The First Course

One of my favorite writers, Wendell Berry, has written:

"We can [not] live harmlessly or strictly at our own expense; we depend upon other creatures and survive by their deaths. To live, we must daily break the body and shed the blood of creation. The point is, when we do this knowingly, lovingly, skillfully, reverently, it is a sacrament; when we do it ignorantly, greedily, clumsily, destructively, it is a desecration...in such desecration, we condemn ourselves to spiritual and moral loneliness, and others to want."

My purpose here is to create an outlet to reflect on food - its production, its distribution, its preparation, and its consumption.

Sometimes I worry that my passion for food is likely to consume me! I think about food almost all the time - not in an unhealthy, compulsive way, but in a reverent, mindful way. I'm mindful of my eating habits. I'm mindful of the sources of most of my food. I'm mindful of the value of my food. I try to practice gratitude for what I eat. I talk about food seemingly endlessly with my family and friends and especially with my poor wife. I must drive her crazy sometimes! Poor thing!

So, I figure that this blog could be a good outlet for my self-indulgent wanderings and wonderings about food. And maybe as I write and reflect, something less self-indulgent will emerge.

Perhaps someone else will join the conversation and we can together talk about food and hunger; about poverty and "food insecurity;" about what happens in the world when we consume greedily and mindlessly and destructively. Perhaps we can talk about "spiritual and moral loneliness," and our forgotten and neglected responsibilities toward those who are in want of food.

In fact, that conversation has already begun in my "real" world. Last night I met for the first time with a small group of people from the church that I serve as minister, and we began an eight-month exploration of food and hunger issues using the book Food & Faith: Justice, Joy and Daily Bread, which is a resource of Earth Ministry, "an ecumenical, Christian, environmental, eco-justice oriented, nonprofit organization based in Seattle, Washington."

You can learn more about their work at their website:

http://www.earthministry.org

I'm excited to have other people to talk with about my passion for food and hunger-related issues! Last night we started by talking about food, our memories of early food-related events or rituals, our favorites foods, our families' relationships to food production. By the end of our meeting we were already imagining ways to bring some of our passion and our learning back to the rest of the congregation and to the larger community. This promises to be a good year filled with wonderful conversations with delightful and passionate people!

And I am grateful. And I am inspired. And so we begin...