Every Wednesday, I gather with a group of men to share a meal and open the Scriptures together. For some of the guys who break bread with us, our Bible study is the only time they get to enjoy a home-cooked meal with others in any given week. At least, sad to say, as a single man living in America today, that is sometimes true for me.

It is difficult to understate the importance of sharing meals with others regularly: it is good for our health, and it has social benefits, and that’s not to mention the spiritual significance. For most of human history the table has been at the epicenter of human culture. But today, the dining room is disappearing from American homes. In general, people do not eat together anymore. And that does not bode well for us.

I have spent years reckoning with these issues—often asking, Why do I eat so many meals alone? My spiritual search has led me to two important discoveries that I believe are intimately related: first, I have realized that we eat alone because our technological society was designed to spare us the burden of eating together; and second, if we want to return to fellowship at the table, it will take more than individual willpower—we must undergo a spiritual transformation that begins at Christ’s table in the celebration of Communion.

Eating Alone

It used to be that gathering around the table was a physical necessity by nature of the limitations imposed by the seasons and the land. People gathered around the table because food had to be prepared in advance, usually in bulk, and would eventually spoil, so it had to be eaten up. But today, thanks to food trucks and refrigerators and microwaves, we have been liberated from many physical constraints. However, in removing those boundaries, we have managed to create a society where it is exceedingly more convenient to eat alone. And so, we eat alone.

Speaking more broadly, these days, nearly all our relationships—not only with other humans, but also with the created world—are mediated through our technologies. That mediation inevitably weakens our bonds with others in the physical world because it creates a physical distance between us. We do not have to live together or work together or eat together and so we don’t.

Today, the only communion we share is a technological communion. We abide in our smartphones, and our smartphones abide in us. The fruit of our technological abiding might be a form of material abundance, convenience, comfort, and pleasure, but these are artificial luxuries acquired through destructive systems and they do not satisfy our hunger or satiate our thirst. We eat and drink and find ourselves worse off than before.

Communion

As much as I harp on the problems with our technological society, I don’t see the technologies themselves as the ultimate issue. The primary problem is sin: our relationship with God, and dependence upon him, has been severed because collectively we chose to eat the fruit that was forbidden by God (Genesis 2). Today, our technologies simply cultivate the conditions wherein a spiritual lie can take root in our hearts and bear fruit in our lives—a lie that I don’t need God, or others, or creation itself to flourish; a lie that the fullness of life is found outside the parameters of my God-given limitations. Our technologies become the weapons we wield to exert our independent will on others and transgress the boundaries God established, often irrespective or else ignorant of the consequences.

Therefore, while I certainly think it would be good to depend less on the technologies that I find so problematic, what first needs to be dealt with is our sin—for all our other issues flow from this. Each of us bears a spiritual wound that demands a spiritual healing. But how can we be healed?

We must come back to the table—to the Lord’s Table, in particular, over which Jesus himself presides. At Communion, God reminds us and re-presents to us (that is, makes present to us again) the sacrifice of Christ on our behalf by which our sin is dealt with and we are reconciled to the Father. Indeed, at Communion, we embody what we profess: that Jesus, the lamb of God, was broken and given as food to us as a gift so that we, unmerited, might be able to take and eat of him who is our life—thus undoing the consequences of our first eating in the Garden of Eden that brought upon us death.

Communion is so important for us today because by partaking of Communion we become the kind of people who are capable of sharing our lives with one another. When we eat the bread and drink the wine that Christ offers us, we are mystically united to God in love. Abiding in the love of God, we begin to love others as God loves them. The way of communion is opened to us, for we can no longer bear to impose our own independent will upon others irrespective of the consequences but rather learn to yield our personal will in exchange for the perfect will of God. In time, we will no longer stand to have our relationships mediated through technologies that obscure us from one another because we will desire to draw near to one another, as near as we can draw, because in Christ God drew near to us.

It is in view of these things that my friends have begun our meals every week by taking Communion. We have been asking God to do a supernatural work in us to make us the kind of people who love as he loved us. It has been amazing to discover that the more we partake of Christ at Communion, the more we hunger and thirst after him. The more we hunger and thirst after him, the more we are changed so that our lives can bear the fruit that he desires.

When I first interned at The Rabbit Room in the summer of 2022, I remember being wonderstruck. While I had encountered so much shallow and didactic Christian art, here was an organization that sought to champion artists, musicians, and authors whose work possessed both an aesthetic richness and a spiritual depth. I began to dream that my first book, Mr. Halick’s Planet, might find a home there.

Today, it is my great joy to share with you that Rabbit Room has agreed to publish Mr. Halick’s Planet in 2029!

The story is set on a foreign planet occupied by a wealthy and charismatic billionaire known as Mr. Halick. When twins Evan and Jane go with their father, Todd, to meet said billionaire, they are astonished to discover that Mr. Halick has created a technological utopia and transcended virtually all human limitations—all but one: death. Now, with Todd’s help, Mr. Halick aspires to overcome that final barrier and find a way to live forever. But the children must discover, at what cost?

The story is a middle grade children’s novel (that is, written primarily, although not exclusively, for children ages 8-12) that explores what it means to live fully alive in a technological age. Ultimately, the book serves as a creative retelling of the greatest story of all time: how a transcendent God chose to put on flesh and die, so that those who believe in him might live, and really live.

This news would not have been possible without the generous support of Creo Arts, a like-minded organization, whose faith in my work, collaboration, and artist grant have helped make this dream a reality.

I can’t wait to share my book with you. In the meantime, I hope you will continue to follow along with my writing here and elsewhere.

God bless,
Michael

Jesus was crammed in with his disciples, his friends, in an upper room. It was evening and I imagine that everyone was feeling quite famished. He took a fresh loaf of bread, perhaps breathing in its delectable smell, and gave thanks to God—for who cannot give thanks when they smell such an aroma? Then he broke it, and said:

“This is my body.”

In the same way, he took a cup of wine. I can picture him lifting it so that it was just under his nose. Maybe he closed his eyes and smelled it, imagining all the luscious grapes that were crushed to produce that particular cup of fermented beverage. Then he said, “This is my blood.” And he invited his disciples to take and eat and drink his body and his blood which was broken and poured out for them.

If you think about it, it is a strange thing that Christians do when we celebrate the Lord’s Supper, remembering this unique moment. What did Christ mean that the bread was his body and that the wine was his blood? Surely, he wasn’t speaking literally, was he? And if he was God, as we believe, what kind of God would offer to become food and drink for his worshippers? Wouldn’t it be more appropriate, as repulsive as it might sound, for things to be the other way around—we offering our bodies and blood as nourishment to God?

These are really only the tip of the iceberg of my questions about Communion, and I do not claim to know all the answers. No! I only have a few ideas about it. There are some loaves that are too big for my stomach to digest, especially in one sitting. But I have found great delight in asking questions like these and contemplating the mystery of the Eucharist. And it satisfies my soul like nothing else.

Over the last few years, I have been on a spiritual journey that has led me to the dinner table. I have not journeyed to just any dinner table, but to Christ’s dinner table, where he offers himself to us as food and drink. In this next series of essays, I want to share with you, my dear readers, some of the discoveries I have made in my exploration of the beauty and mystery of the sacrament. I pray that somehow my reflections here will inspire and inform your worship.

I wish you had been there
with me in the cool of the day
on the back porch I sat
and read and prayed
The sparrows and the crickets
sang together a final encore
before the night set in
and then, you should have seen it,
I saw stars and stars
appear all around me
I mean fireflies
flickering like stars
How many of them?
I couldn’t say
enough to remind me
I’m not as old
as I sometimes pretend to be
We would have laughed together

Dear Readers,

If you have enjoyed my writing, please consider supporting my work with Lewis House. Lewis House is a Christian Study Center based on the campus of the University of Kentucky.

We serve students by providing accredited classes in Christian thought, run a scholars program where students have facilitated discussions about great books, host monthly lectures from leading thinkers about pressing cultural issues, and more.

My position is completely fundraised. If you are interested in finding out more about my work you can contact me at jmheard@lewishouse.org. You can also make a one-time or monthly donation by clicking on the button below.

Blessings,
Michael

About Lewis House

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“My frame was not hidden from you
   when I was made in the secret place,
   when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed body;
   all the days ordained for me were
written in your book
before one of them came to be.”

God is many things, but he is most certainly a writer and an artist — and he is an excellent one, at that. Psalm 139 paints a beautiful picture of God the writer at work at his desk. We are the characters in his story, created in his imagination and given life for the revelation of his glory.

Good writing demands a great deal of patience and a level of secrecy, as all creative endeavors do. As a writer, I am usually reluctant to share much about the project I am working on or send it out for others to read before it is complete. That is both because I want to protect myself from criticism of a story or poem that is not finished, and because I want to protect the integrity of the project itself.

It might sound strange, but I have learned to regard any new idea for a story or poem as a living thing – it is a plant, a flower, that once planted must be fed and given space and time to grow. When an idea is first conceived, it is vulnerable and therefore must be protected. If I expose it to the whims and judgements of others too early, their opinions threaten to undermine the development of that idea or else rush its growth.

Indeed, like a seed planted beneath the ground, or like a child formed in her mother’s womb, the best ideas come into being in secret. Any writer who wants to be a good writer should learn to wait, to patiently attend to their work in hiddenness and love. Often, the best things in life spring up out of the hidden places.

§

It is no wonder that Jesus should invite those who wish to pray to “go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen…” (Matthew 6:6). God covets the secret places of our lives because the secret place is the ultimate place of intimacy and of creativity.

Today, we are afraid of secrets. After all, conspiracies and scandals begin as secrets — and we have seen too many of those. And we know that evildoers act in secret. We ought to have nothing to hide. Our fear so often compels us to pursue complete transparency, to use every instrument available to us to give ourselves the illusion of control.

But a life without secrets is a life without depth. The issue is not secrecy itself but rather what it is that we are trying to conceal. We should ask ourselves often: What am I hiding? And if those secrets, like seeds, grow up and bear fruit in public, or are exposed in some other way, what will their fruit be?

Jesus teaches us in the Sermon on the Mount to hide our good works. “But when you give to the needy,” he teaches, “do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret” (Matthew 6:3). The point of hiding our good works is not to keep those deeds hidden, but rather to protect the integrity of our actions and so ensure that those works bear fruit for the benefit of all.

When we do good in secret, we come into fellowship with God who always acts in secret. God is hidden, and if we want to live fruitful lives, we too must learn to love the secret place. Only the seed that gets buried in the ground will bear any fruit.

This essay of mine was originally published by the Rabbit Room in December of 2022. I share it here because it resonates with the subject of my latest series which explores what writing can teach us about how to live well.

-JMH

If you are a writer or artist of any stripe, chances are you know a thing or two about disappointment. Perhaps, like me, you have found yourself blinded with false visions of breakthrough—publishing deal, critical acclaim, virality—only to stub your pride on the doorframe of reality. I’m an avid dreamer, so I hobble around with serious bruises thanks to my artistic ambitions. Writing, like other crafts, is not an easy vocation to pursue.

But today, I don’t want to throw a pity party for writers—I think there are enough of those already and I am partied out. Instead, I’d like to offer writers and artists of the church a reminder: we have a responsibility to steward our disappointments.

Disappointment is a norm in the post-fall world, not just for writers and artists. When Adam and Eve reached out and made their sinful choice, they planted the seed of disappointment in each of our hearts to grow and bear fruit for ages to come. Disappointment is now sown into the soil of our reality; it has perverted our nature. To neglect this is to cave into one of the most fundamental lies that the enemy tries to convince us of, that we live in the garden today, that our world is as it should be. Believe this, and you are bound to slip into a spiritual passivity that will corrupt your soul and further poison the ground around you.

When I talk about “stewarding disappointment,” I do not have a mind to denigrate or minimize our grief in any way. Grief is grief. Our sorrows do not always have to be justified, explained away, or made use of. There are moments when we should simply take grief for what it is, to cry and experience the weight of our sadness. Jesus himself, when standing before the tomb of Lazarus, bent down and wept. Are we too proud to weep with him? This is one of the most powerful ways to steward our grief—to simply experience it rather than flee, hide from, or neglect it.

But there are other ways to steward it too, ways that we might not always have the strength to muster. Sometimes God orders our disappointments in ways that meet others in their disappointments. If I, in my pain and isolation, could reach out and grab hold of the hand of a neighbor who is also enduring their own form of grief, could this perhaps partly remedy what is ailing both of us? One of my dearest friendships was formed and given its depth during a time we were both experiencing the pain of heartbreak and our paths collided. I sat with him in his confusion and loss just as he sat with me in mine. Those who have strength amid their troubles should strive to keep their eyes open for whom God might ask them to share their disappointments. Deep community forms not in the absence of troubles, but when individuals, in the midst of their troubles, band together to bear each other’s burdens.

The world doesn’t need people who live without disappointment. The world idolizes such individuals—celebrities, self-help gurus, spiritual sages. These people hide their disappointments by putting on masks; they conceal the truth, calling evil “good” and good “evil.” In doing so, they lead their flocks blindly into ditches. What our society needs instead are people who stand boldly and honestly in their brokenness because they understand that the power and grace of God are most clearly demonstrated there. For us, disappointment is no longer our defining reality.

Imagine this scene: The disciples hide in an upper room. The other Jews hold them in contempt. They have brought shame to their families. The words they spoke and the lives they led the last few years have proven empty all because their Messiah has been crucified on a tree, utterly humiliated. To say they are disappointed would be an understatement.

Isn’t it remarkable that God would use one grievous disappointment as a means of liberating us from the disappointment that characterizes our lives? Jesus’ death frees us from sin; Jesus’ resurrection gives us the hope of new life. In Christ, all our disappointments can be redeemed. That is not to say they will not leave their mark, but even the holes in Jesus’ hand demonstrated the legitimacy of his new body. Indeed, the resurrected Christ demonstrates how we ought to properly steward our disappointments. We are wounded and killed, but by God’s power, we rise again.

So we do not have to lose heart when a manuscript gets rejected, when our hearts get broken, or when we face the death of a dream. When Jesus said, “Behold, I am making all things new,” He meant all things. He intends to incorporate every sad and stinging disappointment into the great melody that our lives will sing in Christ. When we submit our disappointments to Him and steward them for His glory, we can trust that He is fulfilling His purposes for us, both in us and through us. He alone is our hope.

When people ask me why I write children’s books I usually respond that I cannot help but write children’s books. I spend most of my time thinking about deep and serious things, but as soon as I sit down to write a story it comes out as:

“Odoni Finklewerr had his head turned into a turnip.”

I have a tendency to take life too seriously. But when I write I feel as though I have permission to stop pretending to be so grown up. The world, filled with all its oddities and eccentricities, comes into view and I laugh like I did when I was a boy.

Jesus taught us that to enter the kingdom of heaven we must change and become like little children. That is because the kingdom of heaven is full of laughter, and we adults do not know how to laugh. Of course, we laugh sometimes, but our laughter is often cynical and morbid. We laugh at the expense of our enemies. We laugh when we should cry. We laugh to hide our pain. But children laugh because life is funny, because serious things (looked at a certain way) are absurd and absurd things are taken far too seriously.

Wasn’t it children who sang and laughed at the joy of Christ’s coming while the Pharisees stood coldly at a distance? And while the grown-up Pharisees laughed as Jesus was hung on a cross, didn’t the children weep? To enter the kingdom of heaven, we must learn to laugh like children, otherwise we might one day find ourselves laughing when we really ought to cry.

In his dedication of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, C.S. Lewis wrote this to his goddaughter, Lucy:

“I wrote this story for you, but when I began it I had not realized that girls grow quicker than books. As a result you are already too old for fairy tales, and by the time it is printed and bound you will be older still. But some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again. You can then take it down from some upper shelf, dust it, and tell me what you think of it. I shall probably be too deaf to hear, and too old to understand a word you say, but I shall still be your affectionate Godfather, C. S. Lewis.”

I consider it a great gift to be a writer of children’s books, because it demands that I work to maintain a child’s outlook. But this effort should not be reserved for middle grade children’s book writers. We should all try to become like children. So stoop down to observe the ants marching on the sidewalk. Pluck a leaf from a sycamore tree and consider how it is the size of your face. Splash in the largest puddles you can find on a rainy day. God gave us laughter because he is funny and wanted someone to laugh with. Let’s take him seriously and remember how to laugh like children.

Otherwise, beware! Your head might get turned into a turnip.

In this next series, I want to explore what writing has taught me about myself, about others, and ultimately about God, the author of all things good, true, and beautiful. While these essays might include some helpful nuggets about writing itself, my primary aim is to get at something deeper: what can writing teach us about how to live well?

-JMH

“It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door…. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to.”

-The Fellowship of the Ring, p. 72

If I had known the difficulties I would encounter in my journey to become a writer, I would likely never have started.

It took a good dose of naivety, boredom, and ambition to get me going my senior year of high school. I had this vain notion that I would be an immediate sensation — something like Christopher Paolini who started writing the first book of the Eragon series when he was just 15 years old. How hard could it be? I thought.

Much more difficult than I imagined. My first attempt at a book was a 100,000 word beast that reads today exactly like a high school senior trying to write a fantasy novel with a fake English accent. Unfortunately, it took me two years before I realized I am not an Oxford scholar writing in the 1950s and do not have to base my stories in medieval England. Like so many young Christian writers, when I first tried my hand at fiction I could not help but imitate C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, my literary heroes.

As cringy as those beginning stages were, I sometimes look back at my younger self with a bit of envy — for while my writing left much to be desired as far as craft goes, there was a kind of innocent delight I enjoyed early on. I didn’t have anything to prove and I wasn’t self-aware enough to recognize how bad my writing was at that stage. I was quite simply enthralled by the pleasure of seeing images in my imagination get put to the page, to watch my characters take shape and a story develop where there was nothing before. In my first year of writing, I probably wrote four hours a day. Any spare moment I could find I stole away to work on my story.

To begin writing a book, and to embark upon learning a craft like writing, is a bit like falling in love for the first time. It is horribly awkward. Most of us stumble through it and make all kinds of mistakes. But the clumsiness becomes almost irrelevant in light of the joy we experience in the victories along the way and in the ultimate reward that is a completed work.

Again, if I had known the difficulties I would encounter in my journey to become a writer, I would likely never have started. But in a way, I think this kind of ignorance can be a grace that preserves the greatest gifts that life has to offer. If I for fear of trial or failure never started writing, I never would have ventured into the Groggylands, or Huedo, or thought up Mr. Halick or the Nevezees or any of the places or characters I pray my readers will one day get to discover for themselves. Life would be a great deal duller for me, and my neighbors would be deprived of a great pleasure.

Thus, writing takes bravery, and reveals what bravery takes. To be brave is not to be unafraid. To be brave is to love life more than fear death. To be brave we must have something for which to be brave. We are cowards not because we are overwhelmed by fear, but because we are not overcome with love. As the Apostle John puts it, “Perfect love drives out fear.”1

If we want to truly live, we must learn to fix our eyes on what is worthy of our lives. The writer of Hebrews tells us to look to Jesus, “the pioneer and perfecter of faith” who “for the joy set before him endured the cross.”2 Likewise, if we want to write, or paint, or woodwork, or pursue any other craft or discipline, we must dare to try.

This week I had the opportunity to share a short testimony in chapel at Asbury Theological Seminary. Although I graduated in December, I am walking to celebrate the completion of my degree tomorrow. In honor of my time there, I wanted to share my testimony for your encouragement.
-JMH

I never would have guessed that in my first month of seminary I would be sitting on the living room floor of Sundo 110 burning the hairs off of a goat hoof. I confess that goat hoof is not particularly palatable to my western taste buds. Nevertheless, I am grateful for the dining experience, and I assure you that Abraham, my roommate at the time, is an excellent cook.

I bring Abraham up because Abraham taught me something important about the generosity of God. Every time I stepped out of my room that semester, he was offering me food. Even though he grew up in circumstances more meager than I will likely ever know, he never asked to be paid back. I watched Abraham live and give out of a recognition of God’s abundance and his faith challenged me.

Over the last few years, I have been on a journey trying to figure out what has gone wrong for my generation. We have been given technologies that promise to connect us to everyone, everywhere, all the time - so why are we struggling? I came to the conviction that the ministry of the table is going to prove critical for the church in a digital age.

At Christ’s table, we are delivered from the illusion of independence and are granted the opportunity to enter into communion with God and his creation by remembering our place in it.
At Christ’s table, we learn that the fullness of life is a life marked by sacrifice, not control.
At Christ’s table, we are taught to trust in God’s abundance rather than relying on our own scarcity.
At Christ’s table, we discover that salvation is not a product of technological innovation but is rather a free gift from God because God eats with us and even becomes food for us.

Last summer, I was writing about these things and I felt the Holy Spirit convict me: Here you are writing about the table once again, but what are you doing about it? I thought about my friend Abraham and was compelled to begin cooking for others and practicing hospitality on a regular basis.

I started cooking meals for a weekly Bible study a couple of college friends began. I paid for these out of my own pocket. Of course, I could not afford to do this; I was not making much. But what is money for, I reasoned, except to create opportunities like this for brothers to share meaningful connections and possibly encounter God? When I ran out of money, I believed God would supply my needs.

A few weeks in, I was sharing about these things with a friend and mentor. He asked me, how are you going to pay for these meals? I explained to him that I was paying for it myself and I believed God would provide for me. When my friend heard this, he reached into his wallet and pulled out a hundred dollar bill and handed it to me. That is for your next meal, he said.

I was moved by his gesture. When I got into the car after our meeting concluded, I thanked God for what he had given and prayed that my friend’s $100 would never run out.

That very week, someone offered to begin covering all of our Bible study meals. In this way, God taught me to walk in obedience and trust him to provide for my needs.

In the Gospel of John, Jesus looks out at the crowds gathering on the hillside and sees that they are hungry. “Where are we going to buy bread to feed everyone?” he asks the disciples. The disciples eye one another in disbelief. “Lord,” says Phillip, “it would take more than half a year’s wages to buy enough bread for each one to have a bite!” Andrew chimes in: “Here is a boy with five small barley loaves and two small fish, but how far will they go among so many?” Jesus has the crowds sit down. Then he takes the bread, gives thanks and breaks it.

You may not feel equipped for whatever reason to share in Jesus’ table ministry. You may not have the time, or the money, or the cooking skills, or even the table. Jesus does not ask us to give what we do not have. We bring what little we have, give thanks, and share it.

How many hungry people would be fed if we all began to participate in Jesus’ table ministry today?

Those who sow with tears
will reap with songs of joy.
-Psalm 126:5

May my dead dreams
be the topsoil of your garden, God
plant seeds in the cracks
of my broken heart

I will lie down
in the dust
of my disappointments
and wait for your promised
resurrection

you are making
all things new

This is the fifth essay in a series about food, tech, and the body. You can read the introduction here, the first essay here, the second essay here, the third essay here, and the fourth essay here.
—JMH

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published

Breathe with unconditional breath
the unconditioned air.
Shun electric wire.
Communicate slowly. Live
a three-dimensioned life;
stay away from screens.
Stay away from anything
that obscures the place it is in.
There are no unsacred places;
there are only sacred places
and desecrated places.

-Wendell Berry, from How to Be a Poet

Every morning, I eat an avocado. I am somewhat of an avocado toast fiend. Unfortunately, avocados are not native to Kentucky, and Kentucky’s climate is not exactly conducive for growing avocados. In order for me to eat an avocado every morning, avocados must be shipped to Kentucky from elsewhere—in my case, Mexico.

This is more of a confession than a profession. I find the smooth-nutty flavor and buttery texture of avocados somewhat irresistible. Regardless, I aspire to change my breakfast menu in time. I want to become more attuned to the unique pleasures of eating in Kentucky. I want my breakfast to come from a place a little closer to home.

I first arrived at this conviction reading about, of all things, wine. Yes, this teetotaler is full of contradictions — up to this point, I do not drink alcohol unless I am taking communion, but I was nevertheless interested in what I might be able to learn from The Spirituality of Wine by Gisela Kreglinger.

Terroir is a French term that is sometimes used by vintners to describe the way that certain wines aim to capture a particular place and wine culture. The flavor profiles of terroir-driven wines are often unique and surprising as they are shaped by the specific region, microclimate, and soil in which they are produced.

Kreglinger explains that a great consequence of globalization and the subsequent explosion in popularity of mass-produced wines is that tragically wines with an emphasis on terroir have been sidelined. The global market, it turns out, does not exactly have a taste for places, which Kreglinger describes as an “aesthetic and spiritual loss.”1 Consumers have settled instead for a homogeneous, predictable product “that perhaps protects us from disappointment but even more from the unspeakable beauty, complexity, and surprise of a well-crafted wine.”2

I think this stands as a helpful metaphor for understanding a greater phenomenon. Every place has its own treasures — resources and goods distinct to that location. Large tech-driven industries tend to uproot local cultures and replace them with cheap, frictionless alternatives that mimic the form of what they replace but fail to capture their substance.

These industries arm us with instruments that enable us to transcend the boundaries of our local places to receive cultural goods from elsewhere (and often many places at once). But by depending on those goods we so often surrender to an ignorance that renders our bodies and the land from which those goods were derived vulnerable to exploitation. Furthermore, it makes gratitude next to impossible. If I do not know where my food comes from, or the resources necessary to power my digital devices, then I will not be able to truly appreciate, much less recognize, the sacrifices made for my benefit.

That is not to mention the fact that the connections these technologies make possible are so often shallow and therefore cannot transmit the fullness of any given good — a fullness that is necessary for our health and wholeness. We require more than what our technologies can capture or convey. Over time, and stretched across a wide range of industries, our dependence upon connections to places not our own will leave us malnourished, not only because we have depended on what is not our own to sustain us but also because we have failed to depend on the places where we are planted. Indeed, our shallow connections threaten to make us shallow people — people who are incapable of living fully, of discovering the hidden nuances of any given good, of maintaining deep commitments.

We were not created to live in so many places at once. God intended for us to grow deep roots, to live intimately with and in creation, to love our places by caring for them and in turn being nourished by those very places. God, the vintner of our souls, desires to produce an excellent wine of terroir out of us. But in order for that to happen, we must surrender our devices and give up on the illusion that we live where we are not and instead learn to ask how we might better love our places well.

This is the fourth essay in a series about food, tech, and the body. You can read the introduction here, the first essay here, the second essay here, and the third essay here.
—JMH

I am not good at waiting.

I come by it honest. The technologies that run our society condition us to expect instantaneous access to all kinds of goods, information, and services. One click and that pair of shoes I want shows up at my front door. One click and pizza has arrived. One click and I’m given all the information I could ever ask for about Jeff Bezos. Anything I could ever want seems to be a few seconds away. Waiting, Apple and Google and Walmart and Arby’s and many other major food and tech corporations would have us believe, is a thing of the past.

Nevertheless, waiting remains a fact of life. The question our society teaches us to ask is, How does one escape the agony of waiting? But I am convinced there is a better and more prudent question that is worth asking:

How does one wait well?

Be patient, then, brothers and sisters, until the Lord’s coming. See how the farmer waits for the land to yield its valuable crop, patiently waiting for the autumn and spring rains. You too, be patient and stand firm, because the Lord’s coming is near.

-James 5:7-8

The farmer, according to the Apostle James, has something to teach us about waiting by nature of his connection to the earth. The farmer’s livelihood depends upon his ability to wait well, his sensitivity to the land and the ever-changing seasons.

Today, our exposure to and appreciation for these rhythms is quite limited. The only occasions we are inclined to pay attention to the weather, for instance, are when the weather proves to be a nuisance — too hot for our comfort, or too hazardous for our morning commute. Sometimes we delight in a pretty spring day, but we enjoy it only as a spectacle; we have little appreciation for the functional value of its aesthetic. Our detachment from the earth is only possible because of our immersion in an industrial society and our often blind acceptance of that society’s premises. Our very detachment from the earth, I would argue, is what makes us so bad at waiting.

We tend to utilize our technologies to short-circuit and side-step all kinds of natural processes so that we can take what we want from the earth when we want it. Consider how strawberries are available to me year-round despite the fact that in Kentucky, where I live, strawberries are typically only in season mid-May through mid-June. To keep strawberries on the shelf year-round, strawberries have to be constantly harvested (usually, before they are fully ripe) and shipped across the country so that I can purchase them at my local Kroger.

But why should strawberries be exclusively harvested in May and June? And what does buying strawberries out of season have to do with waiting?

Too often, we use our technologies, knowingly or not, in ways that reflect and reinforce a contempt for the natural order and its limitations. We do not believe that God was deliberate in how he created the world and set apart particular times for particular pleasures. Instead, we view creation as meaningless matter that we can manipulate as we please without consequence. There is no problem, we would like to believe, with growing and eating strawberries out of season. But there is a problem because constant and instantaneous access to any good thing inevitably tarnishes it, and a society whose members never have to wait for anything will never learn how to wait at all.

When we use our technologies to surpass God-given limitations, we become incapable of recognizing the value of any given moment with all of its unique particulars because that moment could be enjoyed at any time with any particulars. In other words, a strawberry eaten year-round ceases to be worth anything because that very same strawberry could be enjoyed at any other time. But to eat a locally grown strawberry in May or June becomes a precious experience by nature of its exclusivity.

That is not to mention that we tend to severely underestimate the degree of sophistication involved in any natural process and therefore are rarely able to effectively replicate it with our technologies. As much as a strawberry grown out of season might taste like a strawberry, that strawberry will never be quite as nutritious as the locally harvested one, grown in season. Though we might be momentarily gratified, in the long run the health of our bodies will suffer from our impatience.

The farmer teaches us how to wait well because he understands that the desired harvest is possible only through the proper cultivation of the present. He watches the skies and the livestock and the soil, and rather than try to escape their limitations or subjugate them, he works creatively with them. He delights himself in the pleasures of the moment—the strawberries in May, the broccoli in June, the blackberries in July, and so on. He prays, because he recognizes that his livelihood depends entirely upon a power greater than himself who commands the winds and the rains.

Our technological age in every way conditions us to believe that “the life that is truly life” in Jesus’ words exists outside the confines of our creative limitations, but the good farmer knows otherwise: life in all of its fullness can only be found within those limitations, by accepting our mortality and giving thanks for the moment, fleeting as it is.

God, like a good farmer, concerns himself not only with the production of fruit, but also the cultivation of the ground. We must learn to trust him, even in seasons where our lives seem to produce so little, and take heart, for strawberry season is on the horizon.

This is the third essay in a series about food, tech, and the body. You can read the introduction here, the first essay here, and the second essay here.
—JMH

I have found that work, specifically physical labor, is one of the primary barriers preventing me from embracing better food and tech habits. When picking up a quick bite from Wendy’s is so easy, it is a struggle to convince myself to go through all the effort required to cook dinner—find a recipe, gather ingredients, cook the meal, and clean the dishes. Likewise, why should I write an essay about work when ChatGPT could write it for me?1

Our technological society boasts that it has saved us from the drudgery of work. Thanks to our machines, we don’t have to plant gardens anymore, or cook, or clean, or walk long distances to see people we love, or visit libraries, or do any number of strenuous tasks and chores. The food industry brings food to our doorsteps—prepared, prepackaged, precooked, preserved. Likewise, the tech industry makes it so that all manner of goods and services live at our fingertips.

There is an important question that gets buried under the comfort, convenience, and ease the food and tech industries grant us: What do I lose when I begin to outsource my work?

In Elizabeth Oldfield’s essay “The Kinds of People We Need at the End of the World,” she describes how, living in an industrial society, we are being “educated into imbecility.” The kinds of work that has become necessary has very little embodied or practical value. She writes:

My grandparents were a home economics teacher, an engineer, a nurse, and a market gardener. They knew how to make things, mend things, heal things, grow things…. I, on the other hand, can make a podcast, turn a sentence, create a reel on social media, and learning those things does not appear to have grown me up in the important ways at all.

If I, being raised in a digital society, were to find myself stranded on a desert island, as Oldfield asks, would I have the skills necessary to serve my neighbor or even to survive? It may sound drastic to consider, but if any or all the mechanisms that run our society were to collapse—the food industry fail, the internet shut off—how would we fare?

Our digital, industrial society has rendered us not only incapable of doing the work our grandparents considered most practical and necessary but also averse to doing much of that kind of work at all. We have little patience for it, and not much appreciation for its value. Our work instead has become a disembodied activity—the materials, processes, and products involved in our work exist primarily in an immaterial realm. We are cogs in a machine, a machine that strips the earth for materials, denigrates the body by exacting upon it inhumane standards of efficiency, and creates products like plastics that are similarly destructive to the creation.

In view of these things, to effectively create better food and tech habits we must somehow rediscover the sanctity of good, embodied work. We must learn to love work, and to view work as worship, something that gives God glory and brings us good not only because of the product it produces but also because of the transformation it yields in us and in others. More precisely, we must rediscover our first and primary vocation to be gardeners of creation.

In Genesis, God creates humankind and places them in a garden “to work it and take care of it” (Genesis 2:15). To be clear, according to Genesis, work is good—a foundational feature of our creaturehood. Work is not a consequence of the fall. Humans worked prior to the fall; therefore, we can expect work to be an important part of our sanctification and prominent aspect of our lives in the New Creation. Work was there at the beginning, just as it is necessary now, and will be in the end. The problem is not work itself; the problem is work that has been corrupted and that corrupts. Wendell Berry writes this about work:

There is work that is isolating, harsh, destructive, specialized or trivialized into meaninglessness. And there is work that is restorative, convivial, dignified and dignifying, and pleasing. Good work is not just the maintenance of connections — as one is now said to work “for a living” or “to support a family” — but the enactment of connections. It is living, and a way of living; it is not support for a family in the sense of an exterior brace or prop but is one of the forms and acts of love (144).

Work is that essential effort that connects us to and immerses us in creation.

When I say that our primary vocation is to be gardeners of creation, I do not suggest that we need to quit our jobs to each take on gardening as a career. Rather, we need to become gardeners insofar as we see it as our primary responsibility to cultivate and maintain the connections that enable our particular environments to flourish, working in ways that respect and exalt the goodness of the physical world. We should be skeptics of those industries and mechanisms that seek to obscure those connections, spending less time on our digital devices, eating out less, doing more work that is physical, personal, and present.

Dear Readers,

I’m taking a break for the holidays. I plan to continue the current series in the new year. In the meantime, enjoy a poem I recently wrote about the pleasures of winter.

Merry Christmas,
Michael

Snow

The first snow
of winter would light
a fire in my spirit.
In the eyes of a child
snow is not snow.
It is gold. It is cold, wet,
condensed joy,
given to bury
the tragedy of fall.
It is cloud descended
to become clay
in my mitts.

Those were spontaneous
holidays,
snow globes
in time,
forever frozen memories
that I sometimes
choose to shake
to watch the snow
fall again.