FOOD & GOD
Truth of ALL Truths
If ever I feel alone, defeated, or disconnected, I can tune in to nature through food and find my way back to my truth of all truths: that God is everywhere and that Nature is God and it is alive and kicking all around us.
A Catholic Start
We grew up Catholic, going to church every Sunday, taking catechism classes after school, and repenting our sins to a priest every other week. This not only did a number on my confidence, but it also screwed up my understanding of god. I felt judged, scared, and unworthy after all of the sinning I did in my high school years.
At some point, I decided that the whole god thing was not for me. Screw heaven and hell; I was over it. Instead, I wanted to live in the now, to live my life in the best way that I could, and to be ok with the person that I was. I knew that I learned from my mistakes … that I became more compassionate with every wrong turn. I would stop looking to and looking for God for approval and forgiveness.
A Re-Emergence
One day God re-emerged in one of the most unexpected places: my kitchen. As a chef, I had been making the same foods day after day, over and over. The redundancy was maddening at times, but the kitchen environment was filled with camaraderie and music, and had kept me engaged and excited enough to continue.
One day, while cleaning hard winter squash for the tenth time that week, I contemplated, “How could there be starving people in the world with all of these seeds? These seeds alone can create almost 100 new squash; and then their seeds can create 10,000 squash; and their seeds can create 1,000,000 squash; and ... all from this one squash!”
The Perfection of Food
I started really noticing the perfection of food – how every tomato of the same species looks different but has the same basic structure, just like us. What also struck me deeply and brought me back to the “God in all things” was learning about what grows indigenously at a certain elevations and how those plants support our physical needs at those elevations.
Deeply hydrating, water rich fruits and cooling aloe vera grow in the warmest climates. Spicy herbs and foods also grow in warm climates and, when eaten, promote sweating and thus cooling of the body. Lung supportive herbs such as osha grow high in the Rocky Mountains. Rhodiola, which helps push blood to muscles and brain thereby allowing bodies to function in the highest of elevations, grows in the Himalayan Mountains. The correlation was both obvious and mind blowing.
The Revitalization of God
I had found God through food of all things! God was not the judgmental, scary, male being that had made me fear and question my worth. God was instead the all-loving, selfless energy that lives in all things including us. Life is a synchronistic miracle that supports each and every one of us in every way if we open to it. Food is just one example but is one that brought me to a deeper understanding of ultimate love and what I see as god energy.
The God energy that I find in food is not specific to humans either; it supports all animals and living organisms. Animals, in their natural environment, only eat what they need and generally find that everything they need is available to them. Indigenous cultures often understand and honor this connection more so than we do in our culture. Unfortunately, I think that many have so bastardized our relationship to food that we forget the true miracle of food in Nature. We forget that it exists in the most loving and nourishing way … that it is selfless love and it is all around us.
FROM THE HEART ~
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