resting in the grace of creation's rhythms...

Yesterday and today have been dig in the dirt, get the herbs in their pots, and cut back more of the bramble day at Chez Lumsdemott. After a late breakfast on the deck, we spent hours potting, arranging, and replanting this year's herb garden. We even made a halting step towards this year's terrace, too. It will be relatively simple utilizing the ton of old tree limbs I've cut over the past year. But it will be perfect for chard, cukes, pumpkins, potatoes, spinach and the peas that are yet to come.

All the while I was sweating and messing about in the dirt, I was thinking about my recent reconnect with the work Matthew Fox. He is currently teaching about the archetypal green man and what he/she means for 21st century creation spirituality. I was introduced to Fox back in the mid-seventies when he reclaimed the ancient Christian mystical tradition for a new generation. His writing was playful, profound, and pragmatic. Fox has been linked in my heart to Fr. Ed Hays and his Forest of Peace retreat center. They both entered my world at about the same time. Over the decades these two Roman Catholic priests (and later Henri Nouwen, Richard Rohr and Sr. Joan Chittister) served as my go-to-elders in the search for a spirituality of tenderness and joy. Of particular interest to me was the biblical and theological insights Fox shared concerning compassion: in renewing the importance of living with an open heart, Fox pointed me towards a path that practiced honoring all of life as holy:

Compassion is the way we treat all there is in life - ourselves, our bodies, our imaginations and dreams, our neighbors, our enemies, our air, our water, our earth, our animals, our death, our space, and our time-as sacred. Compassion is a spirituality (that recognizes that) creation matters. It is treating all creation as holy and as divine... which is what it is... (Remember) compassion is not pity. Compassion never considers an object as weak or inferior. Compassion... works from a strength born of our shared weakness, not from someone else's weakness. And it is from this awareness of our mutuality that we find new ways of sharing... and living... and being. (NOTE: for more on this go to: https://innerself.com/content/personal/spirituality-mindfulness/inspiration/5029-altruism-vs-compassion-by-matthew-fox.html)

In a recent reflection, Fox suggested that St. Thomas Aquinas could be called one of creation's green men. Reminding us that Aquinas was grounded in the wisdom school of Aristotle (like Jean Vanier) Fox writes: 

Why was Aquinas so at home with Aristotle and other pagans? One reason is that his sense of revelation was not anthropocentric—he didn’t see revelation as simply what is in the Bible. He wrote, “Revelation comes in two volumes: the Bible and nature.” He took nature seriously as a source of the experience of the divine and of divine truth. To take nature seriously is to study it, and to do this one turns to scientists whose task it is to uncover the truths of nature. “All creatures confess that they are made by God”–we study them because they lead us to the divine wisdom. “All natural things were produced by the divine art, and so may be called ‘God’s works of art.’” Every single creature leads us to the “Source without a source” who is God and “leads to the knowledge of the first and highest One, which is infinite in every perfection.” Aquinas sees creatures as a “mirror” or image of God. “Every creature is for us like a certain mirror. Because from the order, goodness and magnitude which are caused by God in things, we come to a knowledge of the divine wisdom and goodness and eminence. And this knowledge we call a vision in a mirror.” (For more on this series re: green men and creation spirituality, please go to: http://dailymeditationswit hmatthewfox .org/2019/06/01/thomas-aquinas-as-a-green-man/?utm_ source= ActiveCampaign&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Daily+Meditations+with+Matthew+Fox%3A+June+1%2C+2019&utm_campaign=Daily+Meditations+June+1%2C+2019

I didn't grow up in an earthy environment. We never went camping as kids. We never dug or planted gardens. And there wasn't much connection to the natural world from my parents or the church of my youth. Yes, we had a funky, old, ramshackle summer cottage in Webster, MA that my grandparents built in the 1930s. It was heated by a massive fire place and spending summers there put me in touch with the mysterious beauty and power of water. But besides a few Boy Scout escapades, and summers at the lake, I didn't know much about being green until I worked with Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers. The first few years involved resourcing the grape and Gallo wine boycotts. They were spent in the urban neighborhoods of St. Louis and Kansas City. When we moved to La Paz, the farm worker headquarters in the Tehachapi Mountains of California, most Saturday mornings were spent in Cesar's garden. It was a massive raised-bed, French intensive gardening experiment that regularly brought 75 of us out into the sun and soil. It was there that I learned about irrigation, shaping and building raised beds, the growing cycle of a variety of plants, and the pure joy of being quiet in the presence of natural world.

When life took me to seminary - and later to four local churches as pastor - I never felt quite at home until we were able to create a small garden of our own. Gardening, it seems, not only reconnected me to creation in an intimate way, it was also my first mentor in contemplation. Forty five minutes each evening weeding or watering was soul food for me. It cultivated an inner peace. And eating those first tomatoes! Oh Lord, it was ecstasy! 

While in the garden today, I remembered an NPR interview long ago with Robert Kennedy Jr. who was engaged in a project bringing inner city children into encounters with Mother Earth. "It is a proven fact," he said with conviction, "that violence decreases and hope soars when human beings spend time with their hands in the dirt." My affiliation with Fr. Jim O'Donnell in Cleveland verified this as he worked near the King-Kennedy projects on the East Side of the city to reclaim abandoned lots and convert them into community vegetable and flower gardens. Slowly and with intentionality, safety and beauty began to emerge where once fear and decay prevailed. Lot by lot, street by street, gardens replaced ruins and Habitat for Humanity houses built in partnership with local banks helped local folk reclaim their neighborhoods. It was an encounter in real time with God's promise in Isaiah 58:

Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin? Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up quickly; your vindicator shall go before you, the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard. Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer; you shall cry for help, and he will say, Here I am. If you remove the yoke from among you, the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil, if you offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like the noonday. The Lord will guide you continually, and satisfy your needs in parched places, and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters never fail. Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt; you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to live in.

I find this time of year to be restorative. It does my heart and soul good to get back into the dirt. Sitting on the deck each morning for breakfast while watching the birds, flowers and trees communicate is prayer. And I can't wait to cook with my new herbs. It also does my old heart good to know that the public school my grandson attends in Brooklyn has a weekly encounter with nature built into their curriculum. This year's emphasis in the kindergarten is "sea school" where the class goes to the shore or the aquarium to learn about tide pools, sea life, and the cycles of the moon, the tides and the rain. When Louie was in preschool, his momma organized a "woods school" for neighborhood children; on a regular basis they would head off to a park to watch the worms, meet the grass, dig in the soil, and listen and learn from the trees, wind and water. 

Today we may be living under the authority of an ignorant, belligerent blow hard who denies science, degrades compassion, panders to religious fundamentalists and seems hellbent on destroying nature. But there is an ever-growing army of nonviolent warriors committed to living as green men, women and children, They are creating new/old ways of being that honor our mutuality with one another,  and celebrate Mother Earth and all of God's creation. Today I lift up my heart and trust to the rhythm of creation that has endured far worse than the current regime. And rest in its grace.