Sunday, May 20, 2018

Beautiful Berries

Holy Garden

“Better than any argument is to rise at dawn and pick dew-wet red berries in a cup.”
Wendell Berry


I went to the Hickory farmer's market yesterday. I bought red berries and way too many other things—kale, radishes, blue berries, raspberries, cucumbers, tomatoes, corn, and braided bread—right from the hands of the farmers who tilled the earth, planted the seeds, and harvested the fruits of their labor. Each item was more expensive than the one before, but I didn't complain because they were fresh and beautiful, and because they were the ingredients for my cousin's 70th birthday dinner. It was a happy day.

Visiting farmer's markets always draws me back into memories of childhood gardens. In summer, my father worked at his job all day, then came home and worked in the garden until dark. Any one who creates a garden will tell you, it's a labor of love. Caring for the soil, watering, staking up, and picking the fruit at peak ripeness is essential, and it is also hard work. You have to love it and be committed to it to be successful. I remember spending hot June days scalding and peeling tomatoes for canning. Making soup stock with all the vegetable peelings and husks. Shelling black-eyed peas until my fingers were permanently stained brown. So when I have to pay eight dollars for a carton of shelled peas, I do it happily.

At the royal wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle yesterday, the presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church in America, gave a powerful sermon about love. It was about the commandment to love one another, and about the way that love changes us as individuals and collectively. Loving families and loving communities are sacred environments in which to bring up healthy children. I believe this love must also extend to the earth. We have been given a gift of something holy that we cannot make ourselves, but we can destroy if we are careless. In the words of Wendell Berry, “There are no sacred places and unsacred places; there are only sacred and desecrated places. My belief is that the world and our life in it are conditional gifts.” We are, each and everyone, responsible for tending our earth-home in such a way that we don't create destruction wherever we are. Reverence and respect should be given to those who tirelessly tend the earth so that the rest of us can enjoy dew-wet red berries.

In the Spirit,
Jane

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