Living Relationally in a Decreasing Mechanistic World

Bruce Reyes-Chow @ Moderator - the French Paradox - Michael Pollan - Following Jesus

We arrived in Paris today for a monthlong vacation filled with a good friend's wedding, catching up with "les copains," hanging out for a month with the fam in my favorite city on the planet, reading some good books, and eating many good meals!  On the flight over I read "In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto" by Michael Pollan.  A continuation and expansion on his past book "Omniovre's Dilemna, I was struck by his comments about the way in which we tend to view food as nutrition, reducing it in a mechanistic world-view sort of ways to the components, acids, fats and nutrients that make up what we eat.  The problem with that culinary and ultimately cultural perspective is that we view food as elements as opposed to something that we relate to, with and from.  Food is more than the specific nutrients that create particular chemical reactions within our body organism.  It's about the synergy that certain food combined together create for our palate and ultimately in our body.  It's about the way in which eating together - thanks to mother culture - creates new dynamics that are physiological, cultural, sociological and relational.  Our modern American view of food isn't holistic because we view it as a sum of its parts as opposed to a whole in itself.

I read of the recent General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) - the church system in which I work and both find and make meaning - and the new moderatorship of Bay Area pastor and friend Bruce Reyes-Chow. [New Moderator seeks to unite Presbyterians]  An ardent fan and enthusiastic supporter in my limited capacity of Bruce's hopes and vision for the church we serve together, I believe he's right on the money in seeking to help us move as a faith community beyond our mechanistic or reductionist vision of faith to a larger worldview perspective of relationship, synergy and reciprocity.  It's a lot like Pollan's vision of our mistake in terms of food.  We reduce the whole to its parts, picking and choosing what we like, and what we're against.  Then we're surprised when we see radical increases in Diabetes, Obesity and tremendous decreases in church attendance, involvement and relevance.

I love France - it's my home away from home, or maybe even my true home in a sojourner sort of way.  We so often talk about the French Paradox: how the French eat and drink whatever they want, smoke often and yet live longer, seemingly more healthy lives than most Americans while being much thinner and healthier (at least physically).  It's not a pardox here.  It's just normal.  You eat fresh things. You cook.  You appreciate what you're eating, taking the time to prepare and enjoy it, and share it with community, making meaning in and of life mainly gathered with friends around the table.  It's a worldview based on relationship, community, synergy, reciprocity....even if outside of food most French folks seem to reduce life to a mechanistic modernist worldview.  Why is it that we're so quick to be reductionist and mechanistic with not only food but also with faith, saying this or that is good and this or that person/dogma/faith statement is legitimate, righteous, or "worthy" while these others are not.

Maybe the true paradox is that we continue to see the pardoxical nature (what I'd call the 'greyness') of life and yet remain fixed on labeling and participating in life/world/community in a black-n-white dualism.

Time for a cigarette and a glass of red wine.