Beautiful Necessity

My body felt deep truth when I first heard food author Michael Pollan say, “What happens on our plates is the most profound effect that we have on the natural world.”  Obviously what we eat makes a big difference to our wallets and our waistlines, but we often don’t consider that our most intimate and daily engagement with the earth is through the food we eat.  How often do we stop to think about the ingredients of each bite, including the energetic imprints of the farmers, the food chemists, the packagers, the advertisers, the transporters, and the grocers who conveniently bring food to our mouths? And what about our own hard-earned bushel basket of attitudes, beliefs, emotions, habits, judgments, thoughts, traditions, regrets, worries, shame, guilt, and what-have-yous that taunt and tantalize our every bite? That’s quite a full plate. Just ask our hips.

Our daily food choices impact our internal and external landscapes more than anything else we do.  Our divine bodies artfully interlaced with the earth’s body humbly serve as our only irreplaceable home. As Carl Sagan insightfully noted over a decade ago, “Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusions that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.” (1)

On this “lonely speck” we have created the Great Pacific Garbage Patch between Hawaii and California. This floating noxious stew is constantly growing, with plastic being 90% of the ingredients. Whales, sea birds, and other animals snare themselves in nylon netting and six-pack rings, and choke on balloons, straws, and sandwich wrap. In a startling photographic series titled, “Stations of the Albatross,” artist Chris Jordan has documented what is happening in the North Pacific (ChrisJordan.com). He writes, “The nesting babies are fed bellies-full of plastic by their parents, who soar out over the vast ocean collecting what looks to them like food to bring back to their young. On this diet of human trash, every year tens of thousands of albatross chicks die on Midway from starvation, toxicity, and chocking.”  Jordan’s images document the actual stomach contents of baby birds in one of the world’s most remote marine sanctuaries, more than 2,000 miles from the nearest continent. (2)

By now you are most likely feeling overwhelmed and grabbing the nearest “edible food-like substance.” Lucky for us, our bodies are and have always been in the service of our most radiant health as well as undercover body guards for our most precious earth mother. In tandem, our bodies and the earth know exactly what creates and supports radiant health. Our heads, our habits, our emotions, our culture and traditions, science, not so much. As you heal towards full conscious embodiment, get curious about what you are eating and what is eating you. Does your kitchen inspire and encourage earth-friendly eating? What might be diminishing your health within and around you, including the health of your most precious children, or their children?

You and your family embody and reflect the energy of your kitchen. As you explore every nook and cranny, you may stumble upon an intriguing mix of emotional, mental, physical and spiritual triggers that lurk in the shadows until you are willing and ready to bring them to the light of day. Each food that seems to “get the best of you” mirrors an aspect that is asking for attention. Many internal triggers can be energetically cleared easier than you might imagine. Get friendly and listen lovingly to the amazing wisdom of your body. If all within your kitchen is pulsing with life force, you will be a reflection of that empowering energy and the earth will breathe a sigh of relief. Offer gratitude with each healthy choice you make, and our bodies, in alignment with the earth, will generously guide each step forward. 

Courageously acting solo or united as consumers, we have the biggest voices to demand and buy only food that will sustain our bodies and the earth and not settle for less. We vote at least three times a day with our forks. Where else in our lives do we have so much healthy impact?  The earth feels and responds ─ subtlety or abruptly ─ to each abuse, complacency, disregard, disdain, and unconscious act that also ages and deadens our physical bodies, bite by bite. To discover, embrace, respect, love, listen, and honorably nourish our most valuable assets are steps towards mastery. Every time we release and thoroughly transform a personal shadow we assist in nurturing our earth body. One cannot live without the other. A simple truth. Perhaps the only thing we need to remember.

This blog is published in the April 2010 issue of The Edge (http://soulofthecities.net/digital/2010/04/) under the title “Demand Life-sustaining Food” (page 14).

I am excited about co-creating discovery groups focused on healthy eating and kitchens aligned with a healthy earth. Interested? Reach me through my contact page. I look forward to hearing from you soon.

1) Sagan, Carl, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space (New York: Random House, 1994).
2) Jordan, Chris, “Opening / A New Way of Seeing:  Stations of the Albatross,” Spirituality & Health, January/February 2010.