The first step is to begin to consider and reflect on all that went into bringing this food into your hand or onto your plate. When we do this we find ourselves opening to this vast web of interconnectedness of people, the planet and places, elements, and even machinery.

First, think about the elements, what all from our planet contributed to your food:

Sunlight

The Winds

The Earth and the microbes, microorganisms, the nutrients, the soil, all the wonderful properties and processes that go together to enable plants to be able to find the nutrients that they need.

Water; considering how important water is for all life, and not to mention how scarce and precious or resource is in places. Let yourself wonder: Where did this grow? Did it grow according to natural rainfall, was it from an aquifer or a reservoir, or river? Feeling great gratitude for the reverence of water and how much went into making this gift from the land.

Consider next, the people. Those that trucked to our grocery store, those people that were responsible for packaging and harvesting it and cultivating and planting it, and the people who generated the seeds. Feel your heart open to appreciate all the many people and their families and all those stories that they’re a part of that brought them to helping to contribute to the process

Then places, because chances are this pepper has been in a lot of different places. So much of the planet and so many different places contributed to this food’s growth, either as the location from it’s growing or over the lands with which it was transported. Expanding to even appreciate the machines and the technology and the mechanization, whether it’s the trucks, the planters, the harvesters.

Ponder and feel this in a conscious way, again, all the elements of nature, people, places, products and machinery, to feel a part of this much larger sacred web of participation that we are all woven into.

This practice opens our hearts with wonder and gratitude and love, so that we may become more present in our day-to-day with our foods, with the people around us, and with our communities. The ripples that enabled us to have this food, we can extend back out in the opposite directions, to be part of the healing and regeneration and thriving we want.

Nature-Inspired Spirituality: Timeless Wisdom for Present Times

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