Without Justice, Christianity Forgets Its' Founder

The four little planter-box-crosses are added to the Jerusalem
Cross raised beds. The fencing around the raised beds is temporary
until the boundary fences are complete.

Each one belonged in my emerging potager garden. And it felt good to see them there, encouraging me to better "talk the walk, and, walk the talk."

The four little planter-box-crosses symbolizing acts of devotion, acts of worship, acts of compassion, and acts of justice took their place on my Jerusalem cross raised bed yesterday.

Particularly rewarding was adding "acts of justice" in light of the recent marches against violent policing and racism in the USA and world. For without justice, Christianity forgets its' founder and enables the kingdoms of this world.

I need to get better about doing justice! And so Carla and I marched in Spokane last Saturday for non-violent policing and for justice. A well behaved, multi-racial crowd participated, until the disrupters and political stirrers, late in the day, did their distracting from the peaceful focus on justice.

Acts of justice. Acts of compassion. Acts of devotion. Acts of worship. If I would faithfully follow Jesus, all four are necessary - even if it costs because friends and congregation members fear and resist a Jesus-lifestyle of love in action.

Now it's time to plant. In the four little cross-shaped planter boxes, I'll be experimenting with some different herbs - lovage, caraway, cilantro and Persian mint. They'll flavor my dishes in new, creative ways. And, as I practice the four acts of devotion, worship, compassion and justice, my spiritual walk will be flavored too by the life and nation-building, world-shaping love of the man from Nazareth.

                                        ____________________________

This article touches on a shocking truth about white evangelical religion in the USA today that all Christians must honestly and non-defensively wrestle with. We have to recover justice to recover our souls! 

https://faithandleadership.com/william-h-lamar-iv-its-not-just-coronavirus-bad-theology-killing-us

Weep. Seed. Weed.

During this Great Pause gripping the world, people are weeping. Perhaps you are too. I know I am. So many good folk's health and livelihoods are affected.

But creation is not. 

Given a breather, it's showing signs of joyful and playful renewal - clearer skies; cleaner rivers, lakes and seas; thriving local farmers who are mostly committed to sustainable farming practices.

 Perhaps Pentecost this year is about the Spirit working in history to seed something new - the re-syncing of people with planet "as it was in the beginning," with the added liturgical promise of this being forever, "now and ever shall be, world without end." 

Jerusalem cross gardening, as a spiritual discipline, is grounding me in the promise found in this re-syncing, helping me to "be the re-synced," or, to "be the change" which our world so desperately needs yesterday.

Jerusalem Cross Gardening of Soil.

A tree that will bear Fuji, Gala, and Honeycrisp apples
prepares to be espaliered against the fence.

In my own life this seeding has begun. The fences of my potager garden are being completed to keep the deer and moose at bay. The raised beds (in the shape of a Jerusalem cross) will soon be filled with beautiful organic soil (just need to entice my son to help move it). The chicken cage/tractor has arrived and some laying hens soon will too. Newly planted apple trees and blueberry bushes are leafing out and flowering. The herb spiral is not far behind.

So much still waits to be done, but thanks to this bitter/sweet pandemic and its gift of slowed time, the elements of my permaculture design are steadily emerging to seed the garden I'm after - one that leans in to Original Sustainability through the permaculture ethic of caring for creation, caring for people, and giving away surplus.

In the process, I truly am being re-synced, drawn in to the unity at the heart of creation, found only when we learn to live as FRIENDS - with God, people and all of nature.

Jerusalem Cross Gardening of Soul

An interesting observation is emerging. I'm discovering that nonviolence and its' practice - something I know I can become so much better at - drives this re-syncing process.

Two quotes by Dominic Crossan focus my thoughts.

Three varieties of blueberry bushes
planted above a row of terracing rocks

"...the historical Jesus lived and died for nonviolent resistance to the violent normalcy of civilization then embodied in first-century Mediterranean place and incarnated in first-century Roman time."

I note as I read this sentence today that nothing has changed. In spite of 2000 years of Christians following Jesus, we still have not learned he was, and is, nonviolent in his embodiment of the divine. Yet violence is still a normal part of our civilization today, both in how we relate to people and creation, but in a way that is dangerously more powerful.

Crossan continues. 

"We take upon ourselves nonviolent resistance against violence to move the trajectory of human evolution toward justice and peace rather than injustice and violence."

Gardening Can Shape this Trajectory

The chicken cage/tractor being
prepared for residents

The good news is nonviolent resistance is happening in my garden. In it I am learning to lean in to Original Sustainability and to join the loving dance of mutuality - yes, with backyard chickens [see previous blog entry] and fruit trees, and herbs, a small alfalfa field, insect breeder boxes, table scraps, and the Spirit ever pulling the life in my gardening system into itself even as it becomes incarnate in seed, shoot, bud, flower and fruit.

Conclusion

The simple act of gardening is restoring my soul. In a small but important way, it is helping to non-violently "move human evolution towards justice and peace" and away from "injustice and violence" particularly towards the earth. 

Weeping, seeding and weeding. It's all about how the Spirit seems to be moving in my life this season as Pentecost approaches. I am grateful to be doing Jerusalem-Cross-Gardening in my own back yard again. The parts of myself are reconnecting, gardening of soil eliciting the gardening of soul to weave contemplation and action into the Trinitarian dance that unites all in the unity of the One. 

Well-Being - From "Nest Egg" to Egg

Chickens! 

I closed out one of my small investment funds recently and invested in, yes, chickens. And the return they'll bring.

By this act, "nest egg" morphs into the promise of "eggs." And with it comes a shift in daily living - one more intentional and engaged with the wider mystery and gift of life at the center of which moves Christ.

Cold hard cash becomes living, breathing birds in a web of life; investment shifts from dollars banked (Economic Capital) to cultivating appropriate relationships with the fullness of the earth (Natural Capital). 

And it's in the relationship that the "return" will be found. The birds will be a part of a greater whole, as will I - a gardening system of multiple design elements into which we'll both fit, each playing our own unique life-giving and life-receiving roles.

The chicken condo arrives...

The multiple design elements?  A movable chicken cage/tractor system for housing the birds safely; the birds themselves (ideally an heirloom breed for hardiness and good egg productivity); insect breeder boxes (40 gallon porous barrels buried in the soil, and filled with moist mulch in which multiple insects and worms can thrive to be harvested as a protein supplement); a forest system of fruit trees (upper storey), alfalfa and herbs (ground storey) for fruit, forage and pest control; and swales on contour to harvest rainwater off a neighbors roof in order to optimize groundwater recharge to promote tree health and productivity. And, of course, me. I'll be one of the design elements too, playing a stewardship role of connecting the table (i.e. food scraps) with the chicken run, with the food forest, with the insect breeder box and ultimately back to the table (i.e. as eggs) in the endlessly regenerating cycle of life.

A cheque arrived in the mail last week as I closed out an investment account and reinvested it today in chickens. It wasn't a huge sum, but this return promises the added value of connection. I look forward to the arrival of the chicks, and investing myself in a reciprocal relationship of caring. Perhaps I'll finally learn my place, a small part in the endless circle-dance of life, death and resurrection.

Perhaps the world needs more backyard chickens to help us "get back to normal." And maybe, just maybe, they'll help usher in a new normal, not a return to the normalization of greed that has plundered the earth in which we've all been complicit.

It all begins, again, in the garden?

The Cold, Hard, Trinity of Spikes.

The steel spikes felt cold and hard to the touch, akin to the nails that must have been used to crucify Love on that first Good Friday. And here I was using three - a trinity - on each corner of my raised beds to build a cross. (I was using three spikes on each corner to hold my Jerusalem cross shaped raised beds together as the center piece of my garden). 

Nails. Trinity. Cross.

My mind played with this thought of using a trinity of nails to build the cross.

Hammering to the rhythmic sound of steel on steel, something stirred deep within me to think of Love submitting to be nailed so cruelly to a cross with spikes similar to these, acceptable for my garden but brutal if used on hands and feet. 

Can the reason Love submitted be anything other than the Father's "your-ways-are-not-my-ways" (Is. 55:8-9) revealed now in Jesus and expressed as he hung on the cross by his words, "Father forgive them for they know what they do?" (Lk 23:34).

God - the Holy Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit - needed this cruel trinity of hard, cold nails used on Jesus' hands and feet, to help humanity re-imagine how God works to redeem the world. That, no matter what, God will love. The cycle of meeting violence with violence will be broken.

Jesus says it best in John 12:24. "Listen carefully: Unless a grain of wheat is buried in the ground, dead to the world, it is never any more than a grain of wheat. But if it is buried, it sprouts and reproduces itself many times over. In the same way, anyone who holds on to life just as it is destroys that life. But if you let it go, reckless in your love, you have it forever, real and eternal." (MSG).

It is in the reckless "letting go" that life happens. And so Love, in Jesus, could not but rise again in the hearts of the disciples as they too became reckless in their own loving to seed the change in the world that God yearns to bring.

No matter what. God will love. I hope Jerusalem Cross gardening is seeding the same kind of union with Love in my soul.

"Kin(g)dom of God - Not to be Confused with Civilization"

"By showing up for worship you put yourself on the side of life at a time when a tiny virus is bringing the whole world to it's knees." 

- Easter Sunday sermon, Bishop Elaine Stanovsky, U.M.C., April 12, 2020

The icon of Morihei Ueshiba, founder of aikido,
 hangs on the wall behind the Ndaleni Cross
constructed of two samurai swords sheathed
by Trinity into a love stronger than death.

"Showing up for worship you put yourself on the side of life..."

I love this Easter thought. And would add the hope that showing up for worship during this pandemic, even if only digitally, cements a growing conviction within enough of us that things cannot return to normal. Theology, economy, community - these must all emerge in new ways in the post COVID-19 world if we are to get back up off our knees in an enduring and peaceful way.

Jesus would call this "new way" the kin(g)dom of God. But it should not be confused with civilization.

Describing a brutal massacre of civilians -  women and children, some only a few months old, of the village, Distomo in Greece on Saturday, June 10, 1944 - by the 4th Armored Police Division of the Waffen SS because of an anti-German ambush by local partisans during World War II, John Dominic Crossan* calls such acts of vengeance barbaric. He notes further that civilization is supposed to save us from acts of barbarism like this, even during times of war.

The sad truth is that often civilization has not. Does not. Will not. Save us. And that's because it's development has always been accompanied by escalating violence. Flint became bronze became sword became cannon became nuclear bomb. And all have been used in war. Is it just a question of time that intercontinental ballistic missiles, or worse, are too?

Civilization has not saved us from barbarism. It did not save Jesus. It did not save the Jewish nation. It didn't even save civilization itself as the enemies of Rome helped defeat it. And today, the barbarism of civilization still wreaks havoc on the kin(g)dom of God of which there are beautiful signs all around us.

Morihei Ueshiba, the founder of aikido,
the "way of the harmonious spirit"

So, what will save us from civilization? At war with itself and nature by pitting nation against nation through wars and relentless competition for endless GNP growth, civilization is turning the "It is good" of God into a nightmare of global warming, social and economic disintegration, and ecosystem collapse.

Life itself is being compromised, and the COVID-19 pandemic, the "tiny little virus bringing the whole world to its knees," offers us a brief opportunity, not only to show up for worship on Easter Sunday, but to show up for the kin(g)dom of God during these next Great Fifty Days of Easter as the world struggles to find a vision to forge the different future that is so needed.

But what will this vision look like?

The answer begins and ends with love. Love as the way of the cross that always ends in an Easter, a resurrection.

Emergence theology is wrestling with this in fresh ways within the Christian tradition. If God is love and theology is about the ways of a loving God, then Lent is the time, as Brian D. McLaren suggests, for "an honest self-examination of our maturity in love and a renewal of our commitment to grow in it." And this is especially needed now, during an Easter when the world is challenged by this global pandemic.

So, "Do we love like Jesus?" Or do we love as civilization loves - with guns, missiles or threats to dominate in our back pockets?

Do we love even our enemies, as Jesus did? Or do we circle the wagons and prepare for battle like civilization always does?

Jesus embraced the cross, willing to surrender his own life rather than take the life of another. And in doing so, he lived.  And love became stronger than both death or the threat of death. His example spawned a movement of loving Christ-followers who collectively helped move the good of civilization towards the community of the kin(g)dom because death itself had lost its grip on them.

Where are such Christ-followers today?

Do we love like Jesus? Our challenge in this post-COVID-19 world is to follow his example by being discipled to "say 'no' to the ways of the sword, 'yes' to the ways of the Lord" and to practice nonviolence as Jesus did.

The Universal saints of St. Gregory's Episcopal
Church, explained.

The Great 50 Days this year began in the isolation of our own homes on Easter Sunday morning with the whole world on it's knees.  It's time, finally, to learn to do as Jesus did, "celebrate the revolutionary power of death-defying love," and to do this both in our congregations and alongside all people in the global diversity of many cultures, faiths and practices.

Learning the non-violent way of Jesus will not be easy. There seems to be no ready road map in our Christian world to learn how to practice nonviolence and especially the spirituality that supports it. But at Covenant Methodist here in Spokane we are making a small start.

The Peace and Creation Care Team is learning from Universal Saint/Friend of God/Seventh Story Hero, Morihei Ueshiba, the founder of aikido. "He believed "Budo" (the martial arts way) is not felling the opponent by force, nor is it a tool to lead the world into destruction with arms, but it is accepting the spirit of the universe, keeping the peace of the world, and correctly producing, protecting and cultivating all things in nature."

We have hung an icon of Sensei Ueshiba beneath the 1000-plus peace cranes in our sanctuary during this season of Easter, bringing his witness into our worship space.  Looking to Jesus as the perfecter of our faith, perhaps we will yet learn from Ueshiba how our swords can be sheathed by Trinity in a love that is stronger than death (please see the photo of the Ndaleni Cross above).

Isn't that what resurrection is? A love that is stronger than death! A love that fearlessly and nonviolently challenges all forces of civilization that have done violence to community and creation. Post COVID-19 we don't want those forces back!

It really is time to "show up" for worship. And for practice. The nonviolent love of Jesus towards people and creation beckons. Things cannot return to normal. Theology, economy, community - these must all emerge in new ways in the post COVID-19 world if we are to get back up off our knees in an enduring and peaceful way.  It's what creation groans and longs for - the revealing of the sons and daughters of God, citizens, wringing the good out of civilization.


 *  "Resurrecting Easter - How the West Lost and the East Kept the Original Easter Vision" by John and Sarah Crossan.

Rocks, Piled High in Garden and Psyche

A Pile of Rocks in Garden and Psyche

They were the curse of my new project. Every thrust of the spade and pick axe brought the loud thud of yet another rock strike.

Quickly the task of building a fence and installing raised beds, that should have taken weeks, was stretching into months. The rocks, water-worn by an ancient flood and hidden in the soil for centuries, now piled up in both my garden and impatient psyche.

Rocks Waiting to be Placed

Until they didn't!

In life's rhythm of disorder, order, to reorder (Covid-19 disorder, stay-at-home order, healing of body and soul reordering), the disorderly rock piles, with an ordered placement, now yield a re-ordered threshold into my potager garden. Paved to handle increased foot traffic this new path, as bonus, now displays the ancient story of those tectonic and watery forces that shaped this beautiful land.

A New Path Emerges...

Again, for me there is now no going back. The COVID-19 pandemic spurs me to a determination to be a more faithful Christ-follower: my theology graduates from kindergarten; my preaching freed from a transactional understanding of the cross ("Jesus paid it all") to a relational one of Christ in Jesus demonstrating pure Love, to which all are called.

A new path for me - forged by the ordering of disorderly rocks in my garden, and the ordering influence of this stay-at-home directive - is being laid on which I now must walk. St. Francis says it so well from his deathbed. "I have done what was mine to do, may Christ now teach you what you are to do."

This feels so right. Perhaps my second half of life will be richer for it.

Written this Holy Saturday, April 11, 2020.

Spring 2020. The Pandemic.

"And the people stayed home...and learned new ways of being." Kitty O'Meara

The 8 foot, deer proof fence, under construction 

This poem (see below), so simple and direct, went viral for a reason. It's about the promise of healing - healing for me, for you, and for the whole world under attack by this pandemic. And that promise taps into a deep longing many have.

"And the people stayed home...and learned new ways of being." These are the words in the poem that capture this moment we're in.

That's what I'm learning - new ways of being while staying home, and among other things, developing my potager garden.

Worms - from decay comes
fertility and life

Compost bin filled with table
scraps - and worms

As I work - erecting my fence; composting my grass clippings, leaves and kitchen scraps; constructing a herb spiral ending in a watercress pond; installing my raised beds in the shape of a Jerusalem cross; laying out swales to capture rainwater from a neighbors roof to optimize groundwater recharge; planting fruit trees to use that water; planting alfafa as a legume to fix nitrogen for the tree crops and to feed the chickens - I am making connections. Connections with life in all its' visible and invisible forms promising a unifying friendship - with God, people and all creation.


It's good forging these relationships. Good because it feels so right, this "learning new ways of being" in a world waiting for people who have learned to "stay home." 


So, I've made a decision, partly inspired by the insightful words of this poem. I'm not going back!

Looking east in the emerging potager garden

I'm not going back to the way it was before. Today I choose. I choose to continue to "stay home" and to "learn new ways of being" - to garden; and to read, listen, rest, exercise, play, be still, listen again, meditate, pray, dance; and to meet my shadow.

This day, I choose to embrace this moment offered by the disruption of this awful pandemic. It promises me, promises the world, a sweetness of healing that, coming at such great cost to so many, should not be missed.

Kitty O'Meara captures the hope best. "And when the danger passed, and the people joined together again, they grieved their losses, and made new choices, ... and created new ways to live and heal the earth fully, as they had been healed."

                                                                     * * * * *

AND THE PEOPLE STAYED HOME

"And the people stayed home. And read books, and listened, and rested, and exercised, and made art, and played games, and learned new ways of being, and were still. And listened more deeply. Some meditated, some prayed, some danced. Some met their shadows. And the people began to think differently.

"And the people healed. And, in the absence of people living in ignorant, dangerous, mindless, and heartless way, the earth began to heal.

"And when the danger passed, and the people joined together again, they grieved their losses, and made new choices, and dreamed new images, and created new ways to live and heal the earth fully, as they had been healed."

- Kitty O'Meara 



Permaculture Design: an approach used in developing my potager garden that is very much about the healing of the earth. Below is a good summary of what it is. It's good to be dusting off these skills again as Carla and I become rooted to this spot. No more moving!