My discernment process as an intern (’10) at the Abundant Table led me to articulate a vocational calling – to ministry that recognizes the value of the soil and of those who work with the soil. At Community Roots Garden, a ministry of the North Oxnard United Methodist Church, I keep my hands in the earth, working alongside volunteers to tend a 1 acre garden that builds food security in our area by providing produce to local food pantries and to our volunteers. After growing food for a year on some of the richest topsoil in the world at “Join the Farm,” I became passionate about seeing land differently. Our county loses about 600 acres a year to development, and, as they grow, our cities have become increasingly dependent on imported resources and on an economy based on export. I think community gardens are part of our response to this paving-over ag land craze, part of loving our land and neighbors better. We’re helping to start new community gardens, especially church gardens, since community gardens and churches are like “companion plants.”

As the coordinator of Community Roots Garden, I help manage our garden’s programs along with volunteers from the surrounding area. My coworker Eric and I work closely with youth, especially inner-city Oxnard youth who are often serving their parole service hours. About 15-20 youth help harvest, weed, and plant at the Garden two mornings each week. Many of their family members work as farm workers in the fields bordering the city, and they often encourage these youth to get as far away as possible from the dirt. Education, climbing the ladder, language, gang life, and work experience are ways of distancing themselves from intensive farm work. It’s challenging to engage youth in our alternate model of agriculture in Oxnard’s wider culture of stigmatizing and de-valuing the labor it takes to grow food. We are, in essence, working  to create a different culture that centers on positive relationships to food and farming.

This year, I’m focusing on a project we started at Community Roots called the Oxnard Community Food Security Planning Project, funded through the USDA/ NIFA and fiscally sponsored by the Abundant Table. Through our work, we saw that food insecurity issues are highest for farm workers, the very people who harvest and tend our nation’s vegetables and fruits. Eric and I are bringing together representatives from organizations connected to the food system in the Oxnard area, including farms, farm worker groups, youth, our regional food bank, and public health, to plan for future food projects that will address the food insecurity issues in Oxnard. I’m amazed at the power of friendships to create change, and love seeing new and old friendships across organizations growing through this project and through the conversations it is starting.

After living at the Farm for a year following my internship and commuting to work, I decided to move closer to Community Roots. This gave me the opportunity to seek rest and renewal after 2 years of intentional community. I moved into a granny flat next door to Abundant Table church members and friends, Scott and Elisa. It was a sweet time of living alone and doing lots of reading, cooking, and having friends and family over to my own little place. This month, Julia T., a friend I met through work, moved in as a roommate and I’m enjoying broadening my circle of friends beyond the Abundant Table.

My role in the community has changed from member to community chaplain, and I’ve loved having community members/friends over for dinner, conversation, and prayer.  As a place where my own spiritual and vocational discernment was crucial, I feel gratefully committed to walking alongside new AT interns as they ask the big question during this time in our lives, namely, “What will you do with your one wild and precious life?” in the lovely words of Mary Oliver.