Dancing with, and Honoring, Dinner

I went and saw Joel Salatin speak at the January Series on January 17^th. I was very interested in what he had to say because I’d seen him speak in the documentary Food Inc. and also because I’m at an age where what I eat is becoming my choice for the first time. In the coming years, I’ll be in charge of purchasing my own food and I’m interested in what ethical food looks like. I thought his message was a great groundwork for beginning to think in those ways.

His speech, entitled “Dancing with Dinner” talked about how alienated we’ve become from our food. Out of a past where families came together around food, cultures defined themselves by what they ate, and seasons were reflected in our pantries; we now live in an age, Salatin says, where food is “just a bothersome pit stop between what’s really important in life.”

In the absence of a community or family relationship towards food, corporations are stepping in to fill the role of food provider. Tellingly, these corporations’ advertisements reflect this trend. Meat packaging giant Tyson’s slogan is “feeding you like family”. This has become a self-fulfilling prophecy as more and more family meals consist of things like reheated Tyson chicken nuggets. “We used to eat together,” Salatin mourned, “now we just graze.”

“Dancing with Dinner” is an image Joel Salatin used repeatedly. In the whimsical metaphor, he referred to our food as a dance partner that we could delight in and know. “Food isn’t mechanical!” he reiterated. Salatin was clearly passionate about his topic from the largest aspects to the smallest. “Some people just see a handful of dirt,” he said, “but it isn’t, it’s soil, and people don’t realize that soil is alive!” He began to move about on stage, acting out a drama where a “narwhal-type” organism was attacked by a “centipede-like” organism. Afterwards he exclaimed incredulously, “this is the real world! This makes Steven Spielberg look like a kindergartener: and this kind of stuff is happening every day!”

Another concept Salatin repeated was that of honoring his animals and even his vegetables. He cares, he says, about the “pigness” of a pig. He farms in a way that lets the animals do the things for which they are created. Responding to questions of whether it was harder to eat a pig that you cared for and knew, he said “the way that we create sacred ness is food and eating is to value the animals in a way that makes their sacrifices meaningful.” In other words, as Wendell Berry says in his essay, “The Pleasures of Eating”, “A significant part of the pleasure of eating is in one’s accurate consciousness of the lives and the world from which food comes.” In the case of an ethical farm like Salatin’s, Berry says that “the knowledge of the good health of the garden relieves and frees and comforts the eater.”

The obvious joy throughout Salatin’s speech reflected the Kuyperian idea of “every square inch” of our culture being redeemable. Though some might think slaughtering chickens and figuring out the best way to spread manure is not a worthy task, Salatin shows a way to honor Creation in what he does, to be a part of the ecological ethic that Walsh and Keesmaat discuss in Colossians Remixed. When I see someone living like that, reveling in the good things which God has given us and ensuring that these good things will last, I see glimpses of the Kingdom.

“If God knows every sparrow that falls,” Salatin concluded his lecture, “don’t you think he would care about the “pigness” of a pig?” Walsh and Keesmaat agree with, “When fellow creatures, whether they be particular animals or complex ecological systems, are in distress, when they cry out in anguish, a compassionate community responds.” What we eat has grave implications for our planet and our fellow inhabitants. Armed with the knowledge we’ve been given by films and books and speakers like Joel Salatin, we all should seek to honor what we eat, to introduce ourselves, to learn from it; to find so much joy in our food that it overflows into a dance.