Lesson 2: Killing and eating

 In this lesson, Daniel talked about the reality of believing that the category of non-human person encompasses plants and fungi. His voice is so soft and manner so gentle that it cushions the impact of his words which are: to live is to kill. We eat the bodies of other beings in order to power our life. So, in a way, it does not matter if you are eating cousin Rabbit or cousin Kale - they are both people and both give their lives for your sustenance. To presume to create hierarchies of worthiness (eating animals is killing but eating plants is not) is a mental dodge to escape the uncomfortable truth that we live because others die. He also invited us to understand that our relationship with our food is not a one way street and the fact that the plant and animal others die for us to consume is a fact without moral judgement inherent in it. It is human-centered thinking to assume that humans are always the ones choosing the relationship and that the relationship is always us exploiting them. For example, Michael Pollan, in Omnivore's Dilemma, pointed out that wheat, corn, and other plants have partnered and made themselves attractive to humans and become wildly successful at propagating themselves across the world through us. 

Daniel's exercise for this week was to sit with something from our refrigerator and to drop into meditative openness to try and connect with the spirit of the food. I tried to squelch my inner skeptic (commune with FOOD?) and chose an orange. While I didn't get what I would call a direct connection with the "spirit" of the orange, as I sat with it in my hand, it made me think deeply of the sun and water that is present in the orange. The sweetness hiding inside the bitter rind and the way the tree may use that sweetness to be attractive to us. As I sat there and contemplated the round heaviness of the orange, so perfectly juicy and sweet, it made me think about how much we take our food for granted. I have always struggled with emotional eating, not quite binge eating but definitely close. It occurred to me as I cradled the orange in my hands, that my fraught relationship with food might be alleviated if I treated the food that I got as a gift to be respected, rather than something to mindlessly consume to cover unpleasant emotions. I further realized that it is more about the HOW of food production rather than WHAT the food is that I'm consuming. Respectful production is not factory farming or pesticide heavy monocultural agriculture. 

As I saw with the orange, I felt deeply that my respect for the beings we use as food was lacking. When I rejected Christianity, I also rejected the practice of saying grace before meals. Looking at my food through the lens of an honored gift, outside of any question of God, it seems appalling that I do not think to even take a basic and short moment to honor that gift. The fact that it is so hard to institute that basic pause to respect the source of our food highlights to me that this is going to be a long journey toward a different relationship with the beings in the world. My ingrained and reflexive aversion to spiritual gestures will be difficult to reset but I can start with a pause and a respectful word before I begin to consume the others who nourish me.