Mowing an acre-and-a-quarter lawn is a futile activity. It is futile because I should have chickens and sheep or some other ruminant animal on this land, making use of its verdant bounty. Nonetheless, mowing the lawn is one of my favorite activities, partly because I get to drive a noisy machine (more-or-less) wherever and however I want (and us boys like to make noise and play with machines), but mostly (I hope) because when I'm not listening to an audiobook, I'll listen to some CCM (I am repurposing this acronym - Cogitation-Conducive Music, not "Christian Contemporary Music") and just think about life as I make my irregularly-shaped laps around a track that I redesign as I go, every time I ride the tractor.
Today, the thought that finally took shape was this:
The more we get used to the idea that food comes from factories, the less human we become.
To be truly human is to recognize our dependence on God and His provision, and to shape our lives around this foundational truth. However the basic premise of an industrialized food system like what we have today is that the seasons (and possibly meta-seasons?) as God ordains them, coupled with the natural fertility of the soil as God blesses it, does not add up to enough for us to all have food.
It is not enough for a cow to eat grass, as he was made to do, or for a chicken to roam and eat grass and bugs, as he was made to do, or for a fish to swim in a stream, as he was made to do. It is not enough for the ground to produce whatever it produces.
What spurred this thought to rise to the surface today, I think, is that as Jenny and I were outside with the cats, I noticed an amazing number of chestnuts on the ground, and the question suddenly occurred to me,
These things are food. Why are we not eating them? So I filled a basket with them, and apart from being beautiful to look at, I hope they are also delicious, or at least mildly enjoyable. I will write a post about the results of this experiment after I have completed it. Here they are:
But I digress...
Food doesn't come from factories. It comes from the ground. And you could argue that the things that are made in factories all started in the ground, so they are still food. But I maintain that our way of life is based
first on a rejection of the fundamental truth that God ordains His providence in our lives and we are fully dependent on Him, and
secondly on the acceptance of the idea that we can outdo the natural order as God has designed it.
Let us prayerfully consider whether there is a better way.
In closing I submit, for your consideration:
http://backtoedenfilm.com/#movie
A better way.
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