breaking boring

last summer i learned that i'm allergic to lactose and have a sensitivity to gluten; my doctor told me that i had to completely overhaul what and how i eat. at the time i was working in a place where all of us interns ate lunch together, so i promptly complained about my new diet. my supervisor at the time joked that i would have to eat the same things over and over again and i would be bored. i didn't quite believe him; despite complaining, i was looking forward to learning how to integrate exotic things like kale into my diet. later my supervisor came back to me and said that as he was taking the same frozen dinner out of the freezer for the millionth time, he realized that we all just eat the same thing over and over again. i wasn't surprised then when after a summer of not eating lactose and avoiding gluten as much as possible, i fell back into old patterns of eating the same boring foods over and over again.

about a month ago, i came home from a dance class with a deep sense that i'd been doing a lot of reading and writing about food and faith, but i had not yet put those connections into practice. i was eating just to eat. in the process i was eating food that i'm allergic too and that isn't particularly good for people and the rest of creation. so for lent, i wanted to take something that we must do in order to survive and turn it into a spiritual practice. and i knew exactly who to ask to help me.

erika and i have spent more than two years thinking about faith and the environment and how those two parts of our worlds affect our identities. food is intimately linked to the environment--we need the earth in order to eat.

so, our posts here will be a place to keep our thoughts on food and faith. there will be three parts to (almost) every post.

• food list     here's what we ate today. we hope this will help you see that we're not perfect, and it will also help us be mindful of what we're putting into our mouths, bodies and souls.

• origin of one thing     based on that food list, where did one thing that we ate come from. i'm sort of wondering where a snickers bar really comes to life, so i might just eat it to find out! here we will also think about the place we buy food (what should we know about aldi's, for instance?) and what better alternatives might be.

• ethical/theological implications     what might does what we eat indicate about God and a good life? we're in God-school, after all!

we hope you learn something right along with us, and we hope you'll challenge us when we're missing something. we look forward to your questions and comments!

welcome to lent.