we ARE what we eat

nope, i do not have a new year's resolution to post more regularly. i have plenty of topics i could use to post more often, but the truth is that as the boys are getting older, and i am trying to find that elusive thing called "community," that i increasingly want my life to be in teh here and now, in the real physical world. that doesn't mean that i do not spend more than enough time on the computer (also known as "too much time on the computer"), but that if i have any new year's resolutions involving the internet, it is to spend less time on it, not more. so some updates, briefly, before i get down to the "real" post topic:

advent this year was amazing. Advent-Christmas has always been the most exciting and mystical part of the liturgical year for me, until my late twenties when everything was sort of grey. this year, though, with Finn old enough to participate, it was almost like new again. it made me think a lot of Chesterton's, and Lewis's, writings on wonder--how children are full to bursting with it, and how adults often try to cultivate a demeanor of urbane, ennui, cynicism: how sophistication often has been made synonymous with boredom. and how blessed i am to have my child discovering the joy and peace and wonder of the Christ Child, and how beautiful and salvific that was, and is. my awesome crafty friend sarah gave me the materials to make jesse tree ornaments, and it was the perfect way to make Advent more concrete: candles, readings, ornaments, seeing the little tree increasigly decorated with salvation history. and it was beautiful to hear him understand that Christmas is when we celebrate Jesus being born. may the Holy Ghost continue to grow those seeds . . .

because of Finn's allergies, i am forced, more than the average american, i venture to say, to think about food, and about what we put into our bodies. and i have been thinking in general about how much our culture has lost the idea that we are, in point of fact, what we eat. generally, our culture fills up on foods that truly do not satisfy: prepackaged, ultra-processed "foods" that are so far removed from what should come from the earth that we are plagued with allergies, add/adhd, autism, dyslexia, depression, anxiety, picky eaters, obesity, digestive ailments, infertility, and God knows what else.
from a religious perspective, as well, we are plagued with the declining belief in the Eucharist: or, if not in the Real Presence, in its importance: that we are consuming God-made-flesh. yes it's a bit creepy, because mysteries always are. (incidently, small wonder people who deny God are so bored. who wouldn't be bored in a world without mystery? no surprise that they have to fabricate mysteries such as aliens and such.)and did you know that some companies are using strains from aborted babies for food flavorings? apparently jonathan swift and even such bizarre things as soylent green were not so far from the mark. and apparently if one does not eat the Man-God, one will eat men.
anyway, back on track: so, what? have you seen those bumper stickers "no farms, no food?" because the earth is, in a strictly physical way, our mother. our bodies are made of and renew themselves with matter, and the earth is the source of that material. and we have been so blinded and stupified that we now produce three crops over and over, to the point where the soil literally cannot provide the most basic nutrients and minerals, instead pumping chemicals and unnatural amounts of estrogen into our bodies, so that we are created of hormones and laboratory creations. and our land is paved over with cheap roads and cheap houses, and we approach desolation and destruction as fast as we can manufacture it . . .
subsistance living gets a bad rap, and certainly it IS bad when it isn't working. and working to live takes a lot of energy and time. i do not knock labor-saving devices, but we've gotten so far away from the point of labor, and why it should be saved and what it should be saved FOR, that we've lazed our way into idiocy and sickness. many of my own family suffer from high cholesterol, intenstincal disease, obesity . . . and they are not at all willing to look away from their low-fat, highly processed diets and prescription drugs to look at a different way: the way of eating to live, of living in order to eat the foods that God gave us in nature, in the way that nature intended.
i am on a soap-box, i know, and i would apologize if i did not feel so strongly about it, and feel so strongly the desire for my family to eat our way to health, not disease! in body, mind, and soul.
"a garden is a lovely thing. God wot."