soil – Salvaged Faith

Alternatives to Herbicide

Posted on June 18, 20151 Comment

I always through there were two options when it came to weeds.

1) you could spray chemicals all over them and hope they die… or use more natural chemical reactions like vinegar and hot water to cause them to wither.

2) you could get out there with a hoe, like my deda (grandpa) always did, and take them out by hand.

This year, I’m taking a course on organic ministry at a farm near Norwalk. We spend roughly half the day in conversation and reflection, have some personal retreat time, and do some work in the gardens themselves.

So far, the thing I have learned that has stuck with me the most is that there are other options when it comes to weeds.

Weeds thrive, you see, because the soil conditions promote their growth. And the weeds themselves tell you what the soil needs in order to be more healthy OR what type of plans you should be planting there instead.

Stinging nettle can indicate that the soil is acidic… so maybe you want to plant hydrangeas or blueberries there. Or, you could work to improve the soil conditions by adding dolomitic limestone and making the soil more neutral.

Chicory or mustard weeds are a sign that the ground is hard and too compacted. You can break up the soil by planting sweet clover that will help break up the soil and replenish nitrogen. Brassica crops (like broccoli and cabbages) also will flourish under these conditions.

The list goes on and on.

I was spending time with a group of clergy colleagues this week and we were talking about difficult people in our churches. People who take up a lot of time or who talk too much in meetings, or are always complaining about something. We all have them in our churches, and if we are honest with ourselves, sometimes WE are that person.

Our tendency is to see these people as weeds. We wish they weren’t there. We’d like to pull them up by their roots or change them.

But what if, instead, we stopped and asked what were the conditions that allowed their behaviors to flourish?

What if someone talks too much in a meeting because we haven’t created space for other voices to be heard?

What if someone is constantly complaining because there is something else going on in their life and it is a sign of a pastoral care need?

What if that person who always takes up too much of our time is a sign of our lack of good, healthy boundaries?

And what if instead of focusing so much of our worry on the weeds, we instead worked to strength and plant things that we want to flourish in that space?

What if we shifted the meeting format to have more small group conversation time?

What if we made a policy to only accept a complaint if there was a constructive response along with it, or a commitment to volunteer to be part of the change?

What if we nurtured a community of care with trained lay folks who helped with congregational care instead of trying to do it all on our own.

All of a sudden, our lives are not consumed with stamping out weeds, but with promoting growth and health and vitality in our gardens and in our churches.

a billion organisms and the Body of Christ #iaumc15

Posted on June 8, 2015Leave a comment

Did you know that soil is incredibly diverse and complex? It might look like simple dirt, but one handful contains more living organisms than there are people on the planet.

And every part of the soil, every organism has a part to play. They affect chemical and physical properties. There are a billion bacteria in one gram of fertile soil that consume what is produced by green plants… there are fungi that decompose materials, there are soil animals that consume and decompose and feed on one another and leave channels in the soil that increases infiltration of minerals and water and oxygen.

And all of these living organisms live off of and feed off of one another. It is their interaction that makes soil healthy and thriving and good.

In his book, The Third Plate, Dan Barber describes the “war” that is going on in the soil we walk upon. It is a class system where:

Jack pointed to the soil. “There’s a war going on in there…”

first-level consumers (microbes), the most abundant and miniscule members of the community, break down large fragments of organic material into smaller residues; secondary consumers (protozoa, for example) feed on the primary consumers or their waste; and then third-level consumers (like centipedes, ants, and beetles) eat the secondaries. The more Jack explained it, the more it started to sound like a fraught, complex community…

Fred Magdoff, likened the process to a system of checks and balances. “To me there is real beauty in how it works,” he said. “When there is sufficient and varied food for the organisms, they do what comes naturally, ‘making a living’ by feeding on the food sources that evolution provided… What you have is a thriving, complex community of organisms.”

I have been thinking about the immense complexity of dirt and what it means for us as the church.

We have been inundated with a move towards “simple church” and we talk so much about unity and yet I wonder what would happen if instead we embraced the incredibly complex, diverse, thriving nature of soil as a metaphor of our life together.

It is actually what we find in the Body of Christ as described by Paul in 1 Corinthians 12. We have feet and hands and eyes and hearts and livers and spleens. We all play a part. We might look at others and think, “I don’t need you,” but Paul says we are wrong.

In our Iowa Annual Conference right now, we are divided. We are different. We don’t read scriptures the same. We feel differently about human sexuality. We aren’t sure what we should do about those folks on the margins, our brothers and sisters, who are gay or lesbian or bisexual or transgender or still discovering. Underneath it all is a different understanding of how we understand the scriptures.

And sometimes, that diversity feels like a war. It feels like the battle Jack described the soil beneath us. We are chewing each other up and spitting each other out. And I hate the way my brothers and sisters are hurt and damaged by comments that cut to the core of their very being. Especially as I watch them walk away from the Body of Christ.

When you focus on the conflict that diversity creates, like Jack did, you want to strip out everything that is different to protect yourself and others. We want simple things. We want unity, which means, we want to all be the same.

But to be healthy, we need diversity. We need difference. We need checks and balances. We need to remind each other of the importance of the bible and scripture and justice and mercy and grace and love. It comes from both sides. We need to listen. We need to hold one another accountable. We also need to challenge one another. We need to say things that are difficult to hear. We need to be willing to speak the truth in love.

And together, the interaction of all of our different parts creates something beautiful and mysterious and powerful.

Friends, we might look like United Methodists, but a little deeper under the cover of our identity, we are incredibly complicated. We are men and women, people of all sorts of shades of skin, languages, eye colors, theological perspectives, ideas, gifts, skills, ages…

I need you. All of you. And together, God wants us to be amazing.

Listening to the Earth

Posted on April 26, 2015Leave a comment

Our entire world is greening up this time of year, isn’t it. The trees are leafing out. The grass is vibrant. Shoots of green spring out of mulched patches of wood and earth.

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.

And as we walk through the springtime here in Iowa, our hearts do feel at peace.

It’s like we take one big gigantic sigh of relief that winter is over.

He makes me lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside still waters; he restores my soul.

This world is amazing.

And in the midst of the green and purple and white and yellows of this time of year, we carved out space in our civic and religions calendars to celebrate this world. To honor the earth. To plant some trees. To remind ourselves once again of our need to care for this planet.

In the beginning, God made the heavens and the earth and declared them good.

And then, that very same God formed us from the dust of the earth and gave to us a precious task… to care for the world God had made.

From the ancient Israelites to the earliest followers of Christ, caring for the Earth was an important means of honoring and praising our Creator.

The General Board of Church and Society put out a resource a few years ago that remind us that ancient cultures worshipped a whole realm of Gods that each controlled a different part of nature. And so as they sought to control the world: to produce a harvest or stop torrential rains, they would honor and worship this God or that.

But we believe in one God, and we believe this world is not fragmented but interconnected. We believe every part of this creation is in the hands of our Creator and that every piece of the earth tells of God’s goodness. As Jesus noted in our gospel reading this morning – the stones themselves shout God’s praises.

And the ancestors of our faith saw that this interdependent world works well when it is cared for and that it fails when it is damaged or neglected. “In response to their understanding of God and the natural world, they created an ethos for living in healthy relationship with God, the Earth, and one another.”

Today, we refer to this as stewardship.

At our leadership retreat this spring, we talked about how stewardship was a core value of who we are here at Immanuel United Methodist. We believe we are called to the thoughtful and prudent use of God’s blessings.

One of those blessings is this earth. The earth that sustains and gives us life. The earth itself speaks God’s praises.

Yes, the rocks would cry out with shouts of joy if we were silent. And if we quiet our lives just a little and pay attention, we can hear the dirt speak.

This year, I wanted to feed that part of my soul that likes to play in the dirt, so I am currently taking a year-long continuing education course called “Organic Ministry.” I have been surprised by how many times I discover something new we should be learning… or we shouldn’t have forgotten… about our world. It has been a wonderful opportunity to listen to the earth and hear what it is telling us about God’s glory.

The first thing I’m hearing the earth speak is that everything truly is connected. We simply cannot sustain ourselves on our own. And God has provided this rich world of resources to give us life.

You see, good soil isn’t just something that farmers and gardeners care about. Soil makes our lives possible.

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. God our creator has provided.

This is not something that we often think about, but one little clump of dirt can hardly do much. All by itself, that clump of dirt would become dry and would not have the room for anything to take root within it.

But when one clump of dirt is surrounded by millions of other little dirt particles, then, it is something to be reckoned with! We know that the outermost layer of our planet is soil… but did you know that five tons of topsoil spread out over an acre of land would only be as thick as a dime? We need soil and lots of it to have abundant life.

How many of you slept on soil last night? Well, where do you live? What is your home built on?

How many of you are wearing soil today? Cotton grows in soil! Just check the label on your clothing.

What about eating soil? Just think about all of the foods that you have eaten this week that were grown in the soil, or medicines that were taken from the ground, or water that we have drank that has flowed through and been cleansed by the soil.

The second thing the earth is trying to tell us is that whether we are aware of it or not, is that we have a relationship with the earth.

It is not simply a stockpile of resources that we can use, but our actions impact the health of our world and its ability to continue to sustain us. The soil itself is like a living and breathing organism we must care for.

We think about dirt as dead matter, but in reality it is organic – full of both living and dead organisms. Fungi and bacteria help break down matter into soil and animals such as earth worms churn and nurture the earth. Without all of that living and breathing of the soil – life as we know it would cease.

Now, as a farm girl, I thought I knew this truth well. The soil that we faithfully plant our grains in each spring needs thoughtful and prudent care. We can’t simply plant corn in the same field every single year and expect our harvests to increase. A simple practice like crop rotation insures that vital nutrients like nitrogen are returned to the soil. That describes a relationship we have with the earth, where we listen to what it is telling us and we adapt and act in a new way so that all benefit.

But if we pay better attention to the earth, we begin to see that it thrives on diversity. It is often said that a handful of soil has more living organisms than there are people on the earth. Like the body with many parts that Paul describes in First Corinthians, every part is essential to health.

Yet we gradually strip out the essentials when we plant fields upon fields of only corn or beans for the sake of convenience and production.

As we listen to the earth, conservationists and farmers and gardeners are rediscovering the benefits of companion plants, and smaller scale farms with greater rotation. We are rediscovering that if we care for the soil, the soil will take care of the things we want to grow.

The last thing we hear from the earth today, is that it needs rest and renewal just like we do.

We look out this morning and we can see the flowers budding and hear the birds chirping the sun is shining… and it all sings God’s praise precisely because just two months ago the earth was brown and dormant.

Those of us who experience all four seasons are not doubly blessed, but blessed four times over because in each transition, we witness the hope and the promise and the love of God. We see life bursting forth. We watch things die and have the opportunity to rest, to find Sabbath in the cold winter months… holding fast to the promise the new spring of resurrection is just around the corner.

The world is a miracle.

It is a treasure.

When the Ancient Israelites noticed that everything in this world is interdependent, this is what they are talking about. The dirt and the air and the sun and plant life and our lives are all interconnected and this beautiful system God created works – as long as we take care of it.

Three Simple Rues: Do Good

Posted on July 13, 2008Leave a comment

http://sermon.net/swf/mpp.swf

Sermon Text: Psalm 119: 105-112, Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23
Hymns for the Day: For the Beauty of the Earth, Thy Word is a Lamp, Stay in Love with God

This morning, we have the chance to explore Wesley’s second rule… Do Good… but before we do – I have a quick pop quiz for you all… Who remembers what the first rule is? Who remembers what we talked about last week?

That’s right… Do No Harm… Last week, we began this short series by talking about the things that we should avoid if we want to keep our hearts and our minds and our bodies focused on the Kingdom of God. And while the list of “don’ts” in our faith can sometimes be discouraging – we were also comforted by the notion that Christ will teach us and guide us – that his yoke is easy and his burden is light.

This week – our general rule is to do good. And we get the chance to explore our rural roots as we think about what it means to not only do good – but to become good soil. Matthew’s parable of the crazy gardener – the one who threw seed everywhere – on the path, on the rocks, among the weeds and finally in good soil – helps us to understand what kinds of things we need to cultivate in our lives for the good news of God to grow.

I love these parables of Matthew – probably because I love the earthiness of them. I love the fact that they make you think about getting your hands dirty. You see, even before we moved back to Iowa, I knew that one of my top priorities wherever I would land would be to plant a garden. Planting a garden – putting roots into the ground – meant a lot to me for quite a few reasons. First of all, it makes me think of my paternal grandparents – my Babi and Deda. Deda passed away in October of 2006 and almost all of my memories of him are walking around with a shovel and tending their rather large gardens. And then whatever came out of the ground, Babi would prepare and we would eat fresh or canned fruits and vegetables whenever I was at their house. I wanted to plant a garden because I wanted to grow things like they did and then eat the fruits of my labor. Let me tell you, there is NOTHING like a tomato fresh from the garden.

I also wanted to plant a garden because it meant that I was putting down roots. From the year 2000 and on, I moved a total of twelve times. Every summer it seemed like I was moving to a new place and in all of that time, the longest I stayed anywhere was two years. I remember at one apartment in Nashville, a place where I thought I might stay a while, I planted flowers alongside my windows. But I moved before they ever came up. Putting down roots – finding a home – and claiming your little spot of the world – it feels important to me somehow.

I’m reading a book right now called “A Blade of Grass.” It is set in the southern part of Africa and much of the book has to do with the tension between African natives and the Dutch farmers that have settled their lands. One of the characters in the book, a young woman named Tembi, takes seeds from a fruit that her father has sent her and carefully dries them and then plants them in a secret place on the farm. It is her little corner of the world – a place where only she knows about – and with deep care, she travels there every day to water the ground, to nourish the seeds, and to watch them grow.

I am the daughter of farmers. And that yearning to grow things lies within me.

Actually growing things – that can be a different matter all together!

This spring, I started with the flowerbeds in front of our house. I got some beautiful flowers at Marge’s and set to work in the beds. And spent all afternoon breaking apart the soil, digging holes, and getting things just right. And the flowers have grown – right along with the weeds. And there just doesn’t seem to be enough time in the day to tend those little flower beds – to pull the weeds and to water the flowers and to take care of the soil the way it should be taken care of. But the flowers are growing.

In the backyard, there are two patches in the middle of the yard designated for growing things (besides the hostas which I have left alone for the most part). One is a patch of flowers and weeds – that I can’t tell the difference between and so they simply grow as they wish… and the other is a bare patch of dirt right next to them.

Oh, I had grand intentions for that little plot of dirt. My neighbors can attest to the many afternoons I spent pulling out the weeds that I had started growing there, using the claw to break up the clumps, and raking out all of the roots that had made their home in that little patch. So many hours and days spent in that little patch of ground to make it suitable for growing. To turn it into good soil. And then, no time to actually plant anything. My sister in law started a whole bunch of seeds growing for the two of us – but when the floods came, and we weren’t sure if we would get up there to see them, she planted it all in the garden behind her house.

All of that work this spring has reminded me about what it takes to become “good soil” – to be the kind of people in which God’s word takes root and becomes fruitful. It takes WORK to become good soil. Just like the ground needs to be tilled, weeded, watered and cared for – so our spiritual lives need to be tended… it doesn’t happen all on its own!

While we can sit around and just wait for the Holy Spirit to do its thing and plant seeds of love in our lives, if we aren’t a little bit proactive, then we run the risk of becoming like all of those other types of soil – in which the gospel didn’t bear fruit.

You see, some of us just sit on the path and don’t take any risks at all. Doug Dauenbaugh reminded me that a path is made by many people traveling the same patch of ground over and over again. On Babi and Deda’s farm, cattle were always kept in the pasture and I remember as a child following those cow paths to get to the creek or the back fields. The problem with being a “path person” is that you kind of have one purpose – to be walked upon… and whatever seeds fall upon you are easily picked up and taken away by the breeze, by a bird, or by the wheels of whatever truck happens to be passing by. “Path people” have a sort of one track mind – one way, one purpose, one truth and everything else just fails to stick.

Then there are people whose soil is crowded with rocks. As Matthew explains this gospel, these are people who may joyfully embrace the love of God into their lives, but the ground that they live in is not a place where seeds can grow – and when trouble arises, the new growth quickly fades. During my time in Nashville, I had the opportunity to take a class at Riverbend State Penitentiary and one of the inmates there knew that he was a “Rock Person.” He had grown up in a very troubled home, a troubled neighborhood and town really and no matter where he turned, he was led into a life of crime. In prison, the gospel had the chance to grow within him – but he was saddened by the thought that if he returned home – back to that rocky soil – everything that he had learned about God might fade away. He told me that he didn’t want to go back home – but that he wanted to find a place to make a fresh new start. Many of the children in our communities have this sort of experience – and they experience the awesome power of God’s love at camp or at vacation bible school and their lives are on fire – but then they return home to families that won’t support their new found faith or friends who don’t understand.

Third we have the “Weed Person.” I think that if we are honest with ourselves, this is where many of us are. Matthew claims that the weeds that inhabit this soil are the cares of the world that crowd out the word of God in our lives. Remember those two weeks we spent talking about priorities – about how hard it is to choose God above everything else and to in some cases have to weed people, activities, even things we love out of our lives? This is exactly the kind of soil we are talking about… this is the kind of soil that lives in my yard. And while you aren’t even looking – over night even – cares of all sorts can start to grow and take on roots and pretty soon your good soil starts looking mighty crowded. Pretty soon, your life starts to look like my backyard – where in that one patch I can’t tell which green things are weeds and which are flowers…. Mostly because the flowers aren’t in bloom. And I have to ask myself… would they be blooming – would they be bearing fruit, if some of those other weeds had been pulled out and if they had been given the room to grow?

This brings us to the “good soil.” When John Wesley wanted his flock to “do good” he meant an active good – he meant that he wanted them to lead lives that were busy with doing good things and taking care of one another. In the General Rules for the Societies, these types of things include caring for our neighbor’s bodies and souls. They include things like helping one another out in the community of faith. All of these things are about tending and nurturing the soil, not only of our own lives, but of those around us as well – tending and nurturing the whole community of faith.

In Reuben Job’s “Three Simple Rules” he thinks about a number of ways in which we try to limit the expansiveness of this “do good” rule. And perhaps here is where the garden metaphor limits us. Because Job reminds of Jesus command to do good to everyone: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.” (Luke 6:27-28) … not just those who live in a small and carefully tended part of our lives. Job writes: “every act and every word must pass through the love and will of God and there be measured to discover if its purpose does indeed bring good and goodness to all it touches.” Every act and every word!

Maybe instead of becoming the good soil of a garden, we are to become like compost or fertilizer that is added to other soil – spreading good to everyone we meet! And especially when we think about compost, we are talking about something that must be constantly nurtured and turned and stirred up to have its true impact. Just like weeds can spring up in the soil overnight – we cannot be content with giving a few hundred dollars here and there to charity or to the church… doing good is an active, life changing way of being. Becoming the good soil is not about becoming a Christian and then coasting through life… it is about becoming a Christian and then constantly, consistently, growing into the likeness of Christ.

We do good to others and seek the goodness of God not for some reward… not because our works will get us into heaven… we do good because we desperately want to love and honor God. We do good because we want to become like Christ. We do good and love others, because we were first loved by God and all of that goodness is simply overflowing within us. But it doesn’t happen all by itself. It takes work. Hard work. And sometimes it means that our hands need to get a little dirty. But when we make “doing good” one of the rules by which we live – we will not only find ourselves traveling in Christ’s footsteps – we may actually get to see Christ in the faces of those we serve. So let us do good – let us seek good in our own lives, in the lives of our neighbors, and for the whole world – Let us not only become like the good soil – bringing forth fruit, but let us help good soil to be nurtured in other places in the world so that the love of God might flourish there as well. Amen and Amen.