An Ode to Om

An Ecological Revision of Grace

When I was growing up, I was lucky enough to be in a family where we ate dinner together around the dinner table most nights of the week. At some point, my dad started leading us in saying grace before each meal.

God is great, God is good

And we thank him for our food

By His hands we must be fed

Give us all our daily bread

In Jesus’ name we pray,

Amen

We weren’t necessarily a religious family – we stopped even the somewhat token act of attending services on Christmas and Easter early in my childhood – but my dad saw some values that he wanted to pass on in the act of saying grace. It was something he had done as a child, and he carried on the tradition by using the same words he had been taught.

There came a point in my existential angst as a youth where I questioned why we were saying this so-called grace, droning together in a slew of sounds from rote memorization. I didn’t even think about the words as I said them; I was aware of very little meaning in them. And so I resigned myself to politely bowing out of the chorus, silently drooping my head and folding my hands. I still do this when I get to join my family around the dinner table back in Colorado.

I didn’t give much thought to saying grace for a few years after moving out of my parents’ house for college. But one day, perhaps purely out of sentimentality, I thought back to those words that I used to recite with my family almost every night. I thought about the values held in the metaphors, proclaiming humbleness before the God so great that He gives us life as food. In spite of my contempt for organized religion, this practice suddenly struck a chord within me.

I had recently become flush with thoughts along the same lines of those metaphors, but in praise of the Earth rather than a Christian idea of God. The idea began to formulate within me to write a new sort of grace that I could say, acknowledging my deep gratitude and humility before the Earth. I chose to take a systems thinking approach as I felt that it best applied to the awe-inspiring menagerie of systems that comprise the Earth.

It started with the simple act of saying

Thank You

I began to think about everything that was involved in the systems of getting my food ‘from seed-to-table’. I thought of the animals that give their life when I choose to eat meat… of the animals who make my dairy, my eggs, my honey… of the plants who bear the fruits of their labors for my nourishment, and who give their lives for me as well… of the farm workers who meticulously nurture and raise livestock and crops… of the workers who transport and process foods… of the people who prepare and cook my food…

And these all stood out to me as things that were worth being thankful for, every time I’m fortunate enough to have a meal available to me. So I started saying thank you to all of those things before my meals, bowing my head as if in prayer. This is never a recitation of a prescribed text though; it is always a dynamic and engaging process. I began taking time before a meal to have a silent conversation with my food, taking note of as many different contributors to the dish that I could think of: “Thank you green peppers! Thank you chickens! Thank you farmers!” And I have to admit it is hard to say thank you to a green pepper without a smile on my face.

As this became more of a regular practice for me, I started to reflect back on the grace I said as a child in comparison to this new ritual. I think I began to see why we said grace as a child, even though we weren’t a religious family, per se. Grace was like a package of metaphors, carrying values that my dad wanted to carry forth. I saw how my own practice could become the same thing. Perhaps my children will one day engage in the same thanksgiving at our family dinners.

In thinking about my parents’ version of grace, I found that I liked the sense of closure given by “In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen”. I wanted to emulate this; I sought out some form of mimesis. Eventually I started ending my conversation with my meal by saying “And thank you to the Earth, for all Its good graces,” (both in reference to the abundances afforded to us by the Earth and also as a nod to those other ‘graces’, versions of this same concept, that people around the world practice) but some metaphorical implications of this particular phrase didn’t quite sit well with me. I knew I could chose my metaphors more deliberately.

The problem for me lay in the pronoun: ‘It’. In current usage, this connotes an objectification, and I felt that this didn’t accurately portray the Earth’s fullness of life. My thoughts turned to feminine metaphors of Earth – of Mother Earth and Gaia. I was hesitant to confine my model of the Earth to all the associations that come along with bestowing gender, though. Each pronoun embodied metaphors which are appropriate for certain purposes, but didn’t quite capture the sentiment I was looking for in this usage. It dawned on me that we don’t really have a pronoun equivalent of ‘he/she/it’ that would do justice to what I was trying to say. So I decided to invent a new one.

I dug into the etymologies of our current personal pronouns by combing through the Oxford English Dictionary as a means of informing the formation of this new pronoun. All of them arose mainly out of what could be called laziness – the roots of these words, which trace back to Old English and have relatives in many Old Dutch and Old Germanic languages, are some of the easiest vowel sounds to produce. They were some of the first babblings to be produced by humans, and were probably some of our first utterances as a linguistic species. Pronunciations shifted somewhat over time and space, and cultural influences took hold as well. For example, the differentiation between masculine and feminine came about by adding an additional sound to their then neutral personal pronoun to make a second word. ‘It’ eventually came into use as a gender-neutral pronoun, but over time shifted to be used as an object-identifier.

Drawing inspiration from these examples, I tried to find a similar, easily produced and simple sound for the word. My mind quickly turned to the widely-recognized incantation ‘Om’. Following the same patterns of linguistic production of other members of its set of words, ‘Om’ also has strong spiritual connotations from its use in Hinduism. In the Hindu tradition, ‘Om’ symbolizes a source of life and creation, the manifestation of God in form. So, I drew from the libraries of linguistic and religious tradition and adopted “Om” as my new pronoun to use when referring to the Earth. Now I am able to signify a transition into the meal with, “And thank you to the Earth, for all Om’s good graces,” and I call my practice my Ode to Om.

Rituals such as these, foundational elements of our own personal cultures and narratives, can have resounding impacts on our outlook on life. I now engage in my relationship with the Earth in new ways, attuning myself to new aspects of our dialogue. I am more constantly aware of my position within the many systems at work in the biosphere, creating a binding sense of interconnectivity. Not only do I feel a greater sense of connection and appreciation to Om, but I also enjoy my food more. I can chew slowly and delight in the flavors and textures as I contemplate the great gift I am given in my food. This is one key difference between my Ode to Om and most other forms of grace – I always take a bite of food first. I find that I’m able to more fully appreciate and explore the food when I think about it this way.

My process and my metaphors aren’t necessarily ideal for everyone. But just the act of giving a nod of appreciation to Om, or of restructuring your metaphors in other ways as well, are opportunities to take an active role in shaping your own reality. If we think critically about our cultural practices and metaphors, we can position ourselves to promote a brighter future.