a reflection in 3 parts. part 2

It doesn't have to be spoken of so mystically. Its something that farmers are very familiar with, especially those that still plant with their hands, harvest with their bodies, and eat to survive. There is no question about the connection between the grain of rice and the body which it nourishes. But there has come about such a disconnection between most people (western civilization especially) between our food sources, our life sources, and our every day lives that we forget that the fresh mozzarella cheese and tomato basil on rye sandwiches that some of us may miss so dearly come tomato farms, and cows, and basil plants, and fields of rye that were harvested, and milked, and picked by other human beings, put on trucks by other human beings, stocked on shelves by other human beings, bought, and sold, and washed and cut, and combined, and salted and flavored by other human beings. Its just so simple to give 5 dollars and get the sandwich… but the process… its somehow worth so much more than 5 dollars. How do I pay all those people that have done all that work with just so little. And of course it works cause there are lots of tomato mozzarella sandwiches being bought, and they use tomatoes in other delicious things like papa john's pizza. But what are we losing be being only consumers and not producers. What has disappeared from the human experience when the majority of us consume but do not draw forth any sort of life. We call it a "division of labor" so that some can be teachers, and others basket ball players, and others rock stars, and others stay at home moms, and we can still eat hamburgers, and rice, and lentils, and fish. But this division of labor, I think, has gone to some sort of bizarre extreme that leads to some division of worlds. The world inhabited by the Mexican tomato picker is not the same as the world inhabited by the tomato grower or eater. Well shoot. So along with all of the other problems that come from this including bursting populations that are still somehow starving, an elimination in the diversity of food that exists and that is cultivated, a reduction in general holistic health etc., we get a division of worlds. There are so many divisions between people that we almost think that we are supposed to see another as the other. There is a movie called "I heart huckabees: an existentialist comedy" and at one point a psycho-therapist (or something like that) is talking about the imaginary divisions we have between us, and that they don't really exist, and in the movie the particles of his nose and the main characters nose start free flowing in the air and mixing until the main character snaps out of it pointing out the endless holes, spaces, and divisions that exist between everything, even within the smallest atom. And he's right. But he is looking at it too fundamentally and not mystically enough. We are all one. Our struggle is all one. I'm sure Jung or someone else would say that we stop believing that sometime around when our mothers had a younger child and we realized that there is a competition for attention or something sexual. And they are probably right in most of the western world. But let us remember that our cultural perspective is just one of many cultural perspectives and that the heart of humanity lies much deeper. Where? I think somewhere in the relationship between people. In community and communities. Outside of this an individual is lost, but within a community an individual is given the chance to freely become that which God desires.