by Brent Gavin Was, Intern Minister

A sermon given December 29, 2002

First Unitarian Church

Portland, Oregon

I am a farmer. Hmmmmm. I was hoping for a bit more of a rousing cheer, sort of like that old farmer received at Woodstock thirty years ago. Let’s try it again. I am a farmer . . . I have not been farming for very long. I grew up around horses and cut hay in high school, but until two years ago, my growing record consisted of a long line of dead houseplants. But one day I received one of those little gifts that changes your life. Driving back from a wood lot where I helped cut firewood, Steve, the farmer I was working for, asked me, "Brent, would you like to grow something here?" I was at the library the next day reading up on small farms and herbs and vegetables. So many plants, so many plans.

I have survived two growing seasons so far. Our acre and a half of heirloom vegetables, those lovely varieties that have been saved from corporatization have treated us well. Heirloom means that they are older varieties, and are open pollinated. They can reproduce on their own and are not the product of some hybridization project. They are the antithesis of genetically modified organisms. Now, I have an extremely romantic view of the life of the small New England farmer that I love to perpetuate. Up at dawn after eating a breakfast of fresh eggs, hoe in hand. Hard work caring for the earth. Loading bushels of beets and onions and racks of tomatoes in the truck. I don’t usually get into the chronic tingling in my fingertips, friends with skin cancer, mind numbing fatigue mid-season, and chiropractic bills, let alone the bleak financial outlook of most of our nation’s small farms.

I am not alone. Wendell Berry, the great farmer, poet, and philosopher also helps to spread the romantic notions of the agrarian life. In his poem Prayers and Sayings of the Mad Farmer, he writes, "The finest growth that farmland can produce is a careful farmer." Mr. Berry is a romantic, but his poem does get to the heart of what farming can be. However, his idea that farmland produces good farmers is not universal enough. For us, here in a nation where under two percent of the population is responsible for growing all of our food, where the vast majority of us will never kill a chicken, or plant corn, or work in a greenhouse, we too are products of the farmland, and we too must take responsibility for how and where our food comes from. People involved in farmland, from the bank to the land farmer outside of Eugene to the person at the market or grocery store, we are all products of the fields. No matter where you are in the food supply chain, we must realize that good farmland helps produce good people no matter how close to the fields we live.

Fortunately, good people are produced in many ways. Loving family and friends, education, engagement in our society for justice, and church communities. Each of these and the countless other ways we grow and thrive in the world as a people are terribly important, but farmland, farmland can produce not only a diverse biological community of plants and animals and engaged people, it also produces the stuff of life. Food that enables us to continue to be the good people that we each can be. What we put into our mouths is what we become; it is what we are.

We are what we eat. This was the Buddha’s first lesson after enlightenment. He said we are what we eat and that we eat with our six mouths: our eyes, ears, nose, mouth, touch and mind. What we take into our mind and spirit through not only our senses but also our mind’s ability to synthesize thoughts, ideas and beliefs becomes who we are. The lesson explains that we have to be mindful of what we expose ourselves to, because we will assimilate our surroundings. The Buddha knew that the mind and spirit of humans is terrifically powerful, and what we take into ourselves can be nourishing and sustaining, as well as violent and numbing. The strength and beauty of the human spirit allows us to transcend the "actual" world that we observe in the present so we can create the world that we want and need in the future.

We are what we eat. I do not think that this story is interpreted very literally by most of us. It is not read to coincide with a political joke I saw once, a photograph picturing the President sitting in front of a large piece of meat labeled Rump roast under the caption "You are what you eat." (I saw that joke sometime in the late 70s and the president in question was recent Noble Peace Prize winner Jimmy Carter.)

The Buddha alerts us that we become that to which we are exposed. Surround yourself with beauty and it becomes you. Surround yourself with stillness and love, and you will fatten with equanimity and compassion. We must also take the Buddha’s wisdom literally. We are what we eat. If we fill ourselves with food that was grown responsibly, mindful of the earth, mindful of the lives and livelihoods of farmers, farm workers, transporters of the food, retailers and to the consumers of the food itself, we will be living off the fat of the land. Living off the fat of the land is the goal. Living off the fat of the land is sustainable. Living off anything else is cutting into the meat, it is spending the principal of our bio-endowment. Continuing to live dependant on unsustainable agricultural, environmental and social practices will compromise the complex systems that make life on this planet possible. Or perhaps it is compromised already.

Soil is life. Everything depends on healthy soil and we know so little about the structures, composition and communities found in soil. We do know that in a healthy farm system, soil fertility increases every year. Small farms with many different crops integrated together with animals are systems that resemble nature. Nature is balanced and sustainable. With good rotations, and adequate care, our soil is never depleted, and if done well, becomes richer and more fertile each year. Our corporate farming brothers and sisters, with their lack of cover crops, no crop rotations, their massive plantations of single strains of crops called mono-cultures are costing us nearly 2 inches of irreplaceable top soil per year. The great Mississippi is clogging with silt and the health of our long-term food supply is deteriorating. What is wonderful is that small, diversified farms are more efficient. The number of calories produced per acre is significantly more in small, diversified farms than in massive corporate mono-cultures, thanks to the sense of stewardship cultured on small plots of land the farmer knows, and the hands-on contact with life that is impossible to realize from atop a giant tractor tilling thousands of acres. Food well cared for tastes better, and gets better every year.

Now I have a confession to make. I had a small laying flock of chickens, and I would take eggs to my parents sometimes. One morning, Mom had made breakfast and had run out of my fresh eggs half way through cooking, so my plate had a one fresh and one factory egg on it. Now, if you know fresh eggs, you know they are simply better. Deeper colored yoke, thinner shell, fresh smell. I bragged on my eggs constantly. Well, mom pulled a fast one and tested me. Side by side, not knowing which was which, I could not tell the difference. The shame.

Then I thought, knowing is more than half the battle. When I knew that they were my eggs, I knew they were better. Knowing that my chickens had happy lives producing those eggs made all the difference. Knowing that the lettuce in your salad was grown without the help of Monsanto Corporation, petroleum-based pesticides or nearly slave pickers makes it taste better. There is honor and respect in food produced well, as there is honor and respect in anything crafted well. Doesn’t it just make sense that we want to build ourselves out of something that is better? Food made well makes us better people. We are what we eat.

We have the ability to understand that something tastes good on many different levels. We are able to determine when enough is enough. We are not like a horse that will nearly always eat itself to death if let loose in a grain room. But while we don’t have to eat ourselves to death, so many of us do. The Centers for Disease Control report that more Americans will die of dietary related illness this year than from tobacco. More than a billion of the world’s poorest people are dying from starvation and malnutrition while a billion of the world’s wealthiest, us, are dying from excess.

I saw a piece of guerilla art in the magazine Adbusters recently. It is reminiscent of the "Got Milk" ads. There is a picture of a starving young African boy. The caption reads "I don’t have milk, but I don’t need as much as you do." We, here in the industrialized world, eat so much animal protein that we need ten times as much calcium simply to digest our food than we should need. The shame is that the boy in the photo will be lucky to get one tenth the calcium that we get, and as our reliance on animal protein increases, so will our reliance on calcium, which is produced in horrendous factory milk operations by cows pushed by genetically engineered substances such as rBGH and pesticide producing GMO corn which have consequences to the public health and the ecosystem which we are only beginning to divine out.

It is all related. We are what we eat. We receive a steady diet of news clips pumped into our homes via televisions, radios, shorter and shorter newspaper and magazine stories. Our attention span is shortening to the point where this summer I saw potatoes individually labeled and wrapped in plastic being advertised as ready to microwave, special price $.79 each. A far cry from the $.75 per pound locally grown, organic potatoes at the farmer’s market where you can ask the person who grew it "Tell me about your field. Could I come see it?" or "How do you cook these?"

Food is so important because it is something that we have a most intimate relationship with at least three times a day. Food is so important because the way that we sustain our bodies has such a massive impact on the earth that we are such a part of. But as Jesus said, reaffirming the Buddha’s lesson, we do not live by bread alone. How do we nourish the rest of us? How do we survive in such a toxic culture? Not only toxic in the chemicals we eat and breathe and absorb through our skin, how do we survive in a culture where each of our mouths are filled with hatred, violence and lies on such a regular basis?

Be careful what you eat. Being new to Portland, I have been concerned about how to sustain myself in this new environment. I am far from home and have a lot going on in my life. I have been lonely, nervous about how well I would serve this community, how well I could fill the role of minister. I have sought out ways to nourish myself here. I meditate and pray. I talk to old friends from home and new friends here. I consult mentors like Marilyn and Tom and writers like Walt Whitman, Luke and Pema Chondron. And through this, I have learned a few things about being in the world. I have learned that there is a wealth of help available in the world. From teachers living and dead. From intimate partners to near strangers. Humans love to help each other. We need to be useful. My short time here in this wonderful congregation has taught me the meaning of the saying "Ask and it will be given, search and you will find." The person to your left or to your right, the person fixing coffee this morning, or perhaps one of the many church professionals that work here are working here for you, the member of this community. The love of your community is waiting to nourish you.

A second spiritual nutrition lesson I have learned is to surround myself with people who feed me. Or as I heard from a friend recently, keep yourself surrounded by people who are healthier than you. I know that for me, it sometimes feels like the world is my potential social group! Surround yourself with people who feed you. Surround yourself with people who will forgive you your debts while not putting up with your poor behavior. Who offer a shoulder to cry on and arms to be hugged by while knowing that the same is waiting there for them. Find people in your life who you can not do without. I seek people like this in my life. I have sought, and by some grace, I have found some of them. We all can. We all must try.

And the last lesson I have gleaned, more through witnessing than receiving teaching is the importance of getting right with God. Finding a relationship with the infinite. Connecting with the all-sustaining spirit of life is one of those life-long searches that we all have before us, and it is the most important undertaking of our lives. Like Garrison Keillor, every Unitarian’s favorite conservative Christian, when asked about the purpose of life he says, "to know and serve your God, of course." Seeking God, in my life, this is the most difficult thing I have to do. Learning to surrender. Learning to dispense with the rational, the critical mind. I struggle deeply in this search.

I like to think of it as finding a spring far off in the woods where I can drink deeply, where I can quench my thirst. This spring is usually hidden from me, hard to find through the undergrowth of my daily life, but it is always there. I have to believe that. Bubbling the very stuff of life that when I drink from it, I am renewed.

We interact with the world on many levels. Our six mouths take in and create our inner worlds, which inform our interactions with our outer world. The body, mind, and spirit trinity is another way to look at this. The spirit that feels, the mind that reasons, and the body that is and houses the mind and spirit. Our spring is found in that special place where our mouths, our body, mind and spirit converge and give us a sense of overwhelming love, eternal connectedness with life itself. For me, finding my spring is a direct experience of God.

I have had glimpses of my spring. Once, walking down one of the rows in my field last season, I knelt down and pulled a carrot out of the ground. It was a fine carrot, long, orange. I was proud of that carrot. I wiped the dirt from its skin and bit into it. I felt embraced. I tasted the cloud in that carrot. I tasted the sun. I tasted the horses and chickens that fed the soil that sustained the carrot. I tasted the heat and sweat spilled preparing the soil. I tasted the love and support of all of the people that made it possible for me to be there, in that field, in that very moment. My parents, my partner, Steve the farmer whose land I work, the people who buy my vegetables. I tasted a miracle. That from a tiny speck of a seed developed this living thing that is waiting to sustain my life, and the life of those I love, care for and need. Hidden among the carrots that morning, my spring was waiting for me to simply stop, notice it and drink deeply.

Where is your spring? What feeds you? What nourishes your body, mind, and spirit? Is it being hugged by your child? Is it absorbing the rain on a windblown beach? Is it deep within some painting or in the act of singing? Where is your thirst quenched? Where do your body, mind, and spirit converge in a perfect place, where you can witness that splendid image of God?

We are nourished by this planet. We are nourished by our companions, our loves. We are nourished by the sights and sounds and feelings that we take in each moment we are alive. Underlying all of that is something eternal, something infinite that we, as finite beings, can scarcely comprehend. We do not live by bread alone, but also by love and compassion and care and companionship. Our spirit feels, our mind reasons and our body interacts physically with the world, but none of these can stand alone. Our body, mind, and spirit meet God, meet Eternal Love, which allows us to survive in this world we are blessed with, this promised land we are in.

We must feed ourselves well. Feed our bodies wholesome food grown in a way respectful of the Earth and her servants; feed our spirits with communities rich with love and with friends and families who sustain us; feed our minds with free inquiry into challenges, problems to be solved and deep learning. Do this and we become a fertile field. Our spirit becomes the precious produce of our inner landscape. Eat well. Amen.

PRAYER

Great Provider, we depend on you to nourish us as you depend on us to be stewards to the creation. Guide us through our greed to respect. Lead us to the bounty realized in sustainability. Heal our broken hearts so we may know and serve you always. With humble thanks, amen.

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Copyright 2002, Brent Was.  All rights reserved.