In a society as broken as ours, where the “kin-dom of G-d” Jesus preached seems not-yet, I find it difficult to follow (let alone share) Jesus’ “Don’t worry…” philosophy and equally difficult to believe his romantic promise of “All these things will be given to you.” Sure, I can trust Jesus’ words for myself, since I’ve always had more than enough food, clothing and shelter.
But I cannot embrace Jesus’ Way without envisioning people like my friend Andrew. He and his family live in northern Kenya, where a severe drought is slowly creating famine. Though Andrew often “looks at the birds of the air,” he does so not from awe but rather from frustration because the heavenly Father to whom he prays is feeding the birds from his family’s already struggling garden! Some saints can muster up the generosity and hospitality necessary to welcome such birds, but most days I cannot summon such radical acceptance, such inner-grace. Instead, I angrily judge those creatures as guilty garden thieves and contrive ways to keep them out.
If G-d uses meager gardens to provide for the birds of the air, where is the divine provision for families like Andrew’s? What, I ask, does Jesus’ promise mean for those of us who are dying from lack of faith or food? These are some of the many questions I ask Jesus while we are working in the garden. And sometimes, if I’m listening, I hear him ask me the same questions. Those quiet, desperate moments are when I most watch and wait and pray for enough courage and understanding to walk in the Way of re-membrance.
When the pain of injustice confounds me, as it so often does, one Way I find solace is to replace my busy rushing with stopping to kneel or lay down in the dust, bow my head toward the earth and fold my hands into the soil. Such full body prayer grounds me in the mystery of who I am, who I am not and who G-d might be. Somehow, the world makes more sense from down there. It feels safer, smaller, slower, simpler. Even if I try, I cannot hurry up the growing process. Becoming takes time. When my hands become soiled, I feel at home and can more readily remember from where I have come and to where I am going. Sometimes, when I’m grounded, I even look forward to returning to the dust. A mother several seasons wiser than me once suggested I can feel that way only because I’m young, healthy and have no children who depend on me. She may be right. But whatever the reason, that’s how I feel sometimes.
Ironically, though I am the eldest of four siblings and as such desperately strive to create order from chaos, it calms me to see, smell, hear, touch, taste evidence that proves—despite my most valiant efforts—while I am always invited to partake of life, I will never be able to control it. Never. (And if you get to know me well, you will thank G-d for that. I know I do!) Life is bigger, smaller, older, younger than me. Life began before and will go on after me. And yet, I am part of its whole.
The place in the community garden that most reminds me of this holy mystery is the compost pile.
People often confuse compost with soil. Though they look similar, they are not the same. Another word for compost is humus (not to be confused with hummus, which comes from tahini and creamed chickpeas). Humus is the organic— living—part of soil. I love this humus, this compost. And because I was a language teacher before I became a gardener, I love words that are rooted in and remind me of humus. These include words like:
This simple ritual feels both defiant and sacred. Defiant because compost physically re-members, restores, reconnects what society systematically dis-members, disappears, buries or otherwise tries to forget. It also feels sacred because compost invites us to participate in a transfiguration that results first in redemption—a reclamation through union of what was once lost through division—and this redemption ultimately leads to rebirth.
If you struggle to believe in resurrection, sit in front of a compost bin for a few months and wait. Watch what happens. If you pay attention, you may notice how something dead can be involuntarily brought to life again—often more vigorously than life wrought through intentional human effort. But to get born again, first something must die.
The decomposition of becoming humus mirrors the composition of becoming human. Both involve layers and cycles of heat and time. According to Genesis in Jewish and Christian traditions, G-d simply said, "Let there be light!" and there was, like striking a match. Creating humanity, however, required more time and actions as well as words. G-d said, "Let us create humankind in our own image," and carefully commenced doing so with water, humus and a breath of wind.
Similar to becoming humus, becoming human requires humility. If we are never crushed and cooked down by the heat of life's layers, we can never be transformed. If we want to be reborn, we must first endure the hell fire that soils our appearance and turns upside down our ways of understanding. To generate the heat necessary to create humus, a gardener must carefully layer what is new, fresh and green between what is old, dry and brown. And every so often, the gardener also has to shake up the pile or overturn it in order to ensure all the layers interact. If done well, a compost pile can even serve as a water heater. (I have experienced a compost-heated outdoor shower, and it is exhilarating!)
But like the balance between youthful energy and well-seasoned wisdom, a pile with too little brown creates a hot, rotting stench that offends everyone, while too much brown creates cold, lifeless stagnation. Often the cost of preventing change and preserving things as-they-are is petrification—being petrified by fear can turn us into stone. Likewise, excluding all that is old, dry and traditional can create a hot mess. Such a mess leaves no room for breathing, listening, waiting, sinking, settling down and settling in. Devoid of air pockets, food scraps just rot because the light cannot get in.
In his song “Anthem,” Leonard Cohen also “looks at the birds of the air.” He opens with,
HumorAnyways. Words. Yes. I was telling you why I love compost. When it’s well-tended, compost delights and fills me with awe, joy and energy. I relish the moment when the house or office compost bucket grows full, so I can walk—sometimes happily humming, other times heavily “hmming…”—over to our South Early Street garden and dump what some call "waste" into the first of four bins. For when those cores, shells, grounds, papers and peelings are all "pressed down and shaken together,” the process of creating humus begins.
Humble
Human
Healthy
Humility
Holy
Whole
Home
Heal
Heat
Hum
Hmm…
This simple ritual feels both defiant and sacred. Defiant because compost physically re-members, restores, reconnects what society systematically dis-members, disappears, buries or otherwise tries to forget. It also feels sacred because compost invites us to participate in a transfiguration that results first in redemption—a reclamation through union of what was once lost through division—and this redemption ultimately leads to rebirth.
If you struggle to believe in resurrection, sit in front of a compost bin for a few months and wait. Watch what happens. If you pay attention, you may notice how something dead can be involuntarily brought to life again—often more vigorously than life wrought through intentional human effort. But to get born again, first something must die.
The decomposition of becoming humus mirrors the composition of becoming human. Both involve layers and cycles of heat and time. According to Genesis in Jewish and Christian traditions, G-d simply said, "Let there be light!" and there was, like striking a match. Creating humanity, however, required more time and actions as well as words. G-d said, "Let us create humankind in our own image," and carefully commenced doing so with water, humus and a breath of wind.
Similar to becoming humus, becoming human requires humility. If we are never crushed and cooked down by the heat of life's layers, we can never be transformed. If we want to be reborn, we must first endure the hell fire that soils our appearance and turns upside down our ways of understanding. To generate the heat necessary to create humus, a gardener must carefully layer what is new, fresh and green between what is old, dry and brown. And every so often, the gardener also has to shake up the pile or overturn it in order to ensure all the layers interact. If done well, a compost pile can even serve as a water heater. (I have experienced a compost-heated outdoor shower, and it is exhilarating!)
But like the balance between youthful energy and well-seasoned wisdom, a pile with too little brown creates a hot, rotting stench that offends everyone, while too much brown creates cold, lifeless stagnation. Often the cost of preventing change and preserving things as-they-are is petrification—being petrified by fear can turn us into stone. Likewise, excluding all that is old, dry and traditional can create a hot mess. Such a mess leaves no room for breathing, listening, waiting, sinking, settling down and settling in. Devoid of air pockets, food scraps just rot because the light cannot get in.
In his song “Anthem,” Leonard Cohen also “looks at the birds of the air.” He opens with,
“The birds they sang at the break of day.‘Start again,’ I heard them say…
Every heart to love will come, but like a refugee.
Ring the bells that still can ring.
Forget your perfect offering.There is a crack, a crack in everything.That's how the light gets in.”
Like humility and heat, humor also hastens transfiguration. Until we crack open enough to crack up and laugh a little at our fears, failures and imperfections, we cannot surrender them to the pile and begin to embody another Way. Leaving our lives in those layers requires us to re-Lent and release, to let go and exchange our striving and worrying for watching and waiting.
And so Earth invites us to participate in her rituals of re-membering, which give birth to humus—a creation process we will never be able to control. Only the Invisible can do that—those tiny fungi, worms, bacteria, all the microorganisms that enliven organic matter. Some call this science. I call it magic.
Likewise, becoming holy human—re-membering who we are, from where we have come and to where we are going—this also requires surrender to the Invisible, to the love, joy, doubt, sorrow, anger, confusion, epiphanies and other enlivening experiences that slowly heal what's been shattered. Some call this faith. I call it mystery.
I’d like to close with a passage from the wise Kentucky farmer, Wendell Berry. This is from “The Body and the Earth,” a chapter in his book entitled The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture. Here he teaches us how to re-member:
Whatever we choose to call it, this watch-and-wait Way echoes the always-enough ecology of the birds and lilies in Jesus' sermon. Why are we striving and stacking up for tomorrow? What we need is now. Here. This. If some of us are lacking, what we need for healing is to ask why, to literally re-member what we have dis-membered and to wait for it to become humus so we can become wholly human again.
Mother Teresa once wrote, “If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.” So then, let us gather around the compost bin. Let us invite even those—especially those—with whom we disagree to join us there. Let us watch and wait until we re-member from where we each have come, to where we all are going and why we need each other along the Way.
Perhaps this is part of what Jesus means when he promises if we seek first the kin-dom of G-d, the rest will follow.
And so Earth invites us to participate in her rituals of re-membering, which give birth to humus—a creation process we will never be able to control. Only the Invisible can do that—those tiny fungi, worms, bacteria, all the microorganisms that enliven organic matter. Some call this science. I call it magic.
Likewise, becoming holy human—re-membering who we are, from where we have come and to where we are going—this also requires surrender to the Invisible, to the love, joy, doubt, sorrow, anger, confusion, epiphanies and other enlivening experiences that slowly heal what's been shattered. Some call this faith. I call it mystery.
I’d like to close with a passage from the wise Kentucky farmer, Wendell Berry. This is from “The Body and the Earth,” a chapter in his book entitled The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture. Here he teaches us how to re-member:
“To try to heal the body alone is to collaborate in the destruction of the body. Healing is impossible in loneliness; it is the opposite of loneliness. Conviviality is healing. To be healed we must come with all the other creatures to the feast of Creation… Past the scale of the human, our works do not liberate us—they confine us. They cut off access to the wilderness of Creation where we must go to be reborn--to receive the awareness, at once humbling and exhilarating, grievous and joyful, that we are a part of Creation, one with all that we live from and all that, in turn, lives from us… Healing, on the other hand, complicates the system by opening and restoring connections among the various parts—in this way restoring the ultimate simplicity of their union. When all the parts of the body are working together, are under each other's influence, we say that it is whole; it is healthy. The same is true of the world, of which our bodies are parts. The parts are healthy insofar as they are joined harmoniously to the whole.”And so springtime and Lent are about re-membering and becoming both humus and human. Old and new, ancient and young, dead and alive, past and present, wisdom and passion, tradition and imagination, orthodoxy and mysticism, contemplation and action, wind and water, light and darkness; altogether are necessary for transfiguration, for redemption, for resurrection—for compost. We need each other precisely because we are different. Without you, I cannot be born again. Only after a hellish heat cooks our wet-on-dry layers can the pile settle down, cool down and reveal as humus what once was separate, and from this union raise up new life.
Whatever we choose to call it, this watch-and-wait Way echoes the always-enough ecology of the birds and lilies in Jesus' sermon. Why are we striving and stacking up for tomorrow? What we need is now. Here. This. If some of us are lacking, what we need for healing is to ask why, to literally re-member what we have dis-membered and to wait for it to become humus so we can become wholly human again.
Mother Teresa once wrote, “If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.” So then, let us gather around the compost bin. Let us invite even those—especially those—with whom we disagree to join us there. Let us watch and wait until we re-member from where we each have come, to where we all are going and why we need each other along the Way.
Perhaps this is part of what Jesus means when he promises if we seek first the kin-dom of G-d, the rest will follow.
