The Art of Spiritual Digestion

Have you ever finished a wonderful book, highlighting half the pages, nodded your head in agreement, and then promptly moved on to the next one?

Or attended a workshop, listened to a podcast, copied down pages of notes, and felt inspired for a day or two before life carried you away?

I am guilty of every one of these things on my journey to grow in wisdom and knowledge.

And then one day, as I was journaling, I asked myself if I was overdoing the feeding of my spiritual hunger. Perhaps I was consuming too much, and my problem was not hunger but a lack of digestion.

I made a little sign for over my desk: A hungry spirit is not always looking for more food. Sometimes it is asking for more digestion.

When More Is Not Better

We live in a culture that rewards accumulation. I’m not sure what you accumulate, but I know I may be close to being a veritable ‘hoarder’ of information – books, courses, and experiences looking for answers, seeking wisdom…forgetting Rilke’s advice to “Live the Questions!”

When we are in the midst of some new, interesting thought or idea, often our instinct is to search for another resource. Another expert. Another video. Another technique.

There is certainly a place for learning. Many of those voices from books, courses, and teachers have enriched my life.

But lately I find myself wondering how much of what I already know I have actually lived.

Not understood. Not agreed with. Lived.

There is a difference.

A person can read twenty books on gratitude and still forget to notice a sunrise. We can fill journals with insights about forgiveness while carrying old resentments.

We can talk eloquently about living in the present moment while spending most of our day worrying about tomorrow.

Knowledge and transformation are not the same thing. Sometimes the soul does not need another lesson.

Sometimes it needs reflection…or ‘digestion.’

Aging Has Changed the Question

When I was younger, life seemed to be about acquiring things. I gained experience, strengthened skills, built credentials, and collected knowledge…along with possessions.

Every year seemed to ask, “What else can you add?”

But I am hearing different questions as I age.

What can you release?
What can you simplify?
What matters enough to carry forward?

I have noticed that many of the physical limitations that come with aging also affect the pace at which I move through life.

I move more slowly than I once did, getting tired before the end of the day, sometimes needing rest mid-morning!

At first, those changes felt like losses. Some days they still do.

But hidden inside that slowing down has been an unexpected gift: the opportunity to notice, to revisit old experiences, to ask what they were trying to teach me. To digest.

Many years ago, when multiple sclerosis first entered my life, I had little choice but to slow down.

There were seasons when my body simply would not cooperate with the plans I had made.

I spent time in wheelchairs. I learned to ask for help. I learned that the world moves differently when you cannot keep up with everyone else’s pace.

I would never have chosen those lessons. But they taught me things that no book could have taught.

The wisdom came not from the experience itself but from living with it long enough to absorb what it had to teach – digestion!

The Difference Between Feeding and Nourishing

Anyone who has ever eaten a large holiday meal knows that consuming food and digesting food are two different activities. One takes minutes, and the other takes hours.

The same is true spiritually.

Reading a meaningful passage may take a minute but living it may take years.

I think of some of the truths that have followed me through life.

Be still and know.
Love your neighbor.
Forgive, trust, and let go.

These are not complicated ideas.

Yet I find myself returning to them again and again, discovering new layers of meaning with each season of life.

A younger version of myself thought wisdom was something to be acquired.

An older version is beginning to suspect that wisdom is something that slowly settles into our bones. And like digestion, this cannot be rushed.

Creating Space for Digestion

One reason spiritual digestion is difficult is that we seldom leave room for it. The moment we finish one book, we begin another.

The moment we complete one project, we start planning the next.

Silence makes us uncomfortable, and stillness feels unproductive. Daydreaming? Isn’t that a sin? I remember getting ‘caught’ daydreaming in elementary school and being sent home with an assignment to write 100 times, “I will not daydream in class.”

So how and when do we get a chance to digest all that life has given us?

Not while we are consuming more, but while we are sitting with what is already there.

This may be one reason I have come to value practices such as journaling, prayer, and reflective walks.

They create space. They allow an idea to move from my head to my heart, and give experience time to become wisdom.

Sometimes I sit in my morning chair with a cup of tea and a journal. I write a few words. I stare out the window. I watch the birds. On the surface it looks as though very little is happening.

But perhaps that is exactly the point. Not every important thing is visible.

A Different Kind of Hunger

Perhaps what many of us call spiritual hunger is actually something else.

Perhaps we are not starving for new information. We come to a place where we long to understand the life we have already lived.

To make peace with old wounds and recognize hidden gifts. To notice patterns and gather scattered pieces of experience into something that resembles wisdom.

It unfolds at the pace of reflection and cannot be hurried.

Such is the pace of aging, the pace of the soul.

And maybe that is enough.

Maybe the next book can wait a little while. Maybe the next answer is not somewhere “out there.”

Maybe what we need most is to sit quietly with what we already know and allow it to nourish us.

A Question for Reflection

What truth, lesson, or life experience has been asking for your attention lately? Instead of searching for something new this week, consider spending a few moments with something you already know.

Write about it. Pray about it. Take it for a walk. Sit with it over a cup of tea.

You may discover that your spirit is not asking for more food after all.

It may simply be asking for time to digest.