As we explore Driftless Spirituality, many of my wanderings will grow from my experiences at the Franciscan Spirituality Center in La Crosse, Wisconsin. I’ve worked here 15 months, and we are an interfaith retreat center dedicated to anyone seeking wholeness.
Two weeks ago, I hosted my first retreat here, which was a food retreat. If you’re wandering what that is, so did I up until Oct. 2 and 3.
It looks something like this…
- Amelia Baxter, farmer and leader for the day, shows retreatants where our food comes from.
Basically, part of my job here is to explore how the Franciscan Spirituality Center can connect with the local sustainability movement, and to help us understand what our role as a spirituality center is in that movement.
So for starters, since we are situated in the organic bread basket of America, with some of the highest rates of organic farmers per capita than anywhere in the United States, holding a food retreat seemed to make sense.
It ended up working like this: On Friday night, 13 of us told our stories about times we had experienced food as sacred, and what role food played in our lives. And then Rhonda Funmaker, a Bear clan member of the Ho Chunk, came to cook and share the wisdom of her people’s understanding of food and earth. I continue to ponder much of what she said, including this: As we face water shortages, it is strange when states and people begin to hoard and secure water for themselves. In her understanding, when something like this happens, we should be giving the water to others to make sure everyone has enough.
On Saturday, we headed here.
- Green galore!
Green galore!
If you thought a farm was endless rows of corn and soybeans, think again! Pictured above, Driftless Farm is a beautiful setting where a young family is working to steward the land through farming and sustainable architecture.
Amelia Baxter, who has a background working on justice issues through urban agriculture in Chicago, helped us understand our broken food system and ways we can empower ourselves and our communities to return to a way of eating that nourishes us — body and soul.
And nourish us she did!
These little suckers…
- .
…not only look like heaven, but taste like it, too. Among a variety of delicious lunch items was a butter infused with this nasturcia flower.
Two of my favorite parts of the day:
1) A Kool-Aid and Wonder bread Eucharist, through which we experienced what it is like to seek the sacred through less-than-nutritious bread and drink.
2) Eating half an apple from Peru and half an apple from La Crescent, Minn., and contemplating what we knew about these places and how that influenced our experience of the apple.