Humanity's Marriage with the Earth: Part III

Look in the archives for parts 1 and 2 of the series...parts 3b and 4 with the conclusion are coming soon!

Part IIIa: Good Soil

The stories, essays and poetry of Wendell Berry, Gary Snyder and Barbara Kingsolver take on an ecological nature, which are concerned with contemporary ecological sciences, persistently stressing, what scholar Harold Bush calls a “human cooperation with nature conceived as a dynamic, interrelated series of cyclic feedback systems (Bush 267).” While Romantic poets, such as Walt Whitman, were concerned with obtaining solitary inner peace with nature, the “eco-poets” are focused on the interdependent nature of the world, an imperative toward humility regarding the natural world (Bush 267), and an intense skepticism about rationalism and technology. In John Gatta’s study Making Nature Sacred, he argues that eco-poetry “denies the Romantic solitary's view of nature as a functionally private arena of self-transcendence" (Bush 271)”. The Romantics are only concerned with the anthropocentric human benefits of restoration but not the benefits to the biosphere. However, he does not deny that eco-poets do focus on transcendence, but it is not simply the transcendence of self. It is the transcendence to the world through transformation of the self’s heart and mind to sustain and maintain the planet.

The vision of today's eco-poets is to recover and rejuvenate humanity's almost-lost abilities to see nature as sacred. Berry’s “Window Poems” captures the heart of this endeavor, as it starts in Part I.-
Window. Window.
The wind’s eye
To see into the wind.
The eye in its hollow
Looking out
Through the black frame
At the waves the wind
Drives up the river,
Whitecaps, a wild day…

The symbol of the window represents the civilized eye looking out at the wild of the waves of wind driving up a river. Repeatedly through the 27 part poem, the window is given more characteristics, and his connection with nature becomes more sacred. The window, even though, it is an outlet to creation, also blocks the person, preventing them to see beyond themselves. The window onlooker watches a man who is working the land. In stanza six, there is a downpour of rain and the working man submits to the wetness, while the observer sits inside- “How sheltering and clear/ the window seems, the dry fireheat/ inside, and outside the gray/ downpour. As the man works/ the weather moves” (Collected Poems 77). “Window Poems” highlights the ways people try to fence God, under human control, like some domestic creature. In stanza 7, the man, a god symbol, comes inside, and the people react in initial fear, watching his eyes but fleeing from his sight when he looked up. Their fear turns into indifference when they realize he means no harm. “But they stay cautious/ of each other, half afraid unwilling/ to be too close. They snatch/ what they can carry and fly/ into the trees. They flirt out/ with tail or beak and waste/ more sometimes than they eat.” However this man’s greatness reflects his wild nature, which the observer was afraid of, but then ignored. Berry contends that God

is the wildest being in existence. The presence of His spirit in us is our wildness, our oneness with the wilderness of Creation.... it is why the poets of our tradition so often have given nature the role not only of mother or grandmother but of the highest earthly teacher and judge, a figure of mystery and greatpower (Bush 271).

The man, a wild farmer, knows the price of the seed, wishing these people would take more care. The people only understand what is free, and because of that, the man buys the seed, making it free, which is reflective of God’s salvation of humanity- giving a free gift to an ungrateful, apathetic species.

“Window poems” follows Gatta’s perception of eco-poetry, showing how the act of imagining nature as sacred is a co-creative act between place and person—it is to be discovered, possibly through hierophany, the physical manifestation of the holy, and possibly through imagination. But in order to experience hierophany in regards to nature and place, the human imagination must come alive. In Western culture, it is particularly difficult to open up the human imagination. The miracles we see are limited because we have a limited perception of God and an even more limited perception of how He interacts with Creation. Bush says this is where the work of poets comes in, helping us to perceive name nature as sacred, closing the gap between the secular and the sacred, the material and the spiritual (Bush 270). As Gatta declares, “the poetic imagination may require a perception of transcendence” (Bush 271).

The concept of good soil, in relation to place and salvation is pivotal in Biblical scripture. In Mark 4, Jesus delivers a parable to his followers, which perplexes his disciples:

Listen! A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seed fell along the path, and the birds came and devoured it. Other seed fell on rocky ground, where it did not have much soil, and immediately it sprang up, since it had no depth of soil. And when the sun rose it was scorched, and since it had no root, it withered away. Other seed fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded no grain. And other seeds fell into good soil and produced grain, growing up and increasing and yielding thirty fold and sixty fold and a hundredfold."

In this parable, place plays an important means. Seeds cannot simply flourish anywhere- not on a manmade path, nor on an unkempt piece of land ignored by humans, but in a field flourishing with life, tended and cared for by a farmer. When Jesus explains the story to his puzzled disciples, he draws on his metaphor that the people are the seeds to be planted. A close reading of this passage suggests that human beings as well as plants flourish best where sustainable agriculture is being practice- the place of marriage between human beings and the earth- a farm.

Place is means to experience hierophany. Snyder suggests that no one but the first Americans can bring us to experience this spiritual transcendence in the places we Americans inhabit (Snyder 70). After all, Native Americans had been practicing sacred unions to the earth for centuries. Native American agriculture has been passed on to the colonists, and it has helped the Europeans survive in America, ironically leading to their own dispersion and extinction of culture. Snyder says we have a lot to learn from exclusively the first Americans about our place. While we have a western white history of a hundred and fifty years, “we’re catching just the tip of an iceberg of forty or fifty thousand years of human experience, on this continent, in this place” (Folsom 220). Unbeknownst to ourselves, we have adopted some of their ways, names and beliefs at the same time we have been diluting and absorbing them (Folsom 221). In Snyder’s discourse, The Practice of the Wild, he reflects on living in Northern California:

My family and I have been living twenty years now on the land of the Sierra Nevada range of Northern California. These ridges and slopes are somewhat “wild” and not particularly “good.” The original people here, the Nisesan (or Southern Maidu) were almost entirely displaced or destroyed during the first decades of the gold rush. It seems there is no one left to teach us which places in this landscape were once felt to be “sacred”— though with time and attention, I think we will be able to feel and find them again (Snyder 78).

Bush, Harold K., Jr. "Wendell Berry, seeds of hope, and the survival of
creation." Christianity and Literature. 56.2 (Wntr 2007): 297(20). General OneFile. Gale. Christopher Newport University. 24 Feb.2008 .

Berry, Wendell. Collected Poems. San Francisco: North Point P, 1985. 148.

Literary Study Bible- English Standard Version. Mark 4:1-4:20. Crossway Bibles, 2007.

Snyder, Gary. The Practice of the Wild. Berkeley: Northpoint P, 1990.

Why we are taking food so seriously

Some may wonder where this blog about food originated. As Janelle wrote in our "About" post, our endeavor is to "explore this crucial field of study." We both rediscovered food in a capstone course for seniors in the English Department at our university. We have that course to thank for the push in this direction, and that course's creator, Dr. Scott Pollard, for bringing out our own passions for food.
But why would Janelle use the term 'crucial'? Why is food such a 'serious' issue? Put simply, food is everywhere and it is everything. Without it, frankly, none of us would be alive. But more than that, its place in our culture is as inextricable from the human condition as our search for meaning. We view most things in our lives through a lens of food. Wasn't it a particular food that will always make you think of your beloved relative? Wasn't it the first time you made your own Thanksgiving dinner that made you realize that you had finally 'grown up'? Isn't making chicken noodle soup when you're sick only a habit because that's the food your mom made for you when you were a sick child?
Unfortunately, people have begun to lose sight of how much more important food is than a "necessary fuel whose only requirement is that it can be obtained and consumed without much difficulty or cost," as Mark Bittman writes in a recent New York Times article entitled "Why Take Food Seriously." When did 'cooking' suddenly become popping a frozen dinner into the microwave? What are we as a culture losing when we've lost our seriousness about food? Will we know how to make a Thanksgiving dinner when we've moved out on our own or what is the best homemade remedy when we have a cold? Will we be able to as easily remember our grandparents, aunts, uncles, etc. when we no longer have a vivid detail like food to jog our memories?
Bittman says he is seeing signs of hope in the conversations people are having on food. And that's what our blog is really intended to do: generate, expand and inform those conversations we as a culture are and should be having about food.
Feel free to join us.

It's time for a recipe!

It's beginning to get cold out there. I'm a cold person by nature, so when the temperatures outside start falling below 50 degrees, I need heavy layers or hot food in my tummy to keep me from getting uncomfortable. Which brought me to a recipe for "Roasted Autumn Vegetable Chowder." There's nothing like a huge pot of wonderfully thick chowder of fairly cheap ingredients (what's cheaper than potatoes and broccoli?) to make you feel better about life, especially when your roomies don't bother to turn on the heat so we can all save money (and energy!). As always, take this recipe and make it yours. Add squash or leave out the broccoli. And goodness, this can be vegan or you can add cheese (like I did). It's your stomach. Just watch the proportions when you begin to make sure you have enough liquid in the roasting pan. That's what makes the veggies taste yummy and gets them nice and tender.

So, without further ado...

Roasted Autumn Vegetable Chowder
from Pinch My Salt blog

Firstly, preheat the oven to 400 degrees. (Not only is this the 'perfect' roasting temperature, it heats up the kitchen quite nicely.)

Prepare the following:
3 small russet potatoes, peeled and cut in chunks
1 sweet potato, peeled and cut in chunks
1 small head of cauliflower, cut in chunks
1/2 head of broccoli, cut in chunks
2 leeks, white part only, rinsed well and sliced
1 onion, cut in chunks
3 large garlic cloves, peeled

Put all those vegetables into a roasting pan and toss them with the following:
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 teaspoon dried thyme
1/2 teaspoon dried sage
1/2 teaspoon coriander powder
large pinch of kosher salt
fresh ground black pepper

Pour in:
one cup of vegetable broth
1/2 cup of white wine (any wine will do, but make sure you cook with a wine you would drink. Heating wine only intensifies the flavor. So normally bitter wine turns vegetables into bitter vegetables. Also, add more wine as you see fit. You can never have enough, which is why you should now pour yourself a glass of wine and sip it as you finish up the chowder.)

Pop the pan into the oven and roast the vegetables at 400 degrees, stirring occasionally, until they are tender and slightly browned (about 30 minutes).

When you have five minutes left of the roasting:
In a large saucepan, heat two tablespoons of butter over medium heat, then add:
1/2 onion, diced
one carrot, diced
one celery stalk, diced
Cook, stirring for about five minutes or until the vegetables are softened. Add the roasted vegetables (making sure to scrape out all the liquid with a spatula).

Add:
three more cups of vegetable broth.
Bring the mixture to a simmer. Pour half into a food processor or normal blend and pulse until smooth. Pour that back into the unblended part and combine. (This gives you a smooth yet slightly chunky chowder, and we all know chunky is good!)

Add:
one cup of milk (I used soy, which is better than milk to me)
one cup of defrosted frozen corn.
Heat the whole thing through. (If you used soy milk, don't boil it. Soy milk will curdle when boiled.)

Finishing touches:
Season with salt and freshly ground pepper to taste.
Add a tablespoon or two of hot sauce, to taste (I used Cholula - add more if you want).
If you like cheese, shred some over your bowl.
And this picture, taken right before I ate it and in really bad light, is what you will have. Dig in and warm up that tummy.