Inititally, this post was intended to consist simply of a cool picture with a catchy title. However, it got me thinking…
I have some fairly well defined thoughts concerning the issues of free range meat and dairy, vegetarian, and veganism. This is not the post delineating those thoughts either…
Over the past week, I have overhead two friends talking about decisions/resolutions that they have come to. One said that she is going to try to eat only organic meat. The other said she wanted to eat less meat. Amirable and healthy and decisions.
I have often made and want to make similar decisions in the future in this area and other areas related to simple living and lifestyle. What keeps me from doing this? A tremendous intertia in my own soul, a fear of being radical, of going places where others may not follow, of needing to explain unpopular choices, of doing the hard work to alter one’s lifestyle. Moreover, the Church, as it reflects society, is not a tremendously accomodating place when it comes to these issues, indeed, any decision that leads to what seems to be a radical life.
Last night, talking to some friends, we talked about how the best sort of changes, the most lasting at least, generally come of small steps rather than large ones. It has taken me a while to learn and to continue to apply that lesson.
Well, I need to bring this ramble in for a landing. More later…at some point.
I have heard it said that, “You are what you eat!” Now since FAST or “JUNK” food has taken over the World with a storm, some wish to go to the other extreme of eating only organic food.
Science tells us that a “BALANCED” diet (although this is one balancing act that has always elluded me), is all that one needs to eat. Others say that “Eat, drink and be merry, for tommorrow may not be.” So in view of all these ideas, what should one actually do, as regards, food? Any new ideas, anyone?
I don’t have any new ideas, but what you mentioned is worth discussing.
The advice to eat a balenced diet is good advice. If we work harder to fill our bodies w/ healthy food (veg, fruits, nuts, oils, beans, water, good meats etc…) instead of engaging in restrictive diets, I think we’ll be a lot healthier and have a little more freedom to eat sweets etc… in moderation.
The mentality that it’s okay to “eat, drink, and be merry for tommorow we die” is a dangerous mentality I think. There is time for feasting, (Holidays, special occassions) but for the most part, we should try to live lives that promote health and well being. This involves the establishment of healthy habits and discipline but should not lead us to become completely obsessed by health. Most of us (me) however, could probably stand to think and learn more about it though…
Great thoughts, Laura. In addition to the issue of balancing the types of food we eat, the issues of how those foods are brought to our table are also worthy of discussion, issues such as organic and free-range farming vs. large factory farming. Those issues themselves are complicated by the fact that whatever are good ways of growing produce and animals need to be scalable to feed the majority of people i.e. they need to be affordable to the poor. For example can we really grow enough food to feed the world organically only. I think the hardest thing really is that we need to retrain the way we look at food and how much meat for example we should eat. If we ate less meat, I think we would have the wherewithal to produce it more humanely and to perhaps to produce vegetables more organically. This all, of course, is every bit as hard as training ourselves to think differently about fossil fuel consumption, materialism, etc. Just as with any type of social change (even the more overtly moral ones) change comes by one life being transformed at a time. Wow, it all looks like such an uphill struggle, in society, not to speak of simply in my own life.
“Being a Christian means being different. Get over it.” (from http://www.catapultmagazine.com/top-ten-2/feature/how-to-be-a-Christian-for-real) Not to dismiss your fear of outsiderness and having to explain decisions that can be very difficult to explain to someone who hasn’t taken the same path you have, but you’re not alone on this path. Even a lot of the college students Rob and I work with are looking at food issues more intentionally in the context of faith. And many of them (including ourselves) deal with tension and misunderstanding as a result of making an unpopular choice, particularly with families, who maybe get the feeling that the choices they’ve made intentionally or unintentionally aren’t good enough for us. There’s no easy resolution to that tension. A bit more encouragement:
“In this life we cannot do great things. We can only do small things with great love.” (Mother Theresa–you’ve probably heard that one, but it’s always a good reminder)
“Everyone who ever lived took the lives of other animals, pulled plants, plucked fruit, and ate. Primary people have had their own ways of trying to understand the precept of nonharming. They knew that taking life required gratitude and care. There is no death that is not somebody’s food, no life that is not somebody’s death. Eating is a sacrament. The grace we say clears our hearts… Innumerable little seeds are sacrifices to the food-chain. A parsnip in the ground is a marvel of living chemistry, making sugars and flavors from earth, air, water. And if we do eat meat, it is the life, the bounce, of a great alert being with keen ears and lovely eyes that we eat, let us not deceive ourselves.
We too will be offerings – we are all edible.” (Gary Snyder, The Practice of the Wild)
“Eating with the fullest pleasure — pleasure, that is, that does not depend on ignorance — is perhaps the profoundest enactment of our connection with the world. In this pleasure we experience and celebrate our dependence and our gratitude, for we are living from mys-tery, from creatures we did not make and powers we cannot comprehend.” (Wendell Berry)