Pumpkin Pie

A week ago Wednesday the Freshmen Outreach team held one of CCM's most awesome events of the year: Freshmen Pie Night (made of real freshmen). In preparation I had two pie-making occasions. Tuesday night, I aided two CCM guys (a grad and a law student) in pie-baking. They contributed an apple and a key lime pie, respectively.

Monday was mine own pie day. I took one of the pumpkins that we had purchased for CCM's Halloween party and proceeded to turn it into food. By which I mean, I gutted it, pulling out the seeds and cleaning them. Then I chopped it into pieces and steamed it. After steaming it, I took the peel off and stuck it into the blender to end with pumpkin puree. I baked the seeds and used the puree to make a pie. I had gone from round, Jack-o-Lantern-to-be to FOOD!

Now comes the point where I wax metaphorical. As I was turning pumpkin into food, I was listening to beautifully twangy country music and musing over the fact that I was getting food from a pumpkin. Almost every year as a child, I helped pick out a pumpkin, and we carved it into a jack-o-lantern. In fact, every time I have purchased a pumpkin or witnessed the purchasing of a pumpkin, it has been to create a jack-o-lantern. At the same time, I have eaten pumpkin pies, pumpkin bread, pumpkin cookies, pumpkin muffins... you get the picture. Yet never had I seen the process of transformation from round, orange gourd into pulpy puree. Pumpkin to carve is a gourd. Pumpkin to eat comes from a can.

We have divorced the meaning of the food pumpkin from the plant pumpkin. This divorce is a wider problem in our society : we forget what things are in our quest for convenience. I'm not saying that there is anything wrong with canned pumpkin. Having turned a gourd into food, I now have about half a gallon of pumpkin that I need to use, and the process took a long time. Next time I cook with pumpkin, I will probably get a can -- after I use what's left of this pumpkin, of course. However, we rarely consider what our food is. When was the last time you thought about the cow that gave you your milk? The plant on which your coffee beans grew?

This approach to food might explain at least a part of America's health and obesity problems. The implications of the divorce of meaning go far beyond food, however. Most of the evils in the world can be traced back to this lack of understanding. Consider abortion. Our society can tolerate abortion because it denies the reality of what the unborn child is -- a child.

Other interpersonal evils -- the way we treat each other -- comes back to the same idea. We don't think about what our sexuality is; so we use each other. We pay no attention to our waste; so we destroy our planet. We don't think about who we are; so we accept less than what we deserve. I know it's pretty deep to go from a pumpkin, but all that was baked into the pie.