I’m Alexandra but you can call me Alex. I’m 25 years old and doing life in Santa Barbara, CA. I graduated from the University of San Diego with a Bachelor’s Degree in English and minored in Leadership Studies. I had no idea what I wanted to do when I graduated college so after traveling in Europe, I took a desk job to pay the bills while I figured out what I really wanted to do. Three years later, I’m at the same job with the same missing sense of real purpose or calling. To be frank, I’m fed up with sitting at a desk, staring at a computer screen and having very little relationship with the world I inhabit. I want to live on a smaller global footprint. I want to ride my bike more. I want to keep chickens in my backyard (and a garden!). I feel called back to the earth, the land, and our natural resources. I want to spend more time pursuing a simpler life and embracing the values I feel are lost in today’s modern world. In the meantime, when I’m not sitting at my desk I’m a youth director, choir member, massage therapist and trying to squeeze in anything else that will fit in my schedule.
The calling is merely a whisper, but I think that food, food justice, the industrial food system and all its related parts are becoming my primary interest. I’ve become more aware of the industrial food system and its problems. I’ve been reading more Michael Pollan than I should while trying to get my hands on more information. I’m slowly developing my opinions on these issues. This is as far as I’ve gotten: I believe that food is a vehicle for loving others. I believe that a shared meal is the place where life happens, where we share in God’s goodness, and where we are invited towards deeper relationship with one another
On matters of this weekend, I’m eager to be among people who share my interests and to learn more. As Christians, we are called to serve others and particularly those who have the most need. I sometimes feel sheltered from social justice issues in my spiritual community. I worship in an affluent community where deep social needs seem absent. As a youth director, I strive to bring light to these issues for my students but unfortunately many of the organizations in our community don’t allow young people to see firsthand local injustices because they must protect the identities of those they serve. It is a broken cycle. My students can’t serve at the soup kitchen lest they meet one of their classmates who is there for a meal. But isn’t this the exact sort of encounter that develops our hearts and calls us to action? We must love our neighbors as ourselves. First, we need to know our neighbors and their needs. And that requires us to come face-to-face with those neighbors and those needs—no matter how risky that may seem.
Just like my church has been sheltered, modern society is equally ignorant of the realities of our food system. How many people have a direct relationship with the farm worker who harvested the produce that is in the grocery store? How many people know what it took to get that chicken breast butchered and packaged so neatly in plastic? What about those people who don’t have the money to buy organic, local, fresh food? What about the health implications that are in direct relationship with the food that we put in our mouths? Very few people are aware of how privileged we are to have such variety on our tables every day, to see a grocery store overflowing with food, to have the money to spend on it all. I am hoping to spend this pilgrimage contemplating these questions and walk away more educated and more aware of my responsibilities to act on these issues.