For many people in this modern age food may be the only day-to-day connection to nature.
While we are fortunate enough in Colorado to live with beautiful weather and a multitude of outdoor opportunities, it is easy to get caught up in the hustle and bustle of city life. In our busy days we wake up to an alarm clock in our comfy bed and prepare for the day – with our cell phones, constant WiFi, and video streaming at our fingertips, the luxuries of indoor plumbing and hi-tech appliances (so nice! it’s true). From our homes we go to our vehicles and drive past the trees and rivers to the office. Your office may or may not even have plants inside, fresh life to clean the air and uplift the machine infused environment. Although we will make plans to get out on the weekend, we may not even touch the earth or soak in the breeze for days on end.
Food, however, we will eat many times daily. If you grab an apple for an afternoon snack – a fresh raw apple – it is a brilliant piece of nature held right in your hand. A piece of God’s world, or Gaia’s, containing the Great Spirit wholly and completely in that one perfect fruit picked straight off a strong living tree. Each bite is filled with vitamins and minerals, natural as they are meant to be. You see each time we take a plant, a vegetable or fruit – say an apple – and isolate the “vitamins and minerals” or “flavor,” we lose the other elements that bring it all together for the full nutrition. We remove the spirit of the plant, it’s intention. Decaf coffee for instance is not found in nature, it is a process we use to achieve a desired effect. It has been discovered in recent years that these processes and eliminations only leave our bodies craving more. Somehow our bodies respond to an “apple flavored” beverage by desiring a true full apple. So we continue to eat trying to fill that gap.
And this is just an example…let’s think of all the natural fruits and vegetables, roots, herbs, spices that we can use to touch nature and connect daily. As we take in the physical aspects of our food we can imitate their characteristics as well – juicy, sumptuous, spicy, energized, tough, strong, sweet…you are what you eat! Take on the traits of a tree, strong, wise, patient. Or a pepper, or a squash! Perhaps think of this over your next meal, or while giving gratitude at a bountiful harvest from the garden. Each bite of delicious food contains all of the goodness of the earth – not just the necessary vitamins and minerals (calories and proteins we count daily!) but also the spirit – the very nature of God. Let it nurture your body wholly and completely. Soak in each delicious bite savoring its full juiciness of the earth.
Happy eatings!
For more information…coming soon! A”Foods That Heal” series elaborating on the specific properties of natural foods and how they can help or harm the body. Stay tuned!
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