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.

Letting your stomach cast the vote...

It seemed like kismet when I walked into Silver Diner, a small, old-fashioned diner/chain based in Virginia and Maryland, and found the establishment polling its customers, but not in the way you might expect.
For the month of October, the diner offers Obamalettes (a Chicago pizza-style dish) and McCainlettes (a BBQ chicken dish inspired by the senator's home state). As customers order one or the other, tallies are counted and on Oct. 30, Silver Diner will post the results and predict a presidential winner. Who's winning? Well, it seems that pizza for breakfast (or do you think people are actually swayed by their political bent?) is too great a pull. Obama is leading with 1026 votes (orders) to McCain's 485. While this experiment did make me laugh, what made me connect it with kismet?

Well, I posted this New York Times article in our Food in the News box a few days ago. I didn't get up the interest to write about what should be the connection between food and politics right away. It seems it is more of an interesting topic than I first considered and it took a political omelette to remind me of that.

Okay, first off let me say that food has a much biger impact on our everyday lives than we are usually willing to acknowledge. It not only affects our wallets and our health, the abudance of food keeps us from needing to start wars with other nations, keeps us from turning on our neighbors, even keeps us from going hungry to feed our children (or watching them starve cause we have no food at all to give them). But as Americans, except for those who are poor and unable to acquire food, we have chosen to forget those times in our evolution as a nation that are comparable to many countries in present-day Africa.
As the New York Times article, published in a recent issue of The Sunday Magazine and phrased like a letter to the coming president, states, "Food policy is not something American presidents have had to give much thought to, at least since the Nixon administration..."
It seems that we've forgotten the connection between food and every other aspect of our lives in America. Michael Pollan lists some of these connections in his 'letter':
-Mass food consumption has led to industrialized food production which has increased the impact on our environment (through releasing carbon as we creat new crop fields, using gas in our farm equipment, and killing the land with overuse). As Pollan states, "When we eat from the industrial-food system, we are eating oil and spewing greenhouse gases."
- The way we live in America, with such easy and cheap access to all the foods that are bad for us (I say this as I eat a donut generously brought in by a fellow coworker), has contributed to our generally low health. Most of our top diseases are actually related to what we eat. As Pollan states: "You cannot expect to reform the health care system...without confronting the public-health catastrophe that is the modern American diet."
- America, because we have placed such value in helping others (generally a good thing) and because we have perfected the mass production of food, has become key to the survival of many nations. As we scramble for our own food, we are less and less able (or willing) to give to other nations. How many riots do you think we have set off when we have taken away food aid? How come we didn't help these areas grow their own food, instead of letting them rely on a finite source that so many others rely on? We will soon see how much more valuable food is than previous 'allies' are. "Expect to hear the phrases 'food sovereignty' and 'food security' on the lips of every foreign leader you meet," predicts Pollan.
Pollan raises many more interesting points after offering a look at how we got where we are now. The article is definitely long, but it is worth a read and some meditation on the points he brings up. These are issues we will be facing in the near future.
As Pollan warns the next president of the United States: "What this means is that you, like so many other leaders through history, will find yourself confronting the fact — so easy to overlook these past few years — that the health of a nation’s food system is a critical issue of national security. Food is about to demand your attention."

Whether Obamalette or McCainlette wins, it will be up to the American people to actually address this growing issue. What options do we have to solve this coming crisis? What are we doing wrong right now that could be changed to promote good food policy? This is what we need to ask ourselves, and our leaders, no matter which omelette wins on Election Day.

40 hour work weeks + laziness

The new Starbucks I'm working at is open and I am working 40 hour weeks there, just to go home, loaf around my house and not do anything substantial. But once I find my camera, I will post pictures from the VA wine festival, a whole two weeks ago....woooooo. And maybe I'll blog about my lasagna Sabbath meal I prepared for 16 people and how religious feasts tie people intimately with food. Or the absolutely amazing salad I had at Lindsey Seipp's wedding- she got a caterer who only does organic, locally fresh foods. And it was seriously the best salad I ever had. But right now, Starbucks owns me. : \

A breakthrough in farming

Well it's not really a new concept, but The New York Times published an article on Vertical Farming July 17. Even though it is a relatively older article, I thought the concept was so cool (and the accompanying slideshow so nice) that I would post here and try to generate some talk about this specific kind of farming.

Here's the gist: We are in a population boom. We've had to worry more and more about where we are going to get food, especially with drought and floods (both of which bring their own set of challenges to crops). So what happens if you have a population that needs more room to live, but one that also needs more food-growing space to live? Your answer involves towers of food and new thoughts about how to grow that food.
Scientists, most recently a professor from Columbia University, have begun encouraging interest in this field again. Bringing together scientists and architects, experts have been able design buildings, such this one, above (NY TIMES PHOTO) that is more about aesthetics and powering itself through solar panels, that expand on an idea brainstormed in New York - the skyscraper.

When an influx of immigrants caused a population explosion in cities where the jobs were, those cities just started stacking living quarters on top of each other, solving the problem of lack of space. The question is this: Can the same idea solve our coming food shortage problems? Scientists say yes. I hope they're right. But with skyscapers we ran into the problem of disease, expounded by the close-quarters. It was unnatural to live like this. Can an unnatural mode of growing plants work? What other concerns might we run into with a system like the one above, or this one, seen below:

(NYTIMES PHOTO)

Humanity's Marriage With the Earth: Part II

Part II: Coping with the Broken Land

An American poet, essayist and novelist, Wendell Berry offers hope to the modern American, a hope that they can re-achieve a connection to Creation by the source of agriculture. To align oneself in relationship to land, imitating nature in agriculture, one can simultaneously align himself to a spiritual goal. This thought travels through Berry’s poetry, whose focus on nature and agriculture run with themes of grace, redemption and transformation. Not only images of farming line up with these themes, but through these connections Berry honors his food. His poem, “Prayer after Eating” encompasses his attitude toward food- “I have taken in the light/ that quickened eye and leaf./ May my brain be bright with praise/ of what I eat, in the brief braze/ of motion and of thought./ May I be worthy of my meat” (Collected Poems 148). The light referenced in this poem could allude to the light of God as incarnation in the Bible. As a popular Christian worship song eludes Jesus Christ in the words “light of the world/you stepped down into darkness/opened my eyes/let me see beauty that made my heart adore you (Hughes),” Berry sees Creation as the light stepping into darkness to expose the eye’s attraction to the leaf, a sign of new life, triggering the mind to see the beauty of his food, in order to honor and adore it, and hope that he might be transformed to be worthy of his meat.

First American spiritual perspectives complement Berry’s thought. The First American sees his relationship to a God force through his relationship with nature. Judeo-Christian tradition does not contradict this notion, but establishes it from the beginning of humankind:

Then the Lord God formed the human from the soil of the ground and breathed breath into its nostrils the breath of life and the human became a living being. And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in theeast and there God put the human whom God had formed (Gen. 2:7-2:8).

This scripture shows that humanity is intimately related to the rest of the creation. Like all other creatures, we are also formed from the earth. If humans are related to the rest of the earth, it is no wonder that Great Mam scolds her great-granddaughter, Gloria, informing her that flowers are her cousins when the girl picks flowers in Barbara Kingsolver’s “Homeland.” Great Mam, a Cherokee Indian, lives with her anglicized grandchildren on a Kentucky farm, and struggles to retain her dying culture in an environment which does not approve of it. Gloria does not intrinsically understand, like her great-grandmother, the value of other living things in their relationship to human beings. Great Mam tries to explain:

Sometimes a person has to take a life, like a chicken’s or a hog’s when you need it. If you’re hungry, then they’re happy to give their flesh up to you because they’re your relatives. But nobody is so hungry they need to kill a flower (Kingsolver 11).

Gloria does not accept this teaching, defending that she only picked weeds which no one cared about. At that point, Great Mam gently rebukes her, telling her that it is a bad thing to take for one self something that belongs to everybody. “It is a sin (Kingsolver 12).” In this scene, Great Mam unites Christian and Cherokee notions of relationships and sin to correct her great-granddaughter.

Not only are humans part of creation, but Wendell Berry contends from an ancient perspective, we are small in the scheme of the rest of Creation. We are not greater than nature, nor are we its equal. Primal art displays this notion; on a painted wall in a Lascaux cave a small, childish stick figure is surrounded by vibrant drawings of shaped, shaded and colored animals. The stick figure who had cast his only spear into the guts of bison is now without weapon, revealing him to be vulnerable, frail and incomplete against the magnificent animals surrounding him (“Unsettling” 98). The Bible illustrates the smallness of man in the book of Job, when God speaks to his suffering servant Job from a ferocious whirlwind. Job questioning of God’s sovereignty triggers this storm which God uses to show his subject his full bounty and mystery next to Job’s mere humanity (Job 38). If we are but small creatures in the big scheme of things, we need to be good stewards of the environment. We are no bigger than our land, but we act so in the way we treat it. Berry contends that we can be redeemed from our anthropocentric point of view. In the past, we have focused upon rituals of return to the human condition. A man would go into the wilderness and after measuring himself against Creation, will recognize his true place and as a result, will be saved from pride and despair.(“Unsettling” 99). The man went hungry and therefore had to kill animals and pluck plants, but as he killed and ate with care, he became a restorer of order, a preserver of life.

The ethic of reverence for life was set at precedence in Judaic law codes, established early Genesis, and then in Exodus. Richard H. Hiers, professor of Religion at University of Florida, points out that before the Great Flood, humans along with birds and all other land creatures, were vegetarians. In Genesis 1:29-30, God addresses human and animal needs respectively:

Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air and all the creatures that move on the ground- everything that has the breath of life in it – I give every green plant for food.”

After the fall of man in Genesis 3, when Eve ate the forbidden fruit from the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil, humanity eventually faced their downfall. The earth was full of corruption and violence and God saw all man and that every inclination in their heart was evil (Gen 6:5). He sent a flood which would wipe out all of creation, except for Noah, his family, seven of every kind of clean animal and two of every kind of unclean animal, and seven of every kind of bird, to maintain biodiversity throughout the earth. After the flood, God gave Noah’s family animal for food: “Everything that lives and moves will be food for you. Just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything” (Gen 9:3). With the initial shalom obtained in the Garden of Eden at the end, human beings were still expected the respect the life of animals and birds killed for food (Hiers 134), as stated in God’s following commandment, “But you must not eat meat that has its lifeblood still in it. And for your lifeblood, I will surely demand an accounting. I will demand an accounting from every animal” (Gen 9:4-5). Because the life of each animal was contained by their blood, human beings were to express a reverence for life, by not eating it. Similar provisions appeared later in Judaic law, and is the reason why many gentile converts to early Christianity had to agree not to eat blood of the meat of animals that had been strangled (Hiers 134). Judaic law codes were set up to restore human beings back to God and the Earth, however human beings failed to get the point.

Berry, Wendell. A Part. San Francisco: North Point P, 1980. 5.
Berry, Wendell. The Unsettling of America. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1977.
Hiers, Richard H. "Reverance for Life and Environmental Ethics in Biblical Law and
Covenant." Journal of Law and Religion: 127-157. JSTOR.
Hughes, Tim. "Here I Am to Worship." By Tim Hughes. Rec. 2001. Here I Am to
Worship.
Kingsolver, Barbara. Homeland and Other Stories. New York: Perennial, 1989. 1-22.