I have vivid memories of my mother’s cooking growing up in a home of four brothers and sisters. The race to the dinner table was a mad dash to scoop up whatever was prepared — cinnamon-glazed monkey bread, three-cheese homemade lasagna (with extra ricotta, of course), or if we were lucky, a rich hunk of pumpkin roll. I remember a lot of the food in my life because often times it has been the case that a dish of deliciousness, in my mind, is deeply connected to a person I hold in the dearest regard. Food means people (family and friends), and vice versa.

I tell you this to get your brain stirring and sloshing through your memory bank of wonderful aromas and tastes. More than this, though, is that you and I would grow each day in seeing that eating is more than a psychological act but rather, as theologian Norman Wirzba puts it, “eating is also an ecological, agricultural, moral and spiritual act.”

The carrots we munch on and the blueberries we crave have a story. Each piece of fruit and each vegetable was cared for, watered, picked and transported by many hands — women’s hands and men’s hands, brown hands and white hands, old hands and young hands. During one meal, you may be eating food from three or four different continents. Our food comes from places thousands of miles away, places with names we may not be able to pronounce, and wouldn’t you know, some of your food comes from just down the road.

Unfortunately, some of us — well, most of us, myself included — are too disconnected from the various systems, lands and people who make a living to ensure that we have plenty to choose from. And therein lies not only an economic and moral issue, but a spiritual issue as well: we have become so disconnected to our food, our farmers, our animals and the like that it comes as a great surprise to many that in this country, we throw away between 30 and 40 percent of our food. This comes out to roughly to 20 lbs per person per month, or more simply, the equivalent of 45 bananas, 16 potatoes or two whole turkeys. Tragically, we live in a country with over 50 million people who would qualify as being food insecure, or the state of being without reliable access to a sufficient quantity of affordable, nutritious food.

That’s happening right here in West Michigan, in Grand Rapids and here at Calvin. We have students on this campus and every college campus that are food insecure. Wasting 32 percent of our fresh water, four percent of our energy budget and 20 percent of all land due to food getting tossed in the trash is an ecological and agricultural crisis, absolutely, but in speaking about our relationship to God and creation, waste of this proportion is an abysmal reality. It is nothing less than an act of disregard for the vulnerable.

It is not as though we are without a solution; we have the food, ample amounts in fact. This is solvable, we have the steps to take. One of those solutions is the Food Recovery Network, a national coalition of college students spanning from Hawaii to Maine. More than 180 college campuses, including Calvin College, have decided to take steps towards ending this wastefulness. Two years and 20,000 pounds later, volunteers at Calvin have been working to find solutions to combat food insecurity, access healthy, nutritious food and counter legislative policy that restricts food donations.

Want to learn more? Today in the Meeter Center Lecture Hall from 4-5:15 p.m., join students, faculty and staff for “Pitchforks and Panelists: The Intersection of Urban Farming, Public Health, and Advocacy.” Every great idea starts at the dinner table.