Preserving it all

Tomato sauce, pickled beets, jam, and peaches.
All sourced fresh from the garden and local farmers.

            Do you know someone who preserves food while it is in season to enjoy throughout the year? Someone who tosses dehydrated fruit into their mid-winter oatmeal, or has perfected their salsa recipe to enjoy some local spice well into next spring?

            I’m one of those people.

            I enjoy preserving food; freezing, dehydrating, pickling, canning. Year-round I enjoy eating food that is tasty, homemade, and local. It takes time to plan and make, but it saves time and money in the long run.

            It takes practice to decide what to preserve and how - strawberries can be dehydrated or made into jam, corn can be frozen as kernels or made into a chowder. I need to be intentional about quantity, guessing how many jars of tomato sauce I’m likely to use, and how much chutney will be given as Christmas gifts.

            These are important, as they help me maintain a healthy boundary between preserving and hoarding. Preserving food is a wonderful way to celebrate the local summer abundance, but there’s a time limit. Safety is a concern for canned goods after 12-18 months, so keeping food longer than that poses an unnecessary risk. If all my jars are used for pickling beets, then I can’t can any other delights. If the shelves are stacked with last year’s food, it means I’ve got no jars to be filled, and no pantry space to store it.

Local cherries on the dehydrater

            Storing food requires annual renewal, replenishing my supply of what I find most useful and enjoyable, trying new recipes to replace others that I’m no longer keen on. But if I’m not careful, preserving can transition into hoarding. And that’s neither helpful nor healthy.

            Our spiritual lives, our traditions and practices, are not unlike our food storage. We preserve much; and this is good! It brings us sustained nourishment and enjoyment.  These are things which we replenish time and again, preserving and re-preserving because they feed our souls.

            There are others, however, that are hoarded: a grudge held too long can become toxic, a forgiveness withheld can use up emotional space and deny happiness, a refusal to trying new things may become a monotony that will deter new guests.  

            There are wonderful practices and traditions to be kept: these will be life-giving, nourishing, and sustaining. They will continue to bring us joy and fulfilment as we use them and re-use them, replenishing and renewing them as the days and years pass. But for those practices which are not nourishing us, as individuals and as communities, perhaps we might consider discerning if we should let them go, and thereby make space for something that will sustain and delight us.

            Preserving is wonderful. Hoarding is not.

            Celebrating abundance is wonderful. Practicing greed is not.

            I invite you to take stock of your spiritual pantry. What are you preserving? What are you hoarding? What has gone past its prime, and needs to be discarded? What is worth holding on to? What needs to be dusted off and enjoyed?

            May God's grace surround us as we consider how we preserve the faith that nourishes us.