Our obsession with food in this country hits a fever pitch this week as we celebrate Thanksgiving. Yet according to the National Resources Defense Council, Americans throw away $165 billion (yes with a B) worth of food every year. Sam Wells provides a thoughtful reminder that probably won’t make the gastronomic headlines this week.

Food is Politics. The food industry is the largest manufacturing industry in this country. Anyone who disputes the description of agriculture and animal farming as an industry has not been outside lately. The reality is, the old distinction between food on the one hand, which was about the country and the soil, and industry on the other, which was about the city and the factory, has broken down. We all go to the supermarket and shop for groceries. But did you know that the average item of food in a grocery store has travelled 1500 miles? This means that putting food on our dinner plates is a global project.

It has always been so. The outer reaches of Tiberius’ Roman Empire had one central purpose in the imperial economy: and that was to be a breadbasket and source of other agricultural surpluses. If you lived in an Italian villa and your taste was fish paste, olive oil, or wine, then Galilee was your key supply base. Consider the kinds of diseases carried by those drawn to Jesus. You will find that most of them are connected in some way to malnutrition. The politics of food dominates the gospels just as much as it dominates today’s global economy. When Jesus set about transforming human reality, he went to the core of the culture: the production and consumption of food.

Most of Jesus’ talking about food comes in his parables. It is often supposed that Jesus was a simple agrarian figure telling homespun yet subversive stories of small-town folk, a kind of cross between Huckleberry Finn and John Denver. But when your eyes are opened to the politics of food, the parables take on a new dimension. When we read the story of the landowner who built bigger and bigger barns, we start to ask, “Whose land had now come into his possession and why? Was he in the Romans’ pocket or simply exploiting his fellow Jews?” In other words, it is no longer just a parable about greed but also a story about the politics of food. Think again about the parable of the sower. The stony ground and the thistles are not just figures of speech. They are agronomic reasons why peasant farmers remained in grinding poverty. And when the good soil produced a hundredfold, this is not just some kind of Middle Eastern penchant for exaggeration. This is saying at last this struggling peasant famer could pay his taxes, pay his debts, and finally buy his own land and be free of bonded oppression for good. This becomes Jesus’ image of salvation, of the kingdom of God – the ability to have more than enough food in a culture of extortion and exploitation.

How might we embody a Christian politics based on food?

1. Realize that there is nothing more political than what you eat. Let us not get into a fantasy about uncontaminated food. But let us realize that the world’s economy is based on choices about agriculture. The world is what we eat.
2. Ask yourself “Who am I eating with?” Food is both need and pleasure. And when those in need and those you love come together in such a way that they get all tangled up around the meal table, we call it the kingdom of God.
3. If worship is food, could it be that food is worship? Could we imagine how good eating might become a sacrament of reconciliation between human beings and our planet?

The Revd Dr Sam Wells is the vicar of St Martin-in-the-Fields in London. He has served as a parish priest for 15 years – 10 of those in urban priority areas. He also spent 7 years in North Carolina where he was Dean of Duke University Chapel.

Taken from Come to the Table: A Collection of Recipes celebrating the 25th Anniversary of the Congregation at Duke University Chapel. Congregation at Duke University Chapel, Durham, NC

Recently Street Psalms Press announced  the arrival of our first book, Geography of Grace – Doing Theology From Below by Kris Rocke and Joel Van Dyke.

This project has been several years in the making. It has gone through five major edits, countless rewrites and a change in publishers. We are eager and a bit nervous to see it finally hit the streets. We have no illusions that this will be a New York Times best seller, but as a community, we hope it is a useful tool for those who are hungry to see God at work in hard places.

Authors and leaders like Bob Ekblad, Richard Rohr, Shane Claiborne, Phyllis Trible, Ray Bakke and others have given the book a warm reception. To see what these and other leaders are saying about Geography of Grace go click on the book highlight to the right of this page or go  here.

Fair warning:

We did not set out to write a controversial book, but this book is not without some controversy. We wrote it to honor those who work in the context of poverty and violence, which often pushes leaders to the edge of their faith, and ours as well, if we are honest. As a result, we have taken the “road less traveled,” in our book. Such a road is fraught with danger and all manner of ways to get lost, but as Robert Frost noted, taking the road less travelled “has made all the difference.” We hope it will make a difference with our readers and the communities we serve.

Several who have reviewed the book have recognized and appreciated the risky nature of our journey. One such review comes from Stephan de Beer in Pretoria, South Africa, who writes,

Grace is shared abundantly in the poetic beauty of this book: a grace located in the deepest trenches of human suffering and global urban fractures; a disarming grace, meeting you on every page, robed in profanity, steeped in the incarnation, erupting in surprising, awe-inspiring transformations.

This book offers all of us who sense an invitation to be on the urban margins, some superb handles for the journey – it is not your typical travel guide, but one written for the connoisseur of urban and human marginality, and, if we read carefully enough, a guide book for opening us up to the poetry and profanity of God’s beautiful grace, a grace more than able to make us over, and also the cities in which we live.

 Stephan de Beer, CEO, Tshwane Leadership Foundation, Pretoria, South Africa

To purchase Geography of Grace: Doing Theology From Below in either paperback or e-book format, go here. (Amazon will have the print version of the book available within the next month or so, but for now the paperback edition is available directly from Street Psalms Press in an equally safe and secure process that actually provides more income for our work.)  

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I lived in Tacoma, Washington for the last two years of my life (summer 2009-summer 2011.) I got a master’s degree in leadership (although I’m still not really sure what that means), held three teaching assistantships, and did an internship with the Center for Transforming Mission.  Now, I am back in Guatemala. I returned three months ago and I am continuing to re-enter my context and getting used to the differences in food, safety, and weather. During my time in Tacoma I became aware of the different racial, social and education dynamics surrounding me. I got used to people being scared of me (I assume because I am a 6’2” Guatemalan with long hair and a beard), people following me around the store (just in case I would break something of course), and people being surprised by my ability to speak English and play the piano. The latter, I assume, was because we Guatemalans do not have pianos and English teachers on this side of the border. I felt and dealt with what it is to be treated as a minority.

During my first week back in Guatemala, I thought things would return to normal where I was part of the majority population, a brown guy surrounded by brown people. But I was surprised.  People still follow me around the store, move to the other side of the street when they see me walking and are surprised that I speak English. What I find more interesting is the fact that being “white” is still better in a “brown” context.

Not too long ago I had a really intense experience when I went to the bank with a friend from the United States. We were in Antigua, which is a beautiful city and was originally the first capital city of Guatemala. My friend and I went to exchange some money at the bank. When we got to the front desk my friend realized he did not have his passport, so he asked me to exchange the money for him. I was getting ready to make the transaction when the bank attendant told me, “I cannot exchange the money for you.” “Why is that?” I asked. “Because you are Guatemalan and you do not have an account with us.” For a moment I felt really offended and discriminated against, so I did not answer immediately. After a few seconds I asked, “Are you telling me that I cannot exchange dollars in my own country because I am not white and I am Guatemalan?” “That is exactly what I am saying sir,” she replied. She looked to the security officers and in a matter of seconds both of the guards were right behind me ready to escort me out of the bank. “Don’t worry,” I said, “I have two legs and I can walk.” I talked to my friend, in English because he does not speak Spanish at all, and when they heard me speaking in English they relaxed and left me alone.

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The Church is where natural enemies gather…

Mark Twain wrote of his famous experiment:   He placed a cat and a dog in a cage and to his amazement they became friends.   Encouraged, he added a rabbit, a fox, a goose, a squirrel and even some doves and a monkey.  They too became friends and lived in peace.

In another cage he confined an Irish catholic.  When he seemed tame enough he added a Scotch Presbyterian.  Next he added a Turk from Constantinople, a Greek as well as an Armenian Christian, a Methodist, a Buddhist, a Brahman and finally a Salvation Army Colonel.

He left both cages for two days.  When he came back he found the animals still at peace.  But in the cage of religious leaders he found “a chaos of gory ends, of turbans and fezzes and plaids and bones and flesh, not a specimen alive.”  Twain concluded that the religious leaders disagreed on a theological detail and carried the matter to a Higher Court.

Here at CTM we have learned (the hard way) that attending to “theological detail” and doctrinal distinctives almost always results in “a chaos of gory ends,” especially when doing grassroots theology in hard places.

Whereas theological detail tends to divide us into “a chaos of gory ends,” honest conversation that is done within the crucible of mission has the potential to unite.  We have found that if we raise missional questions high enough and pose them strong enough – I mean to the point where our neat theological formulas fall helpless before the harsh realities of those we serve, we can actually build a table in which the possibility of unity emerges.

Sometimes desperation is not only the best way forward, it is the only way forward.  I am convinced that the overwhelming impossibilities of those on the margins are the key to unity within the Body of Christ.  It takes only a little humility and all of two minutes to learn that when serving among the least, no single spiritual stream is enough. High-risk communities require the best of all the spiritual streams that the Church has to offer, and then some.  Authentic service among the poor creates room at the table for us all and I do mean ALL.  In this sense, it is the poor who hold the key to our salvation.  Perhaps this is why Jesus said, blessed are the poor for theirs is the Kingdom of God.

(This was first published as a Word from Below email on June 15, 2009. To receive the weekly Word from Below by email, click here.)

Kris Rocke
Serves as director of Center for Transforming Mission
Bumps into Reality by accident, most of the time
Heard God laugh once

I ask that you join the people of Kenya in recognizing Sunday, January 6 as an International Day of Prayer for this nation.

We as CTM-Nairobi staff, the Ochiengs and Zylstras, are safe and well. From the roof of Gideon and Mwix Ochieng’s home, however, we can see the devastating damage in Kibera (Africa’s largest slum). Within minutes of the announcement of election results, several fires were started nearby, followed by gunshots, massive explosions, screaming and wailing. I have experienced seeing something on the news, and developing an immunity to it, but this pain is real and it is impacting real people.

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The Geography of Grace community has special reason to be deeply concerned about the news coming from Kenya, and to ask you to be diligent in your prayers on behalf of the Kenyan people.

Both the Center for Transforming Mission and Mile High Ministries (co-sponsors of Geography of Grace) are strongly connected to Kenya. CTM works closely with a group of delightful young leaders in Nairobi, most of whom live and serve in the “informal settlements” (slums) where much of the violence has been taking place. We have two staff families in Nairobi now, and the drama is unfolding all around them. MHM helped launch an orphanage called Tumaini Ministries just outside Nairobi, where some of our dearest friends are caring for Kenya’s children.

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I confess to posting this video from Bangkok, Thailand mainly because it gave me a good laugh—an admiring laugh at that. I don’t know the original source, but it was forwarded to me by my friend Matt Harrison, who works on FasTracks, Denver’s mass transit expansion.

A buzzword in Denver now is “transit oriented development” or TOD, where new high density “live-work-play” neighborhoods are sprouting up around commuter light rail stations. Bangkok obviously is way out ahead of us in that regard.

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I made my way atop of the ravine battling the overgrown grass on the edge of the cliff. The unbearable stench of the world below came upon me like nothing I had ever felt before. Perhaps it was the heat mingled so seamlessly with the scent, or the force of the wind that overpowered my large frame as if God himself were blowing from his lips. Or it may have been the simple fact that I wasn’t prepared to encounter God’s visible absence on that day. Whatever it was, as I laid my eyes on the dumpsite, unable to distinguish people from trash, I could have easily collapsed there, wept for hours, and then rolled over into the abyss of garbage to my death in honor of those suffering below.

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One of my favorite films last year was the political thriller The Constant Gardener, based on the novel by John Le Carré. In addition to a taut storyline, the film provokes viewers with images of a deeply impoverished slum in the Kenya’s capital city, Nairobi.

That slum is called Kibera, and it is the largest in Africa. Something like 800,000 people live on 600 acres of steeply sloped land, with a stream of black water trickling at the bottom. Most of the homes are made from some combination of corrugated tin, mud, or cardboard. There are no city services for this community larger than the city of Denver – no water, sewer, or electricity. One small police station, with a half dozen officers who know better than to try to actually police the community, provide the only formal government presence.

I just returned from a trip to Nairobi, during which we visited Kibera twice. We joined some friends for a church service in the waiting room of a faith-based health clinic, and took a long walking tour led by two women who live there and dozens of children anxious to have their pictures taken by the muzungu (white) visitors. Kibera isn’t a normal stop for tourists in Kenya, to say the least. But we were guests, invited by my friend Gideon Ochieng, who lived in Kibera until recently and who still works with homeless children from the slums.

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