During the sixties and seventies, I had lots of friends who generally fit into the category of “Folkie”. We spent a lot of time experimenting with alternative lifestyles, attire, music, and food. A certain number followed this experimentation to what they considered to be a logical exit from conventional religion as well.
Over the years I had a number of close friends and associates go missing in a variety of communes, religious enclaves, and just plain cults. Some of them experimented with these alternative lifestyles for weeks, months and in some cases for years. Two of my dearest friends disappeared into a succession of them until finally disapearing into one in the far deep boonies of Maine; never to reappear.
I’m the sort of live-and-let-live type when it comes to religious practice. Don’t terrify me by insisting on practicing live sacrifice of pets and children, or murdering unbelievers, and you’re OK.
While working at UPS, I worked alongside an elder in one group who, over a meal break, explained in explicit detail why he could not eat any of the things on my plate and why they were unclean. Actually, considering the quality of the food on the plate, much of his reasoning made sense. So I agreed with him. Then he surprised me and said that I misunderstood. The reasons for the prohibition was mostly to keep the people of piety and rectitude, his people, from being contaminated by intimate contact with the people of Babylon – my people.
A bell went off in my mind, and all of a sudden I was listening to a lecture in undergrad about food prohibitions and restrictions being ways within a group of building solidarity, and a way of keeping members of the group from sharing food and meals, that is, socializing, with those outside of the group. It’s hard to “break bread” with people who think it sinful to have bread, a sacred food, with jam, a sinful treat.
He assured me that only the exceptional circumstances of the truly terrible and confusing workday we were having made it at all necessary. I continued to work side by side with this individual for about another year, and we never even so much as shared a snack in each other’s presence, but in all other ways seemed to be close work friends.
When I saw this prompt from WordPress this morning. I flinched; another list of what I do and how I did it. Boring. Eventually, I started thinking about food as an element of social structure, and I decided to write this post.
Well anyway…Go Ye Forth And Sin No More.
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Food is definitely an element of social structure. I had Muslim students in China. They had their own cook and dining room — shared with the few Buddhists who had their own cook. As long as no one put meat in the Buddhist’s stir-fry, everything was harmonious and no one ever put meat in the Buddhist’s stir-fry. I shared a holiday with them all. Then, in the Muslim restaurant, downtown, there were actual baked goods not cooked with lard but with (gasp) butter. All of it was very interesting.
Yup, brings people together and keeps them apart.
I read the prompt and nearly roared with laughter. But in a smart-assed, sarcastic, “omg, they don’t want to hear my answer!” Once again, I’m impressed how you turned such a dud of a prompt into an interesting read.
I slept on it. I thought I couldn’t do it, and I erased the first four paragrghs I wrote and started over. this one almost sunk me.
What part of Maine? So glad I was 14 in 1970.
It was very close to Baxter State Forest. Beyond Millinocket.
I used to truck to all the paper mills but I never heard a lot of the horror stories.
I live on the Mid Coast (near Boothbay Harbor) and saw some of the horror stories getting played out by summer people with more dollars than sense.
Absolutely!
I made a typo in the response I lived there in the seventies.
I have several religious eating habits stories, beginning from when I was a child. During my bold teen years, I actually remember raising my voice to say accusingly to my mother, “Do you really think GOD cares if I eat chocolate, as long as I am a good person?” (This after getting in trouble for purchasing chocolate chips to put into cookies instead of our Mormon-approved carob chips.) Your post brought up my favourite memory that you can understand since you are an anthropologist. A co-worker at Brandeis invited me to share lunch at the kosher kitchen on campus. Though I was not at all interested in cafeteria food, I jumped at the chance. I will long remember the list of rules and colour-coded trays and such that he went over with me carefully as we walked there. Food rules are a fascinating aspect to add to all the other rules that religious people must abide by.
Ohhhhh, memories of things, Mormon!I So, Crystal, this is not a food-related item, but another sort of proscription:
I remember a mother of one of my short-term girlfriends reminding her to wear Mormon underwear to protect her from bad influences. Since she said this while glaring at me, I suspected it wasn’t anything nice. The relationship failed to thrive.