Church is like Carrots?

Last week the New York Times ran a story about how attempts to get Americans to eat more vegetables tend to stumble on our cultural habits and fail.

This is my favorite part:

The nation has long had a complicated relationship with vegetables. People know that vegetables can improve health. But they’re a lot of work. In refrigerators all over the country, produce often dies a slow, limp death because life becomes too busy.
“The moment you have something fresh you have to schedule your life around using it,” Mr. Balzer said.
In the wrong hands, vegetables can taste terrible. And compared with a lot of food at the supermarket, they’re a relatively expensive way to fill a belly.

Vegetables are too much work, it turns out.
Fresh food requires planning and commitment
If we don’t already eat them regularly, vegetables can seem to require a set of knowledge and skills that shut us out. 

Carrots are like church.
Or, at least my experience of vegetables is a lot like the way many people experience religion.
You know it’s good for you, but….
The practices of faith: prayer, community, study – all these require planning and commitment – just like a box of CSA veggies.
There are an intimidating array of things you don’t know that other people seem to: Facts, like how long it takes to cook an artichoke, or how many different gospels there are.  Matters of opinion, like the difference between an Episcopalian and a Congregationalist, or the best way to prepare yams (or are they sweet potatoes?)  And mysteries, like what happens after we die, and why some people like okra.

In the wrong hands scripture can be revolting, and compared with a lot of the alternatives, faith can be expensive: in courage and commitment - and yes, occasionally in cash.

It wasn’t a cheerful comparison when the article pointed out that historically, none of the marketing strategies, good advice, or public projects, have made much of a dent in Americans’ aversion to vegetables.

But it made me think, again, about how and why people might come to church.  Marketing, information and advice,  can shape expectations and create “shoulds” or good intentions:
I would love to be healthier; I should eat more vegetables.
I would like to know how to pray: I should go to church.

But that’s not what makes the difference in the practices of faith or dining.

The vegetables I do eat, I eat because I know them.  My parents provided me with enough broccoli and asparagus as a child that I still believe they are easy and delicious.  Every tomato I eat is a yearning to return to the mountaintop of a sun-warmed tomato fresh from the vine.  Salad is a discipline I’m still learning, a study I took up because so many of my friends practice it. 

Vegetables make their way into my life through family, and friends, and the occasional sweet miracle.
And that’s how we get to the practices of faith, too.   Maybe we pray because we can’t remember not praying.  Or get up in the morning and go to church because it brings back a little, each time, of one sweet revelation.  Or read scripture because we have friends to read it with.

Not because we "should," but because we have a guide, a companion, to make the start easier and keep us company in the practices.  Or because, more rarely, one taste was enough to send us yearning for it every day.

Church and carrots do have a lot in common, including this:  they don’t come easy unless you’ve done it all your life (and then there are still challenges and surprises!)  But in the end, it’s worth it. 

I’m going to go see about some sweet potatoes, now. (Or are they yams?)