...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...

It’s really complicated honey. I’m only now understanding it myself. We weren’t really thinking about it like you and your friends do. It’s not that we didn’t care about how it would impact you; we weren’t really thinking about you at all. Oh that’s sounds terrible, I’ll say. I...

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,...

Wealth, bounty, scarcity, money, are complex—layered with meaning. We use money all the time, frequently worry over it, try to manage it—but to really think about it is pretty daunting. Money is a tool in a world based upon exchange; it can’t be avoided. At one time people exchanged goods,...

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?

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...

For many of us this Sunday service is where we come together to examine what gives our lives worth and to make sense of the seemingly incomprehensible events around us. Our time in this sanctuary is not mundane; it is a special time where we wrestle with many of the fundamental questions about life.

...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...

...[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....

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...

"Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone;...

"Humans are part of the web of life. What we do to the planet, what we do to other species, and what we do to other people, we end up doing to ourselves."...

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...

A person is ethical only when life, as such, is sacred, that of plants and animals as that of other men and women, and when one devotes oneself helpfully to all life that is in need of help.

NARRATOR: We know Ralph Waldo Emerson. We know the sage of Concord who gave us the doctrine of “self‐reliance” and the belief in the “Oversoul.” He was the leader of the Transcendentalist movement, and is remembered as one of the most important cultural figures of the nineteenth century.