Citadel of the Blogs The Inbox of the Internet (really)

Recently, I’ve begun a pet project with my wife and son (six years old): he picks a food and together we research its origins. So, for example, he chose bread. This is a food that is highly charged in many religious food contexts. So we went through the basic ingredients (flour, water, salt, sugar, yeast) and I provided pictures of where each of these comes from (wheat stalks, grain; salt mines; sugar beets or sugar cane; fungi). And then we glue the pictures in a circular wheel around the central image, bread. The idea is to give him a holistic sense of where the things in our borderless grocery stores come from.

the connection, of course, is that holism is the view I am trying to instill within him. chocolate? how many of us have seen actual cacao plants? yeast? how many of us connect this with mushroom fungi? let alone baking soda, baking powder and other leavening agents.

the concept of leavening is suffused with religious imagery. the invisible “hand” that makes bread rise. so by analogy, the leaven of society is that which creates a profound effect (”rising”) while never actually being seen or noticed. leaven of heaven indeed.

well, how’s that for a little leavening of your day?

haha