Advice by Rabbi Nachman of Breslov

#17

Eating 

( This one really gets to me.  I understood the elevation we give our food by saying the blessings but here it seems Rabbi Nachman is saying that all our acts and words continue to elevate our food.  Then our nourishment we receive from the food becomes incense through our deeds.  Is that how you all read this?)

17) The act of eating plays a vital part in refining and purifying the Creation. The food we eat is refined and elevated when it is transformed into the beautiful words that we speak: the blessings we make over the food itself, the prayers we offer, our words of Torah, and all the other devotions we are enabled to perform by the nourishment we derive from the food. One should keep this in mind as one eats. Then one’s food becomes “incense” as it were. One will find true joy and make a crown of lovingkindness and mercy for the King of Peace, as it is written: “Go forth, O ye daughters of Zion and gaze upon King Solomon”— Shlomo, he to whom peace, Shalom, belongs —“even upon the crown wherewith his mother hath crowned him in the day of his espousals, and in the day of the gladness of his heart” (Song of Songs 3: 11) (16).