in which food makes me angry 8.January.2009

Maybe it started last night when I instant-messaged my husband:

“my motivation to cook supper is falling out of the window….  can it be a palio’s night maybe?”

So we went out for pizza.  It was fine.  Under twenty dollars, easy, quick.  It was fine.

But I knew I had to face grocery shopping today, so I finished out my menu for the next week, and went on my way.  I only needed meat (yes, I know:  I never need meat) for a couple meals, so I thought I’d just knock the whole grocery list out at Whole Foods.  The list wasn’t too long, after all.

One complimentary sack of cookies, two trips to the bathroom for my potty-training two-year-old, and over an hour later, we checked out.

One hundred eighty dollars.  Seriously?  One hundred eighty dollars? I mean, sure, I picked up a few extras: a new bottle of raw agave nectar (It’s cheaper than honey.), some raw carob cacao nibs (I had always wanted these when I was on the raw diet and just found them today, only to find out I misread the package and they weren’t carob. At least they really were raw.), a new mint plant for my pot (surely it will produce mint for many months to come!), some extra Food for Life bread (it’s cheaper at Whole Foods than at the standard American grocery store).  Things like that.  They weren’t stupid, unnecessary foods.

But I left angry.  Isaiah and I were not on good terms.  I really just felt like a hamburger.  That is, I felt like eating one.  You know, I do pretty well with the whole eating-sustainably-grown-meat thing until I’m in a bad mood.  Then I think to myself, “You know what?  It is all just hopeless.  I try to be a good steward of what I eat, and I end up being a bad steward of my money.  I am a lost cause.  I may as well just eat fast food.”  Do you feel sorry for me at all?

Anyway, as it turned out, there was no mouth-watering hamburger joint between Whole Foods and home, so we got tacos.  Isaiah liked that.  And I sucked in my Coca-Cola like it was a drug.

On the drive home, I decided that at the soonest opportunity possible, I needed to take a course in organic gardening.  Really, it seems to be the only reasonable way to be be a good steward of earth, body, and money.  And I have failed enough in my own gardening that I think I could use a little help.  It was a little spark of hope, thinking about taking a gardening class, but still… I still had one hundred eighty dollars worth of groceries in the trunk of my car.  Today it didn’t make me feel much better.

Isaiah spilled his fast food water when we got home.  I yelled at him, which hurt his feelings, so he cried.  I felt more like a hamburger than ever.  That is, I felt as lowly as ground beef between two pieces of bread.  So I told my little boy I was sorry, held him a few moments, and admitted to him that it was only water.

We were on better terms when it was finally naptime.  Isaiah smiled at me before I left his room.  He forgives and forgives.

I set off to the kitchen to do some baking.

Sometimes I slap myself over the head for thinking I have to make food from scratch* — like the pecan rolls I want to serve to some valiant moms of toddlers tomorrow.  I mean, pecan rolls?  Really?  The expense is no less than a simple can of Pillsbury whatever-rolls.  And the work is enough to make me dread my entire day.

But then, in the middle of kneading, I looked down and saw my hands working the dough on my wooden board.  My arms hurt; my breath came out in little puffs.  The exertion grounded me.  I felt human again.  It was like the simplicity of hands in dough — working it, working it – washed away all my guilt and self-hatred for failing again and again in the food department.  If I could only only make bread, and see a few ingredients and a little elbow grease somehow turn into this beautiful, simple staple of the human diet, I could see transformation in grocery shopping, in growing food, in my rocky rollercoaster of a soul.

*One exception to this – an occasion when I never feel like I’m biting off more than I can chew — is when I make this beautiful recipe for crusty, chewy artisan bread.  It is so easy.  Believe me. You should try it at least once.  And the result is something you might buy in a good bakery.  And the best part is that it makes four loaves, only you don’t have to bake them all at once because the dough stores in the fridge for up to two weeks!  Mmmm.  I am salivating right now.  Oh, bread, how do I love thee?  Let me count the ways…

finally, some political conclusions 3.November.2008

“Never underestimate the power of a few committed people to change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has” (Margaret Mead).
Foreword:  I wish I had the time and energy to respond to each of you separately, but again, I can only thank you for the time and thought you put into your responses to my last post.  It all was food for thought.  Some of it angered me; some of it challenged and changed my convictions; all of it was appreciated.  I believe such candid discussions bless and refine our communities.
Thanks to Jill’s link to Jim Wallis’s article on listing one’s own “faith priorities,” I have made my own list of non-negotiables — issues of faith that I believe should not be compromised in politics.  It’s this list that’s guiding me as I go into the voting booth tomorrow.  I come at most of my faith priorities from an obviously Christian viewpoint, but I have realized that no candidate can fulfill all of the items on my wishlist.  Jesus could, I think, or at least He could change my mind to see where I’ve misread His priorities.  I foolishly maintain that Jesus is the answer for everybody everywhere, and the only reason we can’t figure out how to run a nation with perfection is because we don’t have enough of Him and His philosophy.  (Speaking of Jesus, I really want to read Shane Claiborne and Chris Haw’s book Jesus for President: Politics for Ordinary Radicals as soon as possible!)
My Non-Negotiables

1. A pro-life perspective.  On war, abortion, and life-threatening diseases, I will support a presidential candidate who not only protects the life of the unborn without reservation, but also protects the lives of its citizens, even those in the military.  While military troops may be willing to give their life, I believe a President should only risk those lives if absolutely necessary, and furthermore will not abuse his power by choosing to go to war without the proper support of the other branches of government.  Life threatening diseases are of particular concern in third-world countries, and I will support a presidential candidate who makes foreign aid (either through the government or through the American people) a priority.  I also believe that the death penalty should be abolished because I believe in forgiveness and redemption.

2. Care for the weak.  Based on many verses scattered throughout Deuteronomy, the Psalms and verses like Luke 3.11 (“[Jesus] answereth and saith unto them, He that hath two coats, let him impart to him that hath none; and he that hath meat, let him do likewise.”), it’s obvious God cares for the widow, the orphan, and the poor.  He asks me to care for these groups of people regardless of how much they deserve it.  They do not supersede His importance (see Mark 14.7), but especially now that Christ is not with us in flesh, we are called to represent Him to the poor, the widows and orphans, and to all the world.  God cares about those with little strength, and I can support a candidate who respects God’s perspective in this.

3. Freedom.  As a Christian, I find true freedom through Christ, but insofar as the Constitution claims to protect its citizens’ “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” (as well as some other freedoms), I will support a candidate who will uphold these rights.  Specific freedoms on my mind (by no means exhaustive) are the freedom of speech (so that I may spread the gospel) and the freedom of homosexuals to marry.  American freedoms should only be limited when they endanger another person’s freedom (as in the needful arrest of a criminal).

4.  Environmental care.  The earth is the Lord’s; we are its stewards.  I will support a candidate who does not promote further tearing down of God’s Creation, but allows it to be sustained and nurtured.

5. Inclusiveness.  This concept mainly deals with immigration.  If our nation is to live by moral, just principles, we should embrace those who wish to join our social experiment.  Deuteronomy 10.18 says, “[God]… shows His love for the alien by giving him food and clothing.”  We need a nation that will allow this type of open door philosophy.

6. Cultural regeneration.  Political officials should applaud healthy family values and the necessity of quality education over economics.  I will support a candidate who does this.

Choosing a Candidate
I’ve come to a conclusion whom to vote for, by the way.  Want to know who it is?  Well, my friend Tami sent me a few notes after my original political post, assuring me that a vote cast for a third-party candidate would not be wasted.  She gently introduced me to Chuck Baldwin, a Constitutional party presidential candidate endorsed by my old favorite, Ron Paul.  Baldwin is a little unrefined, his website unpolished, and has held no government office.  He fails to mention poverty or the environment on his site, which bothered (bothers) me.

But he has some interesting things to say about abortion:

“Republicans tout themselves as being “pro-life.” Yet, the GOP controlled both houses of Congress and the White House for six years and did absolutely nothing to overturn Roe or end abortion-on-demand. If the Republicans were really serious about being pro-life they could have already ended legal abortion in America. Obviously the Republican Party and most GOP politicians are not serious about ending abortion, but are, regrettably, simply content to perpetuate the issue to manipulate pro-life voters.

Under my administration, we could end legal abortion in a matter of days, not decades. And if Congress refuses to pass Dr. Paul’s bill, I will use the constitutional power of the Presidency to deny funds to protect abortion clinics. Either way, legalized abortion ends when I take office.”

Having read that, I was wondering: What exactly is the saving grace for the Republican party, if, as Baldwin claims, the pro-life agenda is only a campaign point for them? If McCain will cut my taxes, won’t Baldwin, as a small-government, unbending Constitutionalist, cut them more?

And so my thinking spiraled into a series of what if questions:

• What if I had more money to give to the world’s poor, or to give to the perpetuation of the gospel message, or to give to the building of a more environmentally just future?  Would my dollar — and the dollars of those who care for social justice — stretch further than if it were in the hands of the government in the form of taxes?
• What if there were more competition in the health sector?  Would natural health remedies be more common and celebrated?  Would necessary prescription drugs be more fairly priced?
• What if “we are the ones we’ve been waiting for?   What if “we are the change that we seek?”  If volunteerism and “every man for his neighbor” were philosophies that began to blossom throughout our country, would we need the government to do the jobs of poverty-fighting and carbon-taxing?

And then on the flip side, I wondered:

• Isn’t Constitutionalism a bit ruthless?  Without the regulation of the government, won’t Americans all the more seek their plastic castles at the lowest price possible?  Won’t they cease to care about how their food is produced, or from whom their oil comes?

But it turns out I believe in the triumph of good over evil (I know, I know, that’s a big, assuming statement!).  I really do believe in grassroots movements to spread messages of love and change.  I believe that by picking trash up in the park, I have done my part in reducing the need for government (and I’ve taught my son something about caring for the gift of nature).  I have hope that our nation’s financial struggles and health crises and embarrassment of an educational system will be recognized through the voices of the passionate.  New remedies can be sought be more easily when freedom is at its height.

So, in the end, Chuck Baldwin will get my vote tomorrow, for a few reasons:

1.  I like the idea of voting for a third-party candidate.  If we look toward the future, hoping for a party that conforms more accurately to our political priorities, one of the best ways to make that happen is to stop voting for the Big Elephant or the Big Donkey, and vote for a human instead.  (Please don’t take offense at my facetiousness!)

2. I believe in the power of average citizens (and especially those powered by Christ) to bring about change.

3. I can vote for Baldwin with the least guilt, given my “faith priorities.”
How Baldwin Meets My Priorities

It is a little difficult to go into depth on how Baldwin specifically fulfills all of these (or even most of them), since many of these “faith priorities” have been placed under my responsibility because his Constitutional ideals.  Protection of life (priority 1) and freedom (priority 3) are two cases over which I have little to no control as a citizen, and Baldwin’s presidential plan takes these into consideration.  As for the others, I will try to create a picture of how most of these priorities can be played out under his presidency.

1. A pro-life perspective.  Baldwin is unapologetically against abortion, protecting the life of the unborn baby.  He also firmly stands against engaging in wars that do not directly endanger the rights of the American people.  He says, “‘Supporting the troops’ means putting their interests and America’s interests first and not in needlessly endangering them by engaging in ‘policeman of the world’ military adventures all over the world.”  I believe this is an important “pro-life” stance to hold.  As for exercising a pro-life stand in regard to life-threatening diseases here and around the world, I believe that Constitutionalism has the potential to make the greatest impact on eradicating HIV/AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis, starvation, and other life-threatening conditions.  Try this on for size:  Barack Obama pledges to double foreign aid from $25 billion to $50 billion dollars by 2012 — a commendable goal.  But for the 300 million Americans to meet the same financial goal without the government as the go-between, each citizen would have to give only $166 per year.  A pipe dream?  Not if taxes were significantly relieved.  Not if this modest goal were perpetuated by a small group of committed people.

2. Care for the weak.  Again, Baldwin’s plans calls for the citizens to tend to these issues, rather than the government.  So, in a way, I’m voting for myself to get this done.  But with Darrell Castle (the vice-presidential candidate) as the founder of an organization which ministers to homeless gypsy children in Romania, I’m hopeful that care for the weak is a priority that will be supported by a Baldwin presidency.

3. Freedom.  Chuck Baldwin’s Constitutionalism sounds like the best plan I’ve heard to protect an individual’s right to freedom –for protection against slavery, for protection of rights for homosexuals, for choice and competition in education, the right to eat as one desires, etc.  His plan gives no special rights to anyone, but protects each citizen equally.

4. Environmental care.  While I think a carbon tax like Obama proposes could reduce the negative impact Americans have on the environment, it may not teach them to care about nature or understand its role in our lives.  Baldwin doesn’t address the environment specifically, but my hope is that his Constitutionalist message would increase competition for farmers, stop the subsidizing of single-crop farming (read: corn!), and promote organic, sustainable agriculture.

5. Inclusiveness.  On immigration reform, Baldwin is a bit tough on illegals, as my friend Tami warned me.  While I agree that there have to be restrictions and laws in place to protect American citizens, to ship all illegals back to their respective countries (as Baldwin wants to do) would be unnecessary if they are willing to go through the proper procedures.  Baldwin welcomes legal immigrants.  I admit Baldwin comes short of the mark on this priority.

6. Cultural regeneration.  As far as I have seen, Chuck Baldwin supports and models healthy family values.  Baldwin’s plan for education is to eradicate the Department of Education and do away with public schooling.  Can you imagine that?  He argues that the Constitution doesn’t give the government power over education, and that privatizing education would improve its quality.  I would love to be part of this experiment!
Some Final Thoughts

Some of Chuck Baldwin’s ideas seem far-fetched, and I admit, I can’t imagine living the United States he describes.  But if it happens, I want to be a part of it.  To avoid the ruthlessness of having a smaller government, to prevent the public from destroying itself, I believe Constitutionalism calls on the Christian church and other concerned and caring citizens to promote principles of health and life and love to those who are less fortunate.  In fact, I believe that’s the only way Constitutionalism will work.  We cannot look at Constitutionalism as “every man for himself” but as “every man for his neighbor.”  That’s the kind of nation I want to live in.  And that’s what I’m voting for tomorrow.

But (ding!) let me just wake up to reality and admit that Chuck Baldwin will not win tomorrow.  I still refuse to fear either the Republican or Democrat candidate.  I do not agree enough with either of them to give them my vote, but I will give them my prayers and support.  My sister Rachel posted a blog article called “Religion and Politics”, in which she shared the main points from her pastor’s sermon on Sunday.  For a Christian in this election, her thoughtful post was such good news.  To borrow her pastor’s final questions:

• Where is your hope?
• Are you going into Tuesday with fear or faith?
• Most of all, is this fear or faith stoking your desire to go into the world with the gospel?

Finally, after a lot of stressful reading and pondering, I’m happy with my answers to those questions.

mein kampf: a political testimony 19.October.2008

I helped keep Barack Obama in his candidacy for U.S. President.  That’s right.  I voted for him in the Texas primary.  To be honest, I liked crazy old Ron Paul, but I knew he had no chance of winning when my time to vote came around.

“So how could you fall so far as to vote for ‘that one’?” my dear Republican readers wonder.

Sometime last year, I realized that Christians can vote for Democrats.  No, seriously, I did.  My highly respected Christ-following sister came out of the political closet and announced she was a registered Democrat.  And then I read God’s Politics by Jim Wallis.  And Wallis poisoned me even further.  I realized that voting on political issues was going to take much more mulling and measuring and masticating (sorry — I needed another m-word) than going with the general trend of the evangelical Christian public.  How should I stand politically as a follower of Christ to promote justice on the earth?  I had heard, you know, that line that says “God’s not a Republican.”  But really, God’s not a Republican.

In the past few months, everything has gotten hot.  I have heard people blast McCain and Palin; I have heard people blast Obama and Biden even harder (maybe thanks to my conservative background and the people with whom I associate?).  Everyone seems to have decided whom they’re voting for, and the other candidate may as well be the devil.

And in the meantime, I flounder.  Not on the issues.  But on the candidates.  Poverty is something God cares about deeply, and so I lean toward Obama, who cares enough to mention poverty among the issues on his website.  But abortion?  How do you even quantify the horror of abortion?  And yet.  And yet. Should the issue of abortion govern all my every political decision?  After all, what impact might our care of the environment have on future generations?  Would taking care of the earth keep millions more people alive in poverty-stricken countries in the coming decades?

I tried to quantify innocent deaths against innocent deaths; I compared the issue of abortion with the war.  (I am not strongly anti-Iraqi-war, since there is way too much confidential information for the average American to decide whether going to war was justified.  I do have my suspicions, though, that the war had more to do with oil than with the danger of dictator Saddam Hussein.)  Just or unjust war, “innocent” Iraqis have died — people just as precious as those aborted babies.  But those babies — there are so many.  So many more than those killed because of the US’s decision to go to war.  So if you’re comparing numbers… isn’t abortion still the greater evil?

Obama says he wants to educate women so there are fewer unwanted pregnancies.  He wants to make adoption a more viable option, too.  I can support that, although I hate, hate, hate his “if all else fails” solution — to murder a baby that God created.

On financial issues, McCain says, “I want to make every American rich!”  Obama says he wants to spread the wealth around — a biblical perspective if you ask me.  I’d like to say that Christians can do the job of lifting the poor from their suffering, independent of taxation fixes.  But the truth is, we’re not doing it.  Well, then, it’ll have to be done for us.

I have been disgusted by McCain’s haughty nature in debates with Obama.  Maybe he calls himself a maverick; I call him rude.  I have been positively influenced by Obama’s thoughtful, measured responses.  Truly.

On the issue of agriculture, I’m with Obama, too.  While McCain wants to enable farmers to compete in the worldwide market, Obama wants to make it easier for local family farms to thrive.  Obama’s focus is crucial in cutting our oil usage and keeping organic, local food at our fingertips.

I am not deeply impacted by the likelihood of Obama raising taxes.  Socialism does not scare me.  (Oh, how many of you must hate my standpoint on this!)  I wish we could have pure freedom in America.  I wish that the generosity of free humans would overflow with such abundance that poverty would be annihilated.  But it’s not being annihilated.  Those that would be generous have not been generous enough, and the poor continue to suffer.

And I think, too, that freedom on earth is just wishful thinking.  If you’re free in Christ, what does a bigger government harm you?  I realize that governments can get so big that God’s people are oppressed, and I believe that grieves God.  But think how the Chinese church has grown under Communism!  I don’t wish that for us as Americans at all, but I don’t think that socialism is the epitome of spiritual warfare.

What I want to vote for, come November, is a candidate that will support God’s values to care for the poor and the disenfranchised and the earth we’re supposed to be stewarding.  I have not forgotten that one of the disenfranchised ones is the tiny baby who doesn’t make it out of his mother’s womb alive.  And I hurt for that child; my gut churns for that child.  It is the one issue that is keeping me on the fence.

I wish I could just write in Ron Paul on my ballot and say my vote doesn’t matter anyway, especially here in Texas.  I could just stay home and watch McCain get Texas’s vote.  But I believe I need to decide.

And so I struggle.  And so I pray.  I pray that when I cast my ballot, I will do it without guilt or regret.

Afterword:

I know you’re both out there — Obama supporters and McCain supporters.  How did you make your choice?  If your few words could convince me to support one candidate above another, what would you tell me?  Please!  I really want to hear from my readers on this one.

an update on nothing 28.September.2008

Well, this is a post on something, after all.  It’s a much-belated update on my 30 29 Days of Nothing.

What a month this has been!  Full of blessings and bounty — far from nothing!  There was so much bounty, in fact, that I expected to look back at my five resolutions in my original post and have to tell you that I failed at nearly everything.  But today I read my resolutions again (they had always been in the back of my head, but I couldn’t have told you exactly what they said), and I realized we had met almost all our goals!

1. No lunches out except Sunday.  One dinner out per week, with no drinks or appetizers: On this one, I messed up twice, I think, with the lunch thing.  But the lunches were not unplanned splurges in a moment of weakness.  They were both lunches out with friends, for social and relationship-building purposes.  Justified, or not?  (I could have cooked those meals, after all.)  As for dinner, I think I succeeded 100 per cent on that one!

2. Meals planned around grocery store sales. Eh, I tried.  But I don’t really enjoy going through fliers.  So, how’s this?  I planned a meal, and then found the grocery store that had that item on sale — beef stew meat, for instance.  Since I have decided that buying all organic produce is not conducive to saving for an adoption, I am buying most of my conventional produce at the dirt-cheap Korean market.  Meat, though, kind of freaks me out at the Korean market.  So, I’d either bypass the meat altogether, justify a really good meat sale at Kroger or Albertson’s in the name of frugality, or when feeling particularly sustainable, I would go to Whole Foods to get a small serving of the good, organic, free-range stuff.

3. Stay under budget on groceries by at least $50. Everybody say “Wooee!”  Wooee! I am officially done getting groceries for the month.  And guess what?  I am under budget by $105.  Yeah.  I will attribute this in part to the bounty of food my parents brought from Kansas, but I could also argue that our grocery budget was more stressed because we had two weekends with houseguests.  It all balances out.

4. Limited electricity use, including air-drying clothes and turning off lights. I’d say the month was about average in this department.  I wasn’t exactly a stickler about turning off the lights — not more than usual anyway.  But just to make up for it, I am sitting in the darkness with my laptop right now.  And then there was one weekend I totally broke down and used the dryer for two loads of laundry, which I almost never do.  I enjoyed the luxury and felt little guilt.

5. Cloth diapers. The next weekend I broke down and used disposable diapers on Isaiah during the day.  I did feel guilty about that.  Other than that, I stuck to my guns.

As I’ve said, I didn’t feel very deprived during September.  I received bounty.  The hardest moments were in the late afternoon when I was tired and felt like doing anything but cooking.  Those will always be the hardest moments.  Perseverance is rewarded when I realize that in our budget, we were able to pay for a three-night stay at a condo in Breckenridge, where we’ll be two weeks from tonight.  If I had planned better, maybe that money could have gone to someone in need, rather than to give ourselves some late luxury that we missed out on this month.  But whether we had done this experiment in September or not, we still would have taken our mini-vacation in Breckenridge.  And now it’s paid for.

I believe these exercises can and will become habit for me.  In the kitchen, I have become less scared of cooking from scratch.  I have learned a little more about balancing frugal shopping with ecologically responsible shopping; I don’t have to feel guilty about buying organic milk or zucchini.

But I can do without a weekly coffee shop indulgence.  It’s a nice and perhaps much-needed reward on occasion, but I don’t have to do it to satisfy my consumerist cravings.  As Suzy recently reminded me through the words of Gandhi: “We must live simply so that others may be able to simply live.”

All discipline is hard in the outset.  But the fruit it bears will sustain not only our family but maybe also many others.  That’s my dream.

trash-picking: mission failed 8.September.2008

I chickened out.  I’m kicking myself over it.

Monday morning is the best morning to take a walk around the neighborhood because that is the day all large “trash” items are put out on the curb to be taken to the landfill.  It’s sick really, to see what people consider trash.  Oh, there is honest-to-goodness trash out there: limbs from trees, splintered boards, packaging (though even that could be reused; almost everything can be reused).  But sometimes there’s perfectly good stuff.

One day I picked up an old wooden ladder and a plastic frog sandbox… and proceeded to drive away with such excitement and embarrassment that I whipped out in front of an oncoming car.  The car was going slowly enough to wait for this crazy trash-picking lady.

But seriously, what are people thinking?  This morning, one house had an overstuffed armchair, at least eight plastic patio chairs, a glass patio tabletop, and a couple plastic trashcans.  Come on, if they haven’t heard of Freecycle, couldn’t they at least donate the stuff?

It was that armchair I was eying.  I was imagining how I singlehandedly would lift it into the trunk of my car, grab a few patio chairs to stuff next to Isaiah in the backseat, and drive away with glee.  But there were cars in front of the house, and I just knew someone would see me.  I know.  Dumb.  What a weenie I am.

Too bad I wasn’t sensible enough to use my courage to just knock on their door and ask them if I could take a few things off their hands.  Is that the first step in combatting America’s waste?

bananas and adoption 12.August.2008

We graft a child into our family.  The child has always called another country home.  She had another mommy and daddy once upon a time.  She knows the sights, the smells, the sounds of Ethiopia or Korea or Russia.  Her “I am From” story did not include Kansas wheatfields or plastic-packed Walmarts.  If she could speak, she would tell you that America is not “the beautiful” to her; it is a foreign place.  Not home.

Some adopt because they want children.  We want children, too, and to us, it doesn’t matter if they come from our bodies or on an airplane.  We try to adopt with a heart like God’s.  He calls us to care for orphans, and so we follow, thankful that we can be one of the few fortunate adoptive parents.  We adopt because we find it unspeakably exciting to have a global family — so all of our children will know that the world extends beyond our street and our suburb.  We think we want to rescue a child — to teach him about God, and to give him a family again.  We consider the gift of a family as more precious than allowing the child to stay among all that is familiar.  But with all of its goodness and badness, “all that is familiar” is still home to that child.  We hope, that with a lot of love and time, the child will have a beautiful life, and we can be his heroes and his home.

I just finished reading Are Those Kids Yours?, one of the many adoption books on my list.  It was published in 1991, and its statistics are old, most from the 80s.  The last chapter is called “The Global Family,” and it’s dedicated to turning adoptive parents’ insight to the bigger picture, to see adoption not as a solution to the world’s problems and poverty, but only as a small BandAid over our whole global mess.  In spite of being an old book, I kept getting the feeling that this section had been written yesterday:

“In the account of his son’s adoption, Michael Perlitz referred to Honduras as a ‘banana republic.’  Indeed, it is the prototype of a banana republic.  It was governed by the Spanish for 300 years, and then after a brief period of independence, economically ‘colonized’ in the last century by North American entrepreneurs with the aid of military intervention, in order to keep U.S. markets supplied with food that doesn’t grow in our climate.  Bananas and other export products, such as coffee and sugar, are grown on large plantations, leaving little land to grow food for local use.  Agricultural labor is low-wage work, so the campesinos, or local workers, who pick the crops have little money to buy food….

“When rural Hondurans or Filipinos cannot make ends meet on the wages they earn and have no land on which to grow food, they have great difficulty providing for their children.  Some move to the cities in the hope of better opportunities that may not exist.  Often the father leaves and the family never manages to be reunited.  Relinquishing a child for adoption may be the only way to keep the child fed” (Cheri Register in Are Those Kids Yours?).

Cheri Register goes on to ask a few questions of her readers:

“What does it mean to feel responsible for these conditions?  If the world’s wealth were distributed equitably, what would the common standard of living be?  What would we Americans have to give up?… Can we in our daily lives make principled choices that, in the long run, enable these… families to provide for their children?”

I have bananas in a bowl on my counter.  I just bought them at the store this morning.  I think if I bit into one right now, I would be sick.  How many children have been orphaned because of American gluttony?

When we adopt a child, we will be providing what we believe is the best solution for that child.  But as one four-year-old adoptee asked his mother, “Why don’t the American moms and dads just send money to the Korean moms and dads so they can keep their children?”  We have to ask these questions, not to wrack ourselves with guilt, but to embrace the responsibility that is ours.

I sometimes wonder what God sees when He looks at the world.  Could He teach me how my purchase of a T-shirt made in a sweatshop in Asia leads to the abandonment of a child by its raw-fingered, empty-pocketed, ostracized mother?

I look at the problems and wish I could say, “It is only this sinful world.  There’s nothing I can do.”  But that just doesn’t work when I feel responsible.

double green 29.July.2008

Well, a couple months ago, I started to think more about what I was sending down the drain.  In general, I don’t run the water unnecessarily, but sometimes water spirals down through our pipes when it could be serving a second purpose.  So I made a small green commitment to water my plants with used water as often as possible (read: “as often as I think of it”).  Sometimes there are cups of drinking water sitting around unfinished, and I will toss them on my mint plant.  Or sometimes after soaking beans or boiling corn on the cob, there will be a half a kettle of water to take outside to my vegetable garden.

I didn’t have to be strict about my new commitment to see my second green reward: my plants are thriving again!  Who would have thought it could be so easy as watering them!  But then, I do say “thriving” with a grain of salt, because I have yet to harvest anything from my garden.  But the new, green, leafy foliage gives me a little drop of hope in the middle of this miserable Texas heat.

three books 28.July.2008

Drowsiness pushes its heavy shroud over my head, but today I will fight it.  If there’s one thing I learned in reading Don’t Waste Your Life (John Piper), it is that work is not a curse, as I’ve often treated it.  In my work I will have pain and trouble because of the Eden curse, but even without work, pain and trouble will plague me.  They are unavoidable.  And so I try to not fight work anymore.  I’m doing my tasks with my eyes on Father-Creator-God, trying to see laundry and cleaning as neutral tasks that can be transformed into God-glorifying actions.

When I read Better Off: Flipping the Switch on Technology, I started to wonder if, at the root of things, the desire for more and more technology came because of man’s view of work being a curse.  In the book, Eric Brende discovers that in the Anabaptist community in which he’s living and working, socialization comes during the lulls between loading the wagon with hay, and meeting new neighbors comes with a barn raising.  Rejuvenation comes with the morning light, from a body fed with healthy foods and exercised through daily work.

Brende discovers that when driving a car, anxiety levels skyrocket even if the driver feels completely relaxed.  Driving horses and bicycling and walking, however, do not result in such unnatural stress.  This idea fascinates me.  How many things that I have invited into my life in the name of convenience are actually tearing me apart from the inside out?

I enjoyed Brende’s book.  Brende’s prose can get a little dull at times, but the ideas in the book were invigorating for me.  Yes, they do make me want to move to the country to farm with motorless machinery and eat the fruit of my own labors.  Yes, they make me want to get a horse in exchange for a car.  Hey, maybe the horse manure could be my main source of fuel for cooking!  I don’t think there’s anything innately wrong with technology; after all, the horse-drawn plow was once a new invention.  I do think that humans need to create with more ingenuity and thought.  Does our technology make us more holistic individuals?  Or does it take away from our person in the name of ease or comfort?

The third book I’ve recently read is The Creative Family by Amanda Blake Soule.  It was a natural sequel to Better Off, and it was a much more practical resource to boot.  I didn’t want the book to end.  It is chock-full of ideas to help you and your children be creative together.  Soule recommends using nature and natural materials in play.  Plastic toys need not apply.  Sewing, dressing up, creating art with the best quality materials possible, enjoying nature, journaling, gardening:  these are activities that I want to make thrive in my household.  Had I read this book before writing my post on gift-giving on the Crunchy Domestic Goddess blog, I think my list of ideas would have been twice as long.

Back to Don’t Waste Your Life:  This wasn’t an “ah-ha!” book for me, but Piper did help me direct my focus back to God.  He is constantly preaching that God is to be glorified, and that we are to be joyful in Him.  His sections on taking risks, letting go of materialism and riches, work, and spreading the message of the gospel were the ones that impacted me most.

These three books have been inspiring for me.  They make me want to face my day with energy and enthusiasm for work and creating.  I’m excited to teach my children the wonders of living.  My greatest fear is that through mere habit, my ideas will not be transformed into actions.

waffling: what should we eat? 25.June.2008

Questions and Turmoil

Did I just say yesterday that I was eating raw again?  Was it really just yesterday?  Well, my mind is spinning with questions now.  I never thought I would be in turmoil about the food I eat.  I never thought it could be a spiritual issue.

I am constantly astounded by how little humans are able to understand.  A thinking, soulful, researching species — and yet we can’t get a grasp on the perfect way to live, specifically the perfect way to eat!  God has included so many minute details in His creation, and even the digestion and functioning of our bodies are still mysterious even though we use the functions constantly.  Perhaps our ignorance, our trying and failing are enough to remind us that we are in a fallen world.

Is striving for perfection in diet worth the effort?  If sickness and death are unavoidable, we could just throw in the towel, eat a Big Mac and be done with it.  But if you’re a steward of your body and the earth like I am, you do the best you can.  You realize that if you are going to do all things as unto God, you must eat unto God.  And that’s how praying about my food (beyond “Thanks, God, for this meal.”) has become a new habit in my life.

I have prayed over too many meals, knowing I made a poor food choice, when I simply could not put my heart into the prayer.  “Bless this food, Lord.  Help it to nourish…  But how?  Huh.  Uh, bless it anyway.  Thanks… I guess.  Amen.”  But now I find myself pleading that I will make the right food choices — ones that will honor God.  At the same time, I never want to lose my thankfulness for a bowl of rice and beans.  I don’t want to go to Ethiopia and shun the food because it will wreak havoc with my raw vegan stomach.  I don’t want to become so stringent in my food choices that I cannot enjoy a meal with family, a meal with friends. 

Do you see my struggle?  Are balance and contentment possible?

 

Eating Raw: Have I Been Duped?

Brooke at the blog. is trying to eat raw this week, and I praised her for embracing such a healthful diet.  In starting my own raw diet, I had dismissed the counter-arguments to raw foodism on Wikipedia because I found the arguments for eating raw so much more compelling.  But Dan commented on Brooke’s post:

“Most of the claims [for the benefits of a raw diet] confuse me! Enzymes get destroyed by all the acid and proteases in the stomach, and so partially destroying them through cooking should actually aid in digestion. And I don’t see any way that uncooked food would cleanse the bloodstream or eliminate toxins. Have you heard how any of these things are suppose to work? I’ve heard a lot about ‘raw foods’ but none of the claims seem to make sense.”

Hmmm.  I sense that I am a person easily persuaded.  And I thank Dan for reminding me of that.  I don’t understand his digestive jargon either, but he at least convinced me to do more research.

 

Nourishing the Body

In the article “Myths and Truths about Vegetarianism,”  Dr. Stephen Byrnes discusses many claims made by vegetarians.  He argues that many of the studies done on vegetarian groups, in which health was linked to the absence of meat in diets, did not take all factors into account.  For instance, while Seventh Day Adventists may have fewer cases of cancer and simultaneously eat only vegetarian foods, they also do not smoke, a lifestyle choice that may have more far-reaching effects than the decision to eat meat or no meat.

While Byrnes’s discussions are not necessarily addressing a specifically raw diet, he helped me appreciate a more moderate view of eating.  Tom Billings’s comparison of the idealism and realism behind a raw diet hardly seems like a well-researched approach to the issue, but it did make me see my own gullibility.  I went to bed last night, totally overwhelmed with the conflicting information but still wanting to nourish my body in a way that glorifies God.

I am in no way saying my raw diet or anyone else’s raw diet isn’t wonderfully good for their health, but it is not a cure for all ills.  I have enjoyed the benefits of eating raw.  My energy levels have caused me to enjoy my life so much more.  But I am also concerned about being underweight.  I have already lost so much weight since my pregnancy that I can take off a couple pairs of my pants without even unbuttoning them.  And when I stray from the diet, the effects of fatigue can be disheartening, drenching me with guilt.

The main thrust of Byrnes’s article, which I will explore in more detail, is that meat and animal products provide specific nutrients like DHA, protein, and Vitamins A, B12, and D, that cannot be easily absorbed and effectively used by the body when eating only a plant-based diet.  Instead of blaming the beef and butter for our chronically diseased society, Byrnes says that “what has…risen precipitously [in the last few decades] is consumption of margarine and other food products containing trans-fatty acids, lifeless, packaged ‘foods’, processed vegetable oils, carbohydrates and refined sugar.”

 

The Morality of Meat

Byrnes further argues that if abstaining from meat-eating is strictly an environmental, land-use issue, one should take into account the benefits that organic animal waste has on the land.  If animals are farmed on pasture that is not prime cropland, it can easily be considered a wise use of the earth’s space.

Byrnes does not condone senselessly gorging on meat, but instead brings to mind the Native American attitude toward killing animals:

“When Native Americans killed a game animal for food, they would routinely offer a prayer of thanks to the animal’s spirit for giving its life so that they could live. In our world, life feeds off life. Destruction is always balanced with generation. This is a good thing: unchecked, the life force becomes cancerous. If animal food consumption is viewed in this manner, it is hardly murder, but sacrifice. Modern peoples would do well to remember this.”

And then I think to myself: raw veganism sounds like such a pure, perfect diet, but even Jesus — perfect Jesus — ate fish.

 

A Beautiful Balance

The argument that intrigues me most is this:

“[C]ommercial farming of livestock results in an unhealthy food product, whether that product be meat, milk, butter, cream or eggs. Our ancestors did not consume such substandard foodstuffs, and neither should we.

“It is possible to raise animals humanely. This is why organic, preferably Biodynamic, farming is to be encouraged: it is cleaner and more efficient, and produces healthier animals and foodstuffs from those animals. Each person should make every effort, then, to purchase organically raised livestock (and plant foods). Not only does this better support our bodies, as organic foods are more nutrient-dense and are free from hormone and pesticide residues, but this also supports smaller farms and is therefore better for the economy.”

So, is it really that easy?  Or should I say, does it have to be that hard?  Was Barbara Kingsolver right on track in her quest to eat locally for a year (please read Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life)?

It seems that the food issue — what should we eat? — comes down to our care of God’s creation, both our own bodies and the land.  Has our laziness been the catalyst of our health problems?  We depend on food in the grocery stores, and think little about where it has come from, or how early it has been picked from the tree.  In so doing, we depend on transportation to get the food to the store, and we exchange nutritional value for convenience.  Speaking of convenience, so-called convenience foods are often highly processed; if we gave them up, how many nutrients would we gain?

What Byrnes is calling for is not the end of vegetarianism (as he says, “there is no one diet that will work for every person”) but a diet of living, whole, local, and organic foods.  For me, I think that means I can continue to eat yogurt and eggs without guilt.  Although I have been avoiding meat for most meals, I can include them if I trust their source.  But I also think I can include lots and lots of fresh, organic fruits and vegetables.  (But maybe I can decrease my consumption of my beloved bananas, shipped all the way from Guatemala.)  I have felt the impact of raw produce enough that I believe it should not be a mere supplement to meat. 

But I think it’s safe to say I’m not a raw vegan, or even a raw foodist anymore.  For now, I’d like to be known as a whole foodist, a local-as-often-as-possible foodist, an organic foodist, a grateful foodist.

 

The Price of Beauty

However, I don’t think I have to explain how 100% nourishing food would break our budget right now.  I dearly love my local farmer’s market, but it comes with a hefty price tag.

Is the only other option to do the work ourselves, to either become a farmer, or to start a first-hand relationship with one?  Community-supported agriculture requires the people who eat the produce to help with weeding and picking, to get their hands dirty.  To put an end to chemically-treated vegetables and factory-farmed meat means we have to stop supporting those industries.  Maybe that means adjusting our budgets to include the best food; maybe it means growing our own gardens and raising our own animals.  We must start a movement to get things to changed if we really want healthier food options for future generations.  And if that means breaking a sweat, if it means getting our hands dirty, I hope you’ll agree that it’s worth it.

But in the end, it’s still a journey.  We still ask questions, repent of our past, seeking contentment and displaying gratitude with every bite we eat.

the lowdown on going raw 8.June.2008

I have wanted to write this post for a long time.  I have started and stopped, written a few paragraphs, and erased the whole thing.  I can’t understand why the subject of my raw diet is such a difficult one to tackle.  I  really want to do the topic justice.  And yet I feel ill-equipped to explain all the intricacies of how raw plant-based food just blesses the body.

A raw diet is extreme around these parts.  I’m a farmer’s daughter — a beef-raising, corn-growing farmer.  I love my dad.  I love the culture of farming, and how it compels a person to live a slow-paced life, dependent on rain and sunshine and God’s grace.  But it also seemed to come with a certain plate of food: meat, starch, cooked vegetable, salad.  I love those foods.  Vegetables were essential to the meal, but not the main event.  Since they were not the star of the show, I relaxed into a more dangerous standard American diet when I moved away from home.  Convenience foods, if affordable, were my indulgences.  An Arby’s Beef-n-Cheddar sandwich, a juicy bacon cheeseburger, Cheddar Peppers from Sonic, McDonald’s ice cream, a DiGiorno pizza, a Barq’s root beer:  these were my poisons of choice.  And then there were the things I cooked: chicken fried chicken with cream gravy, butter-fried omelettes and buttermilk pancakes, queso, beef roast, mashed potatoes, apple crisp, cookies.  Oh, how I love those foods.  Comfort foods, they call them.

Bad food is slow poison.  It fills your belly and your arteries.  A young woman like me can continue to look healthy, keep from getting sick most of the time, and enjoy the flavor of foods meal after meal without serious consequences.  I was tired and angry and had pimples, but, hey, doesn’t everybody have those problems?  I think I would have continued, just for the pleasure of tasting food.

And then one day, after a lecture on health during a MOPS meeting, I realized I had not been treating my digestive system as a temple.  I wondered for the first time what eating only healthy, whole foods would look and feel like.  I had been reading snippets about raw vegan diets, and how plants that haven’t reached temperatures above about 110 degrees Fahrenheit still have all their enzymes intact.  (Wikipedia’s description of raw foodism explains the concept well.)  In essence, an apple uncooked has all the enzymes necessary for digestion.  Therefore, the body’s store of digestive enzymes doesn’t get depleted when the apple enters the body, and there is more energy left for other things — like playing with your one-and-a-half-year-old son instead of wishing for an early and long naptime.

As is my nature, I jumped into the diet full force without a lot of forethought.  I knew I wanted energy to be a mom and wife.  I knew I wanted to honor the body God has given me.  I knew I didn’t want to support the corrupt food industries in the United States with as much frequency.

In short, I wanted to know everything that is in my food and how it effects me.  I have ditched the vegetable oil for olive and coconut oils.  I have traded my distilled apple cider vinegar for an organic, raw, undistilled version.  For salt, I’m using Himalayan pink sea salt which has not been exposed to high heat and is therefore still a good source of sodium.  I buy organic vegetables when I can.  I have tried sprouting my whole grains and legumes to get their full nutritional value.  I try not to buy dried fruit unless it is free of sulfites.

I had one very tough week of side effects — detoxification, if you will.  I was very groggy while my body seemed to be ridding itself of all the filth I had been feeding it.  When I thought about eating yet another salad, my gag reflex set in.  The next few weeks were more of a roller coaster, as I ate raw during the week at home and then ate cooked food socially on weekends.  On Mondays and Tuesdays, my body would go through detox again.

But then a week or two ago, I began to feel physically whole.  Salads sounded refreshing again instead of making me want to gag.  I became a morning person.  Last Sunday I shared some frozen custard with my family, and the following day I had to take a nap, but besides that, I have felt… terrific.  And I never use the word “terrific.”

Here and there, I have run into advice from other raw foodists that reminds me to be gracious with myself.  This is a hard balance to keep, so I try to be gracious without allowing myself to gorge on unhealthy foods.  Instead of forcing myself to eat 100% raw and vegan food, I am probably 80% raw.

For now, I have decided to include occasional scrambled eggs (from organic, local, pastured chickens), local raw honey (from Round Rock Honey) , and Straus Family Creamery yogurt.  These are my non-vegan indulgences.  At restaurants, I get the healthiest salad I can to go along with the seemingly unavoidable chips and salsa.

I have chosen to buy meat as a special occasion treat for my family, but I buy it at a nearby farmers’ market from Rehoboth Ranch, a family farm that raises its animals with sustainable practices.  Either that, or I use the pork that my parents butchered, or the beef that my dad raised.  I know these animals have not been abused or unhealthily nourished; they have not been pumped full of antibiotics or raised on a bed of manure.  Meat, though, is not the centerpiece of our meals anymore.  I probably eat meat a couple times per week.  I am convinced that nuts and another plant-based products can supply the protein and healthy fats necessary for a human diet. 

Oh, what a learning process, though.  I want to know what vitamins and minerals each vegetable and fruit and and nut has in it, so I can create a balanced eating routine for myself.  Right now, I’m doing a lot of guesswork until I get my hands back on my favorite raw food resource so far: Living Cuisine: The Art and Spirit of Raw Foods, a guide and cookbook by Renee Loux Underkoffler.

As I learn to be gracious with myself, God has been all the more gracious to me.  If, of an afternoon, I give in to the bag of Fritos, God has given me the strength to stop after a small handful.  He has sustained my appetite for salads and vegetables, and slowly, slowly, my cravings for processed foods are waning.

I began eating raw as an experiment — just to see what would happen and how I would feel.  I hate to admit it, but I don’t want to let it go.  As socially odd as a raw vegan diet is, its benefits have made my life so much more joyful.  I have felt like I can be the woman God has created me to be, now that my body is functioning like He created it to function.

I am a beginner as I write this post to you.  I write this testimony as an expression of thankfulness for all I have learned during this transition.