Organic Farm in Jamaica

I cannot claim to have a green thumb.  Indeed I have led many plants to their demise.  Yet, I have aspirations of one day being a gardener.  In fact, planting a small garden is on near the top of a very long list of things I want to learn.  My track record with plants, alongside the particularities of trying to garden in the desert are rather intimidating to me.  But I have this experience of gardens which continues to be so inspiring to me, that the desire to try it out keeps nudging me in that direction.

During my first seminary internship, I had the privilege of living and serving in Elon, NC, a rural community not far from Burlington, NC.  The people of Fairview UMC were delightful people who introduced me to REAL food.  Food that had been grown right there, in their own gardens.  I had never known such a thing.  In fact, I had never had any fruit or vegetables, other than the occasional homegrown tomato, that had not been commercially grown, processed, shipped, and bought at the local Kroger or Safeway.  Most of the vegetables I ate growing up were canned or frozen.

Organic Jamaican Blue Ginger

I was completely fascinated that nearly every family in this church had a garden.  And, as part of the internship agreement, the church families were to provide my meals each day, I visited many of those families and ate of food that had very recently been in the ground, on the tree or the vine, sometimes as recently as that very morning!  I can still taste the fresh green beans, the okra

(which has previously been known to me only as curiously slimy and completely unappetizing), the tomatoes, the corn, the cucumbers.  Wow! I had no idea food could be so enjoyable.  I also had no idea that such a connection to the earth was possible.

Watching these faithful people garden, seeing how food actually grows, watching them tend, pick, share, and cook the fruits of the earth, was truly an awakening for me.  I suppose connection to food or earth in this way had been, at best, mythical to me.  But really I had hardly given it any thought before.  In the years since then, I’ve discovered all sorts of ways to foster a connection to the earth, to food, to the rhythms inherent in seasons and growth.  I’ve discovered food co-ops and farmers’ markets, very rarely buy food in cans or frozen, have dabbled in the slow food movement, scrubbed fresh ginger alongside Rastafarian organic farmers in Jamaica.  I have become fascinated with plants, their life, flowering, fruiting, death cycles, and have hundreds of photos as evidence of that fascination.

Jenny washing ginger in Jamaica

I have much more to explore, so much to learn, and a long way to go before I could think of myself as a gardener.  Though I remain convinced that gardening is part of connecting with God and God’s creation.  I am convinced this is true, even if we have not found our way into (or are even interested in) being a gardener who actually tills the earth.  We are gardeners all the same.  God has made us

co-creators with him.  God has placed us in a garden.  God has given us responsibility to care for, nurture, tend, steward much around us, living and not.  God has created us to bear fruit and to have responsibility for helping others bear fruit as well.

Yes, I am a gardener.  So are you.  Put on your gloves, your big floppy hat.  Let’s see what we can do to tend to what has been give to us.  Let’s see what fruit we’ll bear at harvest time!

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