Paleo Spirituality

Today, while in church, I was struck with the idea of "Paleo spirituality"!  From these early paintings, from tens of thousands of years ago, we are struck with the strong need for humans of all early, and naturally later cultures such as our own, to fulfill their spiritual needs.


I think the idea of spirituality, of being in touch with something larger than ourselves, larger than our "tribe", and even larger than this world are universal.  In fact, I know that such is the case: however far back, and however wide you travel, spiritual things, universal truths, things we can never understand but that are crucial to us are understood to be of very great importance.

Even tens of thousands of years ago, our ancestors, who were genetically identical to ourselves, spent vast amounts of time and interest in exploring the spiritual.

Lascaux Cave Paintings: the prehistoric Sistine Chapel

Known as "the prehistoric Sistine Chapel," the Lascaux Caves, a cave complex in southwestern France, contain some of the most remarkable paleolithic cave paintings in the world, from at least 15,000 years ago.

Altamira Cave Paintings: as Picasso famously exclaimed, "after Altamira, all is decadence"

Interestingly, these ancient peoples only showed the human form obscurely; there appears to be a religious taboo against that...  only spiritual reasons could make them obey such an edict, or to compel them to go deep underground into dark caves to draw these animals.

At any rate, my point is that spirituality is obviously very, very important to all of us humans!  

Just as in our diet, which we have messed with in our arrogance, putting mass-produced, genetically modified grains and beans in the forefront of our diet, and vilifying the animal products to which we owe our very existence and supremacy in the animal world, we are also ignoring the spiritual side of our human nature!  

Only in very recent, modern times; probably since Marx and his ilk, have we denied God. 

I think the resulting degradation of our diet is a small, but devastating result of this wrong-ness.

Our hubris in thinking that we are the "be-all-and-end-all" will destroy us totally, if we go down this path to hell...

We are part of Nature!  We are part of God's world!!  

We are meant to eat His food, do His work, and enjoy the life He has designed.

If not?

We will continue on the disastrous path we are on:

1. Eating industrial manufactured foods
2. Working as if we are in Mordor, endlessly and joyously for the "good of the state" and our personal doom
3. Devoid of anything of the spirit, or of community, or of play!

I think the Paleo Diet is the "canary in the coal mine" about all of this:

"Our diet is really important!

Look at all that is wrong!!"

That's a very important warning, paleo/canary!

J