It is looking like drought time is coming over us here in Northern California. After a year of floods we’ve now seen two years of blue sky and now we’re midway through the third winter of little to no rain….

Food will not bring us close to God. We are no worse off if we do not eat, and no better off if we do. Superbowl Sunday is the largest food-consumption day of the American year, after Thanksgiving. If you’re like me, you probably won’t spend much time thinking about what you eat today. Someone will just plunk some chips or wings or potato skins in front of you, and you’ll down ’em. The Christians in Corinth thought about food a lot, trying to decide what to eat, who to eat with, and why it mattered. The quote above is from one of those Corinthians, and while I love how thoughtful theyre being about eating, I respectfully disagree that food can’t bring us close to God.

It was the first day of 2009. A cold beginning in Wisconsin, with 3 or more feet of snow and ice chunks on Lake Michigan. A friend and I went for a walk to catch up, as we were both…

Leslie Hatfield, in the Huffington Post begins her article, “Maybe Jeremy Piven didn’t get mercury poisoning from fish at all — according to the results of a new study released by the Institute for Agriculture and Trace Policy (IATP), the actor may well have been sickened by soda or candy or anything that contains high fructose corn syrup, which, if you eat processed food in this country means, well, just about anything.” All this makes one believe John Calvin may have been right about human depravity. Speaking of which – If you didn’t realize, this year is his 500th birthday. Yes, he is very old. And you can learn about the celebrations here.

report about mercury in the already maligned high fructose corn syrup (HFCS).Thanks a lot, Dennis. When this can happen and salmonella-tainted peanut butter is sold on supermarket shelves nation-wide, it does seem to indict the centralized, corporate-driven food system we have created. How often are you ingesting mercury? Around 50% of the time you eat anything with high fructose corn syrup in it! At least that is the frequency mercury was found in the samples taken in a study published today in the scientific journal, Environmental Health. A separate study was done by the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP), where my former friend Dennis works (just kidding Dennis, but I did take you out of my will), which detected mercury in nearly one-third of 55 popular brand name food and beverage products where HFCS is the first or second highest labeled ingredient. Among them were products by Quaker, Hershey’s, Kraft and Smucker’s. We North American consume a heck of a lot of HFCS. On average, Americans consume about 12 teaspoons per day of HFCS. Consumption by teenagers and other high consumers can be up to 80 percent above average levels.

We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked and dejected with a lost opportunity. The “tide in the affairs of men” does not remain at the flood; it ebbs. We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is deaf to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residue of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words: “Too late.” There is an invisible book of life that faithfully records our vigilance or our neglect. “The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on…” We still have a choice today; nonviolent coexistence or violent co-annihilation.

This is a true story. Last saturday I went to one of the local mega-food grocery stores for the week’s shopping. As I drove down one of the parking lanes I noticed a young man standing next to the front…

Yes, well, if Wendell Berry and Wes Jackson have their way, you would only get farm bill reform alerts from the Hunger Program every half century! That’s because the changes in agricultural production they laid out on January 5 are based on ecological principles as opposed to the desires of agribusiness. They also are grounded in the great research on perennials done by Jackson’s Land Institute and on Berry’s sage advice on agrarianism (here is a choice morsel from Orion magazine – The Agrarian Standard). May our new leadership in Washington take heed!

“It is much more comfortable to depersonalize the poor so we don’t feel responsible for the catastrophic human failure that results in someone sleeping on the street while people have spare bedrooms in their homes. We can volunteer in a social program or distribute excess food and clothing through organizations and never have to open up our homes, our beds our dinner tables. When we get to heaven, we will separated into those sheep and goats Jesus talks about in Matthew 25 based on how we cared for the least among us. I’m just not convinced that Jesus is going to say, “When I was hungry, you gave a check to the United Way and they fed me,” or, “When I was naked, you gived clothes to the Salvation Army and they clothed me.” Jesus is not seeking distant acts of charity. He seeks concrete acts of love: “you fed me . . . you visited me in prison . . . you welcomed me into your home . . . you clothed me.” Yes, I spend many hours of each day working “for the hungry.” But I clearly depersonalize them in many ways. Foremost because I am not working with the hungry and dispossessed. Nor have I recently invited a hungry or homeless person to eat at my table or stay the night. And, yes, I just finished writing my end-of-the-year checks to non-profits.

Part of what makes a holiday a holiday is the food. If its the Fourth of July, there should be hamburgers and hot dogs on the grill. Valentine’s day involves chocolate. Halloween involves candy as a whole and even Flag…