Pickling for the kindom, come

For me, canning pickles is a spiritual discipline.

As is making jam, freezing corn and drying apples. I'm not talking about some sort of namby-pamby, spiritualized Martha Stewart-type activity, that soothes the soul and warms the heart. I'm talking about the sort of spiritual discipline that directly subverts the corporations currently occupying your digestive tract; a religious practice that exorcizes the contaminants of profit from personal temples of God; one that fills the mouth and spirit with the tastes of heaven and earth.

A handful of agro-food corporations have their hand in one form or another in virtually every refrigerator in the Global North. Your fridge is a closet of skeletons: unknown chemicals, the fruit of migrant labour, the ingredients of shareholder interests. The food chain is a network of voracious corporatism; an insult to the Creator of body and earth.

That's the bad news.

The good news is that the alternatives taste fabulous. This is no matter of overbearing obligation, or guilty hand-wringing. This is a great-tasting, ethical, agricultural, culinary adventure. Taste and see that the Lord is good Know your food. Know your farmer. Know the piece of earth from which your food comes. Know what is in your body. Know God.

Every carrot you grow yourself, and every carrot grown in a caring manner by someone near you is a carrot that will not be grown by the big boys of pesticides, cross-continental transport and migrant labour. Every such vegetable constitutes a direct, subversive displacement of corporatism.

So find some dirt, grow some food, store it up for winter, and enjoy it to the full. But first, find people with whom to do it. Like a table, the garden and kitchen are places of shared experience. Go to the elders.

They understand the spirit of the endeavour and know the skills.

Also, find food producers near enough that you can visit the farm and get to know the farmer. Philosopher-farmer Wendell Berry speaks of "trustworthy food. Trust is impossible if the distance between field and table is too great.

Don't let your conscience be misled by the "organic" label. Organic food is not necessarily known food. Organic food from thousands of kilometers away is no more organic than the fossil fuel used to transport it. The organic label, unfortunately, is no guarantee of fair labour practices. So let your standard be "known" food instead of just organic food. Do it as a spiritual discipline; as a sign of God's presence, as something that has great consequence for your spirit and the collective spirit. Be present to the food and all activities related to it. Eat slowly. Share food.

Taste the sunshine, rain and miracle of life in each bite. Pray before you eat (I find this much easier when I'm eating "known food"). Most importantly, enjoy it to the fullest. Food justice tastes good.

Eating known food is a challenge. My wife and I have weaned ourselves almost entirely off orange juice, bananas, iceberg lettuce in January and various other long-distance fruits and veggies, but we still make many compromises. We enjoy the known food to the maximum and cut ourselves some slack for the compromises.

Though we live in downtown Winnipeg, we re-arrange our work schedules (and income requirements) to accommodate part-time seasonal work on a collective, organic, veggie farm within cycling distance of our apartment. Our primary motivation is to connect with the source of our own food. We have the honour of growing beautiful food for hundreds of others. And we have the satisfaction of knowing that the food we grow directly displaces food produced in exploitative ways.

Winter is a particular challenge; thus the importance of canning, freezing, drying and having root cellars. Few things are more satisfying than canning homegrown vegetables. It is the subversive art of the current era.

If growing and preserving food is a spiritual discipline or arts our places of worship are logical places in which to practise them. So let's dig up the church lawns, jackhammer the parking lots and start growing the kindom come.

Will Braun is editor of Geez Magazine. He and his wife, Jennifer deGroot, are part of the Wiens Shared Farm worker collective.

(www.GeezMagazine.org).

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