Dear People of Christ Church,

Though this week, I've been lamenting the recent grayness of the skies, the week after Easter I had some marvelous time off in my new garden, planting for the summer and acquainting myself with the pleasures of the yard. When we lived in Waltham we were on a steep hill, complete with 20 foot rock face behind the house. It was beautiful in its own way, but not exactly conducive to enjoying the sunshine--so one of the things we really wanted in our new house when we moved was more outdoor space. Last Friday I got to try out our new battery powered lawnmower (heavy, but still easier than pushing 2 children in a stroller). What a pleasure. I'm sure the novelty will wear off at some point, but for now, I am happy to be mowing the lawn. We also did some planting-cucumber, tomato, peas-then got broccoli, more tomatoes, and lettuce from Waltham Fields' seedling sale. The fact that food could actually come out of the ground is kind of magical.

We are longtime shareholders at Waltham Fields (see my March, 2007 post about it on the e crier blog page so I feel some closeness to the gifts of the land, but it feels somehow different when it's in your own space. I've been reading Michael Pollan's book on gardening, Second Nature, more memoir than instruction book. At its heart is a critique of the metaphors we've used over the years for natural world. His judgment of lawns notwithstanding ("nature under totalitarian rule"), I'm pretty convinced by his assessment of the whole mess we've gotten into, in how we contrast nature and culture. Libraries, schools, factories are culture; rivers, lakes, and fields are nature. In the usual telling, these are separate spheres-nature is acted upon, and culture acts. If you're feeling more romantic, you can talk about nature as unblemished, virgin, pure, innocent. But separating them is a false dichotomy. Unless you want to go back to the dinosaurs, nature has always been subjected to the whims of human intervention. Whether it be invasive species accidentally introduced into a new environment or plants hybridized to generate certain characteristics, humans leave their mark on nature everywhere. And we certainly cannot separate ourselves from it. Seeing pictures of the flooding in the south and due to recent storms has made that clear. When the US Army Corps of Engineers blew a hole in a levee to save the town of Cairo, Illinois, they flooded 130,000 acres of farmland. Technology helps, but creates its own complication as well.

Our Christian faith gives us some tools for thinking about this. We began, our stories say, in a garden-an image no less potent for being a mythological one. We were given "dominion"-power, yes, but a particular kind of power. We are dependent on nature, and so taking care of it is also taking care of ourselves. Each day of creation concludes, "God saw that it was good." Creation is good-a good gift, given to us. We have not always seen it this way-more often, we have been like selfish three year old, given a book only to rip the pages apart assuming daddy will give us a new one when we demand one.

There is something theological in what we have been given, in tilling it and caring for it, but also in enjoying it. Pleasure in the garden is a spiritual question, as is helping those whose "gardens" have flooded. (See more from Episcopal Relief and Development) Digging in the dirt or walking by the pond across the street from my house, I know myself to be one small part of nature. There is something very comforting in knowing my smallness in that wider scheme. Humans have devised immense powers of destruction, but this world that God has made is also way, way, bigger than us. That seems to me like an icon, a window, into God: we are entirely dependent on the land, intimately connected to it. But it the sheer magnitude of nature's vast otherness also puts us in our rightful-and small-place.

Blessings,

Sara+