Bread and Glitter article

I will be writing now and again for the KCBR arts journal, Bread and Glitter. It's a really wonderful exploration for our little family into the intersections between art, theology, and community. My first article for them, which is a combination and extension of several of my blogs about gardening, went up this week. It's called "Rotten Good Soil." You can read it here, and give B&G some lovin'.

That's amore? Woah.

Sometimes these days, it feels like I’ve been swept into a whirlwind. Days are swirling by, leaving a trail of debris on my heart.

There are lots of ways to say “change.” There’s the mild “modification,” mechanical “adjustment” or “remodeling,” clerical “amendment.” None of these describes what’s happening here and now in the middle of this glorious storm; what I’m marveling is not beige and nor is it of my own doing like a mark in a ledger or a shift in a schedule. This thing is forcefully mysterious, like a rip tide.

So what’s got me disheveled with a grin on my face? I’m knowing love, my friends. No, there’s not some dude I’m gaga over. I’m googly-eyed over a family and shocked to find myself in a tailor-made little spot in the middle of it all.

This is a shock because, while my natural family never withheld the expression of love, somewhere, I came to believe I was not right for anyone, not good enough, not worthy of esteem. According to my own estimation, my quiet disposition disqualified me from attention, my simple gifts were less valuable than those of others, and my fierce affection for others scared them off. And I began to say “no” to who I am.

There hasn’t been a single moment of shifting; instead it truly has been like being in the middle of a force of nature, with multiple things in flux at any given moment, nothing in its rightful place. Then, things come to rest, and I realize I know something new in the very center of me.

I know that to accept the identity God has given me means that I accept some limitations. I can’t be everything. It’s ok to not be everything. Geez, thank goodness! Something in that understanding broke a heavy burden on me, and gave me permission to receive what the Lord gave me long ago and to be who I am. I read this and think, “Well yeah, duh!” but there’s sure as hell a difference between knowing that in your head and believing it in your heart. To be able do the latter is a gift, a rare treasure.

So that’s really floaty and abstract. The way it plays out is with people. For the last four months I’ve been in consistent relationship with two groups of people: one, a group of learning leaders we refer to as the Collaborative. The other is my house church, primarily made up of artists and art students. In both of these groups, I’ve been challenged to expose myself, to risk loving other people in words and deeds. I sincerely thought, in my inmost being, that I would be ignored, rejected, or found a failure. How can it be that for years I have lived under that assumption?

The actual reaction has been the opposite.

Heroes have hugged me tight. Beautiful men of amazing character have told me they love me. Culinary geniuses have fed me with love. Busy pastors have listened to me and prayed for me. Brilliant artists have treasured my likeness with their pencils. It’s baffling, undoing, and altogether good. Because I do the same, with all joy.

It’s a marvelous exchange, a righteous reciprocation the likes of which I never dreamed. And yet, here I am, upside down in the middle of it.

Oh, just a sappy garden recap...

It’s a crispy-cold Friday morning, clear and sunny, and I am sitting here in my room staring out my window. Just recently, the trees out there were full of brilliant green leaves, their heavy branches ceremoniously waving in the wind. Now, lots of the leaves are gone, while others are faded greens or golds, or the color of rust. Again, the apartment building down the street is visible, reminding me of my placement right in urban Kansas City.

I’m wearing my coat and drinking a hot cup of coffee, because we can’t get our heat to turn on. It’s a strange reminder of the shifting season as I reflect with the Lord who has been with me this last 8 months, who has stirred my imagination, pricked my conscience, and developed friendships in the arena of gardening. Any day now, we’ll have a hard frost, and the garden will be officially over for the season. I feel a funny sort of grief about that, not too dramatic, but noticeable nonetheless. At the same time, I anticipate the “OVER;” I am longing to turn the page, to declare it “GOOD,” as the Lord did his work on the first day, before moving onto something even more fruitful.

Can we flip back through the pages first, though?

There was a dream in my heart to have a garden. I suppose it goes back to some dreary afternoon when I was little (and again, last year, when I was big), as I read stories like the Secret Garden, which painted gardens as hidden places of wonder and life and uncanny communion with beasts.

In late winter of this year, then, I asked our landlords if I could till up some of their spacious and then uncared-for yard. Since we already had a modest garden plot in our own backyard, my intention was simply to learn and to make use of something that had no function. I didn’t really expect they would say yes, but they did, and offered a sizable chunk of their space for our use, and granted us access to their home—and therefore their two surly adolescent boys, four darling little girls, an anxious German shepherd, and a formidable but dopey mastiff.

Come March, we started working the soil…which we discovered was healthy but littered with stones and bricks and other more interesting objects from a 16-plex which had been razed there years ago. In spite of the fact that I spent hours and hours digging stuff out, I was energized and happy, even drawing a sunshine with a happy face in my journal to illustrate my joie de vivre. The most beautiful thing about this phase was that, as I worked (sometimes with my roommate Dana, sometimes with other good friends who came along for the ride), I talked with God, and he spoke. There were sweet moments of hearing his sorrow and hopes over the neighborhood in which the garden is situated, and the people that walk by, or watch from the run-down apartments next door with lots of windows knocked out. My friend the Holy Spirit and me started to dream together about teaching people how to grow food on unused land, how to cook it, eat well, and enjoy others in the process.

Fencing was donated and put into place, seeds were bought, a hose was extended out to the plot, and then it was time to plant. What simplicity! At the right time and when the soil was not too wet, I planted flowers, beans, squash, and melons. You poke a couple of holes in the soil, you put a seed inside and cover it up, you water it gently for a while, and—bada boom!—you’ve got yourself some seedlings! It was a process so simple it made me uncomfortable. Would anything really grow? With each planting, I blessed the seeds like children, “May the Lord bless you and keep you; may he make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you.” Yet, at the same time, I told God it would be ok if nothing really grew, that the experience in itself would be fruit enough.

But to my joy, some plants poked their heads out of the ground; most survived and grew. There was a period of waiting, and of faithful tending—weeding, mulching, watering, thinning. In spite of two incredibly needy dogs, both of whom could kill me if they wanted, the times in the garden were mostly lovely and enchanting. I loved discovering what shapes the leaves took as they formed, how fuzzy the vines were on the squash plants, and the way the female melon flowers swelled into fruit like pregnant bellies.

Then there was fruit! Flowers! Vegetables! Beautiful beans, vibrant muskmelon, scary giant zucchini, and lovely summer squash. The zinnias blazed in color against the back stone wall. I came to understand that there’s nothing like picking something you grew, bringing it back to your kitchen, and enjoying it right away. As I’m not yet a parent, it might be one of the more fulfilling experiences I’ve had. If that sounds silly to you, grow a few things next year and you might change your mind.

I’m sad to say that the early summer was the apex of the experience and that things went gradually downhill from there. My zucchini, poor things, were brutally attacked by bugs. First it was teeny tiny aphids, and then some big old beetles. I let them conquer the plants, first one and then the other. Then they went after the summer squash, a truly beautiful delight of a plant that I was sad to see go down. I mysteriously lost a couple of muskmelon plants, while in the meantime, the watermelon grew slowly, and then ripened without me realizing it and were inedible. I only got two good ones off that plant, both in October!

My visits have become scarcer since summer closed. I’m largely deterred by the dogs, who, hungry for attention, swarm about forcefully and grasp at my attention in scary ways. They’ve made the little garden patch their domain, and I’ve resigned myself to it, resolving that if I have a plot there next year, there will be adequate fencing, in spite of possible cost. Luckily, what I have planted pretty well takes care of itself. There are turnips and rutabaga and cabbages growing still, while the butternut squash whose mother vines have not perished are still ripening until we get a hard freeze. Some of them are fighting hard against pests, but I don’t think that can be helped, as the rest of the vegetation in the yard was poisoned off in late summer and they have nowhere else to go.

And so it winds down, and my little plot and me prepare ourselves for the repose of winter. Though I used to hate this gray, barren season, I may indeed relish the chance to recoup, to reformulate my process and gather materials.

What I know right now is that it has been a good beginning. A foundation has been laid. Next year’s gardens(s?) will certainly not look the same, but I have no shame, no fear. I’m deeply grateful for the wonderful gift that was my secret garden.

Captivated by Rot

Last summer I was thinking about the parable of the 4 soils, found in Matthew 13. It makes clear that God’s word is not readily acceptable to everyone all the time, but instead can only be received by those with the right “soil.” Understanding, then, that I could receive God’s word only if my heart were of the right conditions, I began to pray that it would be so.

A year later, I had become a gardener. I had spent months learning the pillars of wisdom for caring for plants and putting them into practice. One of these pillars—perhaps the most important, in fact—is the soil. The state of the soil will determine the ability of seeds to sprout, the depth to which their roots can grow, and the amount of nutrients available to help them grow strong. Healthy soil should be dark, meaning it is nutrient-rich; it should be loose but not sandy so as to let the right amount of water pass through.

One of the things that surprised me as I learned about soil is that it can be improved, changed, built. It’s not something that happens instantaneously, but it can be done. Where there are rocks and weeds, they can be removed with some labor. Harder to change is what is called the structure of the soil. This is, essentially, like it sounds; it refers to what makes up the soil and how much space is between its parts. The trick to obtaining healthy soil structure is to add organic matter. That’s fancy-speak for dead stuff: dead leaves, dead grass, manures, and rotted-down plants or food all will do the trick. A letter-writer named W.C. quoted in Wendell Berry’s book The Unsettling of America sums it up nicely: “Yes, rot is the word. Rot means death, and without death and rot there can be no new life.”

Somehow, in the context of nature—gardens, forests, oceans—the idea of death turning to life makes good sense. Nothing is wasted that is in the cycle of nature, because death really does feed life. The rind of my butternut squash and the cores of the boxful of apples will rot all year in a pile. They’ll begin as nice, everyday versions of scraps, but soon turn into slimy, smelly versions of themselves. From there they will rot until they’re no longer recognizable, but have all broken down into a bunch of near-black bits. And then, they’ll be turned into the soil of the garden and make food and space for the broccoli or tomatoes that will grow there, which will eventually feed me, my roommates, our friends, and strangers.

A few nights ago I was lying in bed, lights out, having just read a journal entry from a few months after my mom had passed away four years ago. I think I was thanking God for the ways that he has used that grief and hardship in the years since. Then, in a moment, something clicked into place, and I understood that the truth of good soil in the physical is truth in the heart, too. I began to remember different kinds of death that have, in their way, rotted and stunk, and slowly disintegrated into the substance of my past. Those things have made my character what it is now.

And I laughed out loud, lying in bed in the dark, because I realized that the decisions that are so difficult today, and the ways that I am laying down things that I want because God is asking me to, are building really good soil in my heart. As the years go by, as I continue to make sacrifices, I will become of rich and meaty character like the best of soils, and the things that God speaks to me will grow strong and mighty because I receive them. There is no need to worry, then, because what he plants is good.

Putting a trend to the test

To those who are in tune with current trends in our culture, it’s not much of a surprise to hear that we are interested in local and organic food, in making things from scratch, and in all manner of time-sucking interests and practices that were, for the most part, not taught to us when we were children. Examples are many and readily available: the surge of interest in “artisanal” ice cream, the addition of the nearly meaningless term “natural” on food containers, and the commonality of the reusable shopping bag.

Although I’ve been distinctly inclined to the from-scratch mentality since I started shopping for my own groceries as a sophomore in college, part of me has hesitated to fully throw myself into my relatively new interest in gardening because I fear that I am being unduly influenced by a trend. Let’s face it: I have enough trouble embracing fashion fads, which are of relatively low cost in money or time. So putting oodles of time and money and heart into something that’s going to pass soon, which I’ll look back on with pity for my impressionability, is not something I want to do.

Nonetheless, at each new step of involvement in this vein of things, I discover in myself new passion, the kind of which I had nearly thought myself incapable. Yet, I am finding that I hold convictions of absolute good and bad, beneficial and harmful, when it comes to the mainstream modern lifestyle, especially as it pertains to food and land production. I’m not usually a super-opinionated person, so this has been interesting. But then, everything about this complex of living holistically (gardening for food, food from scratch, community and physical health in it all) keeps on making sense.

About a month ago, I decided to resign myself to the fact that I really care about this stuff and start truly learning about it—not just in the current, trendy practices, but also in its history and deeper ramifications on our society. To begin my education, I turned to Wendell Berry, a fellow completely unknown to me just months ago. I discovered him not in the form of his many zealous essays, but in a thin tome of poetry called Sabbaths, which are the reflections of Mr. Berry as a farmer, thinker, and writer, on Sabbath days over the course of several years. I was captivated by these poems because they reflected the things that I love about nature, wild and tamed.

Poems are a bit ethereal, though, and so after finishing the volume, I ordered the first book of essays Mr. Berry wrote about agriculture, entitled The Unsettling of America. Thus far (I’m about half-way through it), the book focuses largely on the shifts in agricultural practices and policies in the first three quarters of the twentieth century (it was published in 1977). Reading this book has been a bit uncanny; it’s one of those rare scenarios where you read something and you find that it at once articulates beliefs you hold but have never expressed, and fills in the gaps of your own knowledge of the causes and effects of these beliefs.

Some friends and me have been learning, over the summer, about the power of questions. “Questions,” said my friend Linnea, “are creative.” We find that, as we learn to look carefully at our lives and our culture, we can ask how and why things are as they are. Why did we grow up in suburban homes, eating (in my case) meals out of boxes and bags? How did farming become so big-business? What are the effects of that on our everyday lives, the way we live, our health? Have these things been beneficial to us?

It’s a scary thing to question, to make a habit of questioning. I’m only beginning to learn. And yet it has beautiful gifts to offer. When I question, I find out what I believe, what I know, and what I don’t know. Laying down the prideful assumption that I know it all or even can discover all, I learn to see things that before were invisible to me. I also become more comfortable with mystery. Guided by questions, life can be more intentional, and hence more impacting, because as questions are raised, and answers are found or attempted, new paths can be forged into uncharted territory.

So it is that I’m beginning to ask questions about land, food, health, and communities. Maybe it’s the asking of the questions that can distinguish a fad-follower from a true believer.

Life, Mind and Garden Abuzz

We are, at this moment, getting slimed by a furious thunderstorm, slap-dab in the middle of a Sunday morning. The past 2 weeks have given us lots of rain.

Classic images of farmers will tell you that rain is good. I think of rain sometimes along with an image of a leather-faced farmer looking up to the sky, straw hat tipped upwards, along with eyebrows knit in concentrated hope. While our culture is on the whole disconnected from this reality, it remains a reality nonetheless that rain brings life.

And life abundantly. Two days ago I went to check on my garden, after taking a blissful break for a week while the rains came down. Again, absence made the growth more apparent; I was surprised that the vines had nearly carpeted the whole patch. The baby butternut squashes, barely existent the week before, had doubled in size. The greatest surprise waited in the summer squash bush, like an obese child playing hide-and-go-seek behind a lamppost. One squash lay, brilliant yellow, warty and swollen, nested in the arms of the plant. It was about two-thirds the length of my arm.

Greater shock yet remained. I pushed aside the furrily-spikey leaves of the zucchini plant to see whether it had yet decided to produce fruit. Bees and beetles buzzed beneath its canopy, and yellow flowers continued to unfurl daintily. Don’t be fooled by these fairy-like images, though. Because underneath at all, I finally discovered an ogre of a zucchini, stretched out and snoozing, camouflaged dark green under the plant. Uttering expletives of surprise, I pulled the thing off its vine (after photographing it, duh!), feeling it drool juice from this new wound out onto my fingers. It was heavy, several pounds, and the size of my lower leg. There was another, just inches shorter and ounces lighter.

Meanwhile, there are other fruits and vegetables in excess all over town. There’s a crabapple tree I know of that’s nearly ready to be shaken and freed of its rosy-green fruit, as well as a tree dripping with purple-gray plums outside the café where I work. I could be a full-time homesteader right now—picking, cutting, pitting, peeling, baking, freezing, drying, canning. There’s more around, and available for little to no cost, than we have time to prepare or put away.

This makes me wonder: Why seasons? Think about the contrast.

Now, it is summer. Color abounds, in landscape and in diet. Flowers cut from gardens (even from vacant lots, for the imaginative) endlessly adorn our tables. Our meals are stuffed with fruit of the land. First come the strawberries, followed by blueberries and melons. Beans, beets, broccoli, greens, peppers. And the corn—fresh and tender, exploding sweetness into the mouth. Fuzzy peaches, bumpy squash, plump cherries. One can be bored neither by the cuisine nor the activities of living, for the sun allows us to be out at all hours. Then there is the preservation of all things edible, which once occupied the summers of those on this land. This allowed not only for the nourishment of the body in times of scarcity, but also for variety in dullness. How sweet, lovely, and precious is a jar of homemade jam in the depths of winter, when we are just dying to see real, deep reds or blues on our plates! These things maintain the memory of warmer times.

Fast forward: Winter. Nothing grows here. We eat lots of animal products, and root vegetables stored in cellars somewhere. Pies and cakes are filled with spices, pumpkin (another veggie stored in cold, dark places), dried fruits, or nuts. We pay fortunes for fruits imported from other parts of the country or of the world and for meager portions of green things. In the meantime, we stare gloomily at barren landscapes of skeletal trees and drab colors.

Although the variety is enjoyable, it can also be a bit jarring. Sometimes, although I am always safe and fed, I feel like I will waste away in the winter. Why is it like this? Why such extremes of abundance and lack? I ask not because I am altogether ignorant of the mechanics of weather, but because I believe in a Maker who intentionally designed this part of the world to function in this way. Does not this entire world speak something from his heart? So what is it about the juxtaposition of seasons, the constant rhythm of yearning in winter and overflowing fullness in summer, that he wants to speak?

I want to raise the question, and mull over it a bit longer yet. For the time being, there are summery things to be done, providing a lovely opportunity for thought and discussion on the matter.

Summer Abundance

We are entering the fullness of summer. In past decades, centuries, summer was the time of abundance and fruitful work that, in many ways, sustained the rest of the year. Little House in the Big Woods (a recent and worthy literary foray) describes the bustle of this time, when Pa and friends would work the fields from dawn until dusk, while Ma and the children would be busy at home, putting away the fruits of the earth.

As a first-year vegetable gardener, I am newly, wonderfully being initiated into the rhythm that naturally governs this part of the world. With the enthusiasm of a novice, I prepared the ground and sowed seeds, all the while unsure that anything would be produced. Late May and early June caught my excitement; the seeds had begun to sprout and take root, forming small plants. The garden mothered by my roommate Wendy was beginning to produce lettuce and herbs.

Then I went away for a week. While I was gone, to the relief of my dog-fearing roommates, there was abundant rain and some sun. As I groggily looked out the kitchen window the morning following my return, I was thrilled to see a full-fledged garden: thriving herbs, happy tomatoes, abundant lettuce and chard. Evidence the Ziploc bag full of homegrown lettuce in the fridge and Wendy’s continual encouragement to give away lettuce and herbs to any visitors.

The full shock of summer came when I, several days later, made it over to my own garden-child, at the loft around the corner. The entire yard was grown up; there were weeds three feet high which had only been 6 inches when I left. A volunteer pumpkin plant had slashed its way another 4 feet through the tall brush (see Dana weeding around it in the photo). The dogs, as ever running happily around, resembled cheetahs speeding through the African brush. And the garden! Weeds I had not yet uprooted in the aisles had spread into a rough green shag carpet. Along the back wall, the sunflowers were nearly taller than I and beginning to form flowers. Bright zinnias had at last awoken, and the nasturtium with their red-orange blossoms formed an unruly base to the bed. Best of all, the vegetables were thriving: the beans formed a zealous two rows and were beginning to bear flowers and fruit, while the squash and melons were beginning to vine along and creep.

About when I spotted the zucchini, something changed for me. The two plants I had left of them were growing giant leaves bigger than my head from vines sturdy and furry. I imagined all the vining plants looking like that, and suddenly the garden seemed very small, and I knew that I was going to have a great deal of squash on my hands. It was no longer an uncertainty, but a concrete future happening that required preparation.

There awaits, therefore, a good deal of work to be done—not only in keeping a garden from becoming a jungle, or harvesting its fruit, but in putting its fruit to good use, honoring my own work, that of my friends, and of the land. As we discovered in picking cherries and jamming them, often the preservation is the greater of the two tasks. This is all well and good. I look forward to learning the art of canning and freezing and storing away, to finding the joy in the task and also in, with each one, easing a bit more the financial burden on a household like ours that yearns to host and serve and provide.