Junk spirituality and junk food are everywhere. Junk food is made in factories, marketed as cheap and easy, and it is highly profitable for the companies selling it. It is high in fat, salt, and sugar. It is highly-processed, full of artificial flavors, colors, preservatives, texturizers, and other chemical additives designed to make it seem like real food. Junk spirituality is also made in factories, marketed as cheap and easy, and it is highly profitable for the persons and companies selling it. It is highly processed, full of “new-age” magical thinking. It is the worst kind of canned wisdom-tradition “greatest hits” personal-salvation silage. Junk food and junk spirituality both fill us up but they are junk, not nourishing. Junk food and junk spirituality are cheap because the real costs are paid by other people, by the natural world in which we live, and sooner or later by our own sick bodies and shallow lives. Junk food and junk spirituality trap us into a highly-individualized, self-serving worldview from which we cannot see beyond our own wants and needs, or beyond the surfaces of a world that has become completely commodified. The reality couldn’t be more different: spirituality is not magic, it is not religion, it is not fireworks peak experience, it is not personal salvation. It is service. It is service that grows out of deep and simple seeing, awareness, connection, compassion, and generosity. Spirituality is carrying light, it is relieving suffering, it is bringing healing and wholeness, as we can, for as many as we can, for as long as we can. And one of the very best places to see, connect, and carry light is in the kitchen, cooking real food, for real people. Cooking is spiritual practice, and the kitchen floor is one of the best places to wake up.