step one: check!

So, T and I decided to start a garden at our place here in Nashville.

By the way, as a side note, I'm sending out an alert here to all my friends who continue to read this blog--please come and visit. Our place is small but oh so cheery. Our landlords let us choose the colors of the walls, and we picked a light green (I believe the color swath said something like "sea breeze"). I wasn't sure when we initially got here if it looked good or if it would go well with our furniture, art, etc. But as it turns out, the fit couldn't be better. Our art and furniture is, for the most part, rather shabby and unimpressive. But somehow the wall colors bring out all of the life and vibrancy in our home decor. So I'm grateful. Our neighborhood is slightly sketchy but mostly delightful. We've gotten to know several of our neighbors now, who have been really kind to us and invited us into their homes. We're taking them all sugar free, dairy free, wheat free blackberry muffins tomorrow, the blackberries for which T harvested herself last week from some bushes growing at Shelby Bottoms park (which is about a mile or so from us). There was a price to pay for the blackberries, however--scrapes from the "extremely aggressive" thorns and, more seriously, chiggers. I feel bad looking at all the whelps on T's poor body. She bravely suffers for the greater good--yummy muffins.

But back to the original topic of the post. Ever since we met our sorely missed friend Steven in Austin last year, Tish and I have talked about starting a garden once we moved here (well, to be completely accurate, we mostly talked about helping Steven with his garden in Austin, since we thought until May that I hadn't been admitted anywhere). Steven does many things well, but perhaps his greatest gift is narrating his passions in such a compelling way that something of that passion is birthed in you as you listen to him speak. His vision of the shalom of God filling the fissures and brokenness of the quotidian in the abandoned places of empire is so hopeful, so winsome. Steven is not trying to become a celebrity or to posture himself, he is simply a faithful Christian brother who wants to be part of a movement to create urban spaces where "it is easier to be good," as Dorothy Day put it. His love for Wendell Berry has led him to see the interconnectedness between living lightly upon the land by intentionally placing ourselves closer to the means of production of our food and the empowerment of the poor.

The practice of growing one's own food is an act of cultural subversion. It undermines the dynamic of exclusivity that operates in gentrifying neighborhoods. Industrial food production, even big organic (e.g. Whole Foods) depends upon the commodification of food and the consumption by the privileged class of a certain kind of food aesthetic. This dynamic, of course, contributes to the relational distance between rich and poor and white and non-white by highlighting the inability of the unprivileged to participate in these patterns of consumption. Food production on a local scale traverses these seemingly intractable social boundaries because it is physical work, humbling work. The skills required are not highly technical, they are not the province of the bourgeois, but are instead accessible to all. The work is difficult enough that it abases the wealthy and dignifying enough that it lifts the head of the poor. Furthermore, the result is food that is highly nutritious and visually appealing, and, perhaps most importantly, radically inexpensive. After a very small initial investment, if one is careful to save seeds from one's current plants, one can operate a garden for virtually nothing. I thank Steven for showing me how intrinsic a part of the dance of shalom in our city streets gardening is.

Alas, however much I can go on about the beauty and holiness and sacramentality of gardening, blah, blah, blah, I have much zeal and no knowledge. I literally have no idea where to start on a garden. I am, unfortunately, a child of the suburbs and then, more recently, an oblivious urban denizen. I have lived virtually my entire life apart from the means of the production of my food. Somewhat humorously, T and I went to this meeting about community gardens at the eastside Community Center on S. 8th St. the other day. This completely amazing guy Sizwe was answering some questions we had about how to get started, and he just said, spend time with your plants. Sit with them. Listen to them. They'll tell you what they need. And I thought to myself, dude, you have no idea how disconnected from nature I really am. I need a diagram. So, some new friends of ours came to our rescue, letting us borrow their copy of Square Foot Gardening. That was helpful. Stage one of growing your garden is sprouting your seeds indoors. I've never done this before, and I didn't know what to expect. So, I laid out some seeds on a paper towel, moistened the towel, placed the towel on a plate, and set a plastic bag loosely over the plate. Then I waited for two days. Then, voila! Seeds sprouted. For me, each one of these newly sprouted seeds was a small miracle, an inbreaking of the kingdom of God. In the midst of this groaning, violent world, God has given us visual reminders that he has not abandoned us to our own devices. I sat in silence for a little while before my newly sprouted seeds, feeling the holiness of their liturgy of growth, of their silent worship of their creator. Surely the creator of the mighty universe uses the weak things, and the things that are not, to shame the strong. I end with a quote, Mewithoutyou's paraphrase of Elijah's encounter with God in 1 Kings 19 in "The Dryness and the Rain":

First came a strong wind,
ripping off rooftops like bottlecaps
and bending lampposts down to the ground.
Then came a thunder shattering my windows,
but you were not that strong wind or that mighty sound
that left the barn in shambles, the rabbit hutch in ruins,
the split-rail fence splintered and the curtains torn,
all the cows out from the pastures trampling on the pumpkins
and the horses from their stables ambling in the corn.