Melt your heart
Published Feb 14, 2008From Fannie Mays to Frango Mints, Hershey bars to Hershey’s Kisses, there never seems to be a meltdown where chocolate is concerned. Whether it lifts your spirits, raises your cholesterol or packs on a few pounds, serious fans of the indescribably delicious sweet stuff find chocolate irresistible at every turn.
With St. Valentine’s Day smack-dab in the season of Lent, it’s a challenge to forgo the temptation of those nuggets of mouth-watering indulgence. But perhaps considering the situation surrounding one of the sources of chocolate—before it is refined and processed—might put it in perspective and make the sacrifice more meaningful.
Depending on who you consider the expert, some will attribute the origins of the chocolate bean to the Aztecs while others credit Columbus and Cortez for recognizing its alluring value and packing it on board ship as they sailed away from exotic places and headed back home with their bounty.
Nevertheless, today the cacao tree is cultivated around the equator and known to be native to Central and South America. Specifically, the tree grows prolifically in the Amazon region of Brazil. Pulp-filled pods hang from these trees and when cut open reveal seeds that after being dried and processed become the chocolate beans that eventually find their way into stores and restaurants in the form of candy, hot cocoa and a variety of desserts.
Meanwhile, as children of all ages can be seen eyeing bakery shelves dotted with chocolate-frosting-slathered cupcakes, folks who live and work in places like the Amazon Forest are hungry for a sweet kind of equitable economics that was once the mission of Notre Dame de Namur Sister Dorothy Stang. She died a martyr Feb. 12, 2005, ironically just before Valentine’s Day, as she championed the cause of the poor farmer against the ranchers and loggers who unconscionably cut a destructive swath through the trees in order to further their greed-filled financial aspirations.
Who will take up Sister Stang’s cause? Who will carry her cross? Who will have the courage to continue cultivating the seeds of justice planted by the American nun?
Like bitter chocolate before it is sweetened with sugar, these issues—and so many more like them—leave an aftertaste. At best, it’s food for thought in this season of sacrifice and almsgiving.