hunter c. beezley – Unfundamentalist

It’s the first day of the new year. I’m sitting across from my wife, groggily sipping some necessarily strong coffee in a cozy and warm cafe.

She asks, “What have you learned in 2016?”

It’s good and healthy to ask that question. It helps us to reflect on the past, learn from it, then move on with this new year. It’s going to move on whether you’d like it to or not. The problem is that I would like it to move right along as soon as possible. I’m sure I’m not alone in that sentiment.

2016 was especially difficult. It was a dense year. Chock full of major world events, too many deaths that came way too soon, and one of the most difficult, ridiculous, and devastating political elections in this country (especially for progressives). Then there’s my own life: both my wife and I have experienced more change, growth, and newness in this last year than we ever have before. So when I’m asked, “what have you learned in 2016?” it’s a difficult question to answer because it seems as if the list may not end.

But I still have to answer. I have to start somewhere.

What I’ve included below is merely a start in a longer reflective process.

This is what we talked about as we both—together—began to answer that question. What I’ve learned in 2016:

To take seriously the imperative, “love your neighbors as yourself” (Mark 12:31) is an impossibility unless I genuinely get to know who my neighbor is. Like that old scribe asked Jesus, “who is my neighbor?” (Luke 10:29), it goes… [Read more…] about Three Things I've Learned in 2016

Eating is nothing new. For many of us it has become so rudimentary in the patterns of our days that when we come to the table to feed our hunger, we often think of it merely as a means to an end. Food today has become a commodity, its value seen primarily in its taste, convenience, and price. When we think about it, we mostly view food as fuel to sustain our bodies in order to carry us on throughout the day.

I never cared much about food until my last semester in seminary. I took a class on a theology of food merely because one of my favorite professors was teaching it and I needed another elective to graduate. But by the end of the semester, I realized that this class would stick with me for a while. Nearly a year later, I still cannot help but talk about food and faith.

It is telling that the first story in the Bible is a story about eating. It is in a garden that humanity is first placed and it is eating that ultimately leads to the inauguration of sin into the world. And it is within Christianity that consuming food–namely the Lord’s Supper–functions as the central practice of corporate worship.

Still, food is not often seriously considered in theology. Because we tend to view it merely as fuel, the relationship many of us have with food is filled with anxiety and stress as we wrestle with the daily question “what do I eat for dinner?” We know that food can do something for us: make us fat or skinny, sleepy or ill; but we have lost the wonder and mystery of… [Read more…] about Starting out in a Theology of Food: Beginning with the Eucharist