Food & Justice

Justice. Economic Justice. Social Justice. Food Justice. Sustainability. "Justice by health."

I've been thinking about the way life has happened, how without knowing it I've been led (as Wendell Berry said)-- and the journey continues. There is so much to learn, and whole systems of lifestyle and thought that have been wrong and need to change, and those processes will take time. Time is something I'm not good at appreciating, slow, steady, consistent change lacks the luster and appeal of dramatic radical revolution.

I feel like my life is that game where you draw all the dots on the page, then start drawing in lines one at a time, till eventually you're connecting boxes. At the end you fill your initial into the box and it's completed. It's wonderful when those lines of connection are drawn, when the shape begins to emerge. In my life however, most of the lines are still floating waiting for life and time to draw out the way they go together.

The most recent etching is local food, sustainability, and the way it plays into justice. "400 gallons of oil a year per citizen" are used in the agriculture industry, second only to the use of energy in vehicles-- and the ecological processes are often overlooked as well. We've master corn and soy (or have they mastered us?), we now produce such an excess of them that we feed it to our food, use it in meat & other products, ship it out in US AID, we dump it in foreign markets making it impossible for small-scale farmers (especially in the developing world) to compete with corporate prices. If Americans replaced one meal a day with local grown foods, oil consumption would be cut by 1.1 Million barrels of oil a week. It takes 2,460 gallons of water to produce 1 lb. of beef. If you went beef-free just one day each week you would save 34,000 gallons of water a year.

And the food we eat is hurting us. This is the first generation to be predicted to have a shorter life span than our parents. The highest amount of child diabetes and obesity, and most diseases in the US are preventable with a healthy diet/exercise. "We're overfed and under-nourished." Re-imaging how we eat. There's so many books (that I haven't read yet)-- so much to learn. But I'm excited about beginning this- and the nearby lines it connects to of justice, community, simplicity, peace, health, freedom, sustainability. And, of course... "once we move away from toxic foods we rediscover our taste buds."

"It's actually our farmers who grow our medicine." - Beth Ingram

Everything can feel like a fight, like things we don't want to do. "Gardening can be a way of resisting/divesting from the dominant destructive system. It's a constructive, positive approach toward making change." - Tom Beniveto.

The subversiveness of eating local, eating healthy... revolution by planting... it makes you have to smile.

we mingle in the dust

I've been taking walks every night lately, that movement, the rhythm of my feet on pavement, it's almost involuntary-- a need really. Moonlight, mist, chill, droplets off the ends of branches, the conviction that everything matters.

I am struggling, to know what direction to go in. I know what classes I chose next semester, who I chose to be around, what I'm involved in... all of it matters so much-- all of it shapes me and determines where my life goes. All of it has eternal weight. And that builds this ever present stress in me-- what am I choosing, how do I know what to choose, how do I know where God is... how do I piece together the contrary thoughts in my life and the recognition of my past-- thoughts that have changed so much when I once would have sworn they were RIGHT. TRUTH.

This semester has been good in so many ways-- becoming who I want to be and pursuing things I want to do... but, I feel this pressure, not to know the future- but to make right decisions in the present, to define where I am, what I value, and what it is that my heart is needing... to know how to follow Jesus and the gospel. Yet I am so sick of all the jargon and rituals and superficiality of church and the way it's practiced. I want to do, not think... I have longed all my life to be deep awake, to be alive. And, I feel like the only choice is, in a sense, to be radical ... or not to believe. "lukewarm spitting." And to be radical I mean, if I believe it- it is a lifestyle, ... the gospel, the sermon on the mount, the pursuit of God, the denial of myself, actually loving and serving others, actually prioritizing my time around living the incarnation... and maybe this inner stress is really just the confrontation of my heart's laziness. It's been good to read the Bible with RYR lately. And to send out deep sea soundings to distant friends and hear their hearts echoed back. [Thank you.]

red dust on my suitcase, roots dangling in hand

I've made friends and once again some of those friends are heading off with pieces of my heart embedded. Life must have been much simpler before airplanes and trains and all the machines that carry friends afar. I don't understand why there is this constant uprooting (even when I settle myself to be settled) but it's alright.

"Life is a journey from the house of fear to the house of love."

Tonight I was having one of those times where you want to throw a tantrum at life. The pressure of thoughts building up, of knowing that things matter, but not knowing how to make those decisions.

home

you think you will remember, you think you could not forget.

Pet

[a short story]

I stand at the window, wringing my hands. Out in the yard the dog is stalking a bird along the fence line. It always fascinated me, the way his body tensed, every muscle poised for the aim of possession. He’s a machine, ready to spring, to strike and yet so patient watching—as if time could lie down and beg at his paws. The power in that stance, it was the way I first saw you. I wanted to be absorbed by a power like that.

Your desire was intoxicating. I tattooed my skin with that want; the strength it feed into my veins was a drug. The way your glance owned me, controlled me, dictated the way I flicked my hair, moved my eyes to meet yours. I wanted that want, which was a weakness you uncovered. And the more I loved, the more it fueled your power over me. I didn’t understand then, couldn’t have—or so I naively attempt to justify my youth, to transmit bravery where there was only ignorance and blindness. I didn’t know, that freedom was not losing myself in you, to you. That freedom was not possession anymore than drowning in a sea is freedom.

The dog lurches into the bush, I see the fluttering wings, the desperate attempts at freedom. And I can imagine the teeth piercing through her breast, the crunching of hollow bones, the popping gush of warm, damp blood. I cannot imagine the rush of that domination, the Godlike power of taking life, of deciding fate. I know why you crave it. I don’t blame you.

I stand at the window and examine the dish in my hands. How many times have my hands cradled this fragile glass and my mind raced to its destruction? The ability to shatter it, to lift it and hurl it across the room builds in me with adrenaline. It’s a hysteric, chaotic force—power. But I reined it in, perhaps that was my weakness. You conjured the colors to the surface of my skin with your hands, called my voice out of my mouth. And instead of hating you I loved you the more for your possession of the courage I lacked. But no, that wasn’t love; it was something else, a blurry line between admiration and horror. Fear. Like my Sunday schoolteacher talked about trusting in God. I swallowed that lesson too easily. Love and fear… she was so wrong.

The plate is cracked anyway. For all the days I stood grasping it so tightly, straining it. It began as a fracture, a tiny crack in the surface. But with each increasing pressure it breaks into little fissures, spreading like spider webs underneath, invisible lines of breaking. I am sure one day I will hold it and it will dissolve in my hands. But that is not the finale I would like, there is less satisfaction in slow decay then the hurling. Is that why you always pushed harder? Where you trying to prove your strength, your superiority, or was it that you too were taught the wrong lessons?

The dog is running to the back door, scratching to be let in. Eyes warm and brown and endless, and there are pale soft feathers curled in his gum, blood crusted on the hairs near his mouth. Why didn’t I see that, the first time I looked at you? I push him away angrily. A few months ago I would not have wept over the death of a bird, but I feel the liquid rolling into my eyes like the flash floods in this valley. He does not understand the disdain towards his accomplishment, his nature. He sulks.

The melody of that bird used to greet me in the strawberry blonde strands of sunrise, snuffed out. It is too much, too close to home. I set the plate down and saunter across the linoleum, my jaw set in determination.

I pull out my suitcase. But those eyes bore into me, pleading, infinitely melancholy and apologetic. It’s only his nature. I sink to the cool tile floor and he muzzles my shoulder, drops his head into my lap, my hand involuntarily moves to stroke him. Forgiveness of the unrepentant, another lesson I swallowed to easily, learned wrongly. Again I find myself waiting for you.

29/24

exhale. inhale. exhale. inhale.

a simple pattern that guarantees living. I'm not sure where I'm at right now, or what this journey is.

they say something, some line, about days like this.

I tip my head down, eyes refusing to meet theres

I stick my hands deep in my pockets as if I could find some reserve of strength there,

some lost memory of myself, like a wrinkled receipt, like a cool copper penny

I wish my eyes had windshield wipers instead of lids to blink, eyelashes to flutter...

I would swoosh these visions off the side, they'd gather crunched into the bottom

and I would swipe them off

I would drive through birds and storms and wires

freedom

I do not want peace.

I want freedom.

libertas.

you said it so elegantly. you said it so plainly.

that I wanted to swallow it.

coughing up my heart as I do, too often.

swallow it, as I wish to swallow the moon.

on a day like this. I'd crunch on the glory of fallen leaves, wet slicked to the ground

and call forth a million ghosts to haunt my head. memory.

i want to belong. i want to belong somewhere else.

is it a hushed voice within me?

the holy dove with a broken wing.

faith.

laughter so loud, it clobbers down my spine making me shiver. I do not want to take part.

I imagine the fire escape, our voices trailing off into night and fog over that cold iron

wringing our hands, tapping our feet, so many noises to fit the space where our words could go

and I couldn't say... why I cried over that movie, over the scene where they smile.

but it seemed they were taking in their hands the freedom I yearn for,

and it broke, like a dam inside me, to envy them so, to reach so... stretching like a yoga pose

years, where will I be, where will you go?

all the old metaphors, they pop and simmer like ashes departing from a fire, floating.

worn edges.

the end of being proud.

stand apart, stand alone, but ask. speak.

resurrection

I've been silent here while life shifted and changed a million directions.

But now, perhaps it is time for words again.

There are things worth remembering. Conversations and seemingly inconsequential moments of revelation that may reshape my self if I pay them due attention.

So, words will begin again.

My time in Africa was like a deep breath in, a cherished silence I held in without the ability to exhale or express... and it still feels like that, a weight inside my chest, a bird perched on a branch with wrestling wings, about to take flight into something.

and now I am back at university, "back" and here for the first time really.