Food!

Mountains of sweet potatoes and yams.  Stacks of bags of cranberries.  Bins full of nuts in the shell.  Endcaps laden with evaporated milk, brown sugar, and canned pumpkin (after two years of bad harvests it's back in abundance).  Piles of broccoli and green beans and more 3lb bags of onions than you can shake a stick at.  Clementines (at last! – I really like clementines).  Apples and squash, butter and eggs, chocolates and cookies.  And then the special cardboard display cases with roasting pans and pie tins and basters and pins to make it all happen, and storage containers and foil and freezer bags to make it all last. 

Yesterday I went to the grocery store, where I was awestruck to the point of tears over the vast amounts of food that lay before me.  I literally lost it in the produce section.  So much bounty, so many bellies about to be full!  And it's so very much "our food," too: how much of what we will eat in the next short while is indigenous to the Americas – all of the squashes, all of the potatoes, the corn and anything chocolate.  So many good things!  So much nourishment!  So much great taste!

So I say:

I will remember the work of those that brought all this forth.
I will strive to be worthy of such great gifts.
I will enjoy just enough so there's still plenty to share.
I will be thankful for this food and the life it makes possible.
I will eat this great food for the strength to live the Dharma.