Eat, or the journey will be too long

I think a lot about food. I've carried around an imaginary 15 extra pounds most of my life. I'm 46 years old and I'd guess that six of those extra pounds are now real. I don't burn calories like I used to in spite of workouts supplemented by Friday nights devoted to Japanese sword fighting.

But I'm making peace with my metabolism. For one thing I love to cook. This fall I concocted a soup of squash, amaranth and Japanese seaweed. Cookbooks don't interest me as much as books that enumerate the healing properties of ingredients that go into the pot. Every time I lift the lid, I'm sure I've hit on the cure for cancer.

I'm not the only one who thinks about food.

In 1 Kings 19:4-8, we have Elijah fleeing for his life. He stops beneath a broom tree in the desert, begs God to end his life ("This is enough, oh Lord"), then falls asleep. An angel wakes him to deliver a hearth cake and water. Elijah eats and drinks then stretches out again. The angel returns, saying, "Get up and eat, else the journey will be too long for you." Elijah, "strengthened by the food," walks 40 days and 40 nights to Horeb.

That scripture story was read at St. Charles Borromeo Church before a procession honoring the Blessed Sacrament. Vietnamese parishioners in long silk tunics led the way carrying a gong, a candle and a crucifix. Blessed Sacrament Fr. John Thomas Lane of St. Charles and Dominican Fr. Michael Demkovich of St. Thomas Aquinas Newman Center, our destination, took turns carrying the Blessed Sacrament beneath the canopy.

Eat, or the journey will be too long, the journey of life, I whispered to myself. I squinted, trying to see the host mounted in the gorgeous monstrance, its gold spokes seeming to reach beyond the canopy to eternity. I felt happy to belong to a church that believes in the real presence of God in food.

Some Jews are thinking about food, too. A recent Newsweek article reports that many are asking if it's time to reinterpret the laws governing kosher foods. Is it time to embrace an "ecokashrut" vision that would require that food be free of pesticides, field laborers be paid a just wage, and animals be raised humanely? Jews have always understood that eating is a hallowed act. It makes sense to ask, in essence, what would God eat?

Our government, meanwhile, is trying hard not to think about food. The Department of Agriculture has decided that Americans who go without food are no longer hungry. Instead, they are experiencing "very low food security," according to a new report. The department said that in 2005, 35 million Americans lived in households that at some point during the year could not put food on the table. Low food security? Apparently the department has not interviewed children whose heads ache and who cannot focus in school. They would have said they are hungry.

A few weeks after the procession, I sat across from my parents in a booth at the Village Inn restaurant. My siblings had all left town for Thanksgiving. Exceedingly grateful, my parents and I went to see the movie "Bobby." Then, on a lark, we decided to eat some traditional fare at the only restaurant we knew was open.

Dad pointed to his pumpkin pie. "Eat the rest," he said. I picked at some whipped cream. "Too many calories," I said. He replied, "That's Thanksgiving for you. I'm traumatized because I didn't have enough food. You're traumatized because you had too much." He recalled the time the nuns at a local hospital fired his sister for trying to take home some leftover food for him from the cafeteria where she worked. It was Thanksgiving. He was a growing boy.

[Demetria Martinez is the author of Confessions of a Berlitz-Tape Chicana.]

COPYRIGHT 2007 National Catholic Reporter
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning