Welcome to “Salt and Savor”! This site is designed to provide reflections and information from the desk of the Vice Dean for Faculty Development and Academic Initiatives.
Oh Taste and See
What is the difference between tasting something and savoring something?
My personal point of reference for this question is food. I relish opportunities to experience culinary excellence. I enjoy cooking. Trying new restaurants. Experimenting with unusual foods.
“Tasting” and “taste” are important to my encounters with food. I enjoy tasting foods—“ascertaining the flavor by taking a little into the mouth” (Merriam-Webster)—and certain flavors appeal to my sense of taste. They tantalize my gastronomic senses.
But to “savor” a particular food or dining experience? To savor is a different matter altogether.
The word “savor” comes from the Latin sapere and is related to the Latin word for wisdom. To savor is to appreciate fully, to enjoy or relish. To savor requires a certain amount of patience and perhaps even wisdom. The word “savor” is also related to the world “save.”
In a world as fast-paced, frenzied, and frantic as ours, savoring can be elusive.
We taste countless things every day, but we rarely have the time or take the time to savor any of those things. To taste them with pleasure. To observe them with relish or delight. To consider with curiosity and care their breadth and depth.
Savoring life is important to personal well-being. It is also important to our societies’ well-being. Savoring is vital to the overall health of human communities.
People who savor creation cultivate wisdom for caring about creation. People who savor food cultivate wisdom about the sources of food. They also nurture a concern for food accessibility for all people. People who savor life seek strategies for improving the health and life of all humanity.
Savoring takes practice and courage. And we don’t seem to have enough time for it.
But it yields amazing gifts.
And savoring is so vital to healthy life–to healthy academic and community life–that we cannot think of it as something we do after everything else is finished. It has to become our way of life–
–even in the midst of a pandemic and as other public realities and press in upon us with urgency-
–especially in the midst of current concerns and realities-
—because of an election that has stirred the passions and anxieties of so many people.
We need to savor our minutes, hours, and days because in each of them resides the sacred.
We need to savor each other because in each of us dwells the delights of the divine.
My prayer for our learning community during this election week is that we persist in our educational and ministry work to taste and see that God—and God within us—is good. May we share that goodness—as justice, reconciliation and compassion—with all who we encounter in the days ahead.
More to come. . .
Look for a Salt and Savor post from the Vice Dean about once a week.