....and lows

Last post was about some foods I was really happy about this week.  But some others weren't as great.... like pretzels or mint tea from an ambiguous sources (Bigelow and Hannaford don't provide much information on employee treatment or farming practices).  The mint tea I thought about, decided it didn't seem like a major issue, and had it anyway.  However, with the pretzels, I definitely came at with an attitude of entitlement.  "I have a right to eat pretzels, so who cares where they're from".  Those are the moments of LoGOFF that remind me how selfish I am.  But, they are also the moments that draw me toward God because they remind me that I need Him to transform my heart daily.


Legalism or Laziness?
LoGOFF seems to be a constant dance between legalism and laziness.  On the one hand, it is impractical and legalistic to require that EVERYTHING I consume is totally LoGOFF.  Besides, legalism appeals to my desire to be in control instead of letting Christ's love control me, and it leads to guilt and pride.   On the other hand, as I reject legalism, there is also a tendency to use that to justify laziness, selfishness and entitlement.  These appeal to my desire to be fulfilled by what I consume instead of the Creator of all things.

Love
So, I really appreciated this status I recently saw on Facebook from Jonathan Walton.....

what if change wasn't driven by guilt and shame but instead by grace, humility, and freedom. Join WeLOGOFF.com! #nycup 

I want to be motivated to change out of love for my Savior and the world that He loves, not out of guilt.  But legalism and laziness seem to come so easily, and loving Christ must be learned and developed.  



Lord, teach me to love you more.  Teach my heart to yearn for you.  You are worthy of love and honor and glory, but my heart is easily distracted from your greatness.  Let your great love for me motivate me to love you and your world.

Food update! Highs....

Day to day choices to LoGOFF mostly have to do with food.  That's one of the only things I consume every single day, so it's a daily chance to make choices that are restorative instead of selfish.  Also, I really love food and cooking, so I think about food quite a bit.  Anyway....here are a couple of particularly LoGOFF foods that I've had lately......

Latte

Espresso - I checked the website of Uncommon Grounds where my family gets coffee.  It's not labeled as Fair Trade, but the company that they gets beans from has great, sustainable processes that care for the earth and the employees.

Milk -  My family has been getting milk directly Davis Farm for a long time....it's VERY local, and I go to church with the farmer!  Even though the milk isn't labeled as "organic" or "slave free" I know that the Davises treat their cows and their employees with respect.

Maple Syrup - At the beginning of the week I was using sugar, but then I realized that much sugar isn't fair trade, and I'm assuming what my family has isn't.  However, we get syrup from my uncle Uncle Ed and I know where that comes from....plus it's much more local, and adds a nice, maply flavor to the latte.

This isn't the latte I made...this is a much prettier googleimages picture....

Vegetable Soup

I made veggie soup the other day that had winter squash and kale from my mom's garden last summer.  Also, it had garbanzo beans.  I don't know where the garbanzo beans came from, but protein from plant sources is a lot more sustainable than protein from animals.
Animals need to be fed A LOT of grain before they can be slaughtered for meat, which means there is a lot of grain that could be feeding people, but instead is being fed to animals.  Vegetable protein is lower on the food chain, so it's much more sustainable.  If everyone ate a vegetarian diet, the world could more easily produce enough food for EVERYONE.
Although I won't necessarily be vegetarian this year, I am going to try to eat much less meat than I have in the past.  My family is vegetarian, so it's easy when I'm at home. But there are also lots of great vegetarian options at Vassar.  I'll just have to think about it more than I do at home.

Also not my photo....but this looks remarkably like the soup I made

If all the talk about vegetarianism and sustainable food interests you, check out the More with Less Cookbook.  It's full of "suggestions by Mennonites on how to eat better and consume less of the world's limited food resources".  Our family only loves a few recipes from it, but I think many of the principles in the book are in line with the goal of eating in ways that "love your neighbor as yourself".

Who am I?

While we're on question titles, I figured "who" is probably a good one to tackle next!

I hope this post will put me a bit more in context, so you can understand where I'm coming from, and so that when I mention "home" and "mom" and "school" and "Deece" you know what those things mean.

Family
When I'm not at school, I live in beautiful Vermont with my dad, mom, older sister and two younger brothers.

This is them.  They clean up nice, don't they?

As far as LoGOFF, my mom is probably the person I'll talk about the most because she is the one who is really interested in LoGO (Local/Green/Organic) food.  She loves running the local farmers' market, cooking, gardening, learning about permaculture, eating and making compost in the dining room (the worms can't survive the cold Vermont winters, so they move inside....)

School

I'm a senior at Vassar College.  I'm majoring in psychology and focusing on child development.  After I graduate in the spring, I'll be back at Vassar for the fall semester to do my student teaching and finish up my elementary education certification.

This is our library...I'm blessed to get to study in such a beautiful place!

I'm really lucky that lots of Vassar students before me have worked hard to get LoGOFF food on campus.  The Deece (the main all-you-can-eat) dining hall serves local milk/eggs and many local veggies.  The Retreat (the pay-per-item dining area) also has local options for milk/yogurt/eggs and often for fruits and veggies as well.  And both the dining areas have fair trade coffee!  I'm not sure what UpC (late night coffee/smoothy place) has that would be LoGOFF, but that will be on my list of things to find out when I get back to school!

Hobbies
Dancing - I love swing, contra, waltz, ballet, modern, tap, jazz....you name it, I've probably dabbled in it.


Fiddling - I started playing violin when I was a kid, but switched to fiddling when I realized that violinists practice, and fiddlers play with other people..

Why LoGOFF?

                                   

There are many good reasons to LoGOFF, but for me, it's all about restoring brokenness.  

I believe God wants to restore brokenness in all it's forms.  That means restoring my relationship with Him, restoring my relationship with the people who make my food, restoring the relationships between employers and employees, restoring the relationship between people and the earth, restoring systems of poverty that lead to oppression.  That's a pretty tall order!

Even as I look at my first few days of trying to LoGOFF, I realize that I haven't done it perfectly, and I know I won't.  But I think that's one of the reasons I'm excited about this - because I can't just rely on my ability to try harder and do it perfectly.  Instead, I have to rely on God's grace, and I believe that God offers all the grace I need.  Because Christ lived a perfect life, and took all my failure on himself in death, he has the right to offer me grace, and he does it generously.  Acknowledging the grace of God, and seeking his power to change my heart is the only way I'm going to end up seeing this year as "successful".

That's why I think LoGOFF is an inside out process.  As my relationships with God is restored, that will change me - my thoughts, my attitudes, my desires - and that should continually change the way I consume.  I pray He will cause me to care less and less about my selfish desires, and more and more about doing what He does, and becoming a restorer of brokenness. 
                               
Psalm 80:19
Restore us, Lord God Almighty;
make your face shine on us,
that we may be saved.

What is LoGOFF?

 
LoGOFF stands for Local, Green, Organic, Fair trade and slave Free.  And that is how I'm going to try to live this year.

Local means buying things produced near me, and more importantly, building connections to the people who make the stuff I consume.  That means that at school I'll buy the yogurt made at the local dairy, and not the yogurt made somewhere else and shipped long distances.  It also means making a point to connect with the people who make my food at the dining center.
Green/Organic are about caring for the earth.  That means buying food that is produced in ways that are sustainable.  By extension, it's also a way to care for people, because by consuming less of the earth's resources, I won't be taking more than my fair share.  That means that more people can have enough food to eat, water to drink, and land to live on.
Fair Trade/Slave Free, like local, are ways to care about the people who make the stuff I consume.  This usually refers to stuff made farther away.  There are some things that are fair trade certified, like certain types of chocolate, coffee and sugar.  But more broadly, this refers to caring about worker's rights and workers compensation in the companies from which I buy products.

 

Find out more about the LoGOFF movement and learn how you can get involved here http://logoff.cloudfoundry.com/ or here https://www.facebook.com/WeLOGOFF