Barbara Kingsolver, author of “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle,” is interviewed by Krista Tippet in this Speaking of Faith broadcast. Tippet addressed Kingsolver’s book and how she (and her family) did something that, she said, “wasn’t hard at all,” but something a typical person would say would be “very exotic.
In an attempt to do what was right and protect the environment, Kingsolver and her husband and two daughters moved to a farm in southern Appalachia, where they would live off farming and organic foods. Sometimes things are hard, but it’s the right thing to do. Kingsolver and her family live out this message very well. So for a whole year, “they embarked on an odyssey of planning, planting, cooking, storing, freezing, and harvesting both plants and animals.”
Where does my food come from? Is it really nourishing? What is the environmental cost of my choices? Did a spiritual sensibility form Kingsolver’s life and writing?
Kingsolver believed that what she was doing was good. It gave people an example of someone not only talking about helping the environment but also acting on it. (Connects to STUCO quote “You say you love the poor, can you name them?”) Kingsolver understood that “spiritual matters are always more important than material things as long as you have enough to eat.” Kingsolver knew where her food came from and as a result, embarked on this journey. Through her living in Appalachia, she realized many people went through the motions when buying food and they truly didn’t know where their food came from? She says, “The water there was moved from somewhere else…and it didn’t exactly belong to us…and I didn’t feel comfortable with that…” She explains a huge aspect of motivation as she wanted to make all of her own food.
A Typical Day for Kingsolver and her family…
“By mid-month, we were getting a dozen tomatoes a day, that many cucumbers, our first eggplants, and squash in unmentionable quantities.” She said one day a neighbor came up to her and quoted the bible, saying, “The harvest is bountiful and the labors few.” But in all reality, the labor was large as, still later that day; she had to go “back to the garden to pull 200 onions-our year’s supply-…pull beats that day, pick about a bushel of green beats, and slip paper plates under two dozens ripening melons to protect their undersides form moisture and sow bugs…”
Kingsolver’s views on cooking…
-“I think the planning of beautiful meals and investing one’s heart and time and their preparation is the opposite of self indulgence.”
-If we thought as cooking as this great pleasure that we could look forward to at the end of the working day, I suppose that would change.”
-If we look at it as family time, as spiritually enlightening...” then people would get more out of it
Kingsolver talks about cooking as a way to express yourself and is what kept her motivated, along with her family, after those long farm days. She wants everyone to be able to look at cooking as a positive thing so people don’t have to depend on buying things or eating fast food all the time.
"Small Wonders"
Kingsolver talks about the “wastefulness of our nation, the prideful wastefulness…” and this seems to give her that sense of urgency to do what she did. She said September 11, 2001 greatly influenced her to become that daring author and have that “sense of urgency that she has now.” In her book, “Small Wonders” she talks about 9/11 and that “something new is upon us, and yet nothing is ever knew. We are alive in a fearsome time, and we have been given new things to fear. We’ve been discovered by huge blows but also huge opportunities to reinforce…our will. The easiest thing to do it to think to return the blows, but there are other things we must think about as well, other dangers we face…the changes we dread the most may contain our salvation.”
Barbara Kingsolver is an extraordinary person who did something others would fear to do. She went to the extreme to promote living a good life where we don’t depend on other so much. She is a great example of faith and someone that truly had good intentions. On the experience, Kingsolver said, “We found so much more than we expected. And that’s the day that I understood that sometimes you have to push yourself into a new way of thinking to get to a place where you want to be, that’s very comfortable, that doesn’t even feel like work.
