I just had the worst food experience ever. I went to Red Robin - a place known for its burgers, and I ordered a burger. It's best to describe my experience in terms of a different experience. I have been eating a farmer's market chicken in the past days, and I find myself imagining its vitality when I eat it. Just like you see/ imagine a vegetable's vitality, I started doing the same with my meat. It improved my eating experience tenfold. Another habit I've taken up is imagining the source of all the ingredients in my dish just before eating. A good practice, I think.
Back to the burger - that burger tasted dead. The meat literally tasted as though there were no vitality, but it was simply a vehicle for protein. It disgusts me more and more as I think about it. I'm only feeling better as I eat some honey and almonds.
It's always struck me as naive to protest against eating animals on moral grounds. As far as I can understand, the argument classifies life and the value therein in completely arbitrary terms. For instance, if something has a face, is it MORE alive? If something has legs, is it more vital than something with roots? Well, the rabbit forages, and the plant leans towards the sun. Maybe these seem drastically different at first glance, but with a closer examination, I don't believe there can be much difference between the experiences of pain, pleasure, sustenance, etc. It's very very easy to forget that we live by consuming life. I remember the day as a child when I really linked the image of a chicken and the shrink-wrapped, boneless, skinless breast in the fridge. It was shocking, nearly scandalous. But this is so much easier to do now. It's simple not to think of a Cheez-it coming from the earth. Who cares where a burger comes from? Jamie Oliver blended a WHOLE chicken in front of kids, and it was disgusting. However, when breaded and fried nearly all of them wanted to eat it.
Our society has chosen mechanization of the food chain for good reason, but it's time to honestly look at that chain and remember one existential fact: we live by killing. Death brings life, and nothing else can.
In some Spanish-speaking regions, a butchering of a pig is called El Sacrificio. It evokes images of Abraham and Isaac, Mary Magdalene, Christ. And isn't that only natural? Christians gain eternal life through eating the body and blood of the Christ. Disturbing? OR life affirming? Is it possible to see the Christ in each bite of food you take? It seems that we have to be connected to the killing in order to do that - of both Christ and the plant/ animal. It seems wiser to me to imagine yourself as the roman guard, stabbing the side of an already dying man. This act of irreverance seems hardly different from eating blindly.
What I feel like we must understand is that if to kill means to live, the act of killing must take on a sacred significance. We should kill with intent, blessing that which yields to us.
This tangent is building into a fever, and I can't sense where it's going. But to kill is to live. To die is to be born, and to be born is necessarily to kill. If we are born with our guilt, it's no true guilt. Original sin must be a fallacy, or simply a teaching technique. It seems to me that the only sin is to be ignorant of our own nature. That has nothing to do with learning, and everything to do with looking. I have to look. I have to find the root. I don't trust what people tell me or imply, unless it's that I am holy and beautiful. Something inside me screams in fits if ever anything else is implied, as though it were an insult against my humanity. So back to killing - I want to kill. Thomas Keller wrote a beautiful passage called "the Importance of Rabbits." It entails the story of him butchering cute baby rabbits. It's a fairly horrid story, but that's what makes it all the more beautiful, as he ends contemplating the fact that he never cooked anything with so much care. This is necessarily our purpose while here - to get in touch with the basis of reality, not to run from it, but to understand and finally embrace.
What is fear? That somehow lies at the root of all our issues. We don't want to look at our food supply, because it makes us killers. We don't want to look at ourselves, because it makes us sinners. But is that not what we are? What's ever wrong with that if it's what we are? The fox fornicates openly - why do we hide? The jaguar kills ruthlessly. People have more insight, so we should be better. I suppose that would be the argument, but I don't trust it. I trust something inside me that calls out to all humanity, "I am a sinner. Place the mark of Cain on my forehead, and protect from my enemies!" I am Abraham, ready to kill his son. I am the bold man returning 10 talents for my master's 1. For what else is there that is not an affront to my sense of being? I can't be small - it's not in my nature, nor in anyone else's. I can't fit into a society that asks me to be all things for it, and in return casts me a pittance. The good servant received 10 cities for his cunning - what is this world that returns me a 401(k) for my soul? What am I but a broke guy ruminating on a chicken?
