganism,
and even Bible-based food beliefsare significant obstacles to our life in Christ. Indeed,
they may be the primary obstacles, as unbelievable as that may seem. A conclusion such
as this is only as valid an argument and true as its premises. Let me spell out these
premises as clearly as I can. In essence, I think there are three.
The first is that our food choices simultaneously and profoundly reflect and reinforce our
core beliefs about God, man, nature, and reality. The clichd truism that you are what

you eat is true in the sense of garbage in, garbage out. More valuable, though, in
grasping the importance of food is the idea that we are what we think about food. Every
orthodox-revealed religion, as well as every consequent human culture, secular or
religious, has a food rule that its members conform to in order to embody or incarnate the
cultural beliefs of that group.
The second premise of Eating with WisdomCooking with Sophia is that physics, or
natural science, is an extension, a reflection in time and space, of any cultures
metaphysics. Physics [comes] from metaphysics. That is to say, their beliefs about what is
most real and eternally true is an expression of ontology as much as it is a revelation of
what each knows about nature.
Looking at the two predominant food rules in America today in the light of these two
premises, we arrive at Sophias conclusion. The two rules are: the du jour rule of calorienutrient nutritional scientism and the consequent de facto rule of tastes great, less
filling. Even if we think food and diet are the concerns of hypochondriacs, political
leftists, and others in need of a real life, we know that serious food talk is spoken in the
language of food chemistry, that is, calories and nutrients. The specific quantities of
energy and matter in anything we eat, our meals on this model, are understood as fuel for
the human machine. The search for the best foods and silver bullet nutrients is what we
are looking for: the food/nutrient/calorie combination that best makes the design of the
body machine, the highest octane fuel, if you will, for our body-cars that we drive around
as the ensouled ghost in the machine.
Although this is the accepted model for understanding food and eating conceptually, it is
a failed model as we know after a moments reflection on our countrys obesity and the
prevalence of food-caused illnesses amidst historically unprecedented food plenty. We are
overweight and sick because of the food that we eat, when we have a historically
unprecedented access to every type and variety of food.
Nutritional science is only a du jour or conceptual model of food for the simple reason
that its key gaugesnutrients and caloriesare invisible. Consequently, they are useless
to us in the moment of decision-making about what we should eat at any given meal. We
are left, without the gauges of our conceptual rule, with our de facto rule of tastes great,
less filling.
On this model, we eat whatever, whenever, and however much food we like, usually
justifying it in the smart talk of nutritional chemistry. Our desire for pleasure in eating is
checked somewhat, of course, by our fear of deathdeath here usually wearing the mask
of becoming fat. We keep one eye on the scale and one eye peeled for the Cheetos and
bacon double-cheeseburgers.

Our physics reflects metaphysics and our you are what you think about food premises
tell us that our nutritional scienticismthe way we think, if not actis a reflection and
reinforcement of what Philip Johnson calls the American State Religion, namely,
philosophical naturalism. Naturalism, in essence, is the belief that energy and matter are
what is most real in the world. Calorie- and nutrient-focused thinking in our food choices
are an atheistic equivalent of kosher eating, Hindu food rules, and Orthodox Christian
fasting in support of those beliefs.
These food ideas, of course, reflect a naturalist physics, a godless or atheistic
metaphysics, and a materialist anthropology or idea of the person as primarily a body
machine. Tastes great, less filling, our default guides in actually making our food
choices, [make] our desires and fear our primary authority in how we think, which fosters
our roles as consumers easily moved by advertising in a capitalist culture.
The problems here are two-fold. One we talk about all the timenamely, about how
Americans are killing ourselves physically at every meal, because we wont eat the foods
the calorie-nutrient chemists tell us we should. The other problem is not as obvious as
morbid obesity or a drop-dead heart attack, but is, I think, actually more important.
The ideas of naturalism, our way of thinking about food, reflect and reinforce, and the
desire-driven soul that it fosters, are all contrary to the truths and ends of the Orthodox
Christian faith. In brief, if you are an atheist, materialist, and belly-focused person at
breakfast, lunch, and dinner, you are an atheist, materialist, and desire-driven dummy.
The thesis and third premise of Eating with WisdomCooking with Sophia is that we
need a better food model than the nutrient, IV-drip bag, and all-you-can-eat buffet line for
the greater life in Christ. This better model is, not surprisingly, the Eucharistthe Body
and Blood of Christthe most real, and, perhaps only, truly human food.
Sophia makes seven points in her cookbooks introduction about why the Eucharists
food model fosters Orthodox faith in our life in Christ, and I will only be able to cover
four or five of those tonight. In essence, though her argument is that Communion is the
correct model for our thinking about food and cooking, because of what the Eucharist is
and what it does as the substance of the creative Word and metaphysical center, it makes
us humannot as machines but as images and likenesses of God. It also fosters spiritualmindedness, life, and peace rather than carnal-mindedness which St. Paul says is death
(Romans 8:6).
I think the truth of Sophias thesis is most clear if we think about how we receive
Communion and contrast that with how we make our day-to-day food decisions. Lets
look at the Eucharist and how we approach it for signs of [what] spiritually-minded

eating might look like. What strikes me first is that we do not commune as individuals but
as distinct members of the body of Christ. Understanding how different this is from our
usual thinking involves some looking at our own eyeballs, so bear with me here.
We should start with the obvious, but much-denied fact, that as Americans, per se, we are
Protestants and we are materialists to a greater or lesser degree. Our nation was founded,
for the most part, by religious nonconformists of the radical Reformation, expelled with
the English Restoration at the end of the 17th century, and by economic immigrants
looking for material prosperity. What both groups shared was a belief in the sovereignty
of the individual and a nominalist or anti-sacramental understanding of the physical
world. The country founded by these peopleand I need to say that I did my six years in
the Marine Corps and consider myself a patriot, so please dont feel that Im just running
down my country; this is just to look at the country for what it isand the citizens of that
country, shaped by the institutions they established, reflect their beliefs.
We believe in the absolute distinction of subject and objectthat is the heart of
materialismand that the states primary responsibility is the guarantee and protection of
the rights of individuals. If you are Orthodox and do not believe you are a Protestant, I
offer you a reflection that it is only in Americathat Orthodox churches have pews, that
Orthodox priests wear pants, that sermons last more than half an hour, and that there are
no monasteries to speak of, not to mention the lack of wonder-working, incorrupt saints.
Were almost the Baptist Orthodox Church in the world.
Traditional Orthodoxy, in contrast, is not about individual believers, salvation through his
or her private understanding of Scripture, and separate piety. Orthodoxy is about our
entrance into, our being joined as a distinct member of the body of Christ, his Church. It
is by losing our ego-identity and joining ourselves to him that we become persons in
Christ, shedding our individuality or ego-persona, gaining a hypostatic reality in his
likeness, and sharing in his resurrection and victory over death.
Soteriology in the Church is never alone, if, as persons, we remain, obviously, distinct
from each other. Our greater life and hope, however, is no longer in our separate selves
but in Christ and his Church. This is reflected in our celebration of the Divine Liturgy and
how we commune. In traditional churches, lay people stand silent for the most partmen
on the right and women on the left. Our shared identity in Christ, in whom there is neither
male nor female, is confirmed and revealed in our eating the Lord from one chalice, one
spoon, as members of one body in him. After this sacred meal, we affirm our ecclesial,
shared identity in an agape meal which we eat together in conformity to the Churchs
teachings about feasting and fasting foods rather than our individual preferences or ideas
about food.

Contrast this person as member or social understanding with our individualist thinking
about food as calorie/nutrient quantities or tastes great, less filling. Unlike our approach
to the chalice, our thoughts are about private advantage: the health of our bodies and our
vanity. Our only social thought in our food choices on these models is if the food we eat
will make us look stupid to others or more or less physically attractive to them. There is
no spiritual aspect to nutritional thinking or the default alternative in our desires.
If we believe that our salvation is corporate rather than individual, then the scientistic and
consumer ideas of eating undermine our salutary faith, while a Eucharistic model fosters
it. We read in Ephesians that the Church is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in
all. St. John Chrysostom, commenting on Ephesians 4, says, We should all be even only
one soul. Our identity in Christ is not as individuals but as persons in his Body, the
Church.
I want to take this social, spiritual, and salutary eating a step further in clarifying the
difference between a person and an individuala member versus an ego. A mystery of
medical science demonstrated by Dr. Dean Ornish. Dr. Ornish is famous as the doctor
who first demonstrated via clinical trials that eating a low-fat diet and exercising would
not only prevent coronary events but also reverse heart disease. What is much less well
known about Dr. Ornishs heart trials is that there is a third component to them in
addition to diet and exercise, namely, relationships and stress management. Incredibly,
the results from these trials were better than with diet and exercise [alone]. Those with
improved relationships had more success reversing heart disease than those who ate well
or exercised.
Although this finding was featured clearly in Dr. Ornishs book on the heart trials, it
received little publicity and was largely forgotten. He was so disturbed by this neglect
that he wrote a second book about the importance of love, intimacy, and strong
relationships for physical health, and the overwhelming scientific evidence of the same.
His conclusion in the book, Love and Survival, was:
Love and intimacy are at root of what makes us sick and what makes us well, what causes
sadness and what brings happiness, what makes us suffer and what leads to healing. If a
new drug had the same impact as positive relationships, virtually every doctor in the
country would be recommending it for their patients. It would be malpractice not to
prescribe it. Medicine today tends to focus primarily on the physical and mechanistic:
drugs and surgery, genes and germs, microbes and molecules. I am not aware of any other
factor in medicinenot diet, not smoking, not exercise, not stress, not genetics, not
drugs, not surgerythat has a greater impact on our quality of life, incidence of illness,
and premature death from all causes than love.

This mystery confounds medical scientists because their conception of the human person
is essentially individual and chemical rather than social and spiritual. The Orthodox
Christian understanding of the world and man, in contrast, is based on the Logos or Word,
rather than energy and matter quantities. It is a principle of relationship.
Christos Yannaras explains it this wayand this gets heavy, its going to take a while, but
this [is] essential: to understand that the Logos is a principle of relationship and is the
fabric of reality as well as who we are most. This is a long quotation from Yannarasits
already too dense, so that I couldnt condense it anymore:
Logos for the Greeks means primarily the form which allows the existence to show
themselves, to appear; in effect, to aletheoueinto not be hidden. Aletheia is the
word for the truth. The fact that existence appearsthat is, to show themselves
means that they are in reference tofor this reason, the decisive meaning of logos is
relation. [It is] the reference and the reception of or the response to the reference
which constitutes the event of communion. The entire universe, the whole of reality, is a
communion of logical relation. Sensible beings come and depart, but the logical mode,
the how of their cosmic coexistence is always, eternally, the same in the Word. Thus
Logos, the given mode of the harmony of relations, is shown to be the abiding and
constant existent, the really real.
And if the human person craves immortality, he must, in his individual and collective life,
realize the mode of the truly existentthe logic of relations found in cosmic harmony.
The Logos made flesh constitutes revelation for the ecclesial experience. It reveals that
the mode of existence of God, the communion of love of three hypostases, the mode
which is free from every necessity, can also be realized by created man. The Logos
intervention in history as Christ Jesus reveals that, from the created personal hypostasis
of man made in the image of God, man may also exist, not in the mode of nature, but in
the mode of love; that he may exist not as a natural individual but as a person free from
the necessities of nature, temporality, corruption, and death.
The reason why loving relationships are the key to good physical health is obvious from
this understanding. The fabric of reality with which the human being is designed to live
in communion is the Word, the God who is love, and loving relationship. Our perfection
and immortality is in becoming persons and members of his body, the Church, receiving
the Logos himself as food in the Eucharist. Our identity is transformed in Christ from the
individual, natural, and mortal to the personal, ecclesial, and supernatural.
I noted earlier that the chief reason nutritional chemistry is a failed food model is that,
because calories and nutrients are invisible, it is impossible to use any chemical
recommendations in the moment of choice. We simply cant see vitamins, nutrients,

proteins, and calories. You might rightly wonder: if the Eucharist is our best food model,
how does anyone use this standard at breakfast, lunch, and dinner? The answer is fairly
roundabout, but the good news is that you already use this standard, and, in fact, you are
hard-wired for it and almost incapable of escaping it.
St. Paul, in his letter to the Christians in Rome, said that non-believers were without
excuse, because the invisible things of God, from the creation of the world (cosmos) are
clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and
Godhead. He asserts point-blank that the nature of God, not just his existence, but all
that can be known about him, is visible in the order of nature, the cosmos, in everything
created. If you are like me, you are saying to yourself, I dont see God and know him in
everything he has created, and they sure didnt teach me anything about that in school.
But St. Paul isnt being esoteric or even especially obscure in his assertion. We dont
understand him, because we forget the first point of Palamite theology, which St. Paul
refers to in the words even his eternal power and Godhead. In effect, God is an
unknowable essence in his eminent energies. St. Gregory Palamas explained that all that
we can know of God is that he is simultaneously transcendent and totally other in his
essence and nearer to us than our breath in his creative energies. In this, God is the Father
of all, over all, through all, and in all, as Paul writes to the Ephesiansover all and in
all. In being both transcendent and eminent, God is a polarity without duality. This
qualitypolarity without dualityis his signature in every created thing and the order of
nature, as St. Paul notes in Romans.
Not only is the world and everything in it a set of complementary polarities, but we are
designed to perceive them as such. This is why we have a world of male and female,
night and day, summer and winter, and our human sense faculties are designed to
perceive everything in polar qualities as complementary and antagonistic, as hot and cold,
near and far, loud and quiet, hard and soft, sweet and salty, harsh and subtle. As images of
God in his time-space creation, we are reflections of his power and Godhead in our
bicameral minds, our having front and back, top and bottom, our moving bipedally, left
and right, and in having a heart as our physical and spiritual center, an organ of perpetual
expansion and contraction, continually resolving and regulating the relations of inside
and outside.
We are, in brief, a Palamite icon of Gods essence and energies, as the world is and as we
are designed to perceive. What is true in man and nature, of course, is even more
pronounced [in] Gods Church. Everything from the organization of Scripture in
reflective Old and New Testaments, the Cross itself, the three-barred cross creating
mirrored polarities, to the same divine image in Vespers and Matins and the Divine
Liturgy. It is most obvious, perhaps, in the architecture of the Church and the drama of

worship. Left and right are defined by female and male, two choirs singing antiphonally
with ison: melody and chant; the front and back defined by the templon, the circling
motions and the responsorial chant of the two deacons around the priest at the center and
high place of his Church.
Really, the drama of Orthodox liturgics is Palamite iconography that we enter into as
images of God. Just as Gods nature is visible in human design, the order of nature and
his Church and its services I want to stop and say that if you dont see Gods essence
and energy and how this is his signature over all the world, you have to note the three
principle events of Christianity: (1) God becomes a man, (2) he does this through a virgin
mother, (3) and he rises from the dead. None of those things make any sense except in
Gods signature of an impossible contradiction of total transcendence and eminence,
simultaneously.
Just as Gods nature is visible in human design, the order of nature and his Church and its
services, it is also evident in the Eucharistthe conjunction of his Body and Blood,
distinct but conjoined in communion. The separation of the same in Catholic and
Protestant worship services speak to their misunderstanding of the Eucharist, God, and
his essence and energy. His Word and relation are the fabric of reality, and all human
beings are designed for communion with it, hence Tertullians all souls are Christian
souls. We already make our food choices this way and are incapable of doing otherwise.
Now, this might strike you as bizarre, but I think youll all see that its also common
sense. If you are hot, you crave cold foods and vice versa. If you eat things that are salty,
you crave sweet things and vice versa. By nature, we seek a balance of tastes, textures,
colors and cooking styles in our fooda resolution of contraries reflecting the nature of
God who is peace, love and life. We seek a balance in everything that we have, because
we are designed as images of God to reflect a God who is totally transcendent and
eminent.
The Eucharist becomes our model for day-to-day eating, via the fasting rules of the
Church which are extensions or echoes of Gods nature being reflected in his Body and
Blood sacrifice. The foods that are restricted during the fastsmeat, alcohol, and olive
oilwere the qualitative extremes of early first-millennium Palestine. Without the
excessively contractive meat and expansive qualities of alcohol and olive oil, the only
foods left were reflections of Gods peace and means to our dispassion.
Traditional cuisines of cultures that are based on a creative principle of relation, most
notably the Tao of the Far East and the world of the Mediterranean, reflect the physics or
natural sciences springing from their metaphysics. The ying-yang sciences and four-

element understanding of the Mediterraneanhot and cold, dry and moist, and the cycle
of fire, water, earth, and air.
Traditional day-to-day eating, like fasting, is conscious word observance in obedience to
harmonize our meals with our environment, our activities, and the cycle of change
reflecting Gods power and Godhead, his essence and energies. Learning how to do this is
an art, of course, but because we are designed for it, and it is the nature of the world,
despite it being foreign to our conventional, scientistic ideas, it is easy to learn. Not to
mention that the meals made from it are more delicious, satisfying, and nourishing than
meals made by a chemist or gourmand. Sophia notes here that St. Basil tells us that man
is an image of Godnot in being a psychosomatic unity, but in mans being a reflection
of the Trinity in his souls three powers.
St. Maximus teaches that these powersthe nous or inner heart, the will, and the
passionshead, chest, and belly as C.S. Lewis described it, and body, mind, and spirit in
common speechhave to be in a specific order or hierarchy for the human person to
know God. This is most easily visualized as a three-ball snowman with the
passion/desires being the bottom ball, the will/rational mind being the center, and the
noetic faculty, soul or heart, being the top.
The right-side-up persons heart or spiritual faculty directs the will and mind which
instructs and restrains the passions. Youve got three faculties of soul. Youve got the
heart which should be in charge. Its really an uncreated faculty within you which is
almost an aspect of God himself. This should be what calls the shots in the human person.
The word for conscience in Greek is syneide. This is your shared vision. This is the eye of
the heart. This faculty, according to the Patristic consensus, should direct the will, and
that will should then guide the passions of the belly. So with the snowman: youve got the
heart telling the chest, the will what to do and then the belly is down below taking
direction from above. The snowman has to be right side up for it to be a snowmanto be
a true human, Frosty.
We pray each Sunday that Communion is for the enlightenment of the eyes of my heart
and for the peace of the powers of my soul. If you wonder why the prayer is for the
peace of the powers of my soul, it is to the Patristic consensus, and St. Maximus
teaching specifically, that the powers of the soul be rightly alignedheart to will,
directing passions. The Eucharist, as the Word of God and Light of the World, is the
means to a rightly ordered soul, hence its being the medicine of immortality.
The fasting we do during each week and in certain periods of the year, as well as to
prepare for Communion and the day-to-day eating of traditional cuisines, are also about
the submission of the belly and our individual desires to the direction of our heart and our

personalwhich is to say our ecclesialunderstanding. In contrast, both chemical

nutrition and tastes great, less filling food decisions foster the upside down desiredriven individual whose belly tells the mind how to justify the Garden of Edens See
Food Dietsee the apple, want the apple, forget the heart and God, eat the apple.
Sophia suggests, in Eating with WisdomCooking with Sophia, and I think she is right,
that this is why carnally minded eating is perhaps the primary reason there are no
American saints and the American Orthodox Church is in such disarray. To see this,
remember the snowman, and think of the three stages of the spiritual life as described by
St. Maximus the Confessor: the praktiki, the physiki, and theosis. The praktiki is the right
ordering of the soul in worship, participation in the Mysteries, and life in Christs
mystical Body. St. Maximus repeats again and again throughout the centuries that this is
the acquisition of the virtues which are aspects of the Christ.
The physiki, the second stage which is built upon the successful ordering of the soul in
the acquisition of the virtues, presumes success in the praktiki. As the name suggests, it is
something like spiritual/natural scientist, or enlightened physics. In the second stage, the
eye of the heart is able to see God everywherenot just in his signature on created things
this polarity without dualitybut is able to see the logi (the plural of logos) or the
inner essences of things. This transformed vision leads to seeing and knowing God, per
se, and his energies, which is theosis or divinization.
In effect, the three stages of the spiritual life according to St. Maximus and the Fathers is:
(1) You acquire the virtues and aspects of Christ in the praktiki. You say your prayers,
you receive Communion, you live an ecclesial life and identity. This transforms your
vision, your heart. (2) As you identify with the heartthe logos within youthe Light
that comes into the world and every man is able then to see the Logos, its reflection in
every created thing. This is the physiki. (3) In that transformed vision, we are transformed
even further until we can see God and his energies, himself. Theosis is the salvific
experience of saints in this life and of others, God allowing, in the next.
The second step, this physiki, this transformed vision, requires the total identification of
the human personheart, soul, mind and strengthwith the logos within him or her. So
that the Word within us recognizes its reflection in the Word of created thingstheir
inner essences. That union, that identification, however, is impossible for the materialist
to whom everything is matter and energy quantitiesto include the mind which is only
brain chemistry.
If we believe because of our education, our media, and the way that we eat at breakfast,
lunch, and dinner, then everything that is in the world is only matter and energy at root. If
this is our primary understanding of the fabric of reality, there is no possibility that we

can identify entirely with the logos within us as the fabric of reality and in that have a
transformed vision and begin our step toward our human perfection and theosis.
Tragically, our culture, our education, and the way we think about food at each meal
every day fosters materialist beliefs that are essentially atheism. We are immunized
against a traditionally Orthodox understanding of ourselves in light of Gods Logos.
I offer for your consideration the possibility that the reason that there are no native-born
American saints that were not martyrs is because the physiki, the necessary transition
from our prayer and sacramental lives to theosis is essentially impossible for us as
materialists. We are locked into a nominal Orthodox faith and a restricted spiritual
accomplishmentnot because the graces of God are not available for our transformed
vision, but because we do not understand how or even believe that such a transformation
is possible.
There are two more points in Sophias book: one about the new pseudo-morality about
sin and food, and another on food and pleasure in light of St. Maximus teachings about
pleasure and pain. But Im already over time, Im sure, and I need to conclude. I leave
out these points and her excellent discussion of the significant dangers when beginning a
spiritually-minded way of eating and hope that you will purchase her book.
I conclude by noting why all diets work for a while, why they all fail eventually, and why
only a Eucharist model way of eating not only works indefinitely, but works miracles as
often as not in personal physical health.
All diets work for a time, because, as different as they may be from one anotherand
there are thousandsthey all recommend that we eat real food, not artificial and
processed junk, and that we eat according to a rule of some kindbe it no meat, be it all
meat, be it Ding Dongs for breakfast. This rule brings the desires into submission to the
mind and will. If the heart is still not in charge, at least the bottom of the snowman is not
calling the shots through tastes great, less filling. The soul recovers something of its
designed alignment.
All diets fail eventually, because the real foods recommended are not reflections of the
Logos fabric of reality, and the motivation for the belly-submission to the mind is still
individual and body-focuseda fear of death, a surfeit of vanity, the desire to be
physically attractive. All these ultimately foster the return of the belly to the captains
seat. Most people for whom my wife and daughter cook come to traditional Wordfocused cooking because of serious illness. Few are able to eat this way indefinitely for
the same reasons that people fail on other diets. Carnal-mindedness cannot be reconciled
with a spiritual-minded way.

The odd thing is that, even when undertaken with a carnal mindthat is, to reverse
cancer, heart disease, AIDS, etc.traditional eating works. I hope by now that why this is
true should be obvious. Eating in Word observance is eating in conformity both with
human design and the nature of creation. If you want to learn more about this, and you
want menus and recipes to test drive this Lent, please write me at
john@hogwartsprofessor.com. I will send you what I can and forward your note to Mary
and Sophia on their return from Jerusalem.
God left us the Eucharist as our primary means to know him. I urge you to reflect on this
sacred meal and God as food, and that you consider making it rather than the TPN IVdrip bag of 44 separate chemical nutrients, or your individual desires of tastes great, less
filling your guide in choosing what you eat.