Living Soil

Dear Church Family, Friends, and Guests,

As I think of our commitments vis à vis Adventist Peace Fellowship, particularly the one on “Care for Creation,” I’m humbled once again at the opportunities AND obstacles to making this meaningful in our context. Economic inequality, another core issue for Peace Fellowship churches, is inextricably tied to the challenges of creation care, particularly the means by which it might be done. In other words, God’s world might be one of justice and equity—a place where no one starves and abundance isn’t a zero-sum game. But this world is cut-throat and all about the money.

Worse, those of us living in cities like Los Angeles are largely disconnected from God’s first revelation—nature. We unknowingly suffer what Richard Louv called “Nature Deficit Disorder,” which is a descriptive metaphor naming the costs of alienation from the natural world. We’re embedded in an environment meant to control, domesticate, or harness nature.

So now enter some fundamental scriptural ideas starting with dirt and soil. It’s from this stuff that we were formed! It’s unto this stuff we shall return. It’s dead in many places around the world, but can be made to live again in harmony with biotic principles. It’s the source of dietary minerals. It’s the stuff that, when living, contains the microorganisms that will constitute digestive bacteria in our guts.

We may be facing all the challenges above. And yet… soil is still all around. We have trees that flower fruit. We have garden beds. And we have an actual garden. You can get your hands dirty. You can plant something, tend it, and harvest from it. Last Sunday we started renovations on it. We’re continuing those renovations this Sunday, May 17. We’ll be working together from 9 am to Noon. Join us as we seek to renew a space in which we, as creatures, can interact not only with God’s primordial waters, but with living soil that supports generative life!

Gardening is our universal calling. It’s an ethical, social, personal, spiritual, and religious journey from seed to harvest. It’s an invitation to quietude, to investment, to patience, and to the parables that Jesus so productively used to teach us about the Kingdom of God. Now more than ever, we need to be grounded in sacred and living soils, watered by living waters.

May God be with us!

Pr Greg