Sacrament and Desecration

My niece in the apple tree I planted almost 20 years ago.

In this corner of the world, it is harvest time. That means that, all around me, people are canning madly and harvesting the last of their vegetables. Guys and gals are standing around, talking about the salmon catch this year and how many deer they were able to bag. Having returned too late to plant a garden and being out of practice enough not to attempt hunting this year, I am an observer, though happy to sample the fruits of others’ labor.

And I am reminded of a favorite quote from Wendell Berry. “To live, we must daily break the body and shed the blood of Creation. When we do this knowingly, lovingly, skillfully, reverently, it is a sacrament. When we do it ignorantly, greedily, clumsily, destructively, it is a desecration.”

I am struck often by the reverence that those in this part of the world view the work they do. The care people take with the harvest, with the soil, with the preservation of food for the winter. The insistence that every part of a slaughtered animal be used and used well.

We cannot live without death—this is an incontrovertible fact of life. The forest would disappear if trees did not fall and die to nourish the soil and if animals did not do the same. Even if we choose to eat a vegetarian diet, we eat from plants whose life cycle we have interrupted, planted on soil that had to be cleared of forest and animals in order to grow. And, in the short growing season and long winters of this part of the world, if one were to try to live sustainably and relatively locally, the taking of animal life is a necessity.

Berry points out that, in this, we have no choice. However, we can treat this sacrifice of life for life as a sacrament. I know people who murmur thanks to the deer they have shot, honoring its sacrifice for their own sustenance. Most of us who have gardens large or small, know that such work is often deep spiritual practice, as we connect with the soil, with the nourisher of life. I remember, ages ago, long afternoons of slaughtering chickens for the winter. We would take the birds we had raised from little chicks, birds who had lived on the land, cared for and protected, and, gently and mercifully take their life. I remember an almost biblical sense of reverence on those days—a deep understanding that these birds gave their lives to sustain my own.

Or, we can take life destructively; in which case, such an act is a desecration. Factory farming is a case in point, of course. And there is also a tradition of hunting I encounter on occasion, often from people who live in cities and come out here only to hunt, that can be destructive, that goes beyond the thrill and skill of the hunt. That takes life cavalierly, without reverence. I have on occasion encountered a skinned and headless carcass left to rot.

Perhaps most of us live in between sacrament and desecration. The last hamburger I ate was likely from a factory farm. And the apples from the trees I planted in childhood taste amazing this year.