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

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.

Talking about love

As if I didn't have enough books demanding attention. This one looks like it could be well worth savoring.

http://www.americamagazine.org/content/article.cfm?article_id=3289

I was especially struck by this paragraph from the book review:

Thomas Aquinas explained how differences in closeness and worthiness justify different degrees of love--for, say, a sinful parent and for a virtuous stranger. By contrast, Luther says that Christian love for others should be independent of their worth. The epitome of Christian love, for Thomas, was friendship for God, whereas Luther emphasized obedience to God’s word. While Thomas made self-love central, Luther considered it sinful.

I'm not familiar (yet) with the nuances being summarized here. Luther seems right that Christian love should be independent of the worth of the beloved. While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us and all that.

However, there are differences of roles and relationship and to overlook that seems inhuman. A Christian may well owe a duty to starving children in Africa, but it is very different from the duty owed by a Christian parent to their own children. Any moral system which does not recognize this difference is simply out of line with humanity.

I love Thomas's emphasis on friendship for God. Obedience is very important. Obedience is how we learn to develop a friendship for God, but simple obedience is far from the end goal.

And then there's the issue of self-love. So often we hear about "self-love" and think of narcissism and arrogance. And so often we label our own narcissism as "self-love", which does not help matters. However, it seems to me that the two could not be further apart, and so much sin comes not from an excessive self-love but from the lack of it.

After all, I am the beloved of God! As a follower of God, I ought to love what God loves. And God loves me. God loves a whole lot else, of course, but God definitely loves me. How can I do otherwise? And when I recognize that, what else do I need? I don't need to be the center of attention. I don't need to puff myself up. When I don't know God's love for me, and don't love myself, then I will fall into narcissism.