June 3 2023
A bit about me.
In 1975, after I sold business and home, our family moved from urban St. Catharines, On., to rural Tweed, halfway Toronto-Ottawa, where I had bought 50 acres, 20 hectares, mostly woodland.
My first call was to a ‘witcher’, a water wizard, who plotted two underground streams. He told me to drill where they crossed, about 25 meters deep through sheer rock. Lo and behold, water gushed up: 150 liters per minute, enough to supply 10 dwellings.
Years later, I put a frost-free handpump on the wellhead, ready for today’s uncertain times. We can do without food for 30 days, but without water only for 3 days.
My house.
On a clear patch I built a passive solar, well insulated house, into a southern-facing hill, 2 storeys facing south, with large windows, and 1 storey on the north, a small window there. Later I added three solar panels and battery storage, just in case.
My garden.
I wanted a large garden, desiring some self-sufficiency, but discovered that the soil was sheer sand. But, then 48 years younger, I wheelbarrowed from a nearby farm pure black cow manure, days on end. Each year thereafter I added more compost.
Springtime is garden-time for me. Last year I bought a load of mushroom compost, which yielded such excellent results, that I had another batch this year. Soil is like my body: it needs feeding.
The future has come.
Today, 2023, food prices have shot up and food quality has gone down: it is increasingly clear that the stuff we eat is mainly oil: apples from South Africa or Chile, oranges from wherever. Oil means global heating, and global heating is a sin against creation. Oil also is a poisonous substance which causes cancers and sickness, just as smoking does. What Fentanyl does to the human body fertilizer does to our soil: both kill.
Our bodies, says the Bible, are temples of the Holy Spirit. Where the Holy Spirit resides, there is God, as we are made in his image. Karen Armstrong, in her recent book, “Sacred Nature”, shows how all ancient religions have seen ‘nature’ as holy. My working the soil is akin to prayer.
Robin Wall Kimmerer in, “Braiding Sweetgrass”, writes,
“Love the soil, and it will love back”, adding, “Redemption lives in knowing that you might also hear our hymns of joy when we too marry ourselves to the earth”. Both Genesis 3: 19: “Soil we are and to soil we shall return”, and Revelation 21 affirm this: “The new Jerusalem comes, prepared as a bride.” People adhering to Islam, in their prayers, touch the soil with their heads, symbolizing their affinity to the earth.
All this means that the soil I work is not my own: I am a mere servant: growing food there is an act of worship. The food products we buy are often Ultra-processed, doing more harm to the body than good. Capitalism has only one concern: Profits at all costs, including the cost of health. Food has been replaced by nutrients, and common sense by confusion. The result is what Michael Pollan calls the American paradox: The more we worry about nutrition, the less healthy we seem to become.
I try to emulate what my grandmothers would recognize as food: home-grown stuff. True, their diets were often one-sided: lots of potatoes and plenty of pure fat, straight from the pig, and sparse in greens. But then they were physically active from early morning to late at night, which made up for the poor nutrition. Now that I am on my own, food preparation is my concern, and I follow Michael Pollan proposal: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.
Ever since I bought Francis Lappé’s book, Diet for a small Planet, about 45 years ago, my wife and I have been vegetarian. We have fared well with this regime.
How then shall we live?
That is the perennial question. A complete reorientation is needed. We are speeding toward the END, to the fulfillment of history, of which the arrival of AI, Artificial Intelligence, is a clear indication. We have been created in the image of God, a statement that defies precise definition, because God is beyond conception and articulation. Colossians 1: 15-20 is for me one of the most enlightening sections of Scripture. There Jesus is revealed as the ‘first-born’ of creation, and in the capacity of being pure human he created “All things”. We need ‘I I’, “Incorporated Intelligence”, not AI, Artificial Intelligence. The key to divine insight is ‘service’, serving God through serving his creatures and creation, God’s Primary and Direct Revelation.
Working my garden and writing about it, is a feeble attempt to prepare for God’s Garden to come when the New Creation is revealed.