Every year around Thanksgiving the Cornucopia is used in decorations. It was originally the horn of the goat filled with plenty of nuts and berries brought in from foraging the countryside. Today it’s even more expansive: a woven basket heavy with harvest and spilling out upon the table.
You notice some changes. It is no longer hunter-gatherer but agriculture. No longer a found and repurposed object (goat horn) but a made-to-spec woven product. No longer constrained with what was freely acquired, but increased abundance from what was produced. There’s thoughtful work going into it and much better output as a result.
What you choose to eat works in a similar way. Casting about and eating what comes easy and falls to you will work. You will have calories. You will have low costs on paper as the upside and blessings of industrial agriculture rain down around you. You may even have others coming for you all the time if you keep hitting the drive through.
Even in the ancient near east, a wise man pointed to the birds who eat and asked, why do you worry? Does not your father love you more then these sparrows?
This approach beats the pants off starvation and blatant malnutrition, where you don’t have the ability to even wear pants! Raise your goat horn my friends, for you have much and gratitude is in order.
Then sometime when you stop to think about food, you start to think differently. In a very real sense, to think at all is to think differently. What about the future costs of treating your inputs casually? What are the spillover costs others bear? How can there be so much transportation involved? Does local biome impact my body? What would it be like to know my farmer? Can I make small changes today to grow for tomorrow?
Once you start asking, you start to make changes. Maybe go to organics in produce. Maybe drop chemical colors. Maybe do eggs from the farm. Maybe find a farmer to hang a side of beef. Maybe start gardening. Maybe just cook at home more and drive through less.
Suddenly, you’re weaving that horn and planning a future. You’ve moved from the goat and the gathering to the basket and the harvest.
You’re improving health and lowering future costs. You’re uncovering delight in the patterns of the seasons. You soak in gratitude for the men who came before and breed these seeds and beasts to best serve man. It brings you closer to Eden, where God placed Adam in the first place.
Are you willing? There is great abundance for anyone willing to peek behind the easy button and start to build relationships.