relearn to savor

Photo by Sandy Millar

What does it mean
to savor sweetness?
To slip into the present
with senses and spirit,
not rejecting
the rest of life,
but pausing,
if only
for a delicate moment,
to be raptured
by a temporary
and contrasting
thing.

It is no simple task
to recognize manna now.
We feverishly indulge in
what is decadent,
without reverence,
without reflection,
without reverie.

No moment begins as sweet.
It must be reached,
through bramble and thorn,
through laboring pain,
in sobriety after ruin,
or by the simple act
of arriving
in the present,
fully embodied:
an often
quiet and brutal
battle.

Sometimes I crave
something sweet,
don’t you?
But too often
the syrup I reach for
merely placates
insatiable microbes,
addicts by training,
no longer able
to entertain
humility or awe.

The deeper need
for ambrosia
is rarely met
in the sugar
that coats my tongue,
in flattery drawn
from those desperate to please,
or in the orgasmic wave
that breaks without intimacy.

To savor
is becoming rare
in a world of quick fixes.
We are drenched
in gratification,
in abundance
yet so much of it
is barren
of soul and soil.

I ache for nectar
and can no longer be
enticed by substitutes.
I taste the lie
in refined sweetness.
I feel the transaction
and glaring absence
of generative connection.

My cravings
make me a servant,
mindlessly
hitting the button
for another dose.
Never reaching
the depth
of satisfaction
that pleads
deep in my bones,
transfixed instead
by the effusive
promises
of paradise.

I’ve been captured.
So have you.
And the sacred elixir
life requires
to be worth living
has become
evanescent,
not just something
once scarce and a joy
to find.

The issue
is not the sweetness,
but the savoring.
Mechanical exchanges
of pleasure,
mindless
hand to mouth,
a relentless hunger
for validation
and distraction.

We’re in a fever
unbroken
perpetually reaching outward
for the counterfeit cure,
sweetened by hope
that we will someday
be liberated
from our suffering.

Savoring requires
the breaking of the fever,
a slowing,
making our shadows
known.
It asks that
we enter this moment
embodied,
wholly naked,
and present.

To savor
is to recognize
the fleeting nature of a thing,
its contrast
with the harshness of life,
and to grapple with
the deceptive feeling
that we do not deserve
a kiss from the divine.

And so,
may we not turn away
from sweetness,
but learn
to choose it well,
and begin again,
recognizing and nurturing
the sacred gift of
savoring.