A Theology of Lunch

So, while I was writing "Ka", I was also catching up on blogs, and Raising My Boychick had a link to this post at the Fat Nutritionist.

I think a lot about motherlove and connection and the ka, and about sex and the ka, and all that stuff, but the thing is: food too. And this is a part that's actually kind of subversive. For the reasons noted in that post.

When you break it down to fundamentals, the ka is a repository of life energy, creative power, all that stuff. Where does our energy come, in a deterministic biological sense? From what we eat. "May your ka be fed", that offering liturgy, applies to us here largely in the material world, consuming material things. While my ka is fed by gifts of love and caring, my ka is also fed by lunch, and denying that goes into weird, unpleasant places.

Especially since much of the attempting to bind food up with virtue gets entirely entangled with an aescetic attitude in which there is Good Food and Bad Food - which Food is Good and which Bad changed depending on the latest fad science, of course - and the appropriate way of managing the concept of Soul Food is to only eat the Good or at least feel appropriately contrite when partaking of the Bad. And people get bound up in the lure of the forbidden, and detached from their own body's signals about what food they want to eat, when to start, when to stop. And people cast it in moral terms, referring to their food decisions as "I've been good" or "I've been bad", and even find it harder to make those decisions in the way they would prefer if they have recently been 'bad'.

What we feed ourselves, how we feed ourselves, is a spiritual process; as we offer ma'at to the gods that their ka be fed, when we feed our kau we ought feed them in keeping with ma'at. But what this means in practice is a fiddly sort of thing.

We eat according to our natures: each person has a palate with its quirks, somewhat different nutritional needs, different digestive capacities. We add to this filters for what we feel we can ethically consume, what we can afford, what those in our lives are comfortable with eating. I am not so much a believer in what gets called "intuitive eating" as I am a disbeliever in pretty much anything else I have heard of, honestly, but there's the thing, isn't it? Eat food, it's a good idea.

And there's a lot invested in control mechanisms around food, even if people were free to choose - which we aren't, really. Not by a long shot. I certainly can't afford, y'know, artisinally farmed pastured organic non-GMO pesticide-free antibiotic-free free-range hand-raised grass-fed dry-aged locally-grown ethically butchered non-pasteurised heirloom cruelty-free cageless durians. Certainly not all the damn time.

But that doesn't actually answer the question of how to recognise connective justice at lunchtime.

There are layers and layers.

As a rule, I like my food reasonably unprocessed. And I have the privilege of having the knowledge, time, and facilities to prepare such food rather than having to depend on pre-packaged stuff that contains a fair amount of filler. (Which is one of my little "If I could fix the world" social justice things. Feeding people is one thing. But making sure people have access to ingredients, facilities, and the basic training in order to cook? That's a whole other thing. And getting there, too, that requires making it possible for people to live without having to take several ill-paying jobs - making sure that they have the time and resources to acquire, develop, and actually use those skills. That part would take an overthrow of the current economic system.)

(I still think it's probably a good idea.)

The whole "eat real food! Also organic, locally grown, etc.!" thing is ... okay, it's a nice idea, and I'm not going to knock it. But it needs to be done in a way that isn't catastrophically tone deaf on issues of class. Exhorting people to eat in a particular way has been a growth industry my entire life; making the parts of that that are actually reasonable possible, on the other hand, is evidence of creeping communism and narsty narsty subversiveness. We can't be having with that.

And - like the Fat Nutritionist blogger says - a Twinkie is not the end of the world. (I drink a fair amount of soda. I try to get the kosher for Passover stuff in quantity each year when I can find it, because it's made with sugar rather than liquefied corn subsidies and also tastes better. But even HFCS soda is not a moral failing; I still like it, so I still drink it.)

And yeah. There are ethical questions in where food comes from and how it's prepared, and that's part of eating ma'at. Those questions do not start at the condition of the animals, and they do not stop there either. Those questions include concern about the status of farm workers. (And if you look at that carefully you will notice that that set of questions makes a beeline for immigration without regard for whether or not you wanted to go there.) Those questions include concern about environmental monocultures created by large farms, too. Animal death as a result of farming. Sustainability. Creeping corporatism. Small farmers losing seed crops because of cross-pollination from deliberately sterilised genetically modified corporate grain breeds. Genetic diversity in our food sources. Environmental costs of shipping. Feeding animals inappropriately rather than according to their natures (if you want to eat corn, eat some fucking corn; cows-that-ate-corn is both not as healthy and abusive to the cattle). There's a lot more of that stuff.


Here's a thing, beyond all of that:

Food is one of our social bonds. Exchange of food is considered sacred in a lot of cultures; it's a standard peace offering even in some of our near primate ancestors. This is probably instinctual.

Yet, there is a thread of Western culture that wants to make food divisive. Are you eating too much. Are you sufficiently grateful (there are starving children in Fill-In-The-Blankia, you know). Are you eating the right things. Are the things you're eating of sufficient ethical purity. Have you performed sufficient abasements to apologise to the world for eating that cookie.

These things are all ways of keeping us from feeding our souls. And, perhaps more importantly, from feeding each other. Because offering food to each other is one of the ways that we can connect, ka to ka, recognising this fundamental bond that we share as members of the cosmos, and as long as there is the reflexive response of "I can't eat the food you offer, it would make me a bad person", we have this fundamental hostility that sabotages our interactivity.

I mean. I'm not saying "Don't be an ethical vegetarian", if that's the way you roll; roll that way. I'm not saying "Totally ignore food preferences and intolerance because what I make for you is totally an expression of soul connection!" I consider it my obligation, when I'm feeding people, to offer them food that will sustain their souls - which means having vegetarian or vegan options as necessary, which means making sure that I manage to offer things that won't risk killing my guests or causing them health distress, which means making sure there is food that I, also, can eat. But it's my obligation as the recipient of food to accept or decline with grace, because I recognise that this is a medium of feeding my ka. This is one way that we can express caring for each other.

When we can feed each other, we can have peace in our halls and sustain each other in community.