Mindful Eating for the Beloved Community

What is the Beloved Community?  Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. described the triple evils of racism, militarization, and economic exploitation. The Beloved Community is free of these three evils: it is anti-racist, practices active non-violence, and reconciles historical economic injustices. But it also values the positive attributes that all communities should be able to enjoy, ones that rejuvenate the earth and people’s health and wholeness.  Ones that regenerate the soils by sequestering carbon back into the ground, and value people over profits, allowing humans to simply consume foods with nutrients that promote health. Instead, foods are processed and packaged with toxins, additives, and an imbalance of nutrients that do not match the level of physical activity undertaken by most people in today’s society.  We have industrialized food systems that have been built through systemic racism, on the backs of slave labor - fertilized with chemicals produced for warfare - that degrade health and impoverish soil, people and planet.  While 1.5 billion acres of land was stolen from Indigenous nations in the U.S. between 1776 and 1887[1], today, “white people own 98 percent of all farmland, or about 50 times the number of acres owned by people of color.”[2]  Meanwhile, “over 60 percent of farmworkers are people of color, largely Latinx.”[3]  1.34% of farmers in the United States are Black, while the Black population across the country is around 13.4%.”[4] Of the 139 Black farmers among the over 57,000 farmers in New York State, as of the 2017 USDA Census of Agriculture, Black farmers earned a total net cash farm income of -$906, while white farmers earned $42,875.[5]  

The Beloved Community is one that supports Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) in owning and farming land that allows them to produce wealth and grow food that can be used to nourish communities. It is one that supports Black people in reclaiming their African roots and allows us to share across cultures without assuming that the privileged with education, food, and racist cultural practices should dominate society.

We achieve the Beloved Community by abiding by the King Philosophy. The King Philosophy includes the Triple Evils, Six Principles of Nonviolence, Six Steps of Nonviolent Social Change and the Beloved Community.[6]  We also acknowledge the steps for anti-racist practices outlined by Dr. Ibram X. Kendi in “How to Be an Anti-Racist.”

Mindful Eating for the Beloved Community, then, is a way of eating conscientiously. It entails understanding and recognizing our interconnectedness and relationships at a profoundly deep level, so much so that we see the food we eat and the systems that food comes from is tied to the well-being of our brothers and sisters of different ethnic and economic backgrounds than our own, in different parts of our country and different countries altogether.  It is a way of eating that starts with gratitude for the food in front of us - but does not stop there. It acknowledges that people have access to food of differing nutrient quality depending on their level of privilege, which leads to different health outcomes among different populations.  It acknowledges that companies that own the land and production resources have the most control over the wealth and health of communities. It acknowledges that people of color have less access to the resources that would enable them to own and lead companies, and are often relegated to positions that the privileged do not want, such as harvesting the food in dangerous working conditions, without being provided adequate wages or healthcare benefits.  Mindful Eating for the Beloved Community entails considering all of these factors mindfully as we eat the food in front of us, but then going a step further to use the nourishment from the food eaten to sustain us in actualizing systemic changes to correct these injustices.

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[1] Northeast Farmers of Color Land Trust https://nefoclandtrust.org/our-work

[2] Civil Eats https://civileats.com/2020/02/24/an-enormous-land-transition-is-underway-heres-how-to-make-it-just/

[3] Civil Eats https://civileats.com/2020/02/24/an-enormous-land-transition-is-underway-heres-how-to-make-it-just/

[4] Black Farmer Fund https://www.blackfarmerfund.org/ourstory

[5] Black Farmer Fund https://www.blackfarmerfund.org/ourstory

[6] The King Center https://thekingcenter.org/king-philosophy/

The Light Game

"Through a young intern’s experience in a garden, we come to see how learning the incarnational art of growing food and coming to a deeper realization about why we’re here go hand in hand. In this simple narrative, Mary craftfully weaves together a story that reveals the connections between organic farming, religion, science, energy, light, and life to bring us to reflect on life’s deepest questions. The Light Game is a must-read for anyone searching for deeper answers, who questions religion, or who questions their own life. It will help us more clearly see the light inside each of us, and show us how we can each bring more light into the world."   - Kelly Moltzen, MPH, RDN, Franciscan Action Network board member & Wake Forest University School of Divinity Re:Generate Fellow

The Light Game, available for free on Kindle until September 14

"What if life is a game and there is only one rule?"

We are all searching for answers about the meaning of life. So much so that we often forget about the core truths about what it means to be human, and that people of all religions are in search of the same thing. Those of us who practice religion all seek to understand the "cause, nature, and purpose of the universe," which is how dictionary.com defines "religion."  But what if it all is actually very simple?  In my own tradition, I've realized that the very premise of the religion - that Jesus' life was about sharing what it means to live as an incarnational human being on Earth - becomes an elephant in the room when considering the schism between the life Jesus taught us to live and the human predicaments we find ourselves in at this moment in time. Catholics and other Christians often forget about the incarnationality of the religion, spending entire livelihoods deliberating on philosophical and theological concepts instead of living out what the religion tells us is important: how we live life on Earth.

To be in-carnate is to be in the flesh. The word represents a spiritual being residing in the flesh, in human form.  To fully live as humans we have to know how to nourish ourselves with food from the Earth, and so it is important for us to consider how the food we eat is grown, and even better, to grow some of that food ourselves.

Mary Colborn helps us make a critical discovery about the nature of the energy that produces our food in her new book The Light Game. As an organic farmer and lifelong spiritual Catholic, Mary helps us see that the energy that is used by plants to produce oxygen and food comprises the same vibrating molecules that make up the energy we live off of and is shared in our interactions with one another. Through the various parables (many rooted in the natural world) and healings performed by Jesus throughout his lifetime, Jesus was telling us the same thing. We are Light. We are all made of the same divine energy as that which created the cosmos.  And therefore, each of our lives is critically important, as we are all part of the whole.  We all have an integral role to play during our time on this Earth.

I met Mary through the Global Catholic Climate Movement and had a chance to visit her farm in Michigan recently after supporting her Barnraiser fundraiser earlier in the year.  I've been interested in supporting her work especially after realizing our shared interests in promoting regenerative agriculture within the Catholic Church. While at the farm, Mary read me an almost finalized version of The Light Game. As the book is about a young intern working in the fields of Mary's farm and wrestling with questions about the meaning of life as Mary ponders these questions out loud with her, it felt almost as if I was in the book itself, as I helped harvest produce and talked to Mary about the contents of the book. We picked green beans and raspberries and reflected on Franciscan spirituality, integral ecology, and the challenges of trying to sustain a farm in this day & age with little government support for small-scale organic farmers. I met Mary's sister Tina, saw the chickens, barns that need repair, and acres and acres of unused farmland potential that could be created into a teaching farm with student interns as Mary envisions. I also saw the giant Love Letter on the side of her barn that she talks about at the end of the book. As a struggling small-scale organic farmer, Mary hopes to use the proceeds from the book to revitalize the farm, create a food hub and internship program for young farmers. She's not working alone, either- Mary hopes to do this in tandem with the Kalamazoo Valley Community College Food Innovation Center, which is building a food hub for farmers in the Kalamazoo Valley of Michigan.

I cannot stress enough how exciting this project is, and how profound The Light Game's message is. I would really like you all to read it, and so would Mary.  In honor of World Suicide Prevention Day (September 10), Mary is making her book available for free for five days, downloadable on Kindle or the Kindle app.  Please check it out and share your comments - we'd love to hear what you think!