“Live so Mother Earth will be grateful for us.” -Robin Wall Kimmerer
Sif was the Norse Goddess of grain and fertile grounds where plant life thrives. She is the Goddess of runic alphabet and is symbolic of human’s problems with interaction. We no longer seem to honor such things as plants and animals, unless we are gardeners or growing flowers. She was married to Thor, the thunder God. There is a spattering of poetry written about her from the 1200s. It is said she had her hair cut by a trickster god and Thor demanded that a golden crown be made for her, which resulted in long blond hair. Her hair represented the golden wheat that grew in the fields. Her name, literally means being related by marriage so family is most important to her and seeing plants life as relations is part of her very being. Thor was a sky god and Sif was an earth goddess and these mythological unions were common at the time of pre-Christian times. We have forgotten how incredibly important plant food is to us. We grow it, we eat it, but do we honor it?
Everything we eat was once a living thing, created by Creator, for us, ever sacrificed in the name of nutrition and survival. The planet holds every kind of nutrition that we need, and sometimes we eat when we do not need, waste more than we eat, and we have forgotten how sacred the spirit of our nutrition needs honoring.
Consider ‘waste’ as we scrape our dishes and prepare it for the compost or garbage. Everything that lives has a spirit. Everything. We tend to live with ‘exceptialism’. We think we are the special ones, the deservedness for that which is sacrificed. Yes, we were, apparently, told that the plants and animals are for our use, but consider how thoughtlessly we eat and waste more than we eat. That does not display gratitude for every bite we put in our mouth. Gratitude for such would mean that we would use restraint, we would honor and use less and waste less. Contentment has led us down a rocky path. Our environment is toxic, the air the plants and animals use is toxic, we are toxic. We have not given thught to climate and environment in which our ;food; was raised. Now we are in a mess and we become full of garbage and our dumps become full of plant and animal parts. We are consumers, not grateful. I am one, who does not especially like to eat leftovers, but I have begun to repurpose meals that have leftovers. I have tried using all of what I plant and eat; roots, stems, bones, ends, tops. I save ends of bread for stuffings and use in custards and freezer bananas and the like to use after they begin to go ‘off. I have a seal and save machine that seals food for longer storage. I put my dry goods in quart jars because I am always on meal bug alert. I used mashed potatoes for thickening. I am trying to do my part.
I am aware of how much we are encouraged to over-eat. How many times have we gone to restaurants and the servings are huge? I seem to always ask for a take-out box and then, faithfully, put it in the fridge to eat later or tomorrow. Sometimes tomorrow never comes. I do most of my eating of food that I make, rathe than the quick-fix instant foods in cans and boxes and bags and ‘however-they-can-sell-the-most-with-the-least-packaging’. I have a friend that brings her own leftover Tupperware type container when she goes out to eat because she is saving on waste-cartons that she might use. I do not go that far. I, also buy many containers to use after meals to put leftovers in. I am lucky that The Bee Man likes leftovers for lunch the net day.
Covid-buying taught me another lesson. We needed yeast. There was no yeast to be found in the food stores. We need sealer tops for jars. There were none to be found and I tried to reuse sealer tops and some did not seal. Shelves were emptied and it took some time, in fat, some items are still not available. I learned to make my own artisan bread and it has no chemicals, or padding (think soy) and, yes, takes more time, but what else did we have? Did you know that wonder bread was once full of sawdust as filler? Yes, check that out.
https://www.marketplace.org/2017/11/01/how-wood-got-our-food-then-out-it-then-back-it-again/
Oh, and then there are the non-food items like the plethora of palm oils and etc. that we use instead of fat from the meats we eat. https://www.google.com/search?q=using+palm+oil+and+other+cooking+oils+are+devastating+forests&client=firefox-b-d&biw=1536&bih=711&sxsrf=AOaemvJBU6N6iFNHXvPdhcJ0SC_Radwl0Q%3A1634296849150&ei=EWRpYb-2CPHQ9AO2sLqQDw&ved=0ahUKEwj_gpqZpszzAhVxKH0KHTaYDvIQ4dUDCA0&oq=using+palm+oil+and+other+cooking+oils+are+devastating+forests&gs_lcp=Cgdnd3Mtd2l6EAxKBAhBGABQAFgAYNmTBGgAcAJ4AIABAIgBAJIBAJgBAA&sclient=gws-wiz
All of the things we eat for food can be damaged by climate change. We can have droughts. We can still have pests and food diseases. The record-breaking heat cooked the fruit right on the trees this year. (my poor raspberries) Yes, we can get tainted food right off the shelf. We are an ungrateful lot for the farmer, the fruit and vegetables that are money-makers, or used to be. All it takes is one disaster and our food prices triple, in some cases. A pound of butter at our local food chain cost $7.15 a pound a few weeks ago. Now it is on at a huge savings for ‘store specials’ at $5.57 and it feels like such a bargain. Once in a blue moon I have found it for $3.57 and that is a huge bargain. Am I grateful? Yes, yes, yes, because margarine is now nothing but one step away from plastic. My mother spoke of using only lard on bread. Couldn’t do it. We are so spoiled and so ungrateful.
We have started trading honey for vegetables that are new to me. One vegetable gardener sells what they call “Pink Lady Squash” that is absolutely fabulous. A friend works at the gardens. She trades us squash and garden goods that we cannot grow ourselves for honey. I love to go to pop-up markets (some just use a truck, with a bed full of produce, that parks beside the highway). We have also tried to do what little garden we can get out of a nine x nine plot at the side of our house and we grown tomatoes in with my front flower garden strip. I clean and cook and can and freeze everything I can get my hands on. I always do enough tomato; everything’, pickled everything, frozen everything, to last us through until the next garden is ready. We, also, have grapes; concord grapes that I use in pies and we put through a steamer to juice. Am I a ‘good’ ‘girl’? No. Am I grateful; well, yes, eventually, but I do a great deal of sighing and grumbling when I have to put huge pots of tomato sauce up. Our bit of Mother Earth sustains us. I should be grateful for every bite I eat. We can not relentlessly take without giving. Mother Earth sacrifices for us every living day. Mother Earth is being sucked, sapped, dug into, cut down, excavated, all for food we think we need. She is used for profit. Great forests are cut down to make room for more food growth. We are a greedy bunch.
How do we heal what we have done? Mother Earth is broken. Our relationship with Mother Earth is broken. Our eating has destroyed much of Mother Earth; our diets are broken. We are not alone down here on this blue ball of wonder. Everything is a part of Creation. We should be grateful for all of it. We can plant a tree. We can till our soil and add ‘leftovers’ to revitalize Mother Earth’s little plot we have chosen as our garden. Gratitude is a gift we can give.
Let us live a life in such a way that Mother Earth will be grateful for us. What a thought!
©Carol Desjarlais 10.17.21
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