1 October, 2014. Rabbit, Rabbit.
Today is National Kale Day… and it’s World Vegetarian Day… and it’s the first of the month so it’s a day on which I and Many choose to fast as part of #FastfortheClimate. We do this each for our own reasons, but coming together in an international community of climate change awareness, solidarity, and focus. Fasting is an invitation to bring contemplation into the space of hunger in one’s body — that’s the idea anyway.
Yesterday I tweeted it just as I felt it:
“Tomorrow I just want to feel connected to other people connected (not disconnected) to enormity of our historical moment @FastForClimate“
It was all going to be about that.
But this is kind of how the day unfolded:
Regarding fasting, feeling hungry, I wanted to eat, but stuck steadfastedly to the fast, and instead of feeling strong and connected, I actually felt … sad.
This news brought a kind of despair. Usually I’m more focused on people than “nature” or animals, but not today. I’ve borrowed this photo from the Independent article:
35,000 walruses needing a place to rest.
Yesterday’s WWF Report brought horrific news that “the Living Planet Index, which measures more than 10,000 representative populations of mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and fish, has declined by 52 per cent since 1970.”
Staggering.
My friend Hugh wrote this moving piece about this news, and refers to the “violence that is often rendered invisible … by its slowness.”
So yeah, being with these bits of the daily news, I felt just simply sad.
Then my friend Vicky rang and said, could I please meet her really briefly in town after school, she had something to give me. She gave me these which she had grown, and which are now doing beautifully on her bushes even in the waxing autumn:
And they were just so beautiful. Forgetting I was fasting, I ate a few, with pure delight.
And this is where we are in our lives– somewhere balancing fear and hope, destruction and creativity, death and growth, loss and generosity. This is the place the Fast for the Climate has brought me today — and it’s not even 5:00 yet! It’s ours at this moment in time to figure out how to balance it all, the contradictions and the clarities alike.
Christian Aid supports Fast for the Climate, and posted this today. Inside that link is a beautiful prayer, with which I will pray, in my own godless way, and use as a guide to understand the kind of culture around food we want to nurture:
The earth is fruitful,
may we be generous.
The earth is fragile,
may we be gentle.
The earth is fractured,
may we be just.
Creating God,
harvest in us joy and generosity
as we together share in thanks and giving.
Amen.
Kitchen Counter Culture 
I see a lot of depressing news on my various social media outlets and at times I can hardly bear it, but today’s fast gives me hope. At this very moment, thousands of fed-up people worldwide are standing up for climate change and choosing not to eat. And even though I’m just one person working at home alone at my little desk, I feel connected to the fasters.
Those berries look so good. Are the gold ones salmon berries? Somehow I manage to get through mead making and apple plum sauce canning without even tasting it. I didn’t know it was national kale day. I’m going to take a picture of my kale patch. I started it late last winter and somehow it managed to survive the hot Florida summer. I’m hoping they will get nice and big again with the cooler weather coming on.
Since my first #FastForTheClimate last November, I have come to anticipate the special contemplation fast days bring. You’ve captured the sense of that reflection beautifully, Annie. It is a blessing to feel our connection with others on these days, even in a world where to be awake is to grieve.
Thank you. Food (and fasting) for thought.
I had never heard of this before, funny coincidence as I was thinking just before seeing it what so many people around the world live on, for example a small portion of dahl and chapati once or twice a day and I was considering eating this myself some days in solidarity with them and of some sort of reminder to myself how we really overconsume! So maybe I will sign up to fast for the climate instead!
Annie, it’s awesome you’re thinking about the Fast for the Climate. I use my social accounts to promote the fast and climate awareness, so I feel like I have some skin in the game. I can’t tell you how it felt to see progress on carbon emissions in the U.S.-China deal and in aid to poor countries to adapt to climate change. Of course, it will be a lot of work to make the promise of this week’s news bear fruit, but it’s a start. I believe the movement will eventually win meaningful change. After joining the movement and taking advantage of training that available for activists, I feel this is an exciting time to be alive. Come visit me on Facebook if you’d like to chat about the movement.