meat too

My friend, Heather, wrote about meat in one of her recent blogs, and I'm dwelling on it for some reason, so it's obviously a good blog topic.

I'm finishing up a book by Julia Cameron called God is No Laughing Matter (tongue firmly in cheek, I assure you), and in one of her essays, she talks about Very Spiritual People who go to ashrams and develop malnutrition because they think that's how they can get God to talk to them. She refers to the food at these places as "Nouvelle Nazi" - lots of brown rice and greens and tofu and mysterious sauces. She goes on to say that she happens to know that some of the people who live at these places secretly eat meat because they need to get grounded ("and getting grounded usually means ground beef"). She thinks that indeed, God does talk to you when you do this to yourself, but more in the grandmotherly, "now you eat everything on your plate and help yourself to seconds" sort of way.

I found this hilariously funny and seriously true. I tried the strict vegan thing for awhile - I have several food allergies as it is, so it seemed like a good idea. And then my panic attacks became more frequent and my blood went haywire, and it took my doctor AND my acupuncturist to convince me that I needed meat. I felt guilty and pissed about this for quite awhile. After all, the health problems my family has are, in large part, due to poor diet, so shouldn't the lack of meat be doing good things for my body? Apparently not.

Toward the end of her essay, Julia points out that "Many Native American teachers refuse to teach without red meat. They know that powerful energies require grounding." So perhaps the panic attacks and blood problems were my Iroquois ancestors' way of kicking me in the bum and getting me to pay attention. I asked their forgiveness and agreed to a compromise - I'll eat chicken and fish. I've even allowed myself the expensive upgrade - free-range chicken and wild alaskan salmon, none of that farm-raised crap.

After reading that essay, I suddenly had a craving for meat, so there is now a free-range bird comfortably roasting in my oven. I guess I need grounding before the ancestors will talk to me.