"Food is life, and life is the most precious thing in the universe, in the most real way- by its sheer rarity. Food systems are integrated with all other living systems. And it is by our appreciation for each and every meal, each and every life that we take into our bodies, that we affirm our deep kinship with the mother of all we have ever and will ever hold dear.
When we hear the term food sovereignty we may think of that term as describing a first people’s and indigenous issue, and we may even go as far as to feel empathy for ourselves as refugees in someone else’s land, which we never asked permission to live on. And that’s good, to realize the role our lives play in the lives of others.
May it be The largest circle of others, of all our relations (mitaquie, Aho Mitakuye Oyasin) that we can muster the will to meditate on at length at any given time.
So I encourage all of us to see each meal as a pathway, a trailhead, offering vast riches as long as we take explore that path with the utmost attention and presence and respect and humility.
Anyone who enjoys cooking, even a little bit, even if you don’t like that act of cooking and cleaning and sharpening your knives and maintaining your pantry- we all enjoy feeding people. It’s an act of love. And life itself is born of the primordial soup of love. But it is up to us to engage that creative spirit. It is up to us to engage with our relations, to draw our attention and our physical bodies nearer to the sources of our nourishment. And to understand our role in the layers of systems within which we try to carve out and cultivate our homes.
And by you all journeying out to this particular corner of the great biosphere, to this place, in all its richness. I invite you to try and see the layers in the geology, in this regions ecosystems, and over time to try and glean how these forests looked 400 years ago and how they could look in 100 years.
And to visualize yourself role in caring for the land by participating in its food and all other wildlife’s systems.
And so, with respect and reverence, I offer you my humble preparations...”
- Food Blessing from Shawn Kelly
