Mystery and Miracle

We have 4 chickens. These are the eggs they lay for us.
Every day it blows my mind. Every time it's a miracle.

Rooster

This was our family's first experience in slaughtering an animal for food. The 2yr old golden rooster was a gift from Ryan and Bonnie Marsh. Thanks friends!

Wendell Berry says...

...the Food System is firmly grounded on the following principles:

• Food is important mainly as an article of international trade.
• It doesn't matter what happens to farmers.
• It doesn't matter what happens to the land.
• Agriculture has nothing to do with "the environment."
• There will always be plenty of food, for if farmers don't grow it from the soil, then scientists will invent it.
• There is no connection between food and health. People are fed by the food industry, which pays no attention to health, and are healed by the health industry, which pays no attention to food.
• It follows that there is no connection between healing and health. Hospitals customarily feed their patients poor-quality, awful-tasting, factory-made expensive food and keep them awake all night with various expensive attentions. There is a connection between money and health.

Wendell Berry (Sex, Economy, Freedom & Community, 1994).

i want this life

somehow i stumbled across nicole's blog and foto stream this morning and found myself in a restful world. i have no context for this person and of course we all craft images of ourselves online, "controlled" perceptions if you will- but the lifestyle portrayed in the photographs evokes a sense of intentionality, nurture, creativity and care that i long for. at any rate, browsing them was sabbath experience and for a moment i thought i lived on wendell berry's farm.

eating: an industrial or agricultrual act?

Wendell Berry, amongst many other amazing things, is an intentional sustenance farmer whose essays I've recently fallen in love with. He offers a thoughtful critique of the urban consumer for whom food is an abstract thought. “The industrial eater is, in fact, one who does not know that eating is an agricultural act, who no longer knows or imagines the connections between eating and the land,” who has become passive, uncritical and dependent. He goes on to say, "Both eater and eaten are thus in exile from biological reality. And the result is a kind of solitude, unprecedented in human experience, in which the eater may think of eating as, first, a purely commercial transaction between him and a supplier and then as a purely appetitive transaction between him and his food." I look forward to reading some of his poetry and novels. Do you have a favorite Berry poem or novel?

Quotes from "The Pleasures of Eating," in What Are People For? (New York: North Point Press, 1990), 146, 148.
Photo credit: Bryan Schutmaat

"Village Pet Store And Charcoal Grill" by banksy

the first week in october witnessed the latest genre-diversion (animatronics!?!) masterpiece by elusive street artist, banksy- the "Village Pet Store And Charcoal Grill" ... a mini film released recently was created to document the details. playful, creative, subversive... love it! (see also- bbc).

food, the meal & the life of the world

the fruit of the evening: the next 12 pages will take less time than the intro and thesis...

Everyone eats but only within the last century has food choice become such an overwhelming yet quotidial reality for so many people. Whereas, historically and still in some parts of the world, people ate traditional recipes prepared with local ingredients we now experience the hyper accessibility of diverse cuisines and ranges of food quality that creates a double consumption: we are marketed to as consumers before we consume anything into our bodies. To avoid complete paralysis in the grocery store, we become passive in our food “choices” by eating essentially what we have been conditioned to crave. After half a century of processing the life right out of our food, society is slowly waking up to the physical and emotional health issues that now plague us because of our eating habits. More recently we are beginning to consider the disastrous implication of our meals upon our planet. Increasingly, we are becoming aware of the connection between our diet and the life of the world.
In this paper I will examine Orthodox Eucharistic theology, which extends beyond the liturgical practice of communion to a sacramental presence of the church in the world. To the extent that this is true, meal-times become an extension of the Table of the Lord and are the space for the practice of eating habits that engage the life of the world. The practical movement out of this work is a call to theologically informed eating that brings life and health to our bodies and souls, families and communities, systems and planet. We are what we eat.