Giving Up Bananas

Rev. Peter Friedrichs

November 9, 2008

Last summer, I experienced something of a spiritual crisis. But to tell you about it, I need to go back two summers ago, because that's where the story begins. It was the last morning of a glorious week's vacation, where Irene and I were staying in a small cabin on a lake in central Maine. Although it was drizzling, I got up early to take the canoe out for one last paddle before we loaded it onto the car and, naturally, I took my fishing rod along. Earlier in the week I had been fishing among some rocks just a couple hundred yards from shore when a big bass rose to my bait, but he didn't take it, and I wanted to see if I could coax him up one more time. I paddled all around that same area in the rain, casting my fly and hoping to see it devoured. But no luck.

As any fisherman knows, the "last cast" is hard to make. Each cast is a hope, a prayer waiting to be answered, and packing away your rod is something akin to losing faith or giving up on God. For those of you who have wondered why your husbands, partners, or friends who fish always get home much later than they promised, this is important to understand. In our minds, the next cast is always the best cast, the one that's going to bring up the "big one." But I digress. As the morning's drizzle settled into a steady rain, and my watch told me that soon Irene's patience would begin to wear thin, I knew it was time for that "last cast," that last prayer at the end of a wonderful vacation week. And as luck would have it, with that last cast my prayer was answered, and a big old bass sucked down my fly and the battle was on. Well, not really a battle, but a good old-fashioned tug of war. I issued a silent prayer that the fish would stay on the hook, and within a few minutes I had him by the boat. I reached down and grabbed him by the lip, and there I sat, holding the biggest bass I'd ever caught in my life. After a few moments of admiring him, I said one last prayer, this one a prayer of gratitude, I said goodbye to him, releasing him back into the water.

So, this past summer, when we returned to that same cabin on that same lake in Maine, I was anxious to see if my old friend was lurking among the rocks just off shore. I wasted no time in paddling out to the same spot where I had caught him the year before, casting my lure toward him home. He and I were friends now, old pals from the past, fishing buddies of a sort. It sounds strange to say it, but I felt an affinity for that fish, like we shared some secret bond. "I'm back," I called to him with each cast. "Come out and play!" And on the second day of our vacation, he did! I was sitting in the canoe, my feet dangling over the side, retrieving my lure when WHAM!, the line went taught and I had a big bass on the other end. He jumped once so I could see him, and by his size I could imagine that this was the same fish as last year.

But with that jump he shook the hook and was gone. I was at once elated to see that my friend was still there, and still willing to play with me, and I was determined to get him to the boat once more. So, like any fisherman worth his salt, I changed lures, because we know that a fish once bitten is twice shy, and they rarely take the same lure twice. The lure I picked was a big, juicy replica of a bait fish, and it had two large treble hooks dangling from its body. In fact, it looked something like this one. I tossed it out to where I'd last seen my friend, and retrieved it through the water when, you guessed it, he took it again! And once again, we were playing our game of tug of war. You can imagine my elation (or maybe you can't and you're wondering when this story will end). As he pulled and fought, I pulled back, and we were having a grand old time. At least I was. But suddenly the line went slack, and I knew the unthinkable had happened. He'd broken off and retreated to the safety of his home. As I reeled in my limp line, my disappointment turned to horror when I saw what had actually happened: the line had broken off at the knot between the line itself and the leader. There was no lure on the end of the line, and the break was caused by my own negligence, a badly tied knot. What did this mean? It meant that my friend was down there with a mouthful of hooks. Unable to shake the lure, he wouldn't be able to eat. I had signed his death warrant.

You can ask Irene, or the many family members and friends I've told this story to about how despondent I was afterwards. For days I went out to the rocks and tried to coax my friend back up with all sorts of baits, just so I could remove that lure from his mouth. If I had had a mask and snorkel, I would have dived down to see if I could find him and grab the end of the line that hung from the lure and see if I could free him. But I couldn't save him and I'm certain he slowly starved to death.

This all may sound rather silly to most of you, but as I said, it caused me a serious spiritual crisis. At first, I asked myself the simple question: "Why do I fish?" Although I almost always "catch and release," I have inadvertently killed fish in the past, and even when they are released successfully they are undoubtedly traumatized by the experience. My answer was, "I fish for pleasure, for enjoyment, for the 'sport of it.'" That led me to ask myself about whether it was appropriate to traumatize, torture and even kill a fish simply for my own pleasure. That doesn't seem right, does it? Somehow it seemed to me that "catch and release" was suddenly much less justifiable than "catch and eat." According to the Book of Genesis, God gave us dominion over all the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and all the animals of the earth, but do I believe that that means I can treat them any way that I want, that they're put here simply for my pleasure? And there I was, at the "Big Question:" What is my relationship to the creatures on this earth, and to the earth itself? Are they, is it, here for me, or am I a part of it? How far does the interdependent web extend, and do I really believe that all of us are intimately connected with all of existence? These questions haunt me now as I stand in a stream casting to a rising trout. And I double-check all the knots that I tie. Life was so much simpler before that line broke.

It has been said that one of the functions of ministry is to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable, so I want to be right up front with you. My goal in sharing this story with you and telling you what I'm about to tell you is to raise questions that will haunt you too. I want you to be haunted while walking the aisles in Acme, in Genuardi's, in Pathmark and even Trader Joe's. To be haunted as you unload your groceries from those plastic bags that seem to reproduce like rabbits beneath your kitchen sink. To be haunted as you serve your Thanksgiving dinner to your family, in that Norman Rockwell moment as the browned bird is placed before approving eyes and watering mouths.

I have here before me a bowl of fruit. Bananas, apples, oranges, grapes, even an avocado. Oh, and there are some tomatoes here, too. Because although we think of them as vegetables, tomatoes are actually a fruit, too. Delicious and nutritious fruit. Good and good for you. So, let's see, these bananas are from Ecuador. The apple was grown in Washington State and the grapes come from California. These particular tomatoes come from Mexico, and they're still attached to the vine so you know they're "vine ripe." The avocado was grown down in Chile, and these particular oranges come all the way from South Africa. All told, this bowl of fruit has traveled a distance of more than 18,000 miles to be with us here today. Definitely our most far-flung guests in the service!

It's not news to tell you that bananas aren't grown in the backyards of Media or on farms in Lancaster County, and we certainly all know that fresh tomatoes from New Jersey or Pennsylvania aren't available this time of year. But here is some news that might surprise you: Americans consume about 400 gallons of oil a year per person for the food they eat, and about 80% of those fossil fuels are consumed in getting the food from the point of production to the place of purchase. This amounts to 17% of our nation's total energy use. Author and scientist Steven L. Hopp writes sarcastically that "a quick way to improve food-related fuel economy would be to buy a quart of motor oil and drink it." He then goes on to point out that, if every American family were to eat just one meal each week that was composed of locally and organically raised foods, "we would reduce our country's oil consumption by over 1.1 million barrels every week…Becoming a less energy-dependent nation," he writes, "may just need to start with a good breakfast."^[1]

The whole idea behind the concept of "ethical eating" is that we think about the food that we're putting into our mouths. And by this I don't mean the nutritional value, whether it's good for us or whether it's going to go straight from our lips to our hips. Ethical eating is consumption wedded to awareness and intention. It is about educating ourselves about the true costs of the foods that we buy and consume. It's about facing up to the ugly facts of the agri-industrial complex. It's knowing, for example, that while we've increased the average yield of an acre of farmland from 24 bushels of corn in 1930 to more than 160 bushels per acre today, to achieve this astonishing improvement we apply about 1.5 billion pounds of nitrogen to the soil each year in the form of fertilizers. And that about half of that nitrogen is taken up into the atmosphere and falls as acid rain or stays up there as greenhouse gases, or it washes into our watersheds, causing massive algae blooms that choke off all other aquatic life.^[2]

Ethical eating requires us to understand how our system of government subsidies has turned the rich diversity of crops produced by family farms in America into massive factories that limit production to corn, wheat, rice, cotton, and soybeans because that's what the government pays for. And that when a bushel of corn costs $3.00 to produce and it sells for $2.00 we, as taxpayers, pick up the difference. Or that, because agri-business is paid by the taxpayer to grow these crops, we have lost about 75 percent of the genetic diversity of our agricultural products and that, according to some reports, 97 percent of the vegetable varieties that were available one hundred years ago are now extinct.^[3]

You might not think this is such a big deal. That because we have plenty of corn and wheat we shouldn't care about heirloom tomatoes or lima beans. But consider this: today, three-quarters of all human food now comes from just eight species. Eight. And if we think back to the Potato Famine in Ireland, we know the dangers of relying on a limited crop diversity for our survival. "Jack Harlan, a geneticist and author of the book Crops and Man wrote about the loss of genetic diversity in no uncertain terms. 'These resources stand between us and catastrophic starvation on a scale we cannot imagine…The line between abundance and disaster is becoming thinner and thinner.'"^[4] Author Barbara Kingsolver, whose family spent a year living off what they could produce on their farm in rural Virginia puts it this way: "We now depend on a few corn and soybean strains for the majority of calories (both animal and vegetable) eaten by U.S. citizens. Our addiction to just two crops has made us the fattest people who've ever lived, dining just a few pathogens away from famine."^[5]

Have I done enough afflicting yet? I could go on. I could tell you about the conditions under which chickens and turkeys are raised, and the effects that the antibiotics we force into our beef cattle have on our ecosystem. And don't get me started about the human cost of the foods we consume, the living conditions of migrant farm workers who pick our tomatoes and our apples for pennies an hour, who are housed in concrete bunkers without windows or running water, who are sometimes abducted and held against there will as 21st century slaves, right here in America.

Suffice it to say that, if we are to take up this question of eating ethically, we must educate ourselves about the true costs of our consumption. And then we will need to make some choices about what we buy, how it's grown, from whom we buy it, and what we're willing to pay for it. But why? Why should we take up this challenge? For one thing, the congregations of the Unitarian Universalist Association (including the representatives from this congregation) voted last summer to make "Ethical Eating" a "study action issue" for the next three years, so in a very real sense you've already committed to doing so. But this isn't about doing something because we have to or because we said we were going to do it.

I wish the framers of this particular subject had called it something other than "ethical eating." While I appreciate the alliteration, I think the questions that this topic raises are much bigger than just trying to decide what's the right thing to do or the correct way to behave in the arena of food production and consumption. It's about more than just eating locally and thinking globally. This goes back to the bass in that lake in Maine and the questions that my killing it raised for me. Spiritual questions that we as people of faith are compelled to confront.

As Unitarian Universalists we proclaim to affirm and support respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part. What does that mean to us? How far does it extend? And what does it require of us? The most recent proposed revisions to our principles elaborate on the Seventh Principle thusly:

In the choices we make about the foods we eat, what does it mean to be good stewards who work to restore the Earth and to protect all beings? What does it mean to us when we proclaim the earth to be "holy?" These principles point us toward questions of ultimate reality and meaning, profoundly religious questions like "Who or what made us?" "Why are we here?" and "Who is our neighbor, our brother or sister?"

I hope that today will be the opening of a dialogue among us about our relationship to the food we eat, our relationship to the Earth and to every living being. Our Denominational Affairs representatives will have a table set up after the service with some materials if you're interested. I can envision the emergence of an "ethical eating" group here at UUCDC, along the lines of the International Supper Club, where people can share responsibly purchased and prepared meals while diving deeply into this topic. Perhaps we will expand our sale of Fair Trade coffee, tea and chocolate to the point where we covenant only to serve locally and organically grown foods at church functions in a sort of expansion of the "Green Sanctuary" movement. And I'm sure that there are those of you who can think of even more creative ways to engage the vast questions that I've raised today. Like other questions of spirit and deep meaning, there are no easy answers or quick solutions. But also like other questions of spirit and deep meaning, when we confront them together in sacred community, we all become the richer for it.

This day and every day, I wish you peace.

Closing Words (from Barbara Kingsolver in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle):

Rev. James Ishmael Ford writes:

^[1] Barbara Kingsolver, et al., Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, p. 5.
^[2] "Ethical Eating" by Amy Hassinger in UU World, Spring 2007, p.30.
^[3] Hassinger, p. 31.
^[4] Kingsolver, p.52.
^[5] Kingsolver, p. 54.

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