Tattoo

As I mentioned a few days ago, I was recently looking for pictures of food related tattoos. I have thought about getting a tattoo for years, but last summer decided that it was time. I was in the midst of some major life changes and thought that a tattoo might be one way to mark, literally, both what was new in my life and what was consistent.

I wanted an image that would tie my previous church-based career with the new food-based direction I was taking. The connection is closer than it might appear at first glance. Food images are all over the Bible. Focusing just on the New Testament, there is Jesus' first miracle of turning water into wine at a wedding feast, feeding the crowds with the fish and the loaves, the Last Supper, and Jesus' post-resurrection appearance on the road to Emmaus when the disciples don't recognize him until he breaks bread. One of the most consistent images of heaven throughout the Bible is that of a great feast.

These images pop up so often for a reason. Eating with another person is incredibly important. It is hard to imagine the most important occasions in life, like weddings and funerals, without food being present. Kids whose families eat dinner together on a regular basis are socially and emotionally healthier than kids whose families do not eat together. In my time doing youth ministry, I experienced how important eating together is for teenagers to form a sense of community. Eating together, somehow, opens us up to what God wants to happen in our relationships.

For me, the move to feeding people physically is not far removed from putting them into a position to be fed spiritually. But coming up with the right image to capture all that was tough. I was going to have this tattoo for the rest of my life, so I wanted to be sure about it.

I played around with images of bread and wine, but was never really happy with what I came up with. Something about that just did not seem right. At the Easter Vigil this spring, the stating of the cultural mandate (for more about what this "cultural mandate" is all about, check this out) from the Genesis reading jumped out to me. "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it..." The idea that part of the reason for our existence on earth is to be fruitful (obviously this is not limited to having lots of children) has long been an important part of what it means to me to be a Christian.

There are all kinds of things that we encounter in our lives that are full of potential (artistic talent, tomato seeds, ideas about how to build a house) but need to be cultivated by our active involvement. One of the things I love about cooking is finding an incredible ingredient, like a Copper River Salmon, and figuring out how to bring forth every bit of its potential to be an amazing meal. That's one way to put the cultural mandate into action.

So back to the tattoo. The command to "be fruitful" got me thinking about images again. I couldn't exactly figure how a tattoo of a seed would look any different from a freckle, and when I searched for images of a tattoo of an apple, most of what I found was people who had tattooed themselves with the Apple Computer logo. I'm writing this on my MacBook and I own 2 iPods, but there was no way I was going to put something that looks like the logo of a company, even one that I like as much as Apple, on my body.

Then I returned to the idea of bread and wine, the most significant food images in Christendom. The processes of turning wheat into bread and grapes into wine are both incredibly simple, yet in the hands of great artists they end up with incredibly complex flavors and textures. Master bakers and winemakers reflect God's creativity when they are fruitful with their talent and with the fruit of the fields.

I knew I had my image after discussing this with my sister and brother-in-law. Monte pointed out that the grain of wheat must be cracked and the grape must be crushed for them to reach their potential. Cracked and crushed are not bad descriptions of the past two years of my life. One image that refers to my old life, my new life, and hints at the journey from the old to the new. Perfect.

I found some pictures online, took them to several tattoo parlors until I found an artist that felt "right," had him combine the pictures into one unified image, and walked away with this on my left calf.