In last Sunday’s evening service we were invited to try a short session of contemplative prayer with the help of an icon or a passage from the bible. Imagine my delight when the gentleman next to me rose to his feet and announced that he was moving to the back of the church to meditate on the biscuits. Which just goes to show you never know when a stranger might appear with a word from the Lord…

For a while now I’ve been eager to meditate on Dark Chocolate Gingers. Border Biscuits make some particularly fine ones and as they’d previously always been available in my local supermarket it never crossed my mind that they might disappear from the shelves without notice. Having hunted and failed to find them elsewhere, I was all set to do a post on the Dark Chocolate Ginger Night of the Soul when my friend Cath found me a new brand from Sainsbury’s. Honesty compels me to admit these are Not-Quite-As-Dark Chocolate Gingers but the lower cocoa content is more than made up for by the thickness of the chocolate coating, not to mention its jaunty stripes.

I’ve known biscuit lovers who dislike ginger, but I’ve always loved its pep and fieriness. The hospitable warmth of gingerbread is one of the great joys of Christmas and the McVities ginger nut (less fashionable than it used to be) gloriously dunkable with tea. Another brilliant ginger creation, Marks and Spencer’s stem ginger cookies, belongs in my mind to that stratosphere of gustatory pleasures in which you might enjoy a choice marmalade after a leisurely breakfast. The Dark Chocolate Ginger strikes me as more of a late morning luxury or happy after-thought to an evening meal. Ginger could be expensive in the Middle Ages and while not as sought after as pepper, it was valued for its medicinal benefits more than its culinary ones. A strong dose of ginger can be a shock to the system, but as a winter spice it can also be deliciously warming, healing and cleansing – like truth itself when it’s let loose on the world.

If ginger stands for truth, then chocolate and ginger together make a good advert for speaking the truth in love. Our ability to receive truth increases when we sense the truth-teller is not out to score points for themselves or condemnation for others but genuinely trying to find a path towards collective healing and freedom. This can be a hard path to follow when you’re feeling hurt and angry (or timid or selfish) but anything less is neither truthful nor loving in the long run.

Further Delectation

Spice up your life (or spruce up your knowledge) with this short survey of winter spices in the Middle Ages.

Enjoy George Herbert’s beautiful meditation on The Way, the Truth and the Life, the equally wonderful music of Vaughan Williams, and a singing monk lost in Grand Central Station:

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