Some of my clearest memories
from my college days are from an Anthropology class where
the professor spoke of his various eating adventures during
some of periods of research in the field. Although a basic
meat and potatoes person myself, I grew up hearing tales
from an aunt who was a missionary in Africa as she shared
her adventures eating fried ants and grasshoppers and
other exotic fare. So I was intrigued by my professor’s
feasts of caribou eyes or stories of whole birds fermented
in seal skin for several months and then dug up and eaten
with great relish.
But the one that really got
me was the grubworm story. Some details are fuzzy, but
I think it was a South American tribe who may have been
trying to find out if this professor was really serious
about becoming a part of their lives so he could write
an accurate ethnography about them. In what was possibly
an initiation rite, they took him into the forest, found
a nice, rotting-out tree hollow filled with lovely, fat,
white, wriggling grubworms and offered them to him as
a valued treat.
Yes, he tried them, discovered
he could eat them, and learned that they really were not
only edible but were also an important source of needed
protein. As of that moment, I knew I was not cut out for
anthropological field work. Nonetheless, the story stuck
with me for other reasons: I became much more fully aware
that we are culturally conditioned to see some things
acceptable as food, and other things as unacceptable.
And other cultures may see such things in directly opposite
ways. For most of us, plates of raw grubworms (not to
mention birds fermented in seal skins) are pretty well
off limits where our eating patterns are concerned.
It generally takes an enormous
shift in perspective for something that was normally considered
“off limits” to become acceptable and normal.
As an example, that kind of truly gigantic shift gradually
took place in the United States as the goal of racial
reconciliation and equal rights for all have been recognized
as both righteous and fair. Two hundred years ago, only
a very brave few thought that those of African descent
could be counted as fully human and thus fully deserving
of rights and privileges that were routinely bestowed
on those currently in power. Now, only the very ignorant
few hold to such the original view that those of African
descent and sold into slavery were not to be considered
fully human.
A very similar shift in perspective
took place in the life of Peter, a disciple of Jesus,
often affectionately termed the “Bull in the China
Closet” disciple. Suddenly, and much to his shock,
he became aware that those he had always seen as outside
the possibilities of being in covenant relationship with
God were to be invited in rather than shunned and kept
out. We’ll talk about this more on Sunday. Come
join us—let’s discover what is no longer “off
limits” for us.
