Prayer After Eating
I have taken the light
that quickened eye and leaf.
May my brain be bright with praise
of what I eat, in the brief blaze
of motion and of thought.
May I be worthy of my meat.
Wendell Berry
Although this project is about veganism, I felt this poem was relevant. I didn't grow up in a home that prayed before meals. In fact, I've been fortunate, like many Americans, to take food for granted. I read a quote recently on Facebook - I can't remember it perfectly, or who said it, but it was something about how current generations haven't really experienced famine in living memory, so no wonder we are so weird about food. I don't know the veracity of this statement (my grandparents, who are still alive, lived through the Great Depression, and might possibly disagree), but I wonder if there isn't a kernel of truth in the idea.
In Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food, he points out how food science and nutrition have distracted people from the idea that we eat food. Instead, we think of ourselves as eating nutrients, and how this leads to enormous confusion about what to eat.
One thing that gardening can teach you is, growing food is work. Cooking is work. Both are pleasurable if you have the time, but are difficult to squeeze in when you are overworked, tired, busy, overwhelmed, juggling multiple responsibilities, just trying to get by. I can't speak for raising livestock or hunting, but I can imagine. (I know there is a whole other debate about how these ideas relate to feminism, but I'll save that for another post).
So, I wonder, has the confusion of science, combined with the distance from the work of making food (coupled with the accessibility of food industrialization for the busy person), and the speed at which we live, given us a lack of appreciation? Heck, do we have time to appreciate, or even taste our food sometimes? I, who for various reasons often has no choice but to eat at my desk at work, while still working, have to remind myself at other times to chew my food, taste it, breathe between bites.
This past week I've had a bit of break from my regular work schedule, and a chance to relax. My lovey husband has been taking me to places that serve amazing food, many of which focus on local food sources. First of all, I've remembered, or maybe re-learned, that when eating really good food, taking the time to taste each bite, it keeps the eater in the present. Mindful tasting centers the body and brain. Instead of my usual work situation when food is just gulped down, slowing down to eat, and eating fresh, local food, often leaves me relaxed and euphoric.
As I was eating, I was reminded that I was eating my local landscape. This is how an eater becomes part of the place they live, connected to it, intimately, as it literally makes the person. This is no new idea - in fact, pre-industrialization, there was no other way to live, I suppose.
Consider this: if your food is harvested from the side of a mountain, eating said food, you take the mountain, its soil and rain, into your body. You also take the energy of the sun, which travels through space for 92,960,000 miles to be absorbed by leaves. Think how eating those leaves, or eating something that ate those leaves, literally connects your body to the larger universe. Some may dismiss these ideas as being a bit out there, but I ask readers here to suspend skepticism for a moment. Eating food is a way energy is transferred - the way soil, water, sunlight are transformed into human endeavor. Consider this web of connections. Isn't that something to be grateful for?
