We all have a common craving, hunger, thirst to experience the divine. Not to be confused with perfection as that implies sameness. For me, it is through the creative side of me or more importantly, the value in our food that I feel most close to the divine. It can be sensual. It can be simple. It can be comforting.
Food, through its demands of growing and caring for it, through its importance of most all rite of passages, or through a meal shared with friends: it is a way to see the sacredness and inter-connectedness of all things.
I grew up that way with my Ukrainian grandparents living their lives of the land and also by growing up in the Northwest Territories, both soulful guides who taught me food was sacred and connected us all. It is to have some thought put into it, some work put into it, some honor put into it.
Sure we are bound by a biological imperative that forever keeps us returning to the soil, plants, animals, and running waters for replenishment but it is more than that. It teaches us how interconnected we are. As human beings we seem to separate ourselves from our Source and from our earth. No wonder we feel alone. No wonder we don’t thing we are ‘enough.’ We forgot our natural connection.
We realize our relationship to food can serve as a vehicle through which we can learn about our relationship to life. When did we let marketing and the food industry have the power? We are label obsessed and that is what they sell us.
My question is, if I return to eating what is grown near me, or at the very least seasonally, would I feel connected and whole again? Is it the missing link?
Local farmers and producers are offering it to us, we just need to choose it. Some of our local grocery stores carry small local farm produce, but we need to request it. The choice is always ours. We are in constant change, to me it is something I embrace. I love following the comforts, insights and foods of the seasons. It just seems natural and in rhythm with the natural world. Our bodies change, for the GOOD!
The stomach lining completely regenerates in a week, a healthy liver in six weeks, and the skin surface in a month. Scientists have proven that 98% of all atoms in the body are replaced in a year, 100% in seven years. Ok, they are talking atoms, but that is what we are: tiny beautiful specks of energy, constantly trying to replace the bad with the good. It is in our nature to choose beauty and good.
Forget about the past and the choices made there, we can choose to replace it with the good. One tiny atom or one tiny choice at a time. It was Vincent Van Gogh who said, “Great things are done by a series of small things brought together” and he created works of art that we still marvel at.
This book, “Food Artisans of Alberta” Your trail guide to the best of our locally crafted fare – authored by Karen Anderson & Matilde Sanchez-Turri is one tiny choice I will use this September to guide what I eat, not feed, but eat. I want to do more than nourish my body.
I am sure that the authentic connection I feel and return too while meeting the farmers and producers as well as eat as locally and seasonally will nourish me beyond just my body. It will bring me back to feeling whole, to feeling connected, to feeling the Sacred all around me.