Meeting Margaret

I readily admit to the temptation of idol worship. Not idol worship of men so much, unless their wit and intelligence is cushioned by a massive dose of humility. But women – funny, smart, influential women – they set me genuflecting.

But genuflecting is not becoming, especially in public, hinting as it does to the fact that you, the genuflector, are not yourself funny, smart and/or influential. Besides that it breaks the Second Commandment. I know this and yet when I got word that I was scheduled to be on Lorna Dueck’s Context TV show during an episode on Faith and the Environment** and that Markku and I would share the stage with Margaret Atwood – THE Margaret Atwood, author of over 40 books, winner of the Booker prize, sole subject of an entire literary society – I felt my knees start to give.

Fast forward to CBC Studios, Toronto. It is the pre-show book signing. Margaret is sitting at a table before me while I stand, lock-kneed and smiling in what I hope is a sweet, confident, friendly way – the way one might smile at a very beautiful and very intimidating Great Dane.

Margaret is signing her newest book which I’ve just purchased en route – MaddAddam. “For Thea,” she writes, because in my nervousness I’ve mumbled my name. But oh well, I won’t trouble her to correct it. Thea is a nice name. Maybe I can find someone by that name and give her this book as a present.

And then, quickly and sort of on the sly because of the long line of people stretching behind me, I give her my thin little book, Planted. And, clever woman that she is, she notices from the cover that my name is in fact not Thea, but Leah, which rhymes with Thea, but is definitely a different name. And so she turns the Th into a fanciful L and adds an h on the end and I’m grateful.

Then off to make-up where a spry middle-aged woman with something of a wood-nymph about her makes us up (which is a wonder and sets me wondering why I’ve never gone in for this make-up stuff before since she’s erased five years at least from my face….but I digress).

In make-up Margaret is warm and chatty and very funny and even sings a little song to Lorna and the rest of us, and I worry that my knees might give way.

Then it’s into the studio for the show – the same studio, by the way, where Hockey Night in Canada is filmed, a jewel of trivia which, when he hears it, makes Markku gape and look around in awe and expectancy should Don Cherry come marching in through a side door.

Margaret is on first and for most of the show. And she is very funny and very smart and therefore very articulate. And I’m glad I’m sitting down. She talks about her book Year of the Flood and about religion and the environment and the wacky fictional sect she’s created called "God’s Gardeners" – tenders of gardens, keepers of bees and wearers of flowy linen clothes. Hmmmm…

And then Markku and I are on stage – real life God’s Gardeners. Jesus followers and bird lovers. Of the potential eight questions I’ve been told will be asked of me, I get to lob back only two answers. I spent the whole plane ride out to Toronto reading and committing to memory the best of Wendell Berry (yes, I see the irony) so that I might sound half as articulate as Ms. Atwood. But no matter, because when I steal a glance at Margaret – at this accomplished and gracious author – she is positively beaming at us, her smile beatific with rapport and camaraderie. Yes, the author of The Handmaiden’s Tale – whose dystopian visions have set the most callused hearts quivering – smiles on us. We are in this together. We are all God’s Gardeners, held, with the rest of creation, in the hand of Great Love. And from that place of security and hope we are called to act with courage and strong knees.

**The show will air sometime in the new year. Watch this space for channels and times.

No Books, Please!

credit: Darkwood67

“I prefer not to read things printed on a dead tree.”

So said a young environmentalist when I offered her a copy of my environmentally themed book, Planted. Because I looked at her so blankly and still held my book out like a limp hand waiting to be grasped, she eventually accepted it, I assume to save me embarrassment. It took a few minutes for her comment to sift through the grey matter of my brain before I realised that this woman didn’t read books. No books! At least not books that involve paper -- she later told me she reads everything on her Kindle.

It would be easy to dismiss her as a fringe fanatic. I mean, who doesn’t love books!? (Truth be told, I have rubbed the covers of new books on my face like one would with a swath of silk or toddler’s hand.) Aesthetics aside, I appreciate her conviction, even if the cynic in me wants to ask if she lives in a house made out of dead trees, or if she is sure the heavy metals in her Kindle were ethically sourced, or if her car serves primarily as a means of transportation or is really just a really big pink planter (a la the photo).

But I digress… as I said, I appreciate her conviction. She has made a choice based on her values and is living them out – no dead trees as a means of communication, period, the end.

I applaud her choice because living with an ecological consciousness means making decisions. Some of these decisions will be inconsistent with others, some will look radical, some will look silly. But without them we are left with only an empty ideology.

So, going back to my Kindle-loving Enviro friend -- here’s the main thing I admire about this woman. She still took the book. She told me her opinion, but she saved me embarrassment. She recognised that we’re all on a journey. She didn’t lecture me. She put our newly established relationship first. And because of her graciousness I haven’t been able to dismiss her conviction. It has stuck with me and made me think harder about what decisions I can make that will help me live lighter on the planet today.

Holy Ground

credit: Betsy Jean

When Moses stood at the burning bush God told him to take off his shoes because the place where he was standing was holy ground.

Holy Ground.

What made it holy, of course, was the presence of God, manifested in flaming shrubbery. But what if God, being everywhere (as Christian doctrine teaches us), makes every place holy? What if every bush dances with the flames of God’s presence, but our eyes are just not calibrated to see it?

And...

What if that mud Jesus caked a blind man’s eyes with somehow aided his prayer for healing?

And...

What if the name “Adam” which comes from the Hebrew word meaning “red clay” isn't just an interesting literary device?

Adam – Mud Man. Earth Child. Earthling.

Biologist Hayman Hartman claims that the reason there is life on earth, and not, say, on the moon or mars, is the existence of clay. His claims are complicated, having to do with iron and organic compounds and crystal structures, but in essence, he claims it’s clay that holds the blueprint for life. Isn’t that interesting?

Look down.

You are standing on holy ground.

All Things New

According to the World Health Organization, 300,000 will die annually due to the effects of climate change by the year 2030. The UN Refugee Agency warns that by mid-century 200 million refugees will be on the move because of environmental degredation. The IUCN estimates current extinction rates to be up to 1,000 times the normal background rate.

If statistics had the power to change behaviour then such sound bites would likely have us running hell bent through the streets toward some constructive environmental action -- like trading in our SUVs for Schwinns and our Happy Meals for hemp seed smoothies. But statistics, because they play on flash-in-the-pan emotions of fear and guilt, are short lived in their power to change long-term behaviour. In my experience as a Christian, it is theological truth, grounded in scripture and inculcated into life, which sustains new ways of living.

Paul’s words in Colossians have the power to change the way live in relation to creation.

 For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him [Jesus], and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross. 

It’s a theological meaty passage that links creation and humanity’s redemption in the person of Jesus. Through Christ all things were created; he sustains (or holds together) all things and then through his resurrection he reconciles all things. Where might all things end? Does it stop with people? This is how I used to read it in my tract-toting days. But the radical point this passage seems to be making is that creation itself participates in redemption. Biblical scholar N.T. Wright suggests that “redemption is not simply making creation a bit better, as the optimistic evolutionist would suggest. Nor is it rescuing souls from an evil material world, as the Gnostic would say. It is the remaking of creation.”

This text then has serious implications for our motivation for caring for creation. We do not try to save the world: rather, we join in the saving work God has already begun. We become God’s co-labourers, co-operating with the Spirit in making all things new.


Author's note:  Adapted from an article I contributed to the Citizen's for Public Justice book, Living Ecological Justice: A Biblical Response to the Environmental Crisis, edited by Dr. Mishka Lysack and Karri Munn-Venn -- a great resource for churches and small groups.  Go to www.cpj.ca for more information.

A Post wherein I Ponder the Fire in My Shoulder

My shoulder hurts.

They say you should write about what you know. This is what I know: my shoulder hurts. It feels like someone lit a little fire somewhere under my left shoulder blade and the flames are licking up my neck and down my arm. I don’t know why it hurts or why it feels like a fire and not, say, a vice or a meat grinder. I’m hoping the doctor will shed light on this corporeal mystery when I see her in a few days time.

In the meantime I am icing my upper left side till its numb, taking Tylenol with codeine, mooching shoulder rubs from my husband, and wondering how in the name of all that’s good people live with chronic pain.

I’m also wondering what it means to be a spiritual, yet bodily being. (I know, big stuff. Pain does that, makes a philosopher out even the most simple minded. It also makes you a whiner, but that’s beside the present point.)

Here’s what I’ve come up with ... hold onto your hats, this is going to be good, born, as it is, out of suffering ...

We are creatures.

Dum, dum, dum!

But wait, there’s more...

We are, in fact, earthlings -- formed from the dust, as our creation narrative goes. We are simple stuff – earthen vessels -- frail, easily damaged, dependant. A little dose of pain is all it takes to realign us to this reality. A little dose of pain is all it takes to realign us to a posture of dependence on God and to a posture of solidarity with our fellow suffering earthlings.

Perhaps this explains why, in the midst of this pain, I’ve also had this deep, inexplicable sense of joy. Perhaps I’m being realigned.


Author’s note: Some of you, dear blog friends, might be worried that I have caused myself further pain by typing this wee post for your enjoyment and edification. Not at all. Happily, if I sit just so, with my computer on my lap, ice on my shoulder, and feet on the coffee table, I experience no extra pain (meaning no extra pain above the fiery pain I’m already feeling). But thanks for your concern.

Blessed be the Basset Hounds

Happy Feast of Saint Francis Day!

This is the day we celebrate the patron saint of puppies, piranhas, and pigeons (and every other winged, four and multi-footed creature!). In honor of the day I offer you this lovely poem, penned by Jan Richardson (janrichardson.com), written "in gratitude for the animals who have graced her life." So grab the closest pet at hand (or if you have no cats or dogs underfoot, go outside and look up into the bird-dotted sky) and celebrate this blessing.

Blessing the Animals

You who created them

and called them good:

bless again these creatures

who come to us

as a blessing

fashioned of fur

or feather

or fin,

formed of flesh

that breathes with

your own breath,

that you have made

from sheer delight,

that you have given

in dazzling variety.

Bless them

who curl themselves

around our hearts

who twine themselves

through our days

who companion us

in our labor

who call us

to come and play.

Bless them

who will never be

entirely tamed

and so remind us

that you love

what is wild,

that you rejoice

in what lives close

to the earth,

that your heart beats

in the heart of these creatures

you have entrusted

to our care.

Party Time

Hey ho my blog chums,

I know, I know, I’ve designed these posts to be inspirational and (hopefully) literary in nature, but I want to momentarily break with this fine tradition to invite you to a party.

If you live anywhere near the western shores of Vancouver, British Columbia, then I’d like to invite you to an evening of fun and frivolity and inspiration.

I’d like to ... invite ... you... (ellipses for suspense!) ... to ... my...

Book Launch Party!!

(blow party favours and clap wildly here)

The details:

This Saturday, Sept. 21, 7 - 9 pm 

Regent College, Vancouver BC

(5800 University Blvd on the campus of UBC)

Live music with the wonderful Ryan McAllister of Cowboys and Indians fame! Food! And drinks! Doorprizes! And, of course, a wee bit of book blather.

Please come. Really, I'd love it if you came!

The Milky Way

I saw
the Milky Way
last night.

It had been
eight months since
last I’d seen it,

living as I do
in the ambient glow
of a big city,

and living
as I do
inside.

But last night,
rocking on the smooth
lap of the sea,

I took three steps
from boat’s cabin
to cockpit

and stepped
into
the universe.

The Milky Way,
stretched like a spangled net,
snagged me by

my outstretched heart
and tossed me
into the square ladle

of the Big Dipper,
where I lay free floating
and gasping.

And then a silver thread,
cast down from above --
The North Star,

Leading me 

home and into the heart
of all things.

Swimwear for Earthkeepers

credit: Leopostal

My mother-in-law wears a bikini.

She is seventy years old and decades of gravity have done their work. But she wears a bikini nonetheless, with a devil-may-care nonchalance to what others her age are more inclined to cover in sarongs, ruffles and cruise-wear.

She’s my hero.

Her okay-ness with her body has a two-fold source. First, she’s Finnish. Do you know any Finns? Untouched by Puritanical prudishness, Finns share a continental European lack of modesty concerning the body, but to the extreme. While other Europeans are going topless on the warm and sunny beaches of the French Rivera, the Finns are flinging themselves buck naked from their saunas into the SNOW. There’s a reason to take off your shirt in the south of France—it’s hot! But why subject your whole bare self to the crunch and scrape of ice in the dead of winter? Whatever the reason, the point is, Finns are a people profoundly okay with their bodies.

How does this relate to faith and caring for creation?

My mother-in-law is also a devout Christian and I think her embrace of the bikini as her swimwear of choice goes beyond her Finnish heritage to her biblical understanding of creation. She understands that when it says in the Bible that Adam was formed out of the dirt (adama in Hebrew) that she too is a human formed out of humus and that humus is good. She actually believes that when it says, “God saw all that he had made and it was good,” that means her body as well. It also means mountains and trees and iguanas, but one’s body is a great place to start.

Theologically, the idea that the material world is good makes sense—after all, God wouldn’t have taken on a human body if flesh were inherently evil. Christians believe Jesus was fully man and fully God. Yes, he came to redeem the world, but he did so eating and drinking, walking and sleeping. And working. Jesus was a carpenter, for goodness sake—he worked with wood, with callused hands and with sweat in his eyes. Jesus’ full participation in the material world sheds a holy light on all manner of “earthy” jobs, from ditch digging to diaper changing to gardening to fish and frog studying.

This grounding in the goodness of creation has inspired our work with A Rocha (arocha.ca) these past twelve years. While our theological understanding of creation’s goodness has not demanded that any of us don bikinis on a regular basis, it has compelled us to restore salmon streams, grow organic vegetables, and open the wonder of creation to children on field trips. It has also inspired us to pay attention to the world around us, reverently acknowledging the goodness of creation and the Creator who made it.

(Adapted from Planted, Cascade Books, 2013, and used with permission of the author's mother-in-law.)

Minding the Gap

credit: Ashkay Davis

I was walking with a friend around our farm the other day. We were looking at the weeds sprouting in the flower bed I am in charge of maintaining. And I confessed that I like the idea of gardening very much and I even like the act of gardening if there are fellow gardeners sharing the task very near my elbow, but a certain inertia sets in when it’s just me and the hoe. My friend, a fellow artsy-type who works as a filmmaker for an environmental organization, said, “Yes, I like the idea of caring for creation, but I have gaps.”

Perhaps it was simply the psychological balm of congruency, perhaps it was the sisterly intimacy born of confession, but whatever the reason, it felt good to admit and label my shortfall.

I am an earthkeeper. My absolutely favourite form of recreation is going for a walk in the woods. I know the names of most of the birds that visit our farm. The majority of the food I eat is cooked from scratch. But I have gaps.

So, I’ve set myself a gentle goal to mind the gaps, one at a time, and without guilt.

Gap Number One: Canning.

In my nearly 46 years of life I have helped two people can tomatoes. But I have never canned as much as a pea on my own. I like the idea of canning. I like the thought of pots bubbling with berries that will become jam, cupboards packed with peaches preserved in sugary juice, kitchen counters crowded with mason jars full of beans (with the light from the window filtering through all those stalks of green), tables laden with...

Uh, where was I?

How I will mind this gap? I will tap on the door of our housemate, Denise, who was raised by Mennonites and therefore knows how to can everything that might possibly grow in a garden, and I will ask her to help me can something.

Maybe beans.

The Environment: Home or Hobby?

credit: Etienne Poisson

I visited my Arizona homeland last April and ran into an old friend I hadn’t seen in years. After exchanging the basics -- Where do you live? How many kids do you have? -- we moved on to the “What do you do for a living?” song and dance. When I told her I worked for a conservation organization, my friend, a devout Christian and fine person, looked at me with an expression somewhere between bewilderment and bemusement, and exclaimed, “I’ve never known someone who was into the environment!”

I understand what she meant, of course. She meant “into” the environment like one is “into” a hobby or cause; but, taken literally, the comment begs the question -- what else could one be into? The stratosphere?

There’s nothing else to be in-to, but the environment!

The carbon dioxide exhaled in your next breath will be “recycled” into oxygen by the trees outside your window for your next hour’s breath. The atoms that make up the wonderfully unique and amazing you were once the itty bitty building blocks of birds, bugs, rocks, soil, flowers and/or dinosaurs -- all equally unique and amazing in their own ways. The fact that an atom in your right pinky’s fingernail was once lodged in the hind foot of a three-toed sloth has nothing to do with pantheism or reincarnation (as my friend might fear); it has everything to do with biology.

We are -- part and parcel (and particle) -- creation.

Being “into” the environment isn’t a matter of preference, it’s a matter of placement in the order of things. The environment is not a hobby, it’s our home.

A Song to Break Your Heart

credit: Kenneth Cole Schneider

Sixty different species of birds regularly visit our farm. Each species sings a unique song (or two...or a thousand).

The Red-eyed Vireo sings 20,000 different songs -- every day!

In contrast, the Song Sparrow, despite the connotations of its name, has a meagre repertoire of just ten songs.

The Dark-eyed Junko is a minimalist, abandoning the frivolity of singing for the utility of morse code, tapping out his calls in snappy clicks.

The Swainson’s Thrush climbs the ladder of her song two rungs at a time, swinging like a trapeze artist from each rung as she goes.

The Barred owl’s daytime call is an escalating shrill so piercing you’d swear he was running his talons across a little blackboard tucked beneath his wing. But you forgive him his spine-tingling alarm when at night the full O of his breathy hoot comes drifting out of the dark like a verbal smoke ring.

The Winter Wren sings as if his life depended on it. Looking like a puff of brown cotton and weighing about as much, ounce for ounce he belts out his song with ten times the power of a crowing rooster.

It’s enough to break your heart.

And mend it.

Who is singing out your window?

Gardening with the Least of These

Even so the body is not made up of one part but of many... The eye cannot say to the hand, “I don’t need you!” ... On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor. And the parts that are unpresentable are treated with special modesty, while our presentable parts need no special treatment. But God has put the body together, giving greater honor to the parts that lacked it, so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.
 (I Cor. 12)

It’s easy to be romantic about gardening – red, ripe tomatoes dangling from the vine, shiny green cucumbers, crisp and fresh. In our promotional material for A Rocha’s Community Shared Agriculture (CSA) project, we certainly capitalize on this sort of romanticism, both in recruiting consumers to eat all those lovely organic tomatoes and cucumbers, and also in our recruiting of interns to plant, grown and harvest those beautiful veggies. And usually the romanticism holds. CSA members relish every last bean and brussel sprout, and interns enjoy the soul-nourishing activity of digging in the dirt and falling into bed with sore muscles and the satisfying knowledge that they have provided for the most essential of human needs – food – and they have done so in a way that cares for the earth. Therefore we were a bit surprised by a young intern from Cambodia who came to work in our CSA project. Though he had signed up to serve as a “Sustainable Agriculture Intern,” he was not very keen on digging, planting, weeding or harvesting. He was a lovely fellow, so were puzzled by his work ethic and reluctance to embrace what he had signed up to do. Turns out, farming is peasant work in Cambodia and this guy had a university degree. Once you’ve escaped the drudgery of farming in Cambodia you don’t go back. Farming is what the poor and uneducated do.

It’s easy to be critical of this sort of stance, but upon reflection it hits awfully close to home for those of us born and raised in the privileged North. Very often we’ve relegated the sweaty, backbreaking, daily and dismal tasks of everyday life (whether that be washing dishing, cars, carrots or babies’ bottoms) to those economically desperate enough to do these “thankless” jobs. We have, in fact, reserved the “less honorable” tasks to the “least of these.” The injustice of this sort of hierarchy of labor can be seen in all its starkness in the migrant farm workers who can’t afford to eat the fresh produce that they grow, choosing instead the affordability and convenience of fast food (and therefore unwittingly choosing the array of health problems, from diabetes to heart disease, that go along with that sort of diet). In a word, these workers suffer. But, if we are take seriously the words of Apostle Paul, if one part suffers, the whole body suffers.

An acknowledgment of that suffering and an act of solidarity with those on the bottom rungs of the agribusiness ladder, might be to plant a garden: stand with the least of these, if not literally, then figuratively, under a common sky. Get our hands dirty, break a sweat, grow some food. Such an act not only has the power to create empathy and solidarity, it has the power to ground us, literally, in and on the earth as we become aware of the cycles of seasons and weather; as we slow down and give thanks for the gifts of rain and sun and good soil; as we acknowledge the generous hand who provides it all. If done intentionally, gardening can become an experientially bridge not only between us and the Creator, but also between those for whom growing food is a romantic hobby and those for whom it is a grinding way of life. Sore muscles and callused hands can become a prompt that leads us to remember and pray for our less fortunate brothers and sisters. By planting a garden we proclaim that we are part of a bigger human community – a bigger body – as we give honour to those who appear least.

At the Rim

credit: markusni

I stood at the rim of the Grand Canyon a week ago. It’s funny because I’m not fond of heights but my stomach was steady and my nerves calm as I looked over the edge down to the Colorodo River over 5,000 feet below. Five thousand feet – that’s nearly a mile. The elevation change is so significant that the Canyon comprises five separate and distinct ecosystems from arid desert at the bottom to spruce-fir forest on the north rim. The elevation change is so significant that when Spanish explorer Garcia López de Cárdenas first set eyes on the Canyon in 1540 he estimated the Colorodo to be six feet across, merely a creek over which to hop. He had no reference for what he was seeing. I sympathize, hence the lack of vertigo. Nothing could be that immense, that spectacular. The expanse played tricks on my brain, making me feel like Tom Bombodil and tempting me to think, In four or five leaps I could be off this ledge and down to that stream for a drink!

My husband is wiser. When we approached the Canyon for our first look, Markku burst into shouts of “Halleluiah” (to the mortification of our daughters and the delight of a very friendly park ranger). With the same sense of awe, Markku touched every rock along the “Geological History” walk, setting his hand on stone that was nearly two billion years old. Every rock he touched predated the age of the dinosaurs.

That’s when the vertigo set in. Every rock, older than the dinosaurs. This rock, this rock I touched -- “Vishu granite” -- nearly half the age of the earth. It made me dizzy. Fall off the edge and you not only plummet nearly a mile, but 1.8 billion years as well.

Who are we that you are mindful of us, oh God?

Who Speaks for the Trees?

I watched a forest felled last week. First I heard the rumble of a large machine, then the cracking of wood splintering, then a shivering balance and the fall of a tree appearing both ponderously heavy and bizarrely weightless as it toppled in slow motion, seemingly drawn to earth as much by subjected surrender as by gravity.

I had been standing near the garden outside my home on Kingfisher Farm when this occurred.  The forest in question ran along the 5 acres of our eastern border.  Most of the trees were alders – weeds of the tree world, but also home to squirrels, raccoons, and countless birds including a pair of Barred owls that called regularly to us from across the fence.

Three different envoys of farmmates pleaded with our new neighbour to leave a few trees standing – the cherry that draped over the fence onto our land, but especially the towering cedars on the slope toward the pond. But our case was made in vain -- every tree came down. In as sense our pleading was hypocritical -- our own gardens and pastures were once a tangle of Firs and ferns and our houses are built of wood. And so we pause and lament, recognizing both our own culpability in creation’s destruction as well as the potency of our technology which can destroy in a few days what had flourished for centuries. And we recommit ourselves to know our place, to steward it well, and live in peace.