...[H]ow we eat is not an isolated issue. While we would like to think, and often do think, with our independent human personalities, that what we eat is our own business, the truth is that what I eat, what you eat, has further reaching consequences than merely staying alive and being healthy. In...

A meat eater comes up to a vegan: “Did you hear about the new study saying vegans are more likely to go blind? I guess it’s because you don’t get the proper nutrition.” The vegan replied, “Nah, it’s just from reading all of those tiny ingredient lists.” Vegans (vegetarians who don’t...

Working to feed the hungry and obtain adequate food for poor people in our society has long been central to my own justice and service work. When I was in high school, I spent many weekends volunteering with a group called Youth Service Opportunities Project....

...Our spiritual connection to the food we eat has...been harmed by a modern culture in which over-processed foods are so ubiquitous that we have ceased to think about foods in their whole forms any more. ...Michael Pollan writes, “Try this: Don’t eat anything your great-great-grandmother...

I grew up on my family farm in the southern part of Illinois. There was nothing about it that was a golden age. And I’m NOT nostalgic about the good old days. I don’t like carrying water from the well out back. I don’t like going to an outhouse at 4 a.m. in the snow. I don’t like the wasps...

There I was, at the "Big Question:" What is my relationship to the creatures on this earth, and to the earth itself? Are they, is it, here for me, or am I a part of it? How far does the interdependent web extend, and do I really believe that all of us are intimately connected with all of existence?

...For the affluent, sitting down to a dinner derived from perhaps twenty-five different food sources is taken for granted...Filling the plate and eating and drinking to fullness is a social event, an opportunity to admire the art before you, to pay your respects by consuming it....

What you choose to eat is important to both parts of how you live out the mission of our congregation—transforming your life and caring for the earth. ...How many of you have heard that “an apple a day keeps the doctor away?” Apples (and other fresh fruits) are healthy foods, and eating them...

On a deeper level, do we consider what we are eating and whether its origins are compatible with our personal values? Since the beginning of time, dietary practices have been incorporated into the religious practices of humanity....

I [do not] mean to present myself as some kind of bodhisattva of compassion. However, in my better moments—at least in my more conscious moments—while I’m eating, I do try to imagine the lives and even the deaths of the creatures who nourish me. I try to think of the freedom and exhilaration...

To me democracy is an exciting, living practice, what we do every day. To most democracy doesn’t relate to our daily lives and it sure isn’t much fun. I now see that to engage in democracy, to jump into this living practice we all need something tangible to act on... Because food is our most...

Moses was a rancher. Long before he became a famous Biblical patriarch who led his people to freedom from slavery, he was a simple rancher. And this simple rancher was tending his flock on the side of a mountain one day circa 1527 BCE, when he came upon a small forest fire—a burning bush. He was...

To water in excelsis. In vino veritas. As the Son of Man (or, Jesus) came eating and drinking and made friends with the people of the earth regardless of social distinction or class, let us strive to do likewise in our own eating and drinking, thinking and speaking, living and acting....

We gather to be together,We gather to celebrate and to support our beloved communityWe gather to commune in body as well as in spirit.Let us share both the food and the fellowship we find here tonight.

I want to tell you right up-front that I am unabashedly pro-life. I am also unashamedly pro-abortion. What I am not is unequivocally running for political office! Now, some of you might consider my reproductive platform to be oxymoronic. The fact is that many of us find ourselves in this place of...

It is 2 a.m. I am sleeping in the chaplain’s on-call room at an inner city hospital. My room hovers over the Emergency Entrance and the darkness is punctuated with sirens and lights. It is my night to be available for those unexpected things that happen in the night. But, unlike most of my calls,...

After I graduated from college, I worked for Planned Parenthood for several years. Most days, I walked through protestors to get to work. They usually carried crosses and said things like, "Jesus will forgive you if you repent for your work." It turned out that the most revolutionary thing I did...

I remember back to the 50’s and 60’s when, once a week, my mother would don her shirtwaist, climb into the family car, and make her way to the A&P. How did she choose her groceries then? In our family, in New England and a long way from the fertile, productive valleys of California, proximity...

Tomatoes are arguably the most consumed fruit or vegetable in our country....28% of Americans eat a meal every day that contains at least one tomato. It is estimated that every American eats about 29 pounds of fresh tomatoes a year and an additional 73 pounds processed in tomato sauces, ketchup,...

"You want to do what?" her friend said. "But you can’t, you can’t, what difference could you make. It’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve heard!" "But if someone doesn’t do something, how many more people will be killed, maimed or starve to death because of the war?" Emily answered. "But two...