How to Grow Vegetables

"Honor the face of the old man; stand up in respect for the old..." Leviticus 19:32

We are well into the spring time here in the northern hemisphere. With the possiblity of a mild end to winter, many thoughts turn to the growing of things. It may be the green spaces alive in your town square, it may be the return of the farmer's market and the lovely spring abundance it brings for you and your table.

For most all of us in terms food, our choices are actually limited: we must buy food from one source or another. We are indeed absolutely dependent upon those sources for our very lives. Who grows our foodstuffs? Why not us? Why do we think it fine to pay others to do the manual labor of bringing fresh, healthy food to us for the table? Have we really ever thought about it at all, thought about the lifestyle that necessarily results from tolerating, accepting, even encouraging this practice of others raising our food? One thing leads to another, like a slippery slope.

In these days of rising concern of stewardship for the air, the land and the water, do we suppose that we have relinquished all that to the approximately two percent of the population who (feeding more than 98 percent of Americans and a vast percentage world-wide) are indeed the oligarchs? Are we okay with that, or should we react? How we react depends a lot on us, and our current lifestyle.

Some while never thinking about it, work like vassals to a "state of consumption" in which they participate. Yes, we are called consumers, but aren't we more than that? And what if the farmers rebelled, went on strike and demanded their homage? To a serious threat like that, then what are we? While in a civil society something in just that form may not occur, many other potentially damaging disruptions may well be affecting our daily lives in myriad, subtle ways.

Take for example, the price of sugar, oil, wheat and corn. These commodities have been greatly on the rise the past few years. Why? Agricultural economists explain it in several ways: weather, market "forces," export demands, domestic consumption and yes, things like ethanol driving up prices. Farmers as a group are notorious for growing crops which bring the highest return. Who can blame them?
And when they all do, an overabundance may result, actually depressing prices. Then producers are on to the next "big thing," and lately that has been corn. Remember there is only so much land for all crops produced. A balance of supply and need produces price stability; overproduction in one crop results in shortages in others. You pay the difference.

Corn may be used to produce many, many foodstuffs and meats. Most recently it is used to produce not just grain alcohols such as whiskey but also a product they call "ethanol," a less efficient, grain alcohol used to fuel gasoline powered engines. The result is that millions more acres are now being taken to produce this product and not grain to feed you or produce meats or oils for your table. Did you ask for that? Did you clearly know that certain demands for a better environment would be answered by big business in this way? Did they ask any of us? Well, yes and no. Regardless, we all now pay ever increasing prices to those who grow for us. This topic is ongoing. It's another chapter in the politics of food.

So back to you and me and the springtime garden. Yes, we can grow some, or most of our own food! It's not hard, doesn't require a lot of money or equipment and just may be the best tomato, potato or peach we've even eaten! There is a time investment however; also a time and fuel savings too. It takes time to garden, but the time you'll spend at the store shopping, driving or commuting to places where you obtain food can be used in your own garden. If you have land, own a house, you have space and can garden. Others may take advantage of community garden space, or start a community garden in their neighborhood. Grow some tomatoes, herbs or miniature fruit trees on your apartment balcony or grounds.

Nature has a lot invested in the success of your garden. For example, seeds are adapted to your environment. Choose the ones for your area. Plant them according to the package directions, water and they will grow! Weed your garden and provide nutrients. Grass clippings, compost made with the waste produced in your kitchen, leaves chopped or composted in the fall will all provide food for your plants and mulch to conserve water as well.

Choose vegetables you like, those that are your favorites will be best. You will not be pleased with an abundance of vegetables you prefer on occasion. Plan your garden space accordingly. It is not necessary to have a large garden. For many families a space of eight feet by ten feet will be sufficient. Many vegetables may be grown both spring and again in fall, leaving the hotter summer open for others like tomatoes, melons and eggplant.
Don't forget fruit trees.They are pretty with flowers in the spring and luscious with fruit afterward. They also produce at different times. For example, cherries in May and June, apples as early as late July, peaches and pears in August and September. From them you will have fresh fruit, pies, jams, or anything your appetite inspires.
For a family of four, two "dwarf" to medium sized trees each of any type of fruit is plenty, and may be too much some years. Don't forget small fruits like strawberry, raspberries or grapes!

Many locales now permit small numbers of chickens, ducks or rabbits; some allow goats; if yours does, you may be able to almost entirely feed your household like many of our great grandparents did. Enjoy the satisfaction of your own home grown table. Enjoy the calm of the garden, the reduction of time spent as a consumer shopping, driving, and always be confident about your food. After all, you grew it and you know how! Goodness is in the garden.

Love and the Fall

Those who love me, I also love, and those who seek me, find me. --Proverbs 8:17

I'm In You

by Peter Frampton

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I don't care where I go
 When I'm with you
 When I cry, you don't laugh
 'Cause you know me

 I'm in you, you're in me
 I'm in you, you're in me
 'Cause you gave me the love
 Love that I never had
 Yes, you gave me the love
 Love that I never had...

In today's English language, the pronouns he and she have been nearly stripped away. They are avoided, dis-used. Left in their place is a socio-political idea that rejects this very principle of universal oneness. There are labels and divisions, parsing the world into diverse units.
To the ancient mind, this is akin to tragedy. What could take the place of the Chinese idea of the yin and yang? Or the Hindu wedding ceremony in which bride and groom pronounce one to the other, "I am heaven, you are earth;" to which the bride responds, "I am earth, you are heaven."

Many modern minds, especially in the West, will find these ideas unintelligible, in part, thanks to science. Our rational mind does not allow us to go there. It is all myth, we say. Science, in its aims to reduce things to quantifiable matter fails, it cannot see cosmic love.

Rather, science ignores the "final cause" of creation. It cannot rationalize what something or someone was made for, its purpose, its goal, its end. This reason is the most important to creation. The Tenakh tells us that in both the historical and in the ultimate dimension, G-d is the final cause, creation the ultimate end; it is the alpha and the omega, both the beginning and end.

In this ultimate dimension, we are freed "of the dirty little dungeon of a universe that the Enlightenment thinkers" of past centuries have placed us into wholesale. Enlightenment thought, thought in which rationality and science are the reigning sovereigns, gives to modern minds "a universe in which love and beauty, praise and value are mere subjective fictions," invented by the self spinning aloneness of a human mind.

And yet science through all its triumphs has not been able to extinguish an ancient, almost primordial instinct from the deepest places in our soul, to realize love as the highest wisdom and meaning in a life. So then the Judeo-Christian Bible, or Tanakh, in its entirety is to be read with imagination, with myth and analogy as a divine love story, says Peter Kreeft.

In both the Jewish and Christian telling of the story, the Word contained in the book is a covenant, an agreement between G-d, the Lover and his beloved; the persons he created, the Jews and all who come to him in the Spirit of the Oneness (adonai echad).

The word of G-d here is the Christ, the unity of G-d, the Creator. And to the Christian mind, among other names we may call this oneness, the Christ, love incarnate. Christ has proved G-d's love for his creation by the example of the Cross. He has come because of, and for love, alone. He comes out of love.

Other manifestations of love are found in the connection between the "fall" from the garden of Eden. The connection here is found between the fall and freedom. Love does not enslave; love makes free. Because you are the Beloved, you are free. We are not the Creator's pets; we are meant to be G-d's lover.

In the redemption, love manifests. G-d's love is powerful and in full display as soon as Adam falls. He makes a mistake, he falls away from the covenant that he made in free will with G-d to obey.

As covenantal people, Jews traditionally see the "law" of the Torah as an expression of G-d's will. It is their joy to learn, to know this will. Thus they see their holy book as a love making manual, if you will.
In the ten commandments, the Decalog,  the principal covenants presented to creation by G-d, the Creator, are laid out. In essence, they form the whole of the "covenant-contract." G-d is to have this agreement with his people, who in free will grow to abide by this contract, or rule. In following the way of G-d in divine law, more love is made. Human-kind is "fruitful and multiplies."

Caring for the garden, the world of Creation, is so that human persons may learn to be more like Creators. G-d wishes to teach love through loving the world and the soil it comprises, to raise a crop to the benefit of all of creation. This is stewardship in its most wholistic sense.
The Creator starts small and then moves through the world until his love reaches the ears of his perhaps, most complex creation, mankind. As a lover, G-d is not jealous. Sharing in oneness is the essence of all.

"And the forbidden fruit of Adam and Eve is to teach the Beloved the reality of pure, 'blind,' love."
If they had been told that the reason (a rational idea) was that the fruit was poison, would not Adam and Eve have obeyed; not from a trusting, free love, but from a selfish fear?
Yet G-d did command them, and asked for their love in return for no other reason than love itself. This is covenant. When we "fall," we lick our wounds, we gain a sense of the real, we dust ourselves off and remain in the moment, rather than a self-serving, spinning mind.
Thus we again realize the fall as a direction back to the source, back to the Creator and we, are his Beloved. 
This love is not sentimental, it is not cheap, easy or compromising. This is love in totality. You are the deepest secret of G-d's heart. --Peter Kreeft

Treasures, Doing What We Believe

"Everyone benefits from the sacrifice of gifts that one makes of time, talents and treasure." -- Benedict XVI

It's about putting our faith into action, putting our energies to what matters, being stewards.At its heart the good steward is the good shepherd, caring for ones flock and making provisions for the day to day existence of self and others. It's more than just thinking about material resources.

We believe in the "Giver of Life," our lives as co-creators, that the Lord is the source of infinite abundance. Yet the more we attempt to take, to control, the less we actually have. It's like holding water in our cupped hands and squeezing. It quickly flows away from us.

Only when we relax our grip does the water remain. Doing what we believe involves faith; belief in what we may not yet see, but know deep in our heart; it's making a choice, one small step at a time, to acknowledge our inter-dependence, our inter-being with all of Creation.
Stewardship, then, lies at the heart of the Christian lifestyle. In actuality it's how we live our daily lives which gives evidence of our belief in the Gospel message, in the Good News.

St. Teresa of Avila, mystic and saint, wrote that 'Christ has no body but your own, he has no hands but yours. Yours are the eyes and ears of the Lord through which he is to go about for actions of the Good. Your hands are the hands, like his own, blessing people in the here and now."