In God Makes the Rivers to Flow; An Anthology of the World’s Sacred Poetry & Prose, Eknath Easwaran includes a selection from Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook entitled “Radiant Is the World Soul.”  I’ve written the following poem-like reflections inspired by this selection.

Chocolate

Why spend your substance on what does not nourish
And your labor on what cannot satisfy?
Listen to me, and you will enjoy what is good,
And find delight in what is truly precious.
—Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook

The answer is always chocolate.  It may seem there’s another answer, but there’s not.

It seems like the answer should be something more elevated, something more profound.

But it’s not.

The answer is always chocolate.

And what is the question?

Chocolate?  Chocolate?  Chocolate.

If you’re vegan, you’re going to be disappointed when you begin your search for God.

Because God is chocolate.  Milk chocolate.

The only thing that truly nourishes, the only thing that truly satisfies?

Of course, it’s chocolate.

What is good?  What is truly precious?

Chocolate and chocolate.

I can just about hear you saying, “You can’t be serious.”

No, I can’t.

If I were serious, I would be boring.

And I love chocolate.

And we all know, we all ought to know, that there’s something within chocolate and beyond chocolate that is more chocolate than chocolate.

There’s something real beyond our world of delusions and illusions that is more chocolate than chocolate.

There is a chocolate that is so chocolate one can hardly call the chocolate we eat chocolate.

Ok, what could I possibly be talking about?

What could be more real than the world we call real?

I’ve never truly experienced reality.

But I’ve experienced silence.

And it tastes like the finest chocolate ever made.

And I think if I could reach through the silence, beyond the silence, I would experience chocolate beyond chocolate.

And it would be better than any known chocolate.