september challenge: honoring my body, my physical temple

An hour or two ago, I ate a Schlotzsky's pepperoni pizza for lunch, along with a Barq's root beer. Now I feel sluggish, and a headache's coming on. Maybe they're not related, but the idea that they could be inspired (if you can call it that) my September challenge. I'm going to let this one go till October eighth, to fairly give it a full month.

If you read my blog, it's pretty clear I'm on an Omnivore's Dilemma kick right now. Michael Pollan isn't a Christian, and his book doesn't preach that you should eat whole, unprocessed foods in order to honor Christ and your body and the earth; but for me, the book was all about that. Implementing what I've learned has proved to be a whole 'nother baby. It's just too easy to live unhealthily in this culture. A girl's got to go to great lengths to eat whole, healthy, locally grown food from sustainable farms.

(Completely unrelated sidenote: A pick-up pulling a trailer just drove by our house. The trailer had a lawn mower sitting on it. The lawn mower had a man sitting it. I laughed out loud. You don't see that every day.)

My spiritual challenge this month to honor my body through eating right and exercising is a bit of an experiment. I want to see if some of my grogginess (which I've been attributing to being a mother) dissipates. I want to see if I have more energy to do the things I "should" be doing.

Rules for the month:

1. No pop!
2. Exercise for 15 minutes every day, even if it's only a walk.
3. No fried fast food.
4. Eat fruits and/or vegetables at every meal.
5. Every day, substitute something not very healthy for something healthier (e.g. whole grain bread for white bread).
6. Limit sweets and fats.

I didn't do much research on these rules, but they seem to make sense. Please leave a comment if you have suggestions for me.

To good, God-honoring health!

sustainable?

Last week, I ate a 100% grass-fed New York strip.

It came all the way from Australia.

getting angry

The whole creation groans. Me. The poor, the widows, the orphans. The trees, the cattle, the chickens, the cornfields (okay, maybe not the cornfields; corn is king).

I've been reading about social justice and food. I've had this perpetual pressure in my sinus area -- tears ready to burst at the injustice in the world. If being an environmentalist means I care about this world and everything in it, yes, I guess I'm an environmentalist.

It started with reading Justice in the Burbs by Will and Lisa Samson. It's only been a week, and I already feel the wisdom of that book slipping from my memory. But I still remember the assignments I gave myself: to open my heart and arms (and not just my checkbook) to the suffering people of this world. Why? Because it's right.

There was an interview on our local NPR station today that made me mad. This lady was trying to convince women that it was too risky to forsake their occupations and stay home with their babies. "Because what do you do when divorce or death claims your husband? You'll have no way to support yourself!" Well, number one, if women kept their vows to their husbands, divorce wouldn't be in today's epidemic proportions. As for the widows, followers of God have been commanded to care for them, so wives shouldn't be left in dire straits even if their husband does die. I could go on and on, but the point is: the system is broken. This is a broken, broken world. Women shouldn't be made to feel like it's risky to be a stay-at-home mom.

Let me change gears.

Reading a book about the history of food -- The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan -- didn't seem to be something that would call that slow, dull ache back into my throat. But as I read it, I keep asking, "God, what are we doing to your world?" As for our production and consumption of food, we're so deep in poisonous cow manure (that literally coats the floors of our super beef-producing factories in America's "heart"land) that we can't even find a conceivable way out of it.

I'm so angry with the people who tricked our nation into believing that corn-fed beef is something wonderful, when in fact, it sickens creatures God made to eat grass (the cows, not us). But when you have your plate full of that "prime" corn-fed steak, you're feeding yourself a long, slow death, too. Beef wasn't meant to be poisonous.

I'm fed up with the industrialization and materialism in America, with the lie that says that you can have it all. I'm angry I don't know how to practice the attribute called sacrifice. I'm frustrated that I, who grew up proud to say, "I'm a farmer's daughter," feel my agricultural background crashing in on me, slicing away my idealism that my daddy farmed perfectly. I'm angry that he probably didn't have that option, and I'm angry that I don't have the freedom to do things the best way possible because of how our nation's politics work.

I'm tired of standing in front of the display of bread and being upset because all the healthy-looking hamburger buns cost twice as much as the bleached-white ones. I want eating "natural" to come naturally. But instead, it requires research, money, and... sacrifice.

I want to open a farm. I want to grow things without poison and sell them for the prices they're worth. I want to invite people to work there who need love and a job and someone to pull them up (because they haven't found those bootstraps everybody keeps talking about). I want to know an orphan; I want to know a widow. I want to stop being a glutton for fast food, gasoline, and cheap relationships.

I want to stop being a hypocrite.

one of the fallen

"There ain't no money in poetry. / That's what sets the poet free. / I've had all the freedom I can stand." -Guy Clark in "Cold Dog Soup"

She gleans hundreds of comments because she can write. I feel like an imposter when I scan her blog posts like they're any old cheap, chatty update on life. I read her latest post from the end to the beginning because I caught a line and tasted the quality, and I had to have more. One doesn't skim poignancy. So I moved up, up, up, and saw how she had molded her thoughts into art.

I had to admit I'm a little like the poor, lost, fallen people our waiter was talking about last weekend. He used to be an artist; now he just works at Fiorella's Jack Stack Barbecue -- which, if you have to be a waiter, at least that's a place with food worth its salt. But our waiter said he's not an artist anymore. People don't care about beautiful things. They only want ugly things -- that's what he said. He said we live in a fallen world where beauty isn't valued. But it'll be redeemed. It'll be redeemed. And then he walked away with our smeary plates of bones and barbecue sauce.

I cling to my words, and I hope for art. But on the days when I'm feeling weak and tired, when I'm in subordination to tasks instead of Beauty, I just serve my tables and wait for redemption.

grains for hope

I'm proud of my hometown today, doing more than I've ever done to wipe out world hunger. I'm proud of the people brave enough to move an idea past conception into production. I've met these people. Hey, I'm even related to some of them!

Sometimes I'm hard on Sabetha. I count the people in it as closed-minded -- far from progressive. I figure most of them can't see past their little corner of northeast Kansas. Well, let's just say I've been proven wrong.

God bless Mrs. Spangler, a woman who cared enough to get my high school involved. Because of her, students did the research to discover the needs of people in Mozambique, and now Sabetha businesses are partnering with these kids to package and ship vitamin-fortified rice to Africa.

Watch this Topeka ABC news broadcast or check out the Grains for Hope website .

They're really doing it -- and all in my hometown of 2500 people. You wanna change the world? Move to Sabetha.