Thinking of my readers yesterday, I decided to challenge myself to pray with chocolate today, and not just with a supply of it available, but specifically meditating on chocolate, all it has to represent and as a focus of reflection. Surprisingly, there is very little help or ideas around for using chocolate as a form of prayer, considering how popular both cocoa and prayer are globally.
Eventually though I managed to find a little blog where somebody had set themselves the challenge of eating something mindfully, awake and aware in the present moment, and blogging about it, and they'd chosen chocolate. At last! Finally! I was again taken aback when I realised that this blog was a year old, and nobody else had taken the challenge on, or made it more widespread. Surely this is a wave that could easily crest the world?
The idea is to make the whole process of selecting and consuming a piece of chocolate a mindful exercise - only the one, as after that it becomes less mindful and more fattening, starting with finding the right chocolate in the kitchen and ending with licking your lips and remembering the sweet, heady taste. So I used their blog and embellished it, adding extra cognitive activities and points for musing. I have after all challenged myself to pray for at least 30 minutes everyday using a new method.
Start with a short, simple meditation on what mindfulness is and what it can encompass. From there, turn everything off (the phone, internet, washing machine, bath...), sit down and relax. Admire the chocolate, smell it, feel it, see it for what it is, and remember all the countless people who have touched the same chocolate before, in the process of growing, packaging and presenting the chocolate. And thank God for them all. Maybe also reflect on fair-trade and the working conditions of all these people. Think about how we can make the world a fairer, safer place.
Then focus on the chocolate. Smell it, see the ingredients, picture the chocolate in its many stages, say thanks and relax into the mindfulness of chocolate adoration. Reflect on how we are like chocolate (all individual, sweet, with different elements and hidden parts). Slowly, ever so slowly, go from seeing the chocolate in the box to lip-licking when it's finished. Smell it, feel it with your hands, then on your face, then your lips, lick the outside, feel the texture when it cracks on your teeth as you bite it, scoop out the inside with your tongue (if it's got a filling), chew on it, chase it round your mouth...
When you get towards the end, spin it out, make it last, continue to reflect on its simple beauty and divine elements, and think about what chocolate can teach us about the world and ourselves. Be aware of the feelings when it's finished, the empty space it's left and how it's changed in form and has changed the consumer forever. You will always be able to remember this chocolate if you have the desire. And this simple act of eating a piece of chocolate can change you, make you more aware of the world around, and the sweetness of slow food.
Thank God for the experience and focus on how mindfulness can be an entry point to exploring heaven in a richer context and to a greater degree. It's not just a piece of chocolate; it's a form of prayer. And a form of prayer that can be gentle on the soul, satisfying on the lips (and hips), and transformative from the here and now stress of daily life to the eternal rest of seeing God in our everydays. It also helps to look up once in a while and remember what life is like for many others around the world, a kind of challenge to do what we can with our resources to see God's kingdom come.
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