Adoption, exclusion and the Church (or, What are we supposed to think about transracial adoption?)
This semester, I am taking a class with Dr Willie Jennings entitled “Christianity Identity and the Formation of the Racial World.” We have a private class blog where we are to post three reflections a week, based on our readings and class discussion. We recently read a book by Julia Sheeres’ entited, Jesus Land, which is a gritty, disturbing memoir of her childhood growing up with two adopted African-American brothers. This is one of these reflections based on Sheeres’ texts and the issues it raises regarding transracial adoption.
As a woman, I am perhaps more prone to thinking about issues of family, children and the household than men. As my female roommate and I joked with our male friend regarding our inability to do pull-ups at the gym (damn you, lack of upper body strength!), he responded aptly, “Well, I can’t bear children.” Indeed. Also, as the child of an adoptee, my thoughts on these issues have also included adoption, a topic that doesn’t cross the white, Western-American mind quite as often or as naturally as in societies where the ‘nuclear’ family is neither an ideal nor a meaningful category.
As a Christian, I believe that adoption is central to my (our) faith. Without it, we would remain Gentiles, lost and hopeless and Jesus wouldn’t really mean much at all. Without a robust theology of adoption, Christianity simply makes no sense. Therefore, it seems a no-brainer to me that I will one day have children with whom I am not genetically related. Of course, the heart-wrenching foster care statistics (currently, over 134,000 children in foster care are waiting for permanent families) , the recent tragedy in Haiti and the rising number of children orphaned by epidemics and wars globally, and my own personal experience with my mother further bolsters my belief that adoption can no longer exist merely as a “last ditch” option after exhausting all other possible treatments for infertility.
All that being said, I found Julia Sheeres’ parents and their belief that “Christian duty” called them to take home David pretty moving and, frankly, spot on. Of course, the abuse, the favoritism and the lack of care in raising of all their children was deeply problematic, not to mention downright sinful. And though it wasn’t stated explicitly, part of me wonders if Julia’s parents adopted David out of some sort of merit-based conception of the Christian faith (”Look how good we are. We adopted a black child when no one else wanted him. Surely God will bless us.”) The reality is, David and Jerome never fully became their own, full members of the Sheeres family. They occupied a marginal space both in the household as basement dwellers and in the family’s social dynamics. This is prone to happen in families with adopted children, and surely this was only exacerbated by their racial “otherness,” according to the Sheeres parents. Jerome used such distance to legitimize his abuse of Julia. And Julia, who loved David dearly, distanced herself from David at school to avoid ridicule.
Of course, Julia’s story, and the stories of other interracial, intercultural adoptions give me great pause as I think about adoption. On one hand, children of color adopted into white homes may experience the same sort of distance and marginalization that David and Jerome experienced. On the other hand, children of color may experience a complete overshadowing and supplanting of their own racial and cultural identities/memories with those of their white family, as if their differences are something to be blotted out. A third type of adoption story is particularly familiar to me, as one familiar with evangelical subculture: the young, white couple that seeks to adopt the exotic child in the vein of Compassion International – “Aren’t black babies so cute? O, mixed babies are SO much cuter than white ones. I wish I had a Chinese baby. I want to adopt an Ethiopian so I can raise them in a better, safer place like America” (Of course,we must also contend with the fact that very few families of color adopt white children, and often such adoptions are discouraged. What does it mean that white parents are often considered “most suitable” to adopt children of color? What if Uganda families were coming to America to adopt babies and raise them in Kampala? What would we say?)
All three of these tendencies are disturbing and, unfortunately, all too common. My question is, does the Christian story provide us with a different way to understand adoption across racial, cultural lines? Is there a way to welcome children who don’t look like us into our homes without subsuming or overemphasizing their own histories and identities? Could the Church, a vastly and beautifully diverse body in which there is no male or female, slave nor free, Gentile nor Jew, embrace such families and provide them with a meaningful story? It is these questions that I will continue to wrestle with as I read these statistics:
- Research indicates that children of color are not at greater risk for abuse and neglect than Caucasian children and that there are no differences in the incidence of maltreatment. Nonetheless, children of color are disproportionately reported as victims of child abuse and neglect, and these reports are substantiated at disproportionate rates.
- Children of color are likely to stay in foster care for longer periods of time and are less likely to be either returned home or adopted.
- Nationally, African-American children are 4 times as likely and American Indian children about 3.5 times as likely as white children to be in state protective custody. http://www.nationalfostercare.org/pdfs/F…)
Resolution #1 (stop biting nails): As I predicted (a self-fulfilling prophesy?), this hasn’t gone so well. Old habits are hard to break, and the neurological pathways associated with NB run deep. But I had a great idea last night as I laid me down to sleep: Using the accountability of the interwebs, I will post photos of my nail-growth progress on this here blog (sorry if that’s gross…). I tried several attempts at taking a picture of both hands by using my chin to hold the camera, but I failed miserably. Here is Day 18 (really, Day 1) of the no-nail-biting resolution:
Resolution #2 (eat breakfast): Going great! Oatmeal on Saturday. Eggs and toast on Sunday. Muesli on Monday. So far, so good.
Resolution #3 (start running again): Have been to the gym three times in the last five days, so feeling good about that. Mostly biking, though some running and weight lifting. May consider changing this resolution to simply “Go to the Gym.” You’ve got to start somewhere!
Resolution #4 (buy less/simplify): FAIL — My friend Lex was in town, and then Jill’s brother was town, and my birthday is coming up so….all this equals eating out….a LOT. But, I am trying to borrow most of my books, or buy them used. We’ll see how it goes.
Resolution #5 (compost): FAIL
Resolution #6 (apply for an MSW): A little early for that.
Resolution #7 (eat locally): I went to the Durham Farmers’ Market on Saturday and hope to go every Saturday for fresh produce, eggs, and meat. Local and in-season produce/food in the kitchen currently: acorn and butternut squash, turnips, kale, sweet potatoes, onions, cabbage, romaine lettuce and wheat bread, and mild pork sausage! Yum! Tonight on the menu, lentil stew with winter vegetables.
Resolutuon #8 (ride my bike): Given the frigid temperatures last week….FAIL, though I do ride my bike to the gym.
Resolution #9 (find a church placement for the summer): FAIL (for now)
Resolution #10 (get to know the women living in the group home on my street): FAIL (for now)
Resolution #11 (start playing guitar again): Yikes, forgot about this one….FAIL
Resolution #12 (keep in touch with old friends): More emails to write and phone calls to return, but overall, feeling good about this one. Yeah for a Lex visit!
Resolution #13 (fight off acedia): This is sort of the umbrella resolution for 2010, and pretty much encompasses every other resolution. Sunday, major acedia. Saturday, major productivity. Monday, yet to be determined. I’m still in my pjs, so that’s a bad sign. But acedia isn’t strictly about the Protestant work ethic and the spirit of capitalism but more about seeking out and living into God’s purposes, being thankful for the present, delighting in God’s gifts and using them on behalf of others. So far, fail. But I’ve got a year.
Resolution #14 (Luke 12:22-26): Similar to above.
Resolution #15 (learn more about the Mennonites): Durham Mennonite just started a Sunday school book study about Mennonite history and identity. Definitely want to attend this year.
Some are repeats from prior years (fail) and some are new:
1) stop biting nails (yeah right)
2) eat breakfast (i.e., a meal before noon)
3) start running again (5k on March 27th!)
4) buy less/simplify (books, clothes, eating out, you name it)
5) compost
6) apply for an MSW @ UNC (for 2011)
7) eat locally, even if that means spending more on food; join a CSA (see #4 for source of extra $)
8 ) ride my bike to places within a mile radius (or more!)
9) find/initiate a sweet church placement for the summer (check out this awesome church)
10) get to know the women living in the group home on my street
11) start playing guitar again
12) get in touch (and keep in touch) with old friends
13) fight off acedia (Norris’ newest book is a great resource. Even Oprah likes it.)
14) Luke 12:22-26
15) learn more about the Mennonites
Last night, I finished the last of my papers for the semester, thereby wrapping up my third semester of Divinity School (which means I’m half-way done!). Based on Wordle’s calculations, here’s the gist of my final papers.
*For Gender, Ethnicity and Violence in the OT: “Domestic Goddess: Proverbs 31:10-31 and the Making of the Protestant Evangelical Household” (Proverbs, family, woman/women, home, household, Protestant, traditional, work)
*For Journeys of Reconciliation: "Claiming Our Kin in Suburbia: A Theology of Location and Relocation" (Suburban/suburbia/suburbs, people, Christian/Christians, relocation, neighborhoods, place, values)
Nice to know that the most frequently used words in my Luke exegesis paper were Jesus, kingdom, rich, ruler, God, and possessions!
Rest on the Flight into Egypt by Luc Oliver Merson, 1879
As my previous blog posts have alluded, this semester has totally jacked me up. Learning to read the Gospel of Luke as the authoritative Word rather than a book to be scrutinized, has totally blown my mind. Stay away from that book. It will make you feel terribly inadequate. But it will also excite you like nothing you have ever read before. And be careful of sitting at the feet of Emmanuel Katongole, Christ Rice and Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove. They, too, will encourage you to take the Bible seriously and embody your theology. If you are more comfortable with classroom-oriented or pie-in-the-sky theology, stay away from them. They take the Incarnation very, very seriously.
I’m writing a paper for my Journeys of Reconciliation class on the tension between suburban living (i.e., any lifestyle that is shaped primarily by the values of security, isolation, materialism and status) and the theological concept of “relocation.” John Perkins of CCDA and VOC fame, identifies relocation as one of the three Rs of Christian community development (which I have come equate with basic Christian living), the other two being reconciliation and redistribution.
New Song Community Church, a CCDA partner and a Center for Reconciliation Teaching Communities placement for MDiv students, describes relocation this way on their website: “Living the gospel means desiring for your neighbor and your neighbor’s family that which you desire for yourself and your family. Living the gospel means bettering the quality of other people’s lives spiritually, physically, socially, and emotionally as you better your own. Living the gospel means sharing in the suffering and pain of others.”
Relocation is not merely a pragmatic response to that which is wrong with the world, a simple means to an end. Those who practice it, like Mark Gornik of New Song or John Perkins of VOC, understand relocation as a profoundly theological concept rooted in the biblical witness: “How did Jesus love? ‘The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth’ (John 1:14). Jesus relocated. He became one of us. He didn’t commute back and forth to heaven. Similarly, the most effective messenger of the gospel to the poor will also live among the poor that God has called him to.” As we enter into this Advent season, the idea of Christ’s incarnation and relocation is haunting me. The Incarnation of our Lord is our example, our practice. To follow Jesus means to follow him from the lofty places to the cross, from the throne to the manger.
Furthermore, relocation just makes more sense for those who are seeking to live into God’s new creation. By relocating, those who wish to be in relationship with the poor will see the world from their perspective, walk in their shoes. Doing so allows for real, substantial change, not from top-down administrators and institutional charity but from the people who themselves are affected by social evils on a daily basis: “If our children are a part of that community, you can be sure we will do whatever we can to make sure that the children of our community get a good education. Effective ministries plant and build communities of believers that have a personal stake in the development of their neighborhoods.”
But not only that, relocation allows for the formation of a new family, the Beloved Community, where those who are so radically different from one another live together in peace, reconciled in Christ: “Relocation transforms “you, them, and theirs” to “we, us, and ours.” In Christ, we live together as one. By relocating in whatever fashion, we can break down the walls that separate us, whether phyiscal or social, and share life with those we don’t normally speak to or shake hands with or share a cup of coffee – the insidious pan-hanlder, the raving lunatic on 2nd St, the profligate alcoholic, the prostitute and the dealer, the Lazaruses outside the gated communities, the “unworthy” poor.
(Also, check out their totally rockin’ Keeping It Real page on their site).
John Perkins, the founders of New Song, and countless other witnesses of God’s kingdom are relocating to abandon places, living with abandoned people, and acknowledging the poor and forgotten as first and blessed. What a witness to God’s new creation, the inbreaking of God’s kingdom! Few of us take the Bible this seriously and trust God so fully with our daily lives. Most of us, me especially, have our feet in two different kingdoms trying to serve two different masters, attempting to balance our own financial security with downward mobility, our own political commitments with the politics of Jesus, our own attempts at success and achievement with the example of the cross. I only pray that, some day, God will help me move from fear to peace, from insecurity to true freedom, from conformity to peculiarity.
This wonderful poem pretty much sums up my thoughts on discipleship these days. And, I think it’s a wonderful poem for Advent, as we await the coming of our Incarnate Lord, a Lord whose peculiar relocation inaugurated a peculiar people called the Church, a peopled that are to follow Christ in “oddness.”
(From Walter Brueggemann’s Prayers for a Privileged People)
“Swept to Big Purposes”
You call and we have vocation.
You send and we have identity.
You accompany us and we are swept to
big purposes:
chosen race,
royal priesthood,
your own people,
receiving mercy.
But we, in our restlessness,
do not want to be so peculiar.
We would rather be like the others,
eager for their wealth
their wisdom
their power.
Eager to be like them, comfortable
beautiful
young
free.
We yearn to be like others,
and you make us odd and peculiar and different.
Grant that we may find joy in our baptism,
freedom in our obedience,
delight in our vocation.
The same joy, freedom, and delight
that so marked our Lord
whom we follow in oddness.
Yes, it is reading week. Yes, I have a paper due this Friday, another due Monday, and an exam on Tuesday for a class I haven’t been to since early October (as in, the day I took the midterm!) But post-Thanksgiving malaise has set in, and today I spent more time perfecting and delighting in my Bon Iver and Holiday Folk radio stations on Pandora than anything related to school (though I did carry in a grocery bag full of books to the local 9th St coffee shop I frequent, which made me look really serious).
Actually, no, I did get some good work done today, including a reread of Stan and Will’s Resident Aliens (and the kind of silly sequal, no offense), a glance at Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove’s new book, God’s Economy, and cracked the spine of The Fear of Beggars, a book by Kelly Johnson that I’ve wanted to read for some time.
I have compiled a list of the procrastination techniques I’ve been using over the last few days. They are truly effective, 100% guaranteed to help you avoid being productive.
Technique #1 – Made soup! Threw in that soon-to-be rotten eggplant, some beans, a bit of rice, those sausages I meant to eat for breakfast yesterday, and whatever else was lying around the kitchen. Results: a delicious (and spicy) jambalaya!
Technique #2 – Baked pumpkin brownies! Had some leftover pumpkin to use, so I added it to some premade brownie mix. Delicious.
Technique #3 – Went to church. Not really true procrastination, but it did take up a lot of my Sunday morning and early afternoon. The congregation is smalll and friendly, which means lots of catching up before heading out the door.
Technique #4 – Prowled Hulu. Did you know the Supernanny is on Hulu? And Arrested Development? And a million other shows???
Technique #5 – Made baked goat cheese (and cheddar because it was there), sprinkled with thyme. Also, made boyfriend drive over to house to drop off pita chips to eat with said cheese.
Technique #6- Watched YouTube videos of soldiers surprising their families when they arrive back to the States. Just watched about 20 of them. Wept like a baby.
Technique #7- Made paper flowers. I found a new and totally useless (to me) phone book on the porch yesterday. So I tore out some pages, folded and cut and fluffed and ta da! Paper flowers to adorn the coffee table! Kabob skewers make great stems.
Technique #8 – Surfed some of my favorite online diversions, including failblog.org, bestofyoutube.com, sporcle.com and Google Reader. Also, if you blog, I’m reading your posts voraciously.
Technique #9 – Ate a ton of Stacy’s pita chips (and checked out the Stacy’s website briefly – not much to it) and then played a ton of Scramble on Facebook. Also started 4 new games of Facebook Scrabble (known as Lexulous).
Technique #10 – Ate soup dinner with the neighbors. Again, not really true procrastination (see #3) but enjoyed the time conversing, making jokes and not doing work (though we did talk about theology a fair amount).
Weakness and Greatness. Humility and Power. Poverty and Wealth. The reversals in Luke 18 are not unfamiliar to us as Luke’s readers, nor should they be. In fact, their familiarity should cause us to pause, listen, and take note– Luke is drilling something home.
This pericope is not unique to Luke. In fact, all three synoptic gospels contain an account of Jesus blessing the children and telling a rich man to give away everything he owns. But Luke’s placement is unique, following right after the reversal parables in 1-14. According to Green, the lessons of “value-transposition” in the first half of the chapter are made alive in the second half. Jesus embodies and proclaims his parables by prioritizing the humble children over the more important members of his audience, particularly the rich ruler ‘waiting in the wings’.
The pericope opens with people bringing “even infants” to Jesus for healing and blessing. When the disciples try to put a stop to this, Jesus declares that the kingdom of God belongs to these children, that whoever does not receive the kingdom as a little child will never enter it.” Our modern, romantic notion of children may hinder our ability to recognize the significance of Jesus’ words. In ancient Greco-Roman culture, children were valued for their future utility but had very little intrinsic value as human beings. Infants especially were vulnerable to the widespread practice of infanticide and child abandonment (Green). Is Jesus calling us to become like these children, economically useless and socially vulnerable?
The rich ruler presents a stark contrast to the infants Jesus welcomes, thus hinting that a Lukan reversal is at work. In response to Jesus’ teaching up to this point, the rich ruler asks Jesus what he himself must do to inherit eternal life. This scene echoes that of Jesus and the lawyer in 10:25. But Luke gives us no indication that this ruler is trying to undermine Jesus — his motivates seem pure, his interest genuine. According to the text, he has kept the commandments since he was young, particularly those having to do with “loving thy neighbor as thyself.” But Jesus tells him that there is one thing he is lacking. Jesus says to him, “sell all that you own and distribute the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.”
How does the ruler respond? With deep sorrow. For the ruler, the call to discipleship is met, not with repentance and eager abandonment as modeled by Peter and the other disciples, but with great sadness and disillusionment. Many commentators interpret the rich ruler’s sadness as his refusal or inability to follow Jesus. But unlike the other synoptic gospels, Luke actually doesn’t tell us the end of the story. We are left wondering whether the ruler chose the costly path of discipleship or returned to the security of his possessions.
We must also consider that sadness and disillusionment may have a place in the Christian life of discipleship, especially for those who have something to lose. Could the ‘good news’ to the poor sound a bit like ‘bad news’ to the rich, as the woes in the Sermon on the Plain suggest? As Augustine wrote, “It is one thing not to wish to hoard what one does not have. It is another thing to scatter what has been accumulated. The former is like refusing food; the latter, like cutting off a limb.”Jesus commiserates with the ruler, saying “How hard it is for those with wealth to enter the kingdom of God.” It is as challenging, as impossible as a camel passing through the eye of a needle. But there is a word of hope in the text: “What is impossible for man is possible with God.” Though it will take divine intervention, the ruler may still one day enter into God’s kingdom.
Questions to consider:
- What is the “one thing” the ruler is lacking? Is it obedience? Repentance? Trust? Love of neighbor?
- Are Christians called to welcome children, or become weak, vulnerable and possession-less like children?
- For Luke, are radical acts of hospitality towards the marginalized, financial divestiture and redistribution of one’s possessions on behalf of the poor required of all who wish to follow Jesus, or just those for whom wealth is a “problem”?
Last week, international field ed folks from Uganda and South Africa shared some reflections in chapel. Here is mine:
Before this summer, I knew very little about hospice, nor did I have any real, personal experience with death and loss. In fact, until recently, I had never even been to a funeral. So, of course, when asked to help pioneer an internship at Hospice Africa in Uganda, I was a bit terrified. Living in Uganda sounded like the easy part. But visiting with and caring for the terminally ill? Definitely a foreign experience.
Hospice Africa has over 80 hard working staff. Over the past 15 years, they have trained thousands of health care workers, community volunteers and religious leaders in palliative care. They visit people at their homes most days of the week and also host a day care in which patients come to the HA compound to share a meal.
It was humbling to be there, mainly because I had nothing to offer – no experience, no technique. My hands were empty. Most westerners come to places like Uganda expecting to do, build, create, establish, make their mark. But this past summer, I spent a fair amount of time observing and absorbing, helping wherever possible and trying not to get in the way.
Once a week, I accompanied the staff social worker on some of her visits to more impoverished patients. Often, we were in the slums of Kampala, and some the houses we visited were concrete blocks, as small as the average walk-in closet. One woman stayed in a tiny room with 4 of her children on one bed. I have never witnessed places so unlivable. On top of her desperate poverty, this woman and several of her children were HIV positive. Sick and poor. Poor and sick.
In America, we hide the sick and economically powerless away because their failing bodies and unfortunate lives do too much to remind us of our own mortality. As people living in nation so obsessed with success and power, it’s often hard to believe that the weak and vulnerable have something to teach us, something that Dr Amy Laura Hall describes as ‘embodied discipleship.’ This discipleship involves caring for real bodies, bandaging real wounds, seeing real scars and imperfections on the human body.
During one hospice visitation, I met a man with a large wound on his leg. Both limbs were extremely swollen and he said he was in pain. When he pulled up his pant leg, my first instinct was to look away, as we are apt to do out of respect (or, more realistically, out of fear and revulsion). But this man, Richard, seemed to take comfort in our presence there with him, knowing that he could reveal his broken body to us without judgment or disgust on our part.
The nurses and doctors at Hospice Africa witness the broken bodies of their patients on a daily basis. But this task is not just for medical workers or caretakers. Witnessing the wounds of others is in and of itself a very Christian task. When the disciples saw and touched the wounds of Christ in the Upper Room, they were transformed. In the same way, when we witness the wounds of others, we encounter not only their pain and brokenness, but our own. And out of that witness comes compassion, which literally means co-suffering.
In no way am I trying to idealize suffering, nor do I want to minimize the need for good medical care. But in light of modern medicine and ever-growing medical technology in the West, we cannot forget the cruciform Christ, the body BROKEN for us on the cross. As Christians, we believe that Christ has the power to heal, but we must also recognize that Jesus didn’t cure everyone. In the same way, hospice care does not seek to cure patients but to lovingly care for them in their last days. Just as they experience the pain of mortality in their bodies, so Christ bared that pain in his own body. Hospice care can help us remember that through Christ’s death on the cross, his broken body has itself become a sign of God’s love for the world.
So, like most Americans, I’ve been reluctant to change my eating habits. As an indebted graduate student with no current (or impending) marketable skills, money isn’t exactly growing on trees. With this in mind, I like to be as flexible as possible when it comes to what I eat. My schedule is erratic and I take free food when and where I can get it (including some Dominos cheese pizza from a Women’s Center meeting yesterday…yum.) The idea of having voluntary food “preferences” or restrictions just rubs me the wrong way, especially since a posture of flexibility and adaptability is, in my opinion, just plain easier!
All that being said, Eric Shlosser has done it to me again. I became a vegetarian for about year in college after reading his book, Fast Food Nation. The description of the dangers of the meat packing industry, the squalid torture chambers that are factory farms, and the environmental impact of our meat consumption in America literally made me lose my appetite for meat, at least for twelve months. (According to Slate, the livestock industry not only uses more land than any other human activity. It’s also one of the largest contributors to water pollution and a bigger source of greenhouse-gas emissions than all the world’s trains, planes, and automobiles combined. Crazy!)
After watching his new movie, Food Inc, I think I’m back on the proverbial horse (or should I saw cow?) with regards to vegetarianism, or at least, cutting back on meat. Every year, 10 billion animals are raised and killed for American consumption. Cutting back our meat-eating by just 10 percent could have a major impact, including “saving” 1 billion animals from the slaughterhouse each year, dramatically reducing pollution and greenhouse gas emissions caused by livestock farming, and even cutting our risk for cancer and heart disease in half.
That’s good news for all of us who 1) love pork barbeque and 2) know the food industry needs changing. Even just cutting back can make a big difference. Though I’m not ready to recommit to the vegetarian lifestyle, I’m all for weaning myself off (as is the Bixler, Florer-Bixler clan). And there are a lot of creative ways to do this:
- Cut out red meat. Beef, lamb, goat and bison are the most resource-intensive meats to raise and have the biggest (and most devastating) environmental impact. If we reduced our red meat consumption by one-quarter, the reduction in greenhouse gases would be the same as shifting to a 100 percent locally sourced diet.
- Buy meat from a local farm. Cuts down on carbon emissions, gives greater assurance of humane and sanitary conditions for the animals and supports local business, all while shortening the supply chain and bringing you closer to the food you eat. Can’t go wrong. You can search for meat-supplying farms and co-ops in your zipcode with the Eat Well Guide.
- Have meatless Fridays. Or Mondays. Whenever. Try temporary vegetarianism one or more days out of the week. Break out the Moosewood Cookbook for some filling (and delicious) veggie meals. Have meatless breakfasts. Or lunches. Switch to veggie sausage or cheese pizza. According to Michael Pollan, if Americans went meatless one night a week, it would be equivalent to taking “30 to 40 million cars off the road for a year.”
- Stop cooking meat at home. This is pretty much how I roll. I don’t buy meat and, therefore, don’t cook it. Saves money and saves time. If you really want to satisfy a meat craving, search for a local, organic, sustainable restaurant on the Eat Well Guide (see link above).
- Eat meat like you eat cake: rarely and only on special occasions. For centuries and for many people on the earth today, meat is a delicacy, not a staple. Treat it as such. Eating meat 7 days a week, let alone 2 or 3 times a day, is beyond excessive. The FDA recommends 1 serving of protein a day for the average adult (male or female), which means 2 eggs OR 1/2 cup beans OR 100 gm of meat (about the size of a deck of cards). When is the last time a restaurant has served you a steak the size of a card deck?
- Remember: Kosher doesn’t count.
