With the abundance of summer growth
this is an opportune time of year
to practice what we’ve been learning:
that Earth and humans benefit
by eating less meat
(using it, as Thomas Jefferson advised,
as a condiment rather than the main course)
and eating lots more vegetables.
And so our guests
at Turtle Rock Farm
are eating Gazpacho
grilled vegetables with pasta
tapanade made with eggplant and chick peas
corn and black bean salad
wheat salad
lentil salad
potato and green bean salad
pizza with grilled vegetables
fruit sorbets.
We eat many vegetables and herbs from our garden
or the gardens of other Oklahomans
through the Oklahoma Food Coop
or directly from the farmers themselves,
like the honey we get from Everett.
As guests eat fresh vegetables
seasoned with fresh herbs
they exclaim what a joy it is to eat this way
and when they are leaving
after a day or two,
they tell us, “And I feel so healthy!”
There’s not the slightest feeling that they were deprived
or had to sacrifice.
Rather, they have a joyful experience at the table.
One of the books we’ve read recently
is Sharing Food by Shannon Jung.
Our health and Earth’s health
and all of creation’s health
are interdependent, writes Jung.
Our dependence on air, on water, on food, on each other and on God is integral to health and bodily well-being. Acknowledging and living in support of all life is essential to honoring our individual bodies, which are only relatively individual. Our health depends on the health of others. Only for a time could we suppose the validity of ‘apartheid thinking’ whereby one sector of life benefits at another’s expense. Indeed, all life is related. The quality of the air we breathe, the meat or fruit we eat, the chemical content of the water, the life-giving or life-destroying quality of our relationships with others – how could we not suppose that these were part of our health? Rebecca Todd Peters indicates the way a person’s health and communal health are integral to reach other. ‘Post colonials recognize…a moral universe in which individual actions are understood to have communal effect – for good or ill – and in which the well-being of the community is taken into consideration before individual decisions are made.’
The reality of a shalom creation, in which all beings have a role to play in the well-being of each other, and the future goal of restoring such a shalom express a mutuality of interdependence. We are to strive for justice for all because all are God’s beloved creatures. Honoring the body is a way to get in touch with God’s goodness and the sustaining of life.
It is no wonder
that while eating less meat
creates a healthier planet,
our bodies get healthier as well.
