marieqrogers

I sit down to breakfast, but before I eat, I give Thanks for my food. It is a modest breakfast: coffee, eggs, toast, and sliced kiwi. But when I think about giving Thanks for all who helped make my breakfast possible, it reaches cosmic proportions.

I bought the eggs from a friend who has chickens, so I thank both him and his chickens, but it goes beyond there. The chicken feed was grown by farmers and prepared by other hands and machines, transported by trucks driven by truckers, and sold in a feed store. There a clerk handled the transaction and a hefty young man loaded it onto my friend’s pick-up truck. The tractors, trucks, and other machines were made by factory workers from metals extracted from the Earth by miners and their machines, and the ore was processed in other factories, all made possible by the minds of inventors, scientists, and engineers. Did I mention the fuels involved and their processing? And the wood and concrete and metal which went into the buildings? And the workers who constructed them? My Thanks is extended to all those who made this possible with their muscle and their minds, to the Earth which yielded the metals and the fuels, to the soil and rain that nourished the grains and the trees, and the sun which gave the energy to make it all possible.

I made the bread myself. But it was made from flour whose journey paralleled that of the chicken feed, and yeast produced by other hands and machines and microorganisms, butter from a dairy farm, salt from the Earth, and gas for my stove, again from the Earth with the help of men and machines, and ultimately, the sun.

The kiwi is from New Zealand, grown by farmers, picked by laborers, and sorted by many hands and shipped halfway around the world for my health and pleasure, again with all else that made this possible.

The coffee was grown in South America or maybe Africa. Again I must thank the farmers and pickers, the coffee bush, the soil, the rain, the sun, and all those who processed it and brought it to the store where I bought it. To the coffee I add milk from a dairy farm, thanks to the farmers, cows, feed producers, the grass, soil, rain, sun, and all those in between who had a hand in bringing it to me. I also add sugar, grown in South Florida or Jamaica, thanks to…etc.

And what about my dishes, utensils, and kitchen appliances and all that went into them?

It has taken a global effort to bring me my little breakfast and my expression of Gratitude takes more time than it takes to ingest the food. I am humbled. All this for me.