"Food justice" is a fairly new term for the "radical" idea that everyone should be able to get enough healthy food wherever they live. It's a term I use but wish I didn't need to. I mean: we need a buzz word for this? It breaks my heart to think that we have to have a mission just to be sure that everyone has access to not just something to eat but FOOD, good food -- and it's critical to social justice. If you only have access to junk food without options or hope, how can you have a life?
Some amazing people I know who walk the walk are the folks at Faith Kitchen, which runs out of a Lutheran Church in Cambridge, MA. (Link to the right!) Twice a month, they commit to feeding those who are hungry. No questions asked. We grow produce to help provide part of these meals.
Naturally, growing the food was my entry point. I got connected with them because I had been asked to help some students start a garden, which we did, and once we figured out how to use our space, we quickly realized that we needed to do something with all the pounds of tomatoes and herbs and peppers we found ourselves harvesting.
As someone who is compelled to garden, I jumped at the chance to make these connections. If you grow food, you know what you're getting. It's like magic. Each year, the seed and the sprout become life. It's an annual miracle. How can you not love that?
At the end of March, I did something I'd wanted to do for several years. I brought together the people who run Faith Kitchen with some of us who tend the HDS Garden and we had lunch. Except for the one person who comes to pick up our produce on meal days, no one from the Kitchen sees any of us from the garden, though we are all aware of our link. But on March 23rd, eleven of us spent a hour talking about the work of gardening and the work of feeding people, both bodies and spirits. The word "community" kept coming up.
And the encore for this, in case you're wondering: I already knew how amazing each of these individuals was. The idea of bringing them together was the goal. I knew wherever our conversation would lead, it would be lively. (It was.) The challenge: how to deepen our connections. In a word: what else can we grow? The work of this spring has begun. I will let you know what comes next.
Below are pictures from our lunch and showing off our baby seedlings!
At the end of March, I did something I'd wanted to do for several years. I brought together the people who run Faith Kitchen with some of us who tend the HDS Garden and we had lunch. Except for the one person who comes to pick up our produce on meal days, no one from the Kitchen sees any of us from the garden, though we are all aware of our link. But on March 23rd, eleven of us spent a hour talking about the work of gardening and the work of feeding people, both bodies and spirits. The word "community" kept coming up.
And the encore for this, in case you're wondering: I already knew how amazing each of these individuals was. The idea of bringing them together was the goal. I knew wherever our conversation would lead, it would be lively. (It was.) The challenge: how to deepen our connections. In a word: what else can we grow? The work of this spring has begun. I will let you know what comes next.
Below are pictures from our lunch and showing off our baby seedlings!
No comments:
Post a Comment