{"id":615,"date":"2012-03-14T09:08:11","date_gmt":"2012-03-14T14:08:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slowchurch\/?p=615"},"modified":"2012-03-14T09:08:11","modified_gmt":"2012-03-14T14:08:11","slug":"the-fall-and-food-preservation-guest-post-thomas-turner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slowchurch\/2012\/03\/14\/the-fall-and-food-preservation-guest-post-thomas-turner\/","title":{"rendered":"The Fall and Food Preservation [Guest Post -Thomas Turner]"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/a>Thom Turner is a friend and regular contributor to <\/em>The Englewood Review of Books<\/a>. Thom is also an adjunct lecturer of English at Nyack College<\/a> and the Senior Editor and Publisher of <\/em>GENERATE Magazine<\/a>. He has recently been doing a wonderful series on his blog on a C<\/a>hristian ethic of eating<\/a>, which has some important connections to our Slow Church project. I invited him to guest post here, and he offered the following reflection. <\/em><\/p>\n

\n

Last night as I was ladling the oozing remnants of twenty five pounds of apples into just sterilized quart jars I got to thinking: why do I have to do this? Why is there apple sauce?<\/em><\/p>\n

Don\u2019t get me wrong. I enjoy doing it. I love canning. Sometimes a bit too much. I\u2019ll come home from work and announce that I\u2019ve stopped at the grocery store\u2014I bought pears!<\/em>\u2014and now we are going to pickle them!<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not that I don\u2019t enjoy it. It was more existential. I wondered why I had to can anything.<\/p>\n

Death. The answer is death.<\/p>\n

Apples will rot. Vegetables will spoil. Greens will wilt. Herbs will dry and stiffen. Tomatoes will burst into a rancid, stinking mess. Meat will become diseased and fly infested.<\/p>\n

So we can, cook, pickle, and preserve to cheat death.<\/p>\n

Cursed is the ground because of you;
\nthrough painful toil you will eat food from it
\nall the days of your life.
\nIt will produce thorns and thistles for you,
\nand you will eat the plants of the field.
\nBy the sweat of your brow
\nyou will eat your food
\nuntil you return to the ground,
\nsince from it you were taken;
\nfor dust you are
\nand to dust you will return. (Genesis 3)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

To dust. The rotting, the festering, the molds, the spoiling\u2014its all a precursor, a premonition of death. So we try to stop it the best we can, by cooking and boiling and submerging. And then the cans come back out with new, transformed foods. They are safe and preserved.<\/p>\n

Safe and preserved. In other words, alive.<\/p>\n

So I may have slighted canning a bit. It\u2019s not as much cheating death as\u2026a baptism, a resurrection. The food coming up out of the water, safe to eat, immune to spoil, to rotting, to death.<\/p>\n

The next time you open a jar of pickles or a can of beans say softly to yourself, O Death, where is your victory?<\/em><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thom Turner is a friend and regular contributor to The Englewood Review of Books. Thom is also an adjunct lecturer of English at Nyack College and the Senior Editor and Publisher of GENERATE Magazine. He has recently been doing a wonderful series on his blog on a Christian ethic of eating, which has some important […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":95,"featured_media":616,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,12],"tags":[222,25957,25956,223,203],"class_list":["post-615","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-food","category-meditations","tag-canning","tag-food","tag-meditations","tag-preservation","tag-thomas-turner"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Fall and Food Preservation [Guest Post -Thomas Turner]<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Thom Turner is a friend and regular contributor to The Englewood Review of Books. 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