For the beauty of the earth

So yesterday my friend Hannah and I piled in the car and toodled up to Carver Hill Orchard where we picked peaches and blueberries. We got a little lost along the way, due to Massachusetts' strange abhorrence of street signs, but only a little.

We were the only people there. It is out of the way, and it was a Tuesday after all, so I was not expecting the place to be mobbed but I never anticipated that we'd have the place to ourselves. What a treat!

The house I grew up in had an abundant garden, but we moved from there when I was about fifteen and since then my parents have had a few tomato and pepper plants but that's it. And of course I've been in various apartments and condominimums for the last several years, where I have neither the space, time, or inclination to cultivate a garden. Food comes from the grocery store. They may have a workroom in the back concocting the stuff for all I know. This summer I have been delighted to have a CSA share, which is a little different, but still food comes from a box I pick up on someone's porch.

But my goodness there is something about seeing these plants coming forth from the earth, laden with blessings. Thanksgiving and praise welled up within me.

Now the question arises, would I have the same reaction to string beans and broccoli? Perhaps not to the same extent. Yet there is something quite wonderful about a God who celebrates in creating peaches and strawberries.

Food and Friends and Faith

So it seems like every time I turn around these days I come across something else talking about our overscheduled, overproductive culture and tying that to our eating habits.

Short version: Our lives are generally insane. Everything comes prepackaged and corporatized and disconnected from the natural order, which is bad for us, bad for the environment, and inherently unsustainable. It makes us sick and miserable and yet we keep doing it.

How can we stop the crazy and generally live better lives?

Well, the Slow Food movement says, let's start with how we eat. Instead of looking for food that is faster, let's slow down the process. Let's have soups that simmer on the stove rather than get poured out from a can. Let's eat around a table with family and friends rather than in the car zipping from Point A to Point B. Let's be more connected with the natural rhythms of the seasons rather than always shipping everything all over the globe. Let's have our food be about culture and tradition and community and joy rather than simply ingesting nutrients.

And, let's have our food be about God. The slow foodies don't say this in so many words, but they should. Let's appreciate God's gracious and extravagant creation. Let us be bound together around a common table.

This idea of heritage and sharing meals should be especially resonant for us Christians who regularly gather around the communion table. I recently came across an article which drew some of these ideas together.

http://www.christianitytoday.com/le/2008/003/6.65.html

Leviticus: We are famous!

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2008/august/13.30.html

Reading the comments is fascinating.

Planning future road trips

So, since I moved to Boston, I've always gotten home to Dayton, Ohio via airplane. It's a 14-hour drive, which is an awful lot to do solo, and if you break it up into two days then you have to pay for lodging and more meals, and well flying just makes sense.

However, my friends are doing an admirable job of buying homes along various points of I-90. This could change things significantly. I now or will soon have friends to see in Cortland NY, Meadville, PA, and Youngstown, OH, all of which would break up the trip into manageable segments and none of which would add much to the total driving time. Hey, if I stopped at all three it would add about another two hours to the drive, and I wouldn't stop at all three on one leg.

Hmmm ...

Giving thanks for Creation's bounty

So, my church friends know that remembering to say grace before meals is, ummm, not one of my strong points. To put it mildly. Everyone grows up doing some things and not doing others. This is not a practice that was a regular part of my family's life, and trying to introduce it later always felt forced and awkward.

I have also gotten more interested in food recently. I’ve paid some attention to ethical growing conditions, sustainability, etc. for several years now but over December I got stuck in an airport for most of the day and read through The Omnivore’s Dilemma. Now I got a lot more interested, specifically with regard to animal products. I haven’t gotten regular-old grocery store meats since.

This was happening at the same time as Project Leviticus but I tried to write it up a couple times and my posts ended up being “The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Abridged” with a shake of “Oh and there are a bunch of agricultural laws in Torah and I’m sure this is in the same spirit somehow.” Rigorous exegesis this is not. Although there ARE a bunch of agricultural laws in Torah, which I figure are fundamentally about respecting the Creator through respecting Creation, and I AM sure this is in the same spirit somehow.

I had been interested in getting a CSA share for a while now but it hasn’t really been feasible as a singleton. This year I have some friends who wanted to share it with me, so we signed up for a vegetable share and a meat share (different farms). The veggies have been coming for about six weeks and we recently got our first meat share.

Given the Massachusetts growing season, it wasn’t all that interesting at first. Lotsa lettuces. Some bok choi. Beets. But now in mid to late July things are getting a lot more fun, and it's become more possible to make meals out of my CSA bounty.

And recently I’ve prepared a few group meals, mostly (though not entirely) from CSA sources and shared with friends old and new and I tell you it has been delightful! Absolutely lovely. Now I always like cooking and sharing meals with friends, but the locally grown and responsibly produced element makes it even better. I feel so much more connected with the natural order of things, as if this is the way it is supposed to be.

And, especially interesting to me, beginning these meals with a prayer hasn't felt forced. It has felt quite natural.

What do we look for in church?

Some of my friends are in the process of finding a church home and so we were talking about what we look for in church. Why is church important?

One aspect that comes up a lot in these conversations is community. We want to find our "urban tribe" in church -- that network of interconnected relationships of people who celebrate together, support each other, create a sort of extended family.

We certainly all need networks like that. And certainly it would be strange indeed to isolate that circle of your nearest and dearest from those you worship with.

Still, that isn't what I expect a church to be. I've lived in my current city for almost six years and attended my current church for all but a few months of that time. My "urban tribe," such as it is, is heavily composed of people from that church, and most of the others attend similar churches. I realized this relatively recently and I find it disturbing. My other close friends -- that circle that is so close geography doesn't matter -- is heavily non-Christian.

If we think of church as an "urban tribe", then it seems to me we have two options. One option is that it is somehow inappropriate to be this close to non-Christians. Of course we should interact with people who don't always see the world in the same way -- but your nearest and dearest circle should be all Christian. I don't care for that option at all. The other option is that my dear friends who are Jews or Unitarians or whatever else are in fact part of my church. If that's the case then I think the word "church" has lost its meaning.

Another friend of mine was part of a large church body for a while but found the relational overload to be overwhelming. After you've been at a place for a while, you've been in a few different small groups, served on projects with a bunch of other people, the numbers add up quickly -- he couldn't maintain all those relationships. After trying a house church for a while he's currently just focusing on spending time with Christian friends, and is quite satisfied with this. I have a very strong sense that he's missing the point. Going out to dinner with Christian friends, talking about spiritual matters is all fine and good and valuable, but that's not what church IS.

Okay, then what IS church? If church isn't basically and fundamentally about relationships, what is it about? One option that comes to mind immediately is "well, it's fundamentally about the sacraments." That's part of it too -- but that were the basic fundamental point then I'd be hanging out with the Episcopalians or Lutherans, or maybe still the Catholics, not the Congregationalists.

So what is it? What is going on here? I realize that I have no clue and I find this fascinating. Thoughts?

What she said

The May 6, 2008 post, to be precise.

http://firstyearminister.blogspot.com/