I often include food blessings, words of gratitude, when I post up a recipe. I am grateful beyond the words used.
Maybe I feel things differently because I have had entire months of my life when I was too ill to eat food, to chew food, to lift up a fork, to cut my food, to swallow food, let alone actually stand up in the kitchen to prepare food to feed myself or my family.
Maybe I see things differently because of my education and love for biology, the environment, food and nutrition, having a glimpse of understanding of the connectedness of all these parts of our world, and the necessity of keeping those parts in balance for full functioning.
Maybe I appreciate the hands and hearts of all who have helped bring me the food that nourishes my body and soul because I understand the work and love required to grow good food.
So even without posting a recipe today (one is in the draft box, just waiting for me to download photos), I will leave you with two of my favorite food blessings that capture my thoughts expressed above and expand upon my thoughts in yesterday's post about 'drudgery in the kitchen'. Most likely I have already used them in a past blog post somewhere during the past several years, but I have enjoyed re-reading them this morning (indeed, savoring the words and images) and hope you will also.
As our bodies are sustained with this food
May our hearts be nourished
With true friendship
And our souls fed with the truth.
From the book A Grateful Heart
The food which we are about to eat
Is Earth, Water, and Sun, compounded
Through the alchemy of many plants.
Therefore Earth, Water, and Sun will
become part of us.
This food is also the fruit of the labor of
many beings and creatures.
We are grateful for it.
May it give us strength, health, joy.
And may it increase our love.
~~ Unitarian Grace
Agree or disagree, I hope I have given my readers some 'food for thought'.
Cultivate your life - you are what you grow, inch by inch, row by row,
Diana Dyer, MS, RD
2 comments:
I had the luck to get laid off 3 months before I got cancer. I hasten to add that I also have the luck to be married to a working spouse. So I have spent the 2 1/2 years since finishing treatment building back up, swimming, dancing, doing pottery, spending time with friends and neighbors (I really know and visit with my neighbors) going to every concert or show I feel like...and cooking most every meal of the day from scratch. When my spouse isn't cooking from scratch. Even people who know what happened to me keep asking me what I "do" and whether or not I'm "retired". I kinda resent it. But I do understand what they mean. We don't have a normal way to talk about slowing down your life to heal or even to do what you want to do.
Also, gotta love how after you've lived through stage 4 cancer you're just supposed to get over that and go back -- as soon as your "done" -- to what everyone seems to think is normal life...or is that just a lie agreed upon?
To anyone who's interested, I recommend a book called God's Hotel, about a doctor's experience with what she calls "slow medicine" (it's not about religion, that's the nickname she gives the hospital where she works) and it helped me to feel like I was doing exactly what I should be doing. We need more than busyness and money (or the fear of it) to have a good life. And we need more than endless talk about weight and appearance (buff!) to understand what health is.
I hope to make some money again one day, but I am asking myself all the time just what the phrase "real job" means. Because work, in its very best sense, is something I am doing all the time.
Thanks for your work, by the way. Every voice like yours is a correction that's needed. Some of us are listening.
Maru
Thank you for reading my blog and sharing your deeply insightful comments about your own cancer story. So much of what you said rang true to me, remembering how my body seemed to be revolting against 'going back to normal' after my 2nd tour of duty with chemo, etc, even going back to a job I loved.
I finally stepped off the 'normal' treadmill, only knowing that the change that I sensed needed to happen would not start until I made a deliberate change. I have not been able to predict even one aspect of the past 15 or so years, but I know I have never looked back. :)
I went back to re-read what I wrote about your previous comment on April 12, 2012. I also re-read the poem you included, Hooked by Orval Lund. I will enjoy thinking of you each time I appreciate and enjoy being let go by the hook, smelling my rich soil, listening to the bluebirds chortle, and even seeing the lone coyote lope through our farm in broad daylight like he owns the place.
May you also own your day, do your work, and enjoy it all, my friend. :)
Diana
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