Leviticus meditations: Burritos, holiness, and really long meetings

So, I'm at a meeting last night and dinner is provided. Unsurprisingly, it did not occur to our amazingly organized meeting coordinator to provide a Levitically sanctioned meal, much less my "meat is only acceptable if it comes from tree hugger hippie chickens (or cows or sheep) who spent their animal lives holding hands and skipping around a pasture" approach to Torah, which leaves me going vegetarian except occasionally for meat I prepare myself. Usually at these things, there's some sort of vegetarian something so I didn't think to give her a heads-up, but not this time. Uh oh. Now what? These meetings are LONG -- I didn't particularly want to wait until I got home.

When I adopt dietary Lenten disciplines, my rule is always "this is what I do when I'm making my own food choices." So if I'm abstaining from meat, which I do sometimes, that applies if food is coming from my own kitchen, or if I'm out at a restaurant and can choose from a menu. But if I'm someone else's guest I do what I can do gracefully, but otherwise eat what's put in front of me and don't worry about it. So I took the same approach here and grabbed a chicken burrito. Chicken is a clean animal, there's no blood, it'll have to do.

Upon further reflection, with a full tummy, this was a mistake. Torah makes no provisions for "do this unless it's awkward or uncomfortable or seems somehow rude." If these prohibitions just don't work with the way you live your life, change the way you live your life. Come out and be ye separate. So, if waiting until I got home wasn't a good option, I should have run across the street and gotten something meatless to eat -- even though that would have left our amazingly competent meeting organizer, who did absolutely nothing wrong here, feeling awkward and uncomfortable. That should not be my concern.

Now, here's my problem. I really don't want to do that. And while my tree-hugger hippie approach to eating meat does have a moral dimension, a lot of these prohibitions do not -- they're being separate largely for the sake of being separate. As my Consultant told me the other day, being a "holy nation" is not the same as being a "righteous nation." Israel is supposed to be both, but they're not the same concept, and most of Leviticus is far more about holiness. I have no trouble standing out from the pack when it comes to righteousness (theoretically -- I make no bold claims about my actual track record on the subject). I want my lifestyle to look different. I want to handle money differently. I want to treat people as ends rather than means. I want to recognize myself as God's beloved creation, and when I know that, then chasing after status and acclaim seems pretty ridiculous. If I live that way, I'll look plenty different. But all of that is about righteousness, which is a different question. Separation for separation's sake continues to grate.