Written by Greg Parker- Ex-officio Bosshole
Itadakimasu
My son learned this phrase, as he wanders in Japan.
Itadakimasu speaks gratitude for food given. Itadakimasu is recognition that food depends on sacrifice of plants, animals, those in the chain of provision and the interconnectedness of the world we live in that makes any of the bites of food possible.
What a beautiful phrase.
I show up at a brewery to provide food. Some days I direct money, some days information. Most of this directioning I am responsible for is in service to Death. Irish Death.
A few months ago, a phrase hit me, right in the kisser. I live by Death. It’s probably not a coincidence that on the day I write this I don the Grim Reaper on my chest.
I live by Death. We Live By Death.
I connected these phrases yesterday morning in the presence of Natalia, my muse, wife, and luminous director of Discovery Lab School, a place that lives by life just beginning – school age children.
Natalia liked the connection of these phrases and suggested I write. When the Muse speaks, the wise ones tell me, listen.
She expressed that Iron Horse is something people want to join and know more of and this thread might be a part of why.
If I try to put my finger on what makes Iron Horse different and a place that attracts the heart, it’s our bevy of community-building practices that comes to me. I amuse myself writing this. The skeptic in me pops up right away. “Yeah, Greg, sure, community-building practices, how are those working out? Isn’t your business a mess?” You bet it is. That’s what community-building is. As we work to develop ways of relating that transcend and include the old hierarchical paradigm, we mess. Make one, live one, love one. When creating something that never existed before; a business that is heart first, that celebrates people joining and leaving, that embraces conflict and tension as the pathway to growth in addition to vision, it would seem that mess is inevitable.
A teacher of mine recently invited me to play with my idea of mess. I appreciate his suggestion. What is mess, anyway?
My orientation, for better and worse, has infused Iron Horse brewery from the start. I can’t help but make a mess. When the status quo leaves out heart, how can I not make a mess? A question that seems central to my being: Are we not all equal in the face of death? Are we all not equal in that we have a stomach and appetite and require death, to live? Are we not all worthy of autonomy and interdependence defined by our selves and our relationships?
It strikes me as odd that we blithely boss people around and grill up 163,750 cows on the 4th of July. Are we not equal in our appetite for food, life, freedom.
Itadakimasu, we live by the sacrifice of all things. We live by death.
It is this painful debt, this interdependence that underlies all that we do that Iron Horse tricked me into seeing. I didn’t create Irish Death, Jim Quilter did, with 14 billion years of universal inheritance that came before him. I inherited Death from Jim. Shit.
