Today an Empty Plate

Today I'm fasting, along with thousands of other people around our world, in solidarity for climate justice. Bill McKibben at 350.org sent a message from Copenhagen yesterday asking people to join in this 24-hour symbolic act of gentle activism.

I know this is not by any means a solution to the complex problems of global warming or a substitute for leadership and thoughtful negotiation, but it does represent what I'm trying to do here on this blog and in my life. Thinking about where my food comes from, making informed choices about what I cook and serve to my family and friends, is no longer a strictly personal pastime. Our food is intimately linked to our environment, both local and global.

It seems unlikely, but shopping at farmers markets and eating according to the season is opening a whole field of knowledge that I somehow took for granted in the past. Knowing that this week's beautiful, velvety leeks won't be available next Thursday, that indeed they won't be around for the rest of the winter, gives me pause. It makes the leek, I don't know, in some way, more real, more precious. And the dirt inside its white layers, a reminder of our earth, even as it sits on my cutting board in New York City. This experience is leading me to pay a particular kind of attention to issues that spin all around us in the media -- issues like nutrition, drought, water supply, energy sources, glaciers melting, global warming. That new attention is not intellectual, it's empathetic. Call it linking the personal with the political -- call it, and I do, "interdependence." I've never been a political activist in my life -- but now, here I am, joining a worldwide fast (if only for a day, I mean really, I do that every time I get a colonoscopy) on behalf of people on the other side of our earth who are already dealing with the consequences of our habits of waste and gluttony. And I'm doing it, not because of some high minded idea of righting wrongs, but because it feels like a connection, a human connection that begins, literally, in my belly.

I understand why religions call for occasional periods of fasting and the contemplation that accompanies it. Most days, when I feel hungry, I think about things like the homemade goat cheese and bread in the refrigerator or the apple turnovers fresh out of the oven. But today, my hunger pangs turn my thoughts to Copenhagen and the individuals who share a conviction that there really is something important at stake and that all of our habits and choices do matter.