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Food - A Sacred Gift
Food is any nourishing substance that is eaten, drunk, or otherwise taken into the body to sustain life, provide energy, promote growth etc. It is usually of plant or animal origin, and contains essential nutrients, such as carbohydrates, fats, proteins, vitamins, or minerals. The substance is ingested by an organism and assimilated by the organism’s cells.
Today, most of the food energy consumed by the world population is supplied by the food industry, which is operated by multinational corporations that use intensive farming and industrial agriculture to maximize system output.
Today, most of the food energy consumed by the world population is supplied by the food industry, which is operated by multinational corporations that use intensive farming and industrial agriculture to maximize system output.
Food - A Sacred Gift, A Blessing From Beyond
Ask any child where their food comes from, and the chances are he or she will say the supermarket.
And most adults don’t know a lot more about how food ends up on their plate either.
In our concrete, day-to-day experience it seldom comes to our awareness that our food is a gift, a blessing from beyond. This is so because all food originates from reproducing plant life – life that God created. It takes water, air and sunlight for plants to grow, elements that are also created and regulated by God. The animals that become our food are dependent on this same plant life, air, water, and sunlight.
The divine source of our food is hidden from us by modes of production, packaging and distribution. The food we eat is 13 manufactured in factories, bakeries and dairies or comes to us in trimmed bunches of produce without blemish.
Also, the divine source of our food is hidden from us by a consumer attitude of entitlement. It doesn’t matter to us where food comes from because we deserve it; food is our right. Food is something we buy with our hard-earned money.
Food comes to us as a natural result of our hard work. To say food is a gift is to denigrate the efforts of our hard work and that of people in the food industry who labor in the fields, factories and retail sector to provide our food. We do not see food as a gift. Given the framework of the Western worldview and socioeconomic system, which places high currency on “individual rights,” saying “food is a right” seems so politically correct.
In our economy it is by attributing rights to people that we acknowledge they are valued as human beings. In our economy the highest human values are enshrined as rights. We claim food as a right, and in our best charity we attribute that right to everyone.
Traditional societies had a much more spiritual understanding
of food than we have in today’s culture, where the Darwinian
evolutionary ideas cloud our understanding.
Moreover, we live in a mortal economy, where food has been treated as a weapon, as a commodity. The truth is that food is a gift from the Creator, a blessing so that we may all live.
Every once in a while, something happens and the reality of a higher control bursts into our awareness. The trappings of our society and economy are stripped away. Then we see our daily food for what it is, a sacred gift of life.
And most adults don’t know a lot more about how food ends up on their plate either.
In our concrete, day-to-day experience it seldom comes to our awareness that our food is a gift, a blessing from beyond. This is so because all food originates from reproducing plant life – life that God created. It takes water, air and sunlight for plants to grow, elements that are also created and regulated by God. The animals that become our food are dependent on this same plant life, air, water, and sunlight.
The divine source of our food is hidden from us by modes of production, packaging and distribution. The food we eat is 13 manufactured in factories, bakeries and dairies or comes to us in trimmed bunches of produce without blemish.
Also, the divine source of our food is hidden from us by a consumer attitude of entitlement. It doesn’t matter to us where food comes from because we deserve it; food is our right. Food is something we buy with our hard-earned money.
Food comes to us as a natural result of our hard work. To say food is a gift is to denigrate the efforts of our hard work and that of people in the food industry who labor in the fields, factories and retail sector to provide our food. We do not see food as a gift. Given the framework of the Western worldview and socioeconomic system, which places high currency on “individual rights,” saying “food is a right” seems so politically correct.
In our economy it is by attributing rights to people that we acknowledge they are valued as human beings. In our economy the highest human values are enshrined as rights. We claim food as a right, and in our best charity we attribute that right to everyone.
Traditional societies had a much more spiritual understanding
of food than we have in today’s culture, where the Darwinian
evolutionary ideas cloud our understanding.
Moreover, we live in a mortal economy, where food has been treated as a weapon, as a commodity. The truth is that food is a gift from the Creator, a blessing so that we may all live.
Every once in a while, something happens and the reality of a higher control bursts into our awareness. The trappings of our society and economy are stripped away. Then we see our daily food for what it is, a sacred gift of life.
Commodification Of Our Eating
Scanning and dropping packages in a Walmart basket is rarely occasioned with reflection upon one’s place in the universe. The commodification of our eating has eliminated the empathy between consumers and consumed. Chemically nurtured and internationally distributed monocropping has robbed farmers of their connection with the rhythms of the soil and their relationship with the divine nature. Mass-produced and nutritionally bankrupt diets have broken the social ties of traditional cuisine. And the subjugation of meal-time to our commutes has eliminated the occasion to reflect upon and feel gratitude for this great gift of life.
In traditional societies, they treated this gift with respect due such a life-giving substance. Farmers considered Earth to be mother and farming to be a sacred act of worship. They sang and prayed for the rain and acknowledged their place in the cycles of nature. Animals were not treated as bags of flesh but their sacrifice was respected and their spirits revered.
Cooking was sanctified and communities defined themselves in terms of their diets. Ceremonies and rituals were observed to bind people together through food. And the final act of eating was sanctified as prayers were spoken and bread was broken and friends and families fed their living with a sense of gratitude.
As these relationships and connections began to be displaced by commerce and greed, the sacred was squeezed out of our food system from the outside in.
Cooking was sanctified and communities defined themselves in terms of their diets. Ceremonies and rituals were observed to bind people together through food. And the final act of eating was sanctified as prayers were spoken and bread was broken and friends and families fed their living with a sense of gratitude.
As these relationships and connections began to be displaced by commerce and greed, the sacred was squeezed out of our food system from the outside in.
“The shared meal elevates eating from a mechanical process of fueling the body to a ritual of family and community, from the mere animal biology to an act of culture.”
~ Michael Pollan