Learning to taste is the beginning of seeing

An artist once told me that it was only when she saw a still life with onions by Cézanne that she realized that she had never seen an onion. Now, this doesn’t mean that she had never met up with onions. She had peeled onions, sliced and chopped onions, cooked and eaten onions, but she had never SEEN an onion. She had never perceived an onion with that fresh, clear, first-time-in-my-life vision that allowed her to go out of her own thoughts, ideas and memories and stand in awe before the reality of something new and unknown.

This kind of seeing is natural to a child. Everything to a child is new and unknown. For a child, there is always the first time that they encounter an onion, a cat, a spider, an acorn, a pencil or a lipstick. There are innumerable new and unknown facets in this world into which they have been born, and exploration is natural. A child is a born explorer because everything is new.

Unfortunately, this gift of awe, this urge to explore what to us dull grownups is mundane, very quickly wanes. Familiarity probably doesn’t breed contempt, but it does all too easily breed indifference. I have seen enough spiders – and been taught by the grownups that spiders should be squashed – so that, when I meet one, instead of gazing at it and hoping that we can be friends, I just squash it. (Personally, having reached what may be called my second childhood, I don’t squash spiders. When I meet one outside, I leave it alone and let it go about its business, as long as that business isn’t crawling up inside my sleeve. When I meet one inside the monastery, I tell it to go somewhere else before another Sister sees it.)

Jesus said that we must become like little children in order to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. There are many ways to interpret this, but I think that one of the interpretations is that we need to learn to wonder at reality, as a child does. Some artists and many children have the ability to see reality without the lenses of their own ideas and memories. That is why they often shock grownups with statements that the grownups would never dare think, much less express. With a child, as I have said, this direct vision is still natural, but an artist needs to recover it. So do believers. Jesus said that “no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” We must become children to recover the vision of children.

A good way to begin is to practice tasting. The psalmist says, “Taste and see the goodness of the Lord.” When we learn to truly taste, we will more easily truly see. Tasting doesn’t have as many ideas and memories connected with it (though Marcel Proust would disagree with me!), and it is easier for us to step back and really taste that sip of coffee, that fresh peach, that luscious bite of fish or cheese or steak. To take the time to savor what I usually eat automatically will have an incredible effect on how I perceive life. Nothing will be ordinary, nothing will be mundane, because I am savoring a bite of reality and finding it immensely richer that I ever guessed.

Usually, for Lent, we give up something that we like, and often it is food or drink or some stimulant. I think it would make for a new kind of Lent if, instead of giving up chocolate or whiskey or whatever, I take the time and make the effort to taste it, slowly, perceptively, focusing on it as I enter into it even more than letting it enter into me. It will be a discovery to find if and how this willingness to savor changes me by the time I get to Easter. I may well find that, by truly tasting, I will truly see “that the Lord is good.”

Sister Gabriela of the Incarnation is a member of the Discalced Carmelites order in Flemington. Learn more at www.flemingtoncarmel.org.