On this very day, millions of people will be physically hungry, and in the face of such deprivation, thinking about the reality of spiritual hunger can seem like the very definition of privilege. But many human hungers spring from deep emotional needs and thwarted desires. For all the strength and beauty of being human, we are also “but flesh” as the psalmist says: vulnerable in our physical and emotional states. We are creatures who exist, as poet Mary Oliver says, (in and through) “the soft animal of our bodies.”