by: Liesl Stewart
When I became a Christian in my late teens, I took on a theological lens that was soul-focused–meaning, I felt assured of a place in heaven when I died. I had become familiar with a portrayal of Jesus as the savior who died for my sins, but I didn’t connect much with Jesus the Creator who loves and enjoys what he has created. Since it focused on other-worldly gains, this theological lens didn’t teach me to seek God’s love for Creation in my everyday living. I didn’t recognize God’s intention for interconnection between myself and other people, animal creatures, the earth, and the environment.
The Gospel of John begins with a description of Jesus as Creator.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. (John 1:1-3, NRSVUE)
John continues to describe our Creator God embodied in human form.
And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth. (John 1:14a, RSV)
I find this paraphrase of the verse from the Message especially helpful:
The Word became flesh and blood,
and moved into the neighborhood. (John 1:14, MSG)
The enfleshed Creator God moved into the neighborhood!
Jesus became one of us, an earthly creature, by living among and alongside us, experiencing the glories and limitations of our flesh-ness. He lived socially connected to the people and the rest of Creation around him, relating to them from his fully embodied humanity—showing us how we’re meant to live out faithfulness.
Some of the world’s worst injustices come about because important decisions are made outside of embodied interactions. By “embodied,” I mean people deal directly with each other face-to-face within relationships. Consumers today are usually disconnected by multiple jumps in the supply chain from the people making their food. Producers are then anonymous to the people consuming their food. This disconnect impacts food systems in terrible ways. Food has become industrialized, commodified, and, in many cases, nutritionally dead, with disconnection and disembodiment at every level. A scandalous amount of food waste occurs while many people are malnourished and hungry. Animals are assigned to lives of misery on factory farms, and vulnerable people are exploited for their labor.
About sixteen years ago, I began looking more carefully at the food my family was buying. When grocery shopping, I would scrutinize labels, trying to discern anything I could about the ingredients, the production, or the pathways taken from the source to the shop shelves in front of me. As I pushed my cart among the aisles, I often prayed about food choices as I tried to make the best decisions I could to honor both my family and any parts of Creation involved in production. But it was hard to learn the stories of these foods because industrialized food systems don’t offer transparency. I had to make choices based on frustratingly little information. I also began to see that the supermarkets weren’t offering me all the choices for better-made foods that I was yearning for.
Out of dissatisfaction, a friend and I started gathering people together to buy a few foods directly from farmers. We started by buying olive oil and cheese and gradually added more foods from more farms–flour, fresh produce, pantry staples, etc.
Our group’s purchases gained momentum as more people asked to join us. This drove us to formally organize into a food-buying collective that we called the Good Food Club. I still host this original club today, and my friend hosts another club. We now have a network of twenty food clubs around our city of Cape Town, South Africa, and a few more around the country.
We’ve organized our monthly purchases and collections around what we called “market days,” days when the farmers and producers deliver their lovely goods to us throughout the morning, and club members collect their orders all afternoon. These collection days are filled with logistical heavy lifting, but they also create a wonderful space for club members to connect with each other, and sometimes with our suppliers. They are days overflowing with food and relational abundance. This relationality is how we maintain embodied connections to our food.
Working this way helps us access prices that are fairer for the producers and fairer for us as consumers, without intermediaries–or as few as possible–profiting from our exchanges. The food we buy is sometimes cheaper than at the shops and sometimes more expensive, depending on the type of food it is. Each autonomous club chooses their suppliers based on their own needs.
We started our club to buy better food for our families. But something unexpected and important happened as we connected more closely to the people making our food. As we interacted directly with them over time, we were able to connect with them as people and learn about their businesses. We heard about their practical challenges and sometimes about their hopes and joys. We visited their farms and got to know their drivers, who delivered their goods to us. We learned the stories of the food we were buying.
One farm delivered flour, pecans, butternut, and pumpkins to my home two weeks ago. The heirloom wheat they grow is stone-ground on the farm, and I believe it’s the best flour in the country. I run my fingers through this flour, and my baker’s heart sings the high notes! Later that day, the host of another buying club in our network realized that some of the flour she received was rancid. We alerted the farmer, and he looked into the problem. It turned out they had milled one of their wheat varieties on some of the rainiest days we’ve had this winter. Unfortunately, a small leak in the roof caused some of the flour to get wet during the milling process. They had to recall this flour because not only is rancid flour unpalatable to eat, so I learned, it can also make one quite sick if contaminated with aflatoxins.
A few things struck me. I was struck by how the farmer trusted our feedback that there could be a problem with the flour and investigated immediately. I was struck by how efficiently the recall was completed–the farmer knew exactly to whom he’d sold the flour and was able to contact everyone quickly. And, I was struck by how much I trust this farmer. I know he will replace the rancid flour that I added to our compost pile. Because I have an embodied connection with him, I knew the story of this batch of flour, and I could share the story with our club members. We were disappointed that our baking plans were delayed, but we knew the circumstances and could understand that leaky roofs happen, even on farms.
Another farmer recently had to cancel her yogurt and cheese delivery to us.1 People in her rural area were protesting massive increases in local petrol (gasoline) prices. Because key transport arterials were blockaded in protest, this farmer’s employees couldn’t get to the farm for work. I knew these protests were happening, but without direct information from this farmer, I wouldn’t have known how they were impacting the food system. She also couldn’t drive across the valley to fetch milk from where she pastures her small herd of Jersey cows. We were disappointed to miss her supply but were able to appreciate the huge farming challenges she faced. Importantly, this connection also allows us to know that we are buying food from a farmer who has high welfare standards for the cows in her keep.
This morning, I learned that one of our suppliers had a stroke. This Muslim baker has magic ways with sourdough bread. I’ve come to know him over the past six years as he makes weekly deliveries to my home. We will likely experience administrative hiccups over the next weeks as his family steps in to help the bakery operate, but we will deal. I’m worried about him and will hold him before God in prayer.
Because I know all of our suppliers, I have the honor of praying for them, their employees, their animals, and their businesses. Club members also have the opportunity to care for the people making their food, because they are also connected.
I’ve learned so much through my interactions with the people working hard to make my family’s food. These embodied connections allow me to learn more about the realities of food production and distribution. They help me imagine more just alternatives to the industrialized food system and work for options that can better serve life and all of Creation. Self-reflectively, they root me in Creation as I live out my devotion to God.
Are there ways you are connecting with the people producing your food? We would love to hear what you’ve learned!
If you are in the U.S.2 and want to begin practicing more embodied relationships with food suppliers, try these resources:
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Look into your local Community-Supported Agriculture initiatives.
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Speak to individual producers at Farmers Markets.
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Contact networks that have farms close to you (for example, the Black Church Food Security Network (BCFSN).
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Find a food cooperative near you.
Be curious and ask questions about the food you’re consuming, and then keep asking questions.
If you like to learn on your feet as I do, maybe this food shopping prayerful exercise will be helpful:
When you next go to the store, plan to spend a little longer there. Commit the time to God, asking for eyes to see what’s important, and be mindful of God with you as you shop.
Choose two or three of the foods you buy most often, and spend time reading the labels of the various brands. Ask questions about what you’re reading and what the label designs are meant to communicate to you as the consumer.
Search for information about the ingredients and the companies on the internet. (You might need to continue these internet searches at home in the interest of time.)
As you shop, take note of the cashiers and other shop employees. See them, and respect their labor. However we source our food, people are always contributing to our food supply chains in different ways. Take a moment for friendly interaction, and hold them before our loving God in quiet prayer that they’ll know true peace.
Watch out: this could become a way of life! Those mindful shopping excursions led me to start a food-buying collective, and now my family buys 80% of our food through embodied connections.
1. CreatureKind supports people as they respond practically to the theological problem of factory-farmed animals. While we offer support to people choosing a fully plant-based diet, we also value people who choose to reduce their consumption of animal products, and those eating only what they source from transparent, ethical farmers with high humane standards.↩
2. In other countries, depending on where you are, you can connect with local equivalents: for example, Responsible Consumption Communities, Gruppi du Acquisto Solidale (Solidarity Purchase Groups), Community-Supported Agricutlure initiatives, farm shops, localized produce markets, organizations supporting local food sovereignty movements, farm worker empowerment organizations, to name a few possibilities.↩
