Return to The Garden

“If music be the food of Love, play on.” Shakespeare.

Return to The Garden.

Food has been a hot topic since time immemorial. For some, it’s lacking. For others, especially where food is abundant and possibly taken for granted, it’s seen as the enemy. For others, indifference. They could take it or leave it; it’s seen as something they have to do to survive so they can provide the service they were born to share with the world.

Whatever your relationship is with food, I believe it provides a key to the golden core of who you are. If we watch children, they often eat when they are hungry and stop when full. They often like things that are sweet and fun and colorful. They love to play with their food and maybe even smear it all over their faces. This seems to bring them great joy, much to the chagrin of their parents.

I’ve had the privilege of traveling to countries such as Nepal, Africa, and India. The local culture and their relationship with food greatly differ from the southern food culture of the United States, in which I was born.

I grew up as a “latchkey kid”, as they called it in those days. Both of my parents worked very hard, and when I was old enough to watch my brother after school, my Dad taught me to make anything and everything in the microwave. Eventually, I got the advanced lesson of making French toast on the griddle. This was a big moment in my little life at the time. With pop tarts, cereal, and other processed foods, an egg in the microwave or syrup-drenched French toast was icing on the cake. This is no jab at my parents. It was the popular culture at the time and finding easy ways to get fed was essential.

The positive spin was by the time I was 14, I was running long distances and had revamped the family fridge to everything healthy and green I could find. I was ahead of my time and didn’t even know it. My family quickly jumped on board, especially my Dad, and together we began to make beautiful food. This continued until the day he passed away in 2010.

Googling the word “food”, New Oxford American Dictionary states “any nutritious substance that people or animals eat or drink or that plants absorb to maintain life and growth.” If we take this literally, we will all realize that each person can twist and justify any food as being nutritious. But if we pay attention to what we feel and experience after eating certain foods, we will come to realize the after-effects of a donut are much different than grilled chicken, much different from a huge green salad.

A familiar quote from Hippocrates states “Let food be thy medicine”. As I traveled to places like Nepal or Africa, what I noticed was the ancient ritual and festive celebrations that often surrounded food. In Africa, the women quickly invited me into their circle. They were breastfeeding, playing with children, and communally cooking food. Everyone pitching in and contributing. There was laughing, working, and conversation. I could feel the love and positive energy, and when we ate the food together, I could taste that love and energy in the food. I thought to myself, “This is the way it was always intended to be.”

Although I had the privilege of growing up in a big extended family in the south where we always got together around the dinner table at Thanksgiving or Christmas or Easter and experienced home-cooked meals each night with my immediate family, I also was not sheltered from what media and culture communicated about food, both directly and indirectly. I unconsciously absorbed these false messages. I became aware of my body and began to play the comparison game. I began to see food as the enemy. Eat as little as possible. Do not get fat. Restrict. And then when peers would say something or pressure me to eat foods I didn’t want to eat, I learned to just eat and people will leave me alone. This led to a lot of inner turmoil. Very mixed messages to say the least.

But in Africa, all that changed. I began to see more love, remember the garden and return to the garden in my soul, and appreciate food in a brand new way.

In 2006, I began a nutrition adventure that opened my eyes to a new level of eating. Realizing the energetics of food is the key. At the Institute for Integrative Nutrition classes in NYC (classes were held in-person back then), I met new friends who had vastly different experiences in the world of food. I learned about high-vibration foods and how they can not only shift our internal energy but can also become our blood, literally changing our DNA. I believe the power of food is vital to understand. And the more we fall in love with ourselves because God is alive INSIDE of us, the more we WANT to choose to feed our bodies well.

Years ago, I met an awesome guy, and he talked to me at length about core values and the importance of knowing very clearly who we are and what drives us. It’s through gaining a clear understanding of this that changed everything for me. I realized the highest quality of whole foods and superfoods is a VERY high core value of mine. One of my missions is to share the goodness of food with those I interact with. If you pay attention and chew your food, you can taste the quality, the love, inside the food OR the lack of attention that was given to it. And I also learned just because I was eating at a fancy restaurant and paying top dollar for the food, did not necessarily mean it was made with love, that it was handled with care, or was of the highest quality.

One day, while shopping at a high-end grocery store, the girl who was checking me out gently pulled each vegetable out of my recycled bag and lovingly placed it down to weigh and then with compassion placed them in special positions in the sack I would take home as if putting a child into their crib to rest. It’s like she was so aware of how alive the foods are and how much tender care they need to provide us with the optimal nutrients possible. I commented and thanked her for doing so. She said, “My Mama taught me to always do that”. We continued talking about how foods are our friends and should be shown love and respect just as we would show someone we deeply care about. An awesome moment.

Food is something we eat every day so the value of what we put into our bodies reflects how much we see, love, and value the person we are. This body is simply a shell but with the aliveness, light, and love we feed it daily by eating the foods God provided for us, saying grace, and giving thanks, this changes how we see food, treat food, and treat ourselves.

You know, the world has everything so backward sometimes. It reminds me of The Little Prince when he says, “Grown-ups are certainly very, very strange”. And how Don Miguel Ruiz in The 4 Agreements talks about “Domestication”, how children so quickly become domesticated by the adults around them, then we spend the rest of our lives trying to unlearn being domesticated and remember how to be ourselves. What a trip!

I believe grown-ups are well-meaning. They are only doing what was done for them; that is all they know. Until they become aware. And awareness is simply returning to the eyes of a child. The childlike awe and wonder. Even Jesus says, “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 18:3).

Childish and childlike are two different things and many adults are simply acting out the part of what they think a “grown-up” is “supposed” to be. But if we all just take off the masks and return to the childlike awe and wonder, we will come to realize we are already who we were born to be. When we look through the eyes of the child within, we will see the kingdom of heaven all around us. We do not have to wait! And we will intuitively know what our bodies need for food, how much activity we need, and remember what is most important.

And sometimes what is most important is to play with our food and belly laugh while we do it. So get messy. Grab your favorite people and go play in the garden, in the earth, in the kitchen, climb trees to pick the best apple, go to the farmers market, make a new recipe in the kitchen, try new food, explore the world, follow what lights you up every single day.

And taste your food.

Let yourself enjoy it.

Years ago I was a vegetarian. This was during a time after a car accident when I broke 2 vertebrae of my cervical spine and was sporting a halo, the metal contraption coming out of my skull. My friend wanted to put Christmas ornaments on me and plug me in like a Christmas tree! lol. During this time, someone special to me was preparing elaborate dinners, with meat as the main course. Although I was not eating meat at the time, I fully enjoyed these meals, because they were made with LOVE, pure love. And by fully receiving the food, I was receiving her love. And for me, that is what life is all about.

So go share some love and choose to see food in a brand new light. Food is Love. Food is God. Food is a return to the garden in the cool of the day…

Have so much fun today!

Love, apples, and avocados,

Micah

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