So, there was this football game this past Sunday evening, although it wasn’t much of a game, and we often get together with friends or maybe family for such an occasion and we watch with varying levels of interest and we critique the commercials and we eat. Not the full out feasting of Thanksgiving or the cookie-laden celebration of Christmas, but there’s food. Finger food. Greasy food. Fried food. Rich food. Salty food. As Oliver sang in the musical bearing his name, “Food, glorious food!” It's a consuming life we live, is it not?
These bodies into which we were born need fuel, sustenance, energy, nourishment, and the like. So we eat. Hopefully we down it all with some necessary water as well! And, yes, water is essential for survival, growth, thriving. We may all be all over the map when it comes to what we eat and when we eat and where we eat and with whom we eat, but we all eat. And we need water. Well, all of us with means eat and drink clean water. Whether food is purchased at the grocery store and prepared at home or paid for at a restaurant, it costs money to eat. We are consumers in more than one way. Economic consumers. Biological consumers. It truly is a consuming life!
Naturally, what we consume is an important issue. And not only for our bodies into which we shovel whatever we desire and however much of it we want. Sometimes we are limited by time or by what’s available or by the waistband of our pants. Those of us under a doctor’s care might have restrictions about certain kinds of foods. But mostly we are free to consume and so we do, rarely, if ever, thinking about those who don’t or can’t or won’t (that applies to a parent or guardian who feeds the children first). What is more than a small wonder is that supplies have not yet evaporated… cows and crops and chickens and chocolate and cola… all the good stuff we so delight in consuming. How long can this good earth sustain us at the rate of consumption we’re enjoying?
Here's a challenging exercise: stare at a plate of food and ponder how it came to be piled there. Who grew it? Tended it? Harvested it? Slaughtered it? Cleaned it? Packaged it? Hauled it? Stocked it? Prepared it? At what cost? Who labored for what we love to consume? Who might rejoice in a third of what’s on our plates? Consider it food for thought. Or fuel for reflection. Or energy for action perhaps. How may we give so that others may live? It is a consuming life for all of us on this planet after all!