The Story of the Sacred Tomato
I’d like to share a metaphor and a parable with you, because metaphor is the lingua-franca of theology; and parable is the scalpel which bypasses the mind and pierces straight into the heart.
And things might have gotten a little too cerebral here lately.
There was once a farmland which grew all kinds of unique, delicious and nutritious vegetables. There were pumpkins, zucchinis, watermelons, spring onions, cherry tomato and regular tomatoes.
A small farming community lived happily and healthily there, nourished off the bountiful farm which they all worked on together, to plant, prune, water and pick.
Then along one day came a man from a neighboring farm, who looked very well fed and told the farmspeople that there was a real shortage of tomatoes in the neighboring towns. And that If they switched to just growing and tomatoes, he could make them all very wealthy. And besides, concluded the well-fed man, tomatoes are very very healthy.
The farmspeople took the well-fed man’s advice, and surely enough, before long, by switching all of their diverse and beautiful farmland to just growing tomatoes, they had become very wealthy and well fed themselves.
Now some of the people on the farm were sensitive and thoughtful, and they felt that getting rid of all their beautiful vegetables, just to grow tomatoes didn’t feel right. The sight of the tomato field owners getting fatter and fatter in their newly prosperous farms, as the tomato growers themselves got skinnier and skinnier in their tomato slums, seemed to these sensitive souls to be exploitative and unfair. So, they called back the well-fed man, to share their sensitive and thoughtful concerns with him.
Seeing that margins and profits were not the kinds of things that the sensitive and thoughtful people were most interested in, the well-fed man brought in a tomato scholar who, for the right price, specialized in tomato theology, to convince the sensitive and thoughtful towns people that what they were doing was actually right, and what G-d really wanted.
The Tomatologist gave the sensitive townspeople a metaphor. He said:
“Just as the tomato bush is to the ground in which it is planted and grows from, so is our world to God, who created and sustains it. The tomato is not other than the dirt, nutrients, worms, water, moisture and sunlight from which it grows.”
To prove his point he offered one of the town’s children a plate with a tomato on one side and a handful of nutrient rich dirt on the other. The young child stretched out his hand and ate the dirt and then took a crunchy bite out of the tomato.
Triumphantly, the Tomatologist launched into his proud soliloquy:
The holy tomato and earth are one. There is no point of discontinuity, neither spatially nor temporally between the tomato and its bud, the bud and the stem, the stem and the branch, the branch and the stalk, the stalk and the roots, the roots and the mycelium, the mycelium and the dirt surrounding them, that dirt and the dirt, oceans, lakes, continents and deep sea ranges of all of mother earth.
So, when you bite a tomato you are tasting, as the young child demonstrated, all of planet earth, and all the cosmos, because there would be no planet earth without the cosmic ecosystem in which it gently rests.
This is the metaphor of the sacred tomato, that the tomatologist told the townspeople.
And henceforth, when the thoughtful townspeople would partake of tomato, the sacred tomato, ingesting its sacred flesh and juices. The townspeople would stop and say, we hereby consume you, mother earth, we hereby eat you o’ universe, and we hereby taste you o’ cosmos, may we consume and be consumed. But only the tomato.
This tomato-centrism carried on for many years, and centuries, with tomato priests and tomato pastors, administering tomato sacraments. With tomato holidays and tomato vestments.
The cult of Tomatoism was alive and well.
Then one day a young woman appeared. She was tall and slender, with a smile that turned strangers into friends and eye’s that made lovers out of enemies.
Some of the locals were made a little uncomfortable by her charm and the certainty of her step, moving through the streets as one who danced to the music of life. But they learned to accept her, some by loving, some by laughing and some by sneering and scoffing.
Until one day the mysterious young women did the unthinkable. She began to quietly plant and till an orchard, and at first it was only tomatoes she was planting, as the law of the land required, but soon, rumors started spreading that the young woman had planted pumpkins, turnips, carrots and zucchinis.
Soon, rumor had it that the young woman was traveling all over the farmland with a small group of vagabonds, secretly distributing a variety of vegetable seeds, and talking of a day when all vegetables will be valued and will not be judged on the redness of their skin, but by their nutrients within.
Before long a federal investigation was launched and a tribunal convened to which the young woman was duly summoned. From their high seats, the royal inquisitors questioned, have you been spreading seeds of foreign vegetables and doubts through the land?
The crowd held their breath as the young woman lingered in the eye’s of each judge for a minute before opening her lips to answer:
“The seed that brings forth fruit is not outside, that it may be spread, but within each of us.”
“Did you or did you not give word to have something other than the sacred tomato planted in the sacred earth allotted to you?”
“Trust not in my words, but in the actions of your hands, for they too shall bring forth new life.
All I said was to work the earth with your hands so that you may also become like the mother, giving life to all those ready to let go of themselves in her depths.
Be then like the earth, giving life to all who hope in you.”
“Who gave you the right to break the law of the land, and supplant the sacred tomato, the finest of all vegetables with your rotten vegetables?”
“I am she who was planted in the womb of my mother, and she as far back as the eye can see, in the womb of mother earth. We are the children of earth. For in Her we live, and move, and have our being. For by Her all is created, and in Her all things exist. And that day is coming when you shall see with your own eyes that all things are holy.”
“Do you dare insinuate, in front of witness, prosecutor and judge, that there is something other than the sacred tomato which is worthy of worship? You ought be careful with your words young lady, for the gallows await all those who deny the sacredness of the holy tomato.”
“Just as the Tomatologists taught of the holy tomato, that it is the earth, it is nature, it is the cosmos and moreover, it is God, so to I say to you, the same is true of every vegetable, and more, you too, you are the earth, you are mother nature, you are the children of the cosmos and you are God.”
Silence descended upon the gathered crowd, judges, defendants, prosecutors and onlookers.
And like thunder bursting through a fertile valley, the head judge shattered the spell of silence, yelling “she is guilty, guilty of heresy, guilty of treason and guilty of blasphemy against the sacred tomato and against God Himself — If you continue to speak these words, you shall face death and we will end your life.”
The young woman gracefully turned to look the chief judge in the eye and softly said,” you cannot end my life, any more than you can bring the universe to an end, my life is the life of all worlds, and I will live on eternally. For I am the universe, I am God, I always have been and always shall be.”
With burning fury the chief justice, the man responsible for maintaining law and order in the land, in one sharp motion, tore his cloak and pointed his accusatory finger in the direction of the young lady and from his trembling lips emerged the words, “Hang her.”
On the way to the gallows, while the crowds wept and the judges sneered, the young woman she spoke these words to all that could hear:
“Friends, find that place of stillness within yourself, the divine seed within, yearning to sprout forth. Yearn to know yourselves, see that you are none-other than nature, it is you who is mother earth, and you who are her children. Wash your eyes with light, so that in every human you encounter, from the smallest to the greatest, you see all of humanity, all of reality, all of divinity.”
And as she was hoisted up, she was seen smiling and whispering, “great mother, forgive those who hang me, for they act momentarily in blindness, and may their hearts, and the hearts of all your children turn in one love, a love for one another, a love for themselves and a love for you.”
And with that, our hero exhaled a slow long loving breath, and the wind met her lips and kissed a slow long, loving inhale.
And when her serene body was lowered from the gallows and lowered into the soft welcoming earth, the words she had spoken every night before closing her eyes came to pass:
“return me to the earth, from where I came, and to where I belong. In your hands I return my body and spirit.”
Reunited, again.
This tragically short story of the young woman was written down by those who knew her and had travelled with her, who had been there that day amongst the crowd, swallowing their tears, and this handwritten teary eye-witness account was passed around secretly, from believer to young believer.
And slowly, a small following who knew the young woman’s message to be true, because they felt it reverberate in the depths of their being, began to congregate at the shadow of dusk, meeting to discuss her teachings and to secretly plant new seeds, seeds of doubt and seeds of hope.
And although outwardly they all kept up the appearance of adhering to Tomatomism, inside they knew that all plants and by extension all animals and humans were godly and worthy of love, devotion, reverence and adoration.
But this message, they knew, was a dangerous one, and anyone found sharing it could be executed on the spot, because it subverted the firm religious, economic and political hierarchy that had been built on the firm soil of tomatology.
The divine tomato, the representative of God himself perched high as the golden capstone of the social pyramid. Followed by the Pharaohs, Caesars, Dictators, Celebrities and CEOs, the human personifications of the sacred tomato. Followed by the Kings, knights and nobles, the aristocracy, nobility and royalty, the religious, political and financial leaders who represented the tomato and spoke as its authority, followed by the scribes, bourgeoisie bureaucrats, middle class, merchants, artisans and craftsmen. And spread nice and thinly, suppressed under the full weight of the pyramid, safely at the bottom, sat the plebs, the untouchables, the customers and consumers, serfs and peasants.
But against all this stood one idea, the message of the young woman, a message about the artificiality and ridiculousness of the pyramid, the message that had her hanged, a message now whispered around by the disheveled, disenfranchised, and disenchanted.
There is nothing so powerful as an idea whose time has come, and nothing so dangerous as two ideas at war with one another.
But even among the oppressed this idea and message wasn’t always welcomed, many of the disempowered snarled at the empowering message, finding it easier to live as there had been, even in poor dire conditions, as long as they had a few dependable things to blame their condition on.
They turned with spite on the message of the innate, inalienable divine dignity which rested ready in their bosom, finding the excuses they had already made home with, more familiar and comfortable. Some turned on the messenger, calling her a charlatan, a phony, a nutcase, a stupid martyr for a senseless cause. But others, still remembering her tender smile and soft eyes, found a way of rejecting the message, while embracing the messenger.
Ironically, precisely by embracing the messenger did they rejected the message, by replacing, “you are the children of God” with no, “She was the daughter of God,” with “the seeds of peace and happiness are already within you,” each and every one of you to, “the key lies with Her, she is the way, the truth and the light” “she is the dwelling of the light, the conqueror of the night, she is the temple, the alpha and the omega, the one and only God incarnate, divinity made flesh”
How disappointed she must have been, a child and manifestation of God Herself indeed, but only ever as an exemplar to all her fellow siblings the world over. A mirror of their own innate divinity.
One of her few true followers, William Blake, centuries later would write, “[S]he is the only God… and so am I, and so are you.”
Only the Tomato, the holy Tomato, (and the potato and the avocado. And You).
The nifty tomatists, ever concerned with maintaining their insecure pyramid, paid attention to the trouble brewing at the bottom, and in a move of structural genius, laid off their efforts of criminalizing, arresting and hanging more and more believers that were spreading the story and message of the young women, an effort that was only fanning her flame stronger.
They thought up a better tactic, they took this poor young woman whom they themselves had killed and instead of counter-productively combating her, they plucked her clean from the bottom of the ladder and placed her right at the very tippy top, turning her into a God, with a royal apotheosis, from where she no longer had the leverage to pose a threat of undermining the pyramid, but would instead ensure the survival of the very structure she struggled against, with politicians, popes, and popstars, Divine-Right Kings, Queens, Moguls and Magnates for years and centuries to come.
They took Che Guevara and slapped him on to mass-produced, dubiously sourced, ridiculously priced t-shirts.
Love live the Tomato, available now in exclusive health foods stores near you.
Legend has it, that three weeks later, three weeks after the young woman’s body was laid to rest in the soil, a smattering of her closest disciples, went to visit and pay their respects to their beloved teacher, and as they kneeled down by the mound of resting they saw teeny tiny sprouts, leaves and bud, emerging from the earth, ascending towards the sun, returning to life with the spring, resurrected by the thaw of winter, and softly they heard her words, you are the seed.
You too can go down, every once in a while, to the place she is buried, or to any patch of living earth, kneel down close, feel the soil between your fingers, let it enter beneath your nails and hear her whisper “you are the seed.”
