Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
A PERSONAL REFLECTION
I sat at table in the Guest House of Holy Cross Abbey, a Trappist
Monastery in Berryville, Virginia, with the guest master Father Stephen at
the head of the table, and six other retreatants gathered round. After Father
Stephen had offered a prayer of thanksgiving to God for the food we were
about to enjoy from the bounty of God's creation, he stabbed his fork into
his vegetarian salad and encouraged the rest of us to pass the large platter
of roast beef around the table. The meat had come from beef cattle the
monks raised on their 1200-acre farm along the Shenandoah River, just
yards from the Guest House.
Stephen abstained from meat, following the sixth-century rule of St.
Benedict: “Except the sick who are very weak, let all abstain entirely from
eating the flesh of four-footed animals.” Yet, the monks' livelihood came
from raising beef for others to eat. Stephen's traditions included spiritual
fasting as well as observing Roman Catholic “feast days.” As the lone
Presbyterian at the table that day, my own eating habits were less guided
by religious ritual, health issues, and even conscience than by my physical
appetite.
Many things have changed in the 30 years since that meal. The monks
found raising cattle to be less than profitable and even stopped baking
Monastery Bread, although they use the ovens for brandy-fueled fruit cake
production to support their religious vocation. And I am far more aware
that the food I choose to eat not only directly impacts my health but also
has profound ramifications for the health of the planet itself as well as that
of my global neighbors. I also have come to value the rhythms of feasting
and fasting that help pace my spiritual journey.
One thing has not changed as I look back to that monastery meal:
Although from different ecclesiastical traditions that cannot yet share
in the bread and wine sacramental supper we both refer to as “Holy
Communion,” there was a sense of spiritual union and fellowship around
that dinner table, friendship created and nurtured in the context of tables
set, plates passed, and dishes washed by hand. Had a Buddhist joined us
around the table, he or she would have shared in the salad but not the beef.
A Jew would have enjoyed the beef but passed on the pork had it been
offered. And a Taoist might have cautioned us with words from the Tao
Te Ching, “To take all one wants is never so good as to stop when one
should.”
