Yesterday I harvested 47 shallots and set them out to dry on the picnic table.
It's pure grace this whole food business.
OK, so I had to buy the bulbs but apart from that I set them in the soil and nature did the rest.
If I wanted to I could plant my 47 shallots and by grace I would have maybe 5 times that amount next year.
That is if the rains fell and my soil remained fertile of course, things which we take for granted but are not perhaps the case- we rely on things that are outside our control
Its scary how disconnected we all are to the things that really matter. Here is the deal.
You can eat money but it is not packed with vitamins.
It will not keep you healthy eating money.
In fact most of us are reliant on a type of virtual money that comes out of back machines, theoretical money.
But we need the actual physicality of food and clean water.
That's one of the reasons it is good to grow your own food if you can. It grounds your faith in a good way. We depend on grace.
How do we get our water? It's pumped to us.
How do we get our food?We take our virtual money from the bank machine and drive up to Mr Tesco. There we have faith that the big lorries will have brought in the goods in the middle of the night and that we will be able to get the stuff we need.
But what would happen if the lorries stopped rolling into Tesco's tomorrow night for a month?
We would go hungry.
We would have to grow our own food if we knew how on land which we don't own---
Not that it would be a bad thing either.
We seem to have belief that getting our hands dirty is a bad thing. Growing our own food?
I've a degree don't you know. I didn't spend all that time in school and working up through the company to have to grow my own food. Thats for farmers, the guys in school who didn't really have brains but could drive tractors. I'm smart, I'll use my brain.
But we're not really that smart if we don't see that getting our hands dirty is a good thing. We are linked to the physical world, we are formed from dust and return to dust-literally. We eat food that comes from the land and water and air then crap that same food.
And dust is not a bad thing.
God made dust. Jesus made dust. Holy Spirit made dust.
And they said that it was good-good like the most beautiful thing and then some more.
So we can not turn our nose up at dust and soil and be afraid of getting out hands dirty. The soil is part of our hands.
The soil gives us what we need to live-what did you eat for breakfast?Or lunch?
It was from the soil.
Ever since I started planting some vegetables I have found the internet a foreign place-it does not seem like reality even though I lived there for a long time. I am living there now. But where is the physical, earthy aspect to it all? If you have read this far something is going on in your brain but there is a physical aspect missing to our relationship.
It is dishonest or something because I can not shake your hand or read your face, in fact you may be faceless all together-it is abstract.
And I'm not sure thats the best way to conduct our friendships. I have 206 friends on Myspace but can you call some a friend if you have never physically met them? Perhaps a virtual friend is not a real friend-I just don't know.
Is it a hyper-post modern world?Secular? Can art make a difference? How do you write a good song?
Don't know-but I do know (yet not enough) that was it not for the soil and air and water I would not be here. And neither would you.
So respect the soil.
Go and get your hands dirty.
Ground your faith.