Reverend Dr. Marilyn Sewell

First Unitarian Church
Portland, Oregon

February 2, 1997

I must start this sermon with a confession. I have always been obsessed with food, I have always been obsessed with my body and how I look and how much I weigh. Each morning when I get up, I look in the mirror to see how slender my waist is today. I look in my closet and I am reminded that I can't wear some of the clothes that hang there. I sigh. I go downstairs to breakfast, and I spread low-fat margarine--just a touch of it--on my toast, and I congratulate myself that at least I'm starting out the day IN CONTROL.

I was skinny as a kid and as an adolescent, and so I didn't think too much about food then. But as my body filled out, as they say, I began dieting because I thought I was getting too fat. The natural roundedness of my woman's stomach was unsightly, I thought, and so I bought an early copy of the Weight Watcher's Cookbook, the one with the yellow cover--it's probably an antique by now--and began planning tasteless meals featuring steamed cod. I know I did this because I found this very book not long ago--I found my daily meal plans written on yellow ledger paper and folded inside. I dieted and wore girdles that restrained womanly flesh, my softness, in spite of the fact that I was in reality very thin. I look at my wedding pictures. Yes, thin. When I was married at 28, I was 5'10", and I weighed 128 pounds. Very thin. As I think about my struggles with weight over the years, the interesting thing is that I always believe to be my ideal weight to be 10 to 20 pounds less than what I weigh, at an given time! I can't win for losing, so to speak.

And I am not the only one. In fact, it is the rule, not the exception, for women at least to hate their own bodies, to see food as the enemy. In the words of a Bloomingdale's ad, the current ideal womanly shape is "bean lean, slender as the night, narrow as an arrow, pencil thin, get the point?" This craze for thinness in women culminates in a trend that began in the early 1960's. In the last three decades, fashion models, Miss American pageant contestants, and Playboy centerfolds have grown steadily thinner. Paradoxically, the weight of women under age 30 has actually risen. Into this gaping gulf of cultural norms and fleshy reality, the commercial diet industry is flourishing, reaching two billion dollars in 1990. The clientele are 85-90 per cent women. But the sad truth is that dieting doesn't work--only four people out of a hundred continue to keep their weight down, after dieting. Seventy-six per cent of all dieters are fatter after three years than before they began, and 95 per cent after five years.

Girls as young as nine and ten begin dieting. In one study a majority of 10-year-olds rated themselves as the most unattractive girl in their class. Some develop anorexia, and starve themselves into skeletons; some even die. Bulimia is the most common disorder among young women, an addiction in which they diet and then binge and then purge. While anorexia often begins in junior high, bulimia tends to develop in later adolescence, often in college sororities or dorms. Estimates of bulimia run as high as one fifth of all college-age women. Clinical psychologist Mary Pipher says bulimic and anorexic young women are "oversocialized to the feminine role. They are the ultimate people pleasers. Most are attractive, with good social skills. Often they are the cheerleaders and homecoming queens, the straight-A students and pride of their families."

Why is it that women and girls are so much more susceptible to these body obsessions than men and boys? Whereas a majority of women think they are heavier than they actually are, and are displeased with their looks, men also have an inaccurate body image, but in the opposite direction--men feel that they weigh less than they actually do, and only one in ten report being "strongly dissatisfied" with their bodies. Researchers say that while a boy learns to view his body primarily as a means of achieving mastery over the external environment, a girl learns that the main function of her body is to attract others. We all want to be loved. For a man, power in the world is his avenue to love, to the admiration of his peers, to finding a mate. But for a woman, as soon as she reaches adolescence, she comes to understand that her body is not chiefly her own, to use with power in the world, but rather to attract a desirable male. She sees the pictures in the magazines, she goes to the movies. She looks at her own body in the mirror, and the discrepancy is there. She must change the image, at all costs.

So I see the mass media as one of the major culprits in foisting off unrealistic body images. But this is not the only place to look for an explanation. Think about the seminal myth in Western culture, the Fall of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. They eat, they eat of forbidden fruit, and once they do, they become ashamed and cover their bodies. Christian history presents the body as the enemy. The early devotional writers are full of it--how the flesh tempts us away from the spirit, how pleasure is sinful, how we should deprive the body in order to save the soul. This theology is in direct conflict with what our own bodies, our own senses, tell us--that pleasure is good, and specifically food is good.

Food, in fact, is linked forever in the deepest parts of our psyche with love, for our earliest bliss is being held in the arms of our mother, suckled at her breast, touched, sung to, given our very life. To the newborn, food is love and love is food. I don't think it ever changes. No wonder we have food disorders! No wonder we do our fruitless yo-yo dieting! Our popular culture and our theology both tell us that the body is the enemy, that food is bad, but we believe in a place deeper than consciousness that food is love. And we want food. And we will have food.

There has to be a better way. I realized this some years ago when I was enrolled in a Weight Watcher's group. Just trying to get rid of that extra 10 pounds. But I began feeling uncomfortable in the support group sessions, in which women would stand up and exclaim about their successes in passing up the chocolate, and then everyone would yell and scream and clap when somebody lost 2 pounds. It occurred to me that there were hungry people in this country--lots of them (one in five children are hungry, says a study from Tufts University)--and so it began to feel obscene for a group of grown women to be acting like cheerleaders when somebody refused a piece of cheesecake.

There has to be a better way. When hunger comes, maybe we need to look more deeply at what we're up against. How is our hunger a manifestation of spiritual need? Let's go back to Adam and Eve for a moment.

The Garden of Eden symbolizes the bliss of union with God. Eating the Fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Goodness and Evil represents, I think, our evolution into consciousness, into understanding ourselves as separate beings. This is not a bad thing, but it is a painful one, to become aware of our imperfections, to take on the burdens of knowing that we will suffer and die. Our endless yearning, our emptiness, our hunger is that desire for reconciliation with God. God warned Adam and Eve not to eat the apple. Maybe God was saying, "Do not believe you need to go outside yourselves to attain true knowledge. Do not believe you need be anything more than you already are. Do not believe you are separate from divinity."¹

Countless books and articles will advise us on our nutritional problems, but nutrition is not the basis of our need, says Marc David in his remarkable book Nourishing Wisdom,² which explores the relationship between food and the spirit. After all, all of us here today have read the articles, have seen the food pyramid, follow the health newsletters. We know what to eat. It is not knowledge we need, but a transformation of spirit. There is a divine spark in each of us. What we think we lack, what we truly hunger for, is already ours, is already within.

Food is a constant reminder that we are mortal, made of fragile flesh, bound to this earth, and to each other. We are not our own. We are bought with a price: the labor of many and the love of a few. Each time we eat, we are choosing life, we are choosing to join those who are saying "yes" to living. When we eat with joy and reverence and thanksgiving, we honor our flesh as holy stuff, all that we have, really, to offer to others and to God.

Searching for ways to nourish our bodies, we are led to things of the spirit. We begin to ask questions like, "Who am I, and why have I been put upon this earth? How does my relationship to food reveal my relationship to the rest of life? Why do I sometimes fail to treat myself with love and respect?"

There must be a better way than diet books and dieting centers. And there is. Let us start with the hunger. It's real. It's painful. But what is it really about? It's not just about satisfying our physiological needs. Maybe it's about being tired or anxious or hopeless. Maybe it's about feeling lonely. Maybe it's about needing some comfort and not knowing where to go for it. We even have the phrase "comfort foods," don't we? Chocolate. A hamburger and fries. For me, it's Southern fried chicken. Wonder why. The bottom line: it's about wanting to be loved, not having to feel alone and afraid. So sit with it when it comes, the hunger. Find out what it's really about. And try to act on that reality. If you need to cry or rest or deal with your angst, do that. Otherwise, food will just be anesthesia, and your real need will go unmet.

Food is not the enemy. Your body deeply knows that, and furthermore, it knows what you really want to eat. But you have to give it a chance to experiment with different foods, and to speak to you. Try out some new foods, some that you've heard were healthy, and see how your system responds. Take time to eat slowly, mindfully, to savor the smell and really taste the subtle flavors. Eat in good company, in a calm, peaceful setting whenever possible. Pay attention to aesthetics. Light a candle. Give thanks.

Lent is coming up soon--Ash Wednesday is next week, February 12. It is a time for fasting, for some, until the celebration of the Resurrection on Easter Sunday. This is a good time to experiment with some changes in your diet, to let some foods go so that others may enter. Now when I was a little Catholic girl, I was required to observe Lent, and I remember I always gave up watermelon--because there was no watermelon during that time of the year in Louisiana! No one is required to do anything by any outside authority in our faith--rather, I have my own requirements, and you have yours. So I'm experimenting by doing without alcohol and refined sugar. After all, neither has any nutritional value, and I suspect that both are probably hard on my system.

But I have to say that, because of the anti-flesh tradition of Western religion, I'm suspicious of this whole thing of "giving up" something I like. I have to remind myself that I'm not giving up anything just for the sake of depriving myself--and that I'm not giving up anything out of guilt. I don't think they are bad, and I don't think I'm bad for consuming them. I'm giving up these substances for Lent because I want to love myself better than I do, and I want to see how my body feels without them.

Why should you be conscious of your eating and make good choices? Because you are precious. Because there are people who love you. Because the earth needs your energy and your good gifts. Because the God that made you, made you a miracle and cherishes each hair on your head, and is infinitely sad when you don't cherish yourself. You don't have to be anybody else's ideal image, you don't have to feel guilty about your desires. Remember St. Augustine's advice: "Love God and do what you will"? Love yourself, and eat what you will.

Each morning the sun comes up, the light invades sleep, and we wake to face the new day. We stretch, we rouse our creaking bones out of the bed, and we pass by the mirror on the way to the bath. And the talking to ourselves begins: "Too fat!" many of us say. But you know what? You can change the tape. You can say, "Good morning, my dear! Have I told you lately that I love you?" And you can love you, by caring for and nourishing your precious body, the flesh that is infused with spirit. Accept that body just as it is. Feel no guilt. And each day, once again, choose life.

So be it. Amen.

¹Marc David, Nourishing Wisdom: A Mind-Body Approach to Nutrition and Well-Being. New York: Bell Tower, 1991. p. 78.

²I have used much of David's thinking in the next few paragraphs on food and spirituality.

Copyright © 2000, Reverend Dr. Marilyn Sewell. All rights reserved.