Imaginary Lessons

A few months ago I was daydreaming about getting lessons from a great cook. I imagined a motherly french woman, who grew her food with patience and tenderness, harvesting it carefully and thankfully, and preparing it with creativity and affection. As I imagined our first lesson, I quickly knew what her first words of advice would be: “The most important element of relationship with food,” she says in a thick french accent, “is love.”

Call it a cliché, but I believe it's the truth. Isn't love the most important element of our relationship with anything, or anyone? Consider, when we are born one of the first things we do in relationship with another human being is eat. We are fed, most often, by someone who loves us. Sometimes, we are fed from their own bodies. If you have ever fed a baby, or watched them being fed, it is almost impossible to not sense the presence of love. The baby breathes in out steadily, fingers and hands grasping in the air, and eyes that stare up almost in awe. Somewhere along the way, especially in the West, the love element in our relationship with food is stripped away to the bare-bones of fuel, pleasure and satisfying craving. With all the distractions and triggers in life, love in food is forgotten, like it is forgotten in so many other places.

After experiencing my imaginary lesson with the motherly french cook, I tried to hold an intention of love when I interacted with food. I have many opportunities as it is my job and my primary responsibility at home. I also garden and harvest food, and yet like any meditation, putting it into practice is not as easy as it seems. Of course, there is love somewhere behind my daily interaction with food, but bringing it to the surface of my awareness is difficult. Still like any meditation, the very act of trying, over and over again, is as important as the end goal. It is a loving act in itself. And throughout this study, this is what I intend to do.

Yes, my study is about spirituality and agriculture, not explicitly love and agriculture. But in my mind love evokes the spirit, it calls it into the room, it is it's language, it's music. Love is the most important element in our relationship with food because it is the tie that binds our soul to food, to the Creation and her gifts, and to the people we give and share it with.