Results tagged “food” from Kristin Swenson

A version of this post first appeared in Christian Century's "Theolog."

It's spring, and Richmond is busting out in lush green. White pompoms of elderberry blossoms are bustling with bees. Hard new figs are attached impossibly to smooth branches, and my grape vine sports countless tiny clusters of lime green nubbins. The cats stretch out in the sunshine to doze. And on Fridays, the kids across the alley fire up their grill. My whole body breathes, with every sense, and exhales in well-being. The luscious smell of sizzling burgers, the hoo-hoo of doves, the heat (ah heat) of a southern, not-quite-summer sun, the tender crunch of sugar snap peas, and the riotous beauty of blood red teacup roses nestled among dripping white honeysuckle. With all five, physical senses buzzing, a sixth, the spiritual, shimmers. In spring, it seems perfectly right that the Bible would include a Song of Songs, also called the Song of Solomon. 
 

"In the beginning," the Bible says, food meant plants. Everybody -- human beings, birds, beasts, everything that moves and breathes -- vegan. Yup. "It was so... and very good." Or so the authors/editors of the first chapter of the Bible tell it. Not till after the great Flood and Noah's (meat) sacrifice do the biblical narrators tell that God explicitly allowed meat eating. It appears as a kind of concession and seems tied to human incorrigibleness. For, as the story goes, even after destroying all the people at least partly because their mean-spiritedness and violence proved to be such a disappointment to God, God accepted that people would still be bad. In that context (which also thought-provokingly includes disruption of relationships b/w humankind and animals and a warning against murder), God edited God's earlier remarks about diet to include everything, not just plants. But take care, God warned, that you not eat meat with its life. Back in the day, it was thought that blood = life, so: get rid of the blood before consumption. We think otherwise about what vitalizes -- about where is the life source. It makes me think, omnivore that I am, about what it might mean to us today to avoid eating life.

Hospitality in fierce climes is crucial. The hospitality of the desert is legendary, and several biblical stories hinge on it. Who knows, some suggest, but you might at any time be entertaining angels. Abraham and Sarah made a comfortable place for visitors, undercover messengers of God, who declared that the elderly Sarah will finally have a son. The criminality of Sodom's population is immediately evident to readers simply by their intent to harm the visitors (also angels in human guise) in their midst.

I live in the South, where people pride themselves on gracious hospitality, and it is indeed a lovely tradition, but right now I'm back in northern Minnesota where I great up, right on the tip of Lake Superior.