prophets and vegans

food list

breakfast: fruit cup, potatoes, coffee

lunch: applesauce, raisins, fruit leather

dinner: coffee, orange,  apple, gluten-free pretzels, sweet potato chips

origin of an item

this morning i had breakfast at medici's in hyde park. this locally owned restaurant (so local that the owner and her son are usually around during early breakfast time) has been in hyde park since the 1960s, and it is often filled with students and scholars as well as "normal" hyde park people--i went there often when i lived on the other side of hyde park, back before i was a student in hyde park. the coffee is fair trade and organic, and it is delicious!

reflections

today was a totally vegan day for me, and i've been thinking a little about what it means to be christian and vegan. there is some suggestion that genesis 1:29 ("i have given every green plant for food") is biblical teaching that we should only eat plants (http://www.faithandfood.com/Christianity.php, for example) but that does not take into account all the places in the bible where animals are eaten or we are told that we can eat meat. it also doesn't take into account the fact that vegans eat more than just plants. 

vegans eat way more than just plants... and way more than tofu. actually, i remember when i lived in hyde park, i met someone for the first time over dinner and he was shocked that i was a vegetarian at the time. i didn't look like what a vegetarian to him. at the time, i suggested to him that vegetarians have so many options for food, so we are as diverse as any other group of people. now, i think i would press harder to hear what he thought i would look like, and i might even press him to hear what he eats... not all omnivores look the same either! anyway, i wonder what he would imagine a vegan would look like.

i know i continue to have expectations about how vegans are supposed to act. my experience with vegans (even when i was vegan all the time) has led me to imagine that vegans are often cranky, snobby and judgmental. they spout off the dangers and sufferings associated with factory farming (see: Action for Animal's document on factory farming) without much thought about how it might affect their dinner partners. please. how can the rest of us get on with our lives if we have to think about the conditions of our food or the people who prepared it?

but i think vegans can be prophetic. the prophets in the old testament often fasted (or gave up some kinds of food) in order to draw attention to God or in prayer or to prepare. for example, esther fasts before she goes to the king to ask that her people be saved. fasting (giving up some or all food) can be an act of preparation, purification, prophecy. i think you could fast and not be vegan or prophesy without being vegan. i don't think vegans or fasting (or even christians) have the corner on telling the truth or working for change. but sometimes doing without makes the truth a little easier to tell because our own struggles to do better can be a model for what can be. 

how can we eat prophetically?