In conversation with Brother Timothy, winemaker for The Christian Brothers during Prohibition, he mused that, had society understood wine, not as an instrument of intoxication but, rather, as a contributing force for fellowship, relationship and religious/spiritual expression, it could have qualified for exemption from the laws addressing drunkenness. The problem was that a superficial reality had "uprooted" a deeper one.
Along with loss of awareness of wine's spiritual moorings is a parallel loss of awareness of spirituality's function and place in ongoing daily life. For many, it resides in narrow confining places, formal religious sanctuaries.
While accessing spirituality through wine is done in certain religious settings, it can also be easily done through toasts at the dinner table. Wine encourages you to experience more of reality as balancing and integration and less as compartmentalizing and fragmentation.
You could think of the "S" word as "Special" and to seek and find, increasingly, interactions in your day that are "special" i.e. worth noticing and cherishing. In stringing together a number of them, you may discover seemingly disjointed fragments now connecting as part of a larger whole.
From ancient times, wine serves as a reminder: this moment is not just another disjointed fragment. What can you do to see how special this moment really is?
In looking within, and more closely at those with whom you are sharing it, you may find yourself moving along a path of increasing "specialness", and, in so doing, infuse the "S" word more frequently into your life.
How is your definition of spirituality shaped by religious upbringing?
What obstacles do you face in thinking of a conversation about wine's meaning in your life as being a spiritual experience?
What happens to your perspective when you go through a period of unusually special interactions?
