“How sweet are your words to my taste,
sweeter than honey to my mouth!” (Psalm 119:103)
We don’t eat a lot of honey, but it is smooth with a pure sweetness. Kris sometimes puts honey on her English muffins — mixed with a little margarin you can get a pleasurable taste. (Pam Cooke, in Placerville CA, makes some wonderful honey. Order some from her if you are so inclined.)
I’ve learned to make risotto — and if you use the right stock, and if you use a good solid-bottomed cooking pan, and if you heat the rice just right, and then if you mix in a little extra olive oil and some pesto and a little pecorino cheese, you can get a risotto that is smooth and creamy and — yes — perfectly pleasurable to the taste buds.
That, the psalmist says, is what the words of Torah, of teaching, are to his “moral and spiritual tastebuds.” Pleasurable. He hears them and he says, “Ah, yes, that’s the grace of God washing over me; that’s the truth of God washing over me; that’s God’s love and I bask in it. Glory.”