Blog Action Day

Today, over 15,000 bloggers around the web have committed to discuss matters related to our environment. Diverse voices recognizing the need for public discussion of the various topics under this broad topic are offering information, insight and inspiration in an effort to make us more aware of how we can be part of a more environmentally responsible world.

My contribution contains thoughts from “Our Daily Bread”, the Duke Divinity Convocation that I attended last week. It became a time of reclaiming an appreciation of an agrarian economy, one that I knew as a child in rural Ohio. It was with great interest I heard of the new attention being focused on local food production and trade and the renewal of a culture of community. However, it became obvious that for change to occur connections between food and the health of the land, soils and waters must be understood. Most of us have had our lives shaped by an economy based on cheap fossil fuels plundered and rugged individualism, even those of us with roots in the land. We have lots to learn and to practice. Norman Wirzba, an ecological theologian, reminded us that it is difficult to say grace authentically over our meals when we consider the practices (and injustices) that bring the food to the table. If we understand food as both a gift and a responsibility, what challenges must we accept?

A thought…

Wendell Berry says, “A society wishing to endure must speak the language of care-taking, faith-keeping, kindness, neighborliness, and peace.”