Unbeknownst to many, Harding has a community garden located on Park Avenue across from Harding Academy, tucked into a corner of the field. It needs a lot of work: It is overgrown with weeds, the soil is terrible and the tool shed is falling apart. The garden belongs to you, and it can become whatever you and I and the rest of our community decide to make it. But right now, it’s in danger of being forgotten, and so is the ministry of good food in a starving world.
It may be that we underestimate the importance of food. In his essay on “The Pleasures of Eating,” Wendell Berry writes, “We have neglected to understand that we cannot be free if our food and its sources are controlled by someone else. The condition of the passive consumer of food is not a democratic condition. One reason to eat responsibly is to live free.”
When I first read that passage during my sophomore year, I put a question mark next to it in the margin. But since that time, that passage has changed my life.
Now I have seen the beauty of food. I have savored handfuls of blueberries picked from the hillside on a hot day and watched the summer clouds hang in the blue sky. I have sat on the back steps ,eating chopped carrots and chard, stir-fried with garlic and ginger, and watched the sun set over the cow pasture. On other evenings, I have sat with friends around a table covered thickly with fresh, tenderly prepared dishes, when not only our bodies were at rest, but our souls were as well.
Berry declares eating to be an “agricultural act.” However, he doesn’t mean just that our food comes from farms. He means that eating is connected with everything we are and everything around us. Our food is a bounty of nature, our supply of food is the work of our community and our enjoyment of food is the satisfaction of our hearts. And we pray before meals because eating our daily bread is one of our most profound connections with the grace of God, who redeems the decaying matter of yesterday in order to give us life today.
At the beginning, I couldn’t believe that food meant so much. I thought quality food, fresh food, expensive food was nothing more than snobbery. But it doesn’t have to be that way.
Food can be an art, a homegrown art. Such food is worthy to be called a lifework, and it is truly necessary for a democratic society. How can we be free when that which gives us our energy from day to day comes in shrink-wrapped packages without love? How can we be free when our daily activities — eating, drinking, talking — don’t give us joy and we are forced to turn to distant Hollywood or the amorphous Internet for comfort? Let joy be a product of living, and let beauty be found in the everyday.
For food joins together both the necessary and the pleasurable. It is, after all, intimately linked with health — not just with the health of our bodies, but also with the health of creation, the health of our communities, the health of our imaginations and, because it includes all those other things, the health of our souls.
But food is not a drug to be injected into our lives. Instead, let it be our art, the glue that binds us together, and the vehicle of a culture which every member of our community can personally contribute to. Let the community gather around the table after a day’s work and be family once again, sharing the grace of the Lord who is with us both in the body of the bread and in spirit, and let us share that grace with the world. Feed the hungry. Take care of my sheep. The kingdom of God is here.
Are you concerned that salvation is only internal? Do you believe that the sign of God’s presence is invisible? Look again at the world and see not just the evil that is condemned, but the evil that is accepted and grafted into our society. Look and see the casual pollution, the cordial avoidance of the poor, the violence against God, nature and humanity in the name of the economy. In such an environment, heaven shines like a star, and it can be tasted. The aroma drifts from heaven’s kitchen.
So food is a visceral testimony to God’s grace. At Harding, we have already been testifying and doing God’s work, but now, because of the community garden, we have a unique opportunity to minister with food. Compost needs to be incorporated into the soil. The shed needs to be fixed. Food needs to be grown, and it needs to be shared. More importantly, God’s grace needs to be shared. Let the world “taste and see that the Lord is good.”
Ifyou would like to contribute to the garden, look up “Harding Community GARDEN!!!” on Facebook or e-mail Daniel Kiser.
