The Hunger Inside and the Stomach as the Pathway to God
with Martha Tatarnic
We have an eating disorder.
Vast amounts of money are channeled into convincing us that the secret to health and weight loss can be unlocked… if we purchase the right product or adopt some magic discipline. Yet collectively we are getting neither thinner nor happier. We have a big, desperate problem, as big as the excess pounds—both real and imagined—and all of the junk food and junk diets and junk body messages that we keep devouring. These messages are exacerbated by a disordered worldview which suggests that people’s food choices are of concern to themselves alone; eating becomes an individual act with individual pleasure the ultimate goal and individual guilt the collateral damage. We are taught that our bodies are fundamentally a problem to be solved, or worse, a war to be won.
The Gospel asks us to adjust our framework to consider a bigger picture about who we are and how we are to live. We can learn to honor and appreciate our bodies and our lives when we understand that our bodies and lives are in relationship with other bodies and lives around us. Through the model of Jesus, we are invited to see hunger, our bodies, and the way that we eat in an entirely different way. We are shown how to break out of our own individual spheres of self-concern and into relationship, which is the truest identity of our bodily existence, and which is reaffirmed every time we put food into our mouths.
Martha Tatarnic loves talking religion and politics with friends, eating (and sometimes baking) cake, and running half marathons. She is always on the look-out for new music, new challenges, and hearing new connections in an ancient word. The greatest blessing of her life is to parent two wise and creative children with her husband Dan. She has served as priest and pastor with congregations of varying shapes and sizes, each teaching her something of why Jesus chose to use food in order to build community and reveal the love of God. She is currently the rector of St. George’s in St. Catharines and her blog posts can be found at https://medium.com/@mtatarnic
Course fee: $335