The Abundant Table

“Check out this article about the larger movement of young adult intern
programs the Abundant Table is a part of as a member of the Episcopal
Service Corps <http://www.episcopalservicecorps.org/>.We are one of the 12 internships mentioned as receiving funding from Trinity Wall Street<http://www.trinitywallstreet.org/news/articles/trinity-wall-street-in-the-news>to start our Farm Project internship.

Know any young adults looking for meaningful work or a year of vocational discernment…pass this on tho them!http://episcopaldigitalnetwork.com/ens/2012/01/09/new-generation-explores-intersection-of-faith-service-and-community/“

I think about the word good a lot. In my 22 years of life, I’ve struggled deeply with perfectionist tendencies in different areas of life. It has caused me to be gripped with the fear filled cycling voices of “you’re not good enough Julia.” I’ve had to do pretty constant work to lessen that fear-based living, to unburden, to remind myself I am loved simply because I am.

Last week us Abundant Table-ers gathered over bowls of soup, cider and eggnog next to a crackling fire at Ched and Elaine’s lovely home to study the book Scripture, Culture and Agriculture by Ellen Davis. The chapter we spent the evening on looked at Genesis 1 examining it specifically as the poem it is.

“And God saw all that she had made, and here. It was very good!” (Gen. 1:31)

God saw. That word is not the one that is typically given focus. We tend to declare, “God said, God declared it was good.” Davis points to something huge here: “The goodness of the world is presented not as a simple fact, nor even as an authoritative pronouncement, but as divine perception.” (46) A perception that is especially significant because there are few times in the Bible that this view from God’s eyes is given. God sees nature as inherently good. (side note: Ched’s translation of the Hebrew word ‘good’ was, loosely, “juicy, exotic, awesome, that rocks, that cooks my noodle”)

As our group unpacked the profundity of this verse we spoke to the reality that, as a society, we don’t present a narrative of nature being inherently good. The bedrock of the modern relationship with nature says that nature is not enough, that we have to alter it. Our definition of civilization is autonomy from nature.

As I take bike rides along Hueneme Road, where our farm is, this attitude is evident. Humans have  covered the fields with plastic, and then, in protective suits, looking like aliens they spray the fields to control nature by adding or subtracting with pesticides and antibiotics to “fix” what we had declared as “not good.”  Such control that shouldn’t be needed, but the damage we’ve imparted on the earth now requires it.  These controlling practices we now deem as necessary.

I see ways that in my own life I have created control frameworks of necessary. Frameworks established from a belief that I represent damaged goods, flawed unless I work actively to control or fix myself. I have tried to control my body with an eating disorder that has been my reality for the last 5 years (3 years now in a journey of recovery). The eating disorder has given me guidelines to live under, guidelines it says are necessary for my happiness in the world.

The Abundant Table tries in our own ways to unwork these patterns, to let go of control, we have our organic 5 acre oasis here on the Oxnard plain. Ched and Elaine’s yard is a homesteading dream in the middle of an Oak View neighborhood. As for myself, working on the farm and celebrating the joys of food is actively healing the ways anorexia has been a distorting burden in my life. I believe in these efforts, and our book study conversations exhorted me anew to believe in them, act them out and our talk added a layer.

God saw. How can we as a society let go of the old paradigm relationship to nature and see with new eyes? Get out of our heads when we relate to nature? How can we get out of what we claim is the way things must be done next to the narrative we have written? It is time to rewrite our collective script. We need new eyes that don’t look at nature solely through a mental lens, but that can look at nature and see the value in the earth’s inherent, beautiful goodness through and beneath the ways humans have altered it.

Davis quotes philosopher Erazim Kohak, “The painful flaws in our conception of value…call less for a new conception of the good than for a new way of seeing the good.” (46)

Woven into this I think back to my own ways of seeing myself, the internal narrative that I work to rewrite. How can I alter the script I have been acting on? The self-constructed system of control I tell myself I must live out of in order to be seen as good?  This reading of Genesis has added fuel as I do the work to re-write my script; now with the reminder that God saw Julia and said I am very good, “juicy, exotic, awesome, that rocks, that cooks my noodle” the way I naturally, beautifully am.

A guest essay by Samuel Thomas, Cal Lutheran professor of Religion and our Board Chair (for more info. http://www.callutheran.edu/schools/cas/faculty_profile.php?minor_id=32&profile_id=219)

In the words of a good friend and colleague of mine, my last Bible and Interpretation editorial constituted a good old-fashioned “Isaianic smack-down” of self-aggrandizing, dishonest hypocrites (“Knowledge and Wisdom in a Politics of Passionate Intensity,” October 2011). That short essay was something of a political rant in a text-critical mode, channeling some of the fury of the biblical prophets to characterize our current state of cultural and political discourse. At the time I had in mind publishing a series of such “prophetic critiques” in this venue, but recently have thought better of it. Instead, I will offer here some “Isaianic” reflections on what I currently view as one of the few antidotes to political alienation and the estrangement at the root of our economic systems: local, sustainable, and ethical food production, or what used to be called “farming.”

My last essay was rooted in a text-critical observation from Isaiah 28, which as a whole juxtaposes vituperations against the rich and self- important with images of harmony and blessedness. It sees, in other words, that social and environmental ills are often directly related to greed and corruption, and that this is not in keeping with God’s vision of prosperity. In this way, Isaiah 28 is very much in line with an anti-imperial ideology that runs throughout the Tanakh, one that is based on a conception of covenant that demands care, hospitality, and justice as expressions of faithfulness to the God of Israel. To remedy social and environmental imbalances, God will be a “spirit of justice” (ruah mishpat) and “strength to those who turn back the battle at the gate” (Isa 28:6). Isaiah 28 continues:

Therefore hear the word of the LORD, you scoffers
who rule this people in Jerusalem.
Because you have said, “We have made a covenant with death,
and with Sheol we have an agreement;
when the overwhelming scourge passes through
it will not come to us;
for we have made lies our refuge,
and in falsehood we have taken shelter”…

Listen, and hear my voice;
Pay attention, and hear my speech.
Do those who plow for sowing plow continually?
Do they continually open and harrow their ground?
When they have leveled its surface,
do they not scatter dill, sow cummin,
and plant wheat in rows
and barley in its proper place,
and spelt as the border?
For they are well instructed;
their God teaches them. (Isa 28:14-15; 23-26)

Throughout this chapter Isaiah presents the judgment of the Jerusalem elite (“scoffers”) alongside a vision of a redeemed Israel, of a “new society, a new polity, based on moral order. The important element is that justice and righteousness are the criteria according to which this or any society is to be judged.”¹ One of the insights of Isaiah and of other prophets is that moral order is not defined primarily in terms of sexual purity or patriotic fervor, but rather that it rests ultimately on conceptions of justice as fairness and equality, and righteousness as proper care. Another insight is that the dimensions of moral order are intimately tied to one another: pull a string and even unexpected parts begin to move. In our own time, food has become an important measure of justice, one that reveals the seamy underbelly of global systems of economic production and exchange.

It is becoming more and more difficult to ignore the devastation that is being wrought by what has come to be known (rather ironically, in my view) as “conventional agriculture.” Fertile land is rendered less and less viable with the over-application of pesticides and herbicides and the increasing salinization of soils and water tables that comes from intensive, non-stop irrigation; workers who have often migrated under great stress (and for reasons that are at least partially driven by U.S. international trade policies) are exposed to harsh working conditions and have few options and garner little sympathy; monocultures created to serve enormous corporate food and chemical companies (in the guise of “feeding the world”) threaten biodiversity and the very ecological systems upon which life as we know it depends; and the production and wide distribution of all this food consumes vast quantities of fossil fuels, reinforcing our system of energy addiction and dependency and contributing to climate change. What would Isaiah have to say about all this? We have become very adventurous in our use of science and technology for the purpose of growing and distributing food, but are we “well-instructed?”

In my Old Testament course this semester I decided to try something new with my own instructing: I experimented with teaching the Hebrew Bible through an agrarian lens while engaging students in the campus garden at my university, a 1/3-acre site devoted to growing food, building community, and learning. My primary animating question for the course was, “what does the Hebrew Bible have to say about the relationships between land, people, cities, God, and wisdom?” Of course, attempting to answer this question took us through a lot of talk about covenant, temple, ethics, justice, jubilee, Sabbath, and eschatology, not to mention beets and carrots and crop rotation (“do those who plow for sowing plow continually?”).

As we read primary texts from the Torah, Proverbs, Psalms, Isaiah, Ezekiel, the Song of Songs, and lots of “comparative” material from the ANE, we considered this animating question carefully and in a sustained way. While we carefully considered this question, we spent a couple hours every other week in the garden, working side by side, getting our hands dirty, having some fun, and learning about how complicated and difficult it is to grow food—how very difficult it is indeed to “master” creation. All the while, we read John Barton and Julia Bowden’s The Original Story as a survey, Ellen Davis’ Scripture, Culture, and Agriculture as the frame for our agrarian reading, and T.J. Gorringe’s A Theology of the Built Environment as the theoretical driver of our animating question, as a way to unpack the creation-covenant-redemption arc of biblical theology.

One of my hopes for the students in this course was that they would be able to enter into an engagement with the Old Testament that was both historical-contextual and that addressed contemporary concerns—that they would come to see in a new way that, indeed, the Bible can speak to us about things that matter (like, say, food). None of this was done instead of developing “literacy” and “critical thinking skills” and other important learning outcomes. Ultimately, it was an attempt to appeal to the imaginations of my students and to provide a wedge with which to pry open the spaces where questions and problems meet with new ways of seeing the world.

Of course, I must confess my interest in also generating for my students new ways of being in the world. (Reader, set aside momentarily any questions regarding whether higher education should be about moral transformation, etc.—I know the debate and I’m clearly ending up on one side of it.) I believe that the Hebrew Bible has some very profound things to say about the relationships between humans and the natural world, between humans and other humans, and between humans and God. I would even go so far as to say that one of the principal features of the Old Testament is that it doesn’t let us off the hook, whether we are reading it in a religious mode or not. In other words, the Hebrew Bible—whatever else it may be—is about ethics, and being utterly serious about answering the question, “How shall we live?”²

I have come to the conclusion that the Hebrew Bible can call our attention to the deep ethical predicaments that result from modern, technogene life—and it can help us work toward recovering what the poet Charles Olson might have called “an actual earth of value.” That is, in a national politics of alienation and a global economics predicated on displacement and overconsumption (despite the actual limits of scarcity), an agrarian understanding of the Hebrew Bible can help reorient us to the sources of life and real prosperity: land, community, and meaningful work. To put it in slightly different terms, “Through Adam and Eve we lost a gift but earned a heart, and in many ways we are still earning our heart, just as we are still learning that most of what the earth offers—despite its claims on our labor—has the character of something freely given rather than aggressively acquired.”³

Care for the land and the ethical production of food is inherently communal and community-building; abuse of the land and the unethical production of food erode the integrity of both natural systems and human communities. I have seen the former first-hand in the work of the Abundant Table Farm Project, a faith-rooted, organic CSA (community supported agriculture) outfit down the road from where I live.⁴ The amazing people at the Abundant Table understand that food is as much about relationships as it is about eating, and their efforts to grow food sustainably, work for justice, and engage people in their lives are deeply counter-cultural and inspiring. And biblical.

The work of the Abundant Table is about feeding people while reclaiming a kind of wisdom that insists that we are grounded in responsibility to and not freedom from. It is the latter impulse that appears to animate the logic of the global food trade and the thin platitudes of its greatest champions. Understanding and enacting sustainable, ethical food production through the prism of covenantal theology can be one important antidote to our contemporary estrangements. It is but a seed.

Notes

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.

I am notorious for getting lost. I get lost even in places I have lived for years, so this last month of being new to these cities has involved my spending lots of times doing U-turns, peering at street signs and making phone calls asking for directions just one more time.  The other day when lost in downtown Ventura I was completely frustrated, tired, hot and could tell I needed, for the safety of myself and others, to stop and take a moment. I thankfully was next to what looked like a lovely park and quickly found myself sitting, nestled, being held, by the roots of a huge oak tree.

This summer after the official phone call from Sarah Nolan offering me an internship position I happily called a friend exclaiming, “I’m going to be rooted! I am going to be in a place for a whole year.” I should explain why for me 12 months in one place is a BIG deal.  My childhood was marked by moving. I recently counted and in my 22 years I have lived in 25 bedrooms, jr. high being the last time I spent 365 calling the same room my home. My transience only increased during my college years where I honed the skills of fitting my life in my well-worn backpacking pack that soon became covered with airplane train and bus tags.  Being a nomad has shaped me but over this last year I could tell a deep need to put down my backpack and sink into a place (even if for just a year!).

Carrots. These last weeks I have spent some time getting to know roots. I smiled to myself Monday while yanking up carrots realizing I was making up a little rhythm-ditty in my head to the pop sound that carrot-leaving-soil makes. Though some of the carrots I attempt to harvest threw off the beat and held no pop, as I pulled off only the green leafy top and the carrot stayed firmly…well rooted. I grimaced and head-hung shared with Guadalupe my apologies that I had ruined the carrot. He assured me that no there is grace; the carrot does this wonderful thing of self-rejuvenating. He showed me a row whose tops had been lobbed off weeks before and now as he pulled one it out let out not only a delightful pop, but was one of the bigger more beautiful deep orange carrots I had seen that day.

The time in the field not only provides these learning’s, beat-poetry dappling and wonder, but space for the mind to wander. I must admit that at times that wandering leads to dreams of my own wandering.  I think about that dream I have to hike the Pacific Crest Trail or biking the country, I wonder if my college-roommate is still up for that traveling Europe adventure we spent late nights envisioning, I think about my hitchhiking boyfriend and plan to tag along for an adventure.  When I was reflecting on why these open road dreams were hitting I realized that when I thought about coming here and being rooted I naively thought roots would be instant.

Transitions are hard and for me it is easier to be on the move. I forgot that rooting requires time and patience. It’s not simply being in a place that makes you then rooted, you have to put some intentional working into rooting, seeking nourishment.

Our carrot harvest has been lacking lately because of the weather, simply not enough sunlight. The root vegetable was just too small to be harvested. I realize now in my first weeks I was to quickly harvesting my own roots examining them and becoming frustrated that they didn’t make the leaving the soil pop, they are still too small, not because of big bad things but just needing more time.  But I am glad that like carrots rejuvenation can happen, I can tuck those to-soon-pulled-roots back into the soil and give them more of the nourishment that I daily can tell is making them grow.

Nourishment in the form of deepening relationships with the wonderful women I share the farm house with, with Ched and Elaine while we garden and work together two days a week, with Guadalupe, Julie B and Sam as we join and work in the field, with the Abundant Table church community as we hug one another during the passing of the peace and through connection to this physical place through hikes where I start to recognize native plants, Tuesday morning bike rides with Kat up the Ventura bike trail, and full moon gazing on the beach.

And nourishment through plenty of grace.