Howton Grove Priory | Mobile WebsiteSharing a Vocation with the World . . .

Mediterranean Diet

The Mediterranean diet is much hyped. I have to confess that I have sometimes thought that a monastery with its own vines and olives would be paradise on earth; but even peaches and oranges straight from the tree can pall, and shaking the scorpions out of one's sandals every morning can become tiresome. The truth is paradise is always somewhere other, somehow unattainable. But we can dream as we cook our pasta of golden drifts of sunshine and the clicking of cicadas, can we not?

There is, of course, another and much darker side to the "Mediterranean diet" which has nothing to do with food or drink. Europe must be one of the most fought-over areas on earth. At the end of the twentieth century we were reminded how easily our veneer of civilisation is stripped away. Now our economic difficulties look as though they may break the fragile unity we have attained within the E.U. While we pray for the urgent needs of the world, for the people of Haiti and Afghanistan, wherever a natural or man-made disaster has jeopardised life and happiness, we need to pray perseveringly for something much closer to home: the preservation of peace and harmony within Europe itself. Our recent Remembrance Day services should have reminded us that the shadow of war is never very far away because we remain selfish and sinful. It takes more than a diet of fish and fruit to change that. It takes conversion of heart.