(We’re revisiting this post from 2014.)   Watering in the Rain Talitha G. Phillips California has had a bad year for rain. In late January we were informed it was the worst drought ever recorded.  We’ve all been putting buckets in our showers to catch water for our gardens – an early morning ritual performed with increasing fervency, nearly a prayer. At Montclair Presbyterian Church in Oakland, California, we have a community garden, constructed and mostly maintained by the youth... Read more

(We’re revisiting this post from 2014.)   Just Good Food Rev. Sarah Moore-Nokes   In college, my roommates and I were known for (what we thought were) epic meals. Let me set the scene for you.  Most often we were a haphazard group of 10 or 12 squeezed around a table that could only legitimately seat 6.  Some of us were old friends but there were also always a few new faces who gathered with us to share a meal... Read more

Now that we have asked ourselves the first three questions … 1) Where does your food come from? 2) How was your food grown/raised? 3) When are you eating your food? … and having taken time to consider the answers to these questions, what have we learned about our food and our food choices? And – equally importantly – why are we choosing to eat what we’re eating? In other words, are we fully aware of the justice implications of our... Read more

I do not have bananas growing in my backyard, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t have a banana today (or any other day) despite the fact that the banana would not normally be found in a place with 5 inches of snow on the ground. Modern transportation allows us the luxury of having nearly any kind of food, at any time of year … and not just as a special treat, but regularly and consistently. But in response to... Read more

At the core of this question is a conversation about sustainability. In the service of greater productivity and with a mandate to feed the world, our industrial food system embraces chemical pesticides and herbicides, petroleum-heavy fertilizers, genetically-modified versions of crops, and confined feedlots. Despite these ‘advancements’ in agriculture – which pose environmental, health, and animal welfare concerns – there are still more than 800 million people around the world who are undernourished. Additionally, every year 2.6 million children die from... Read more

Tracking our food back through the maze of the industrial food system to the farm from which it originated is an impossible task. Usually, we can track it back to its country of origin, but rarely to its farm of origin. There are only two ways to know exactly where your food comes from: either to grow it yourself or to buy it directly from the farmer who grew it. For some of us, either of those options are feasible.... Read more

Certainly, eating is an agricultural act, connecting us to those who grow and harvest the food. Of course, eating is also an ecological act, tying us to the land and the environment. Eating is even a political act, as we use each and every food dollar to cast our ‘vote’ about how we want the world to be used and the kind of food system we support. The sacredness of the Lord’s Supper or the Passover meal remind us that... Read more

Though our attempts to find a working definition of food justice have only scratched the surface of the larger conversation, after seven days of food justice posts, we are beginning to see that the issues included in the food justice conversation are numerous and diverse. In an article several years ago in the New York Times, author Michael Pollan wrote about the dificulty in navigating “an increasingly complex, politicized and ethically challenging food landscape.” Wouldn’t it be nice if we... Read more

We are beginning  to understand just how far-reaching are the issues of food justice. The magnitude and complexity of the issues threatens to either overwhelm or dishearten us. Instead of giving up, we stop to pray. We pray not only for the people working within our food system, but also for the land and the animals. We pray for those people in need and for those in positions of power. We ask that our own meals be experiences of grace,... Read more

“So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do everything for the glory of God.” 1 Corinthians 10:31   In last week’s posts on the 40 Days for Food Justice project, we struggled to find language that would help us understand the breadth and depth of the issues encompassed by the phrase food justice. (Read about that discussion here and here.) We also used another hard-to-define phrase: food values. (Read that post here.) If our values are the... Read more