What Difference Does it Make?
March 11, 2007 The Reverend Anne Felton Hines
When I was attending Seminary in Berkeley some twenty-five years ago, I learned of a very special restaurant called Chez Panisse. You may be aware of this place as well; it was rated the best restaurant in the United States a while back. But I didn’t know anything about it when I was going to school just a few blocks away, other than that the food was supposed to be exquisite, and that it was much too expensive for most of us students.
There were two sections of Chez Panisse: The Café, which was upstairs and had moderately-priced meals – though still too expensive for “starving” Seminary students except on very special occasions; and the Restaurant downstairs, which offered one menu each evening, at considerably higher prices. That’s still the structure today, and yesterday I checked on-line the menus for the coming week: the least expensive meal is $50 per person, and by Saturday evening it will have climbed to $85. That latter $85 menu consists of an aperitif, a fish and shellfish salad with herb mayonnaise, green asparagus with Serrano ham and Parmesan, grilled Cattail Creek lamb with mustard sauce and mustard flowers, and a vegetable ragout with artichokes, peas and new onions. For dessert: Bittersweet chocolate fondant with pistachio praline ice cream. I have to admit I don’t know what a “fondant” is, but I’m certainly willing to try it!
But Chez Panisse is far more than simply an expensive restaurant catering to the elite. After watching a video about the founder of it, Alice Waters, I realized that it’s actually a good example of our seventh Unitarian Universalist Principle, which affirms and promotes “respect for the interdependent web of existence of which we are a part.”
Alice Waters created Chez Panisse over thirty years ago, when she was a young woman involved in the anti-war movement in Berkeley. It began simply as an expression of her desire to cook good food and share it with her friends in the movement. But what has always set it apart from most other restaurants and cafes is its commitment to the philosophy of sustainability and interdependence. The website of Chez Panisse reads in part: “We have always seen the meal as a center of the human experience. At the table we are nourished and gladdened, put in touch with the source of life, and reconnected to traditions and creativity.” In a day when so much eating is done in front of the TV, or on-the-go, this concept reminds us of the importance of intentional eating.
Waters was the first to ask the question: How does what we eat make a difference in the world? How do the choices we make about food impact people in our community and beyond? In response to these questions, Waters has insisted on using only organically grown fruits and vegetables, and buys her ingredients from local farmers as much as possible.
According to Waters, her most important job is finding the right ingredients, and creating a partnership with the farmers and ranchers who provide those ingredients. Her basic ethic is “to break down the walls between the producers of food, and the consumers.”
So when one eats at Chez Panisse, one is not only treated to some of the best-tasting food in the country, all grown without chemicals, and brought to the restaurant the same day it’s served; but one is also invited to engage the people who have grown, harvested and prepared the food – to feel a connection with them and with their circumstances.
“When we choose to buy organic,” says one of Waters’ admirers, “we support the chain of events that ramifies all the way back to the farm.” In this way, the choices we make regarding food are “enormously political.”
Waters calls it a different way of thinking about the world – by supporting the people who are taking care of the land. “It isn’t hard,” she says; “it’s a delicious and revolutionary thing to do!”
Perhaps even more “revolutionary” than her restaurant is the project she began for children in the public school system in Berkeley, called the “Edible Schoolyard.” From a concrete area at one of the middle schools, Waters created a garden and kitchen. The children grow organic fruits and vegetables in the garden, and then create their own school lunches from it. Says Waters about the project, “We are starved for beauty and meaning in our lives; I want to bring that (beauty and meaning) to children.”
All this came from one woman’s desire to connect her everyday living to the lives of others, and to the earth. She wanted to remain aware of the affect her actions were having beyond herself, and to live with more intentionality.
As our reading earlier by Thich Nhat Hanh suggests, all things in life are connected. He calls it “interbeing;” even the children’s story pointed to this concept. One of the basic purposes of Buddhist practice is to open ourselves to an awareness of this “interbeing.”
“We think of the rose as beautiful, and garbage as horrible,” writes Thich. “But if we look more deeply, we see that in a few days, the rose will become part of the garbage. And if we look at the garbage, we see that in a few months, it will become a lovely garden….The garbage is as precious as the rose,” he asserts.
When we are mindful of this interbeing – this interdependence of all things – then it becomes more difficult for us to live carelessly, with no thought as to how our actions impact the rest of the world. When we are aware, we are compelled to live our life with greater intentionality.
Thich suggests that because “Everything contains everything else, we cannot just be; we can only inter-be. We are responsible for everything that happens around us.”
Even the “roots of war…are in the way we live our daily lives – the way we develop industries, build society, and consume goods,” he writes.
Of course, these are not alien ideas for Unitarian Universalists; our very seventh Principle speaks to them. We not only affirm our connection with all that lives; we promote it – meaning that we must look carefully at our everyday lives, and ask ourselves how the choices we make impact that “interdependent web.”
What food do we eat? Where do we purchase it? Where do we buy our clothes and other products? What transportation do we use? The answers to these and other questions need not carry great judgment; they only need to deepen our awareness, and lead us as much as possible to choices that enhance the lives of others and of our earth.
What is the effect on people in poor countries, where their water is being sold to them by large private corporations, for profits, when I drink sodas and water bottled by those same corporations?
How does my decision to drive everywhere rather than take public transportation affect the quality of the air we breathe?
And how does my choice to eat meat hurt the animals whose lives are sacrificed for that decision, and contribute to world poverty because of the grains needed to feed those animals?
What is the effect on laborers – mostly women and children – in third world countries, when I purchase low-cost clothing made by them while they work and live in deplorable conditions?
All of us make choices – sometimes with awareness of the consequences on others, but probably more often completely unaware of the effect those choices may have on the lives of people around the world, and on our common mother, the Earth.
Some of you will recall the story I once shared, told by Alice Walker, in which she describes her experience of lying under a grove of trees one day. As she lay there soaking up the peace and the beauty, she heard the tree next to her say, “Please go away!” Alice thought she must have mis-heard, and so asked the tree to repeat itself. “I said, please go away,” it repeated.
“But why?” asked Alice. “I love you! I protest the cutting of trees for profits! I’m your friend!”
“Really?!” exclaimed the tree. “Then what about that house of yours made of wood? And your beautiful coffee table? And all your other wooden furniture you love so much?”
Alice tells the story, of course, far better than I am. But the point is made that even those of us who think we “affirm and promote” care of the earth and all its creatures, sometimes fall short, without even realizing it.
Even Alice Waters, in her restaurant, may not be completely consistent. She serves all kinds of meat; and nowhere have I been able to learn her philosophy about staff support. I do not know how well her staff is paid, or whether they receive health and pension benefits, or what kind of bargaining power they have. Nor do I know if she checks out the conditions for the workers on the farms and ranches she frequents. I assume that justice for employees is as important to her as all her other values; but the truth is, it wasn’t really mentioned anywhere in the material about her.
The point here isn’t to be perfectly consistent in everything we do; that’s probably an impossibility. The point is to live with intentionality – to practice mindfulness in all that we do, so that our lives are more likely to align themselves with our deepest religious values. The point is to do one more thing to bring us there. Henry David Thoreau spoke of it as living “deliberately” – as being able to give a “full account” of life.
Thich Nhat Hanh suggests that we pay attention to the smallest details of our lives, and see beyond the obvious. He describes leading children through the experience of eating a tangerine with such mindfulness. (hold up tangerine)
“…the children were invited to meditate on the tangerine’s origins,” he writes. They saw not only their tangerine, but also its mother, the tangerine tree; ... they began to visualize the blossoms in the sunshine and in the rain. Then they saw petals falling down and the tiny green fruit appear. Now someone has picked it, and the tangerine is here. After seeing this, each child was invited to peel the tangerine slowly, noticing the mist and the fragrance of the tangerine, and then bring it up to his or her mouth and have a mindful bite, in full awareness of the texture and taste of the fruit and the juice coming out.
“Each time you look at a tangerine,” he continues, “you can see deeply into it. You can see everything in the universe in one tangerine.”
Perhaps if we began doing everything, from the simplest acts like eating a tangerine, to the more complex, with such deliberateness and care, we would begin to pay more attention to how our actions affect others, now and in the future. And then, perhaps, we could choose to change some of our actions that may be harmful to other human beings or to the environment.
Unitarian educator Sophia Lyon Fahs wrote that “it matters what we believe.” It also matters what we do; as the hymn says, “what touches one affects us all.” Our actions do make a difference. And so as people who “affirm and promote respect for the interdependent web of all existence,” we are called to ask ourselves what choices we might make that would have a positive effect on the world beyond ourselves.
In a couple of weeks I’ll have three whole months with which to learn our Metro system, -- something that has felt overwhelming to me, for fear of getting lost. That is something I can do that might make a difference.
Alice Waters has inspired me to begin shopping at local Farmer’s Markets – of which there are several. I may even focus on learning to cook without meat! And when I eat out, I can choose restaurants that support local organic farming and healthy living, such as Follow Your Heart, rather than my standard Jack-in-the-Box! That is something I can do that might make a difference.
And I will do some research about the stores at which I buy my clothes, and become more intentional about doing no harm with my purchases. That is something I can do that might make a difference.
What can each of us do – what “one more step” can we each take – to become more mindful of the difference our actions make? And what choices can this congregation make to ensure that the Principles of our Faith are alive in all we do?
In the words of Thich Nhat Hanh: “If we are willing to work together and learn together, we can all benefit from the mistakes of our time, and seeing with the eyes of compassion and understanding, we can offer the next century a beautiful garden and a clear path.”
May this always be so.
© 2007 Anne Felton Hines. All rights reserved.
