Going Too Green?

Lina and I are buying fresh produce from a chemical free farm a little bit up the street, take a left, and go straight. Basically, organic without the official designation.

On Sunday after church, we made a spinach salad with chipotle-seasoned chicken. It was quite tasty. In mid-salad, Lina let out a shriek and dropped her fork on the floor and nearly fell off of her stool.

"There!" she cried. I saw a little green worm squirming about on the side of her salad. For me to have a similar reaction in intensity, there would have had to have been a toenail in the mix. Truth be told, because of my poor eyesight on things close, I might not even seen the critter had she not pointed it out. And eaten it down.

I tried to view the incident in a positive light. True, she should have washed the spinach more carefully. Yet, the fact that a little worm was moving around was a sign off health. If this had been chemically-treated produce, the worm would have been exterminated long before it found a place in her bowl.

We need to remember that what kills other creatures ultimately cannot be good for people either. If a chemical kills a bug or a weed, is it really much of a jump to consider that it might not be particularly healthy for human beings? Like a canary in a coal mine, if the worm is dead, that is a harbinger of doom for people. How else can we explain the astonishing and unprecedented percentages of cancer and other maladies in our age?

I say bring on the worms. What is good for them, is good for us. We should have an integrated understanding of the created order....for what better definition of holy is wholesomeness?