the other Julia sent this to us through the Rwanda listserv from here; I think it’s lovely and a good reminder during weeks like this; where it’s impossible to tell the beginning from the end and I begin to melt into a formless shape of rushing, moving, searching. on eating shwarma, or eating anything, or walking to class, or looking at the sky, or taking the recycling out to the curb on a freezing february morning….or any moment in life:

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I ran into some of my meditating friends. “How can you spend your day
sitting around like a lotus? There is shwarma to be eaten.”

“We’re into connecting to a higher reality.”

“So am I. It’s called shwarma.”

I’d found it. I’d thought that in order to experience spirituality I had to
do something “spiritual.” I was wrong. True transcendence isn’t about
slipping off into an artificial world. It’s about finding spirituality in
the here-and-now.

I began to teach people about higher eating.

“There are two ways to eat shwarma,” I began. “Way number one is to inhale
the thing. Open wide and swallow. It’s similar to the way a dog eats.”

“Really?”

“Way number two is to pause a moment and say: ‘Isn’t it great that I can
live in a world where I can have an experience like shwarma,’ and then
inhale.”

“I don’t get it.”

“The first way is eating shwarma because it’s shwarma. The second way is to
use shwarma as a spiritual vehicle. It is to realize that this meal is an
opportunity to connect to God, to plug in and experience transcendence. Why
meditate only an hour a day? You can always be on the lookout for spiritual
experience.”

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