Food and faith Steering committee
This morning I read an interesting article from YES magazine entitled Relearning the Skills of Community. As I read about their check in time, and provision of mutual support I thought – that sounds very much like forming Christian community to me. That’s what we do in our MSA team meetings. That’s what movements like the New Monasticism and Parish Collective are trying to accomplish.
I have the same response when I read books like Imagination First and Business Secrets of the Trappist Monks. And when I hear that young social entrepreneurs are living in community, practicing mindfulness and holding each other responsible I think – that sounds like spiritual disciplines without the spirit. But then I think is it really without the spirit?
Then I get together with the Food and Faith Initiative Steering Committee of Seattle Tilth’s Just Garden Project. As we talk about churches, synagogues, mosques and Hindu temples growing food and helping to sustain those at the margins with their produce, I think: This is God at work.
I believe that all of these movements are God at work. Young millennials are leaving the established churches in droves. As consultant Kn Moy shared with us recently:
The largest generation in U.S. history — the 80 million Millennials — has come to view religion (and the Bible) as judgmental, homophobic, hypocritical, and too political. Today, only ten percent of Millennials are “religiously affiliated.” Of that number, 59 percent will become “religiously unaffiliated” before they enter college. (That is, they will leave their churches.) And, unlike the Boomers, they will not re-affiliate when they marry and have children. So, basically, the Church, as we know it, will disappear in a couple of generations.
God has not abandoned the young millennials, or the millions from other generations who have left the church in the last few decades. God is at work spreading the salt of the kingdom throughout the world. I think that we need to be less about trying to get people into church and more about trying to help them recognize the presence of God in their everyday lives. Helping to recognize the ways that mindful meditation draws us close to the living God is an important part of what followers of Christ have to offer today. Helping seekers after community to draw close to the love of God which is at the centre of their interactions, even if they don’t see that, is hugely important. Helping those who love to get their hands dirty in a garden to interact with God and story of God that are revealed in their labours is a wonderful achievement.
Not all followers of Christ call themselves Christians and I suspect that even less will do so in the future. But the spirit of God is still very much at work transforming, renewing and making all things whole. My question is: will be recognize this and join in, or will we stand back because it does not fit our preconceptions of how God operates.
God rarely works according to our plans. The Jews looked for a powerful king who would triumphantly lead them into the glory days of a physical kingdom. They got a humble servant instead whose kingdom was ushered in through the renewal of suffering, death and resurrection.
I wonder how often we miss what God is doing because we assume we know what the next steps will be. Perhaps it is time for all of us to look around and ask:
God what are you doing and how can I be a part of it?
One of my biggest challenges during this season of the year is the tension between my preparations for Lent and my commitment to gardening. I so often feel that these two interests are at loggerheads. This year, however, I have spent a lot of time thinking about how I could combine my interests and decided to make a Lenten garden.
Over the last couple of weeks, I have researched Lenten gardens and found some interesting suggestions. Like this one made from sand, purple tea lights and stones to assist evening prayers.
http://fromthesheepfold.blogspot.com/2012/03/try-this-lenten-prayer-garden.html
I particularly enjoyed this Lenten wreath which my imagination immediately transposed into a Lenten garden.
Lenten wreath from http://www.weelittlemiracles.com/2011/03/idea-for-your-family-this-lent.html
However, I also struggled because none of the “gardens” I came across had any plants in them. They all represented sterile, lifeless deserts.
But, deserts are not lifeless, and the journey to the Cross isn’t lifeless either. Gardening, too, is a journey from brokenness to transformation, an exciting, hope filled journey that reminds us God is in the business of transformation. So here are my ideas for a Lenten garden which I intend to experiment with in the next couple of weeks.
Suggestion 1: Fill a bowl with compost – reminding yourself continually that this is garbage transformed. Decorate your bowl with stones or crosses or other reminders of the journey of Jesus towards the Cross. Take some seeds and sprinkle them with water in the name of the Creator, redeemer and sustainer. Allow them to soak overnight and then bury them in your garden, reminding yourself of the One who was buried in the darkness of death for us. Watch them sprout into life as you journey towards Easter and the resurrection.
Suggestion 2: Start with that sandy sterile garden and each Sunday during Lent plant a new plant in your garden. I suggest doing this on Sunday because Sundays are not part of the Lenten journey. Sunday is always a celebration of the resurrection. Planting something in your Lenten garden each week like this sounds like a great reminder of the meaning of Easter. Even thinking about it stirs my heart with longing for the completion of the Easter story.
I think that these are wonderful ways to creatively connect your own experiences of gardening and the Easter story together. This kind of congruence between our daily activities and the story of God strengthens our faith and stabilizes our lives.
So what are your ideas for bringing gardening and Lent together this year? I hope that you will share them with us.
This morning I was very frustrated. My phone and computer calendars have not been in synch since my return from Australia. I have spent the morning rescheduling appointments and grumbling. My mood was not improved by the fact that my body clock is still out of synch too. As I look out on a wet Seattle morning with the snow turning to slush, I think longingly of the 85F days I left behind in Australia less than a week ago.
Then I read Andy Wade’s great article Have You Tried Turning It Off and On Again? That’s the problem I realized. Not only has my phone been on constantly since my return but my life has been too. Catching up after almost three weeks away takes a lot of time and effort and it is easy not to take the time to refresh and resynch my life. Taking time to breathe in deeply the fragrance of God’s love. Relishing the joy of being back with our dog Bonnie who is once more full of life. Drinking in the beauty of a winter shrouded landscape. These are the things that resynch my life, the things that make me feel I have switched off and switched on again.
For Andy Sabbath is a discipline that reboots his system. Lent is too. I appreciated his reminder of this. It is easy for me to focus on what I am encouraging others to do for Lent and not enter fully into the season myself. Andy explains:
It used to be that Lent was more of a private journey for me. But over the years I’ve begun to appreciate how important it is to walk this journey together. You see, it turns out we’re not a bunch of individual computers that can simply be turned off and on again. There’s something embedded in our humanness that causes us to quickly revert back to the old operating system with all its old viruses and bugs. It turns out that we need to walk this journey together because others can see what we fail to see… refuse to see… that all we really did was turn the system off and on again, but nothing actually changed. (Read the article here)
So what does this look like for you? Although Lent is still a month away, here at Mustard Seed Associates we’re already preparing. I’m looking forward to our Return to Our Senses in Lent retreat. I am also looking forward to exploring together as a team A Journey Into Wholeness and to reflecting on the blog series with posts from many collaborators around the world. This is always an important season of reflection for me, but I definitely needed this reminder today that I need a spiritual reboot. And in case you are wondering all I needed to do to resynch my phone and computer calendars was to switch the phone off and on again.
How do you conduct a spiritual re-boot?
Take time to listen to St Matthew’s Passion as preparation for Lent and Holy week
You may also like to check out the more extensive list of Music Resources for Lent and the other resource lists in this series
Closer to Holy Week I will post another set of resources for Palm Sunday and beyond.
And don’t forget to check out the MSA resources:
Our latest resource, 40+ Activities for Lent and Easter, which can be downloaded for free from the MSA website. This guide is designed to be used in conjunction with our other new resources (below) or as a stand alone guide:
- A Journey Into Wholeness: Soul Travel From Lent to Easter – now available in paper and e-book form
- Lenten Prayer cards
- Daily reflections that will be posted on the Godspace blog and also on the Facebook page, Coming Home to the Story of God
This post is out of date, please see our current version here.
With Lent only a few weeks away, I know that many of my readers are already looking for scripture plans and devotional books to read, so I thought that this year I would start early with listing Lenten resources. This year, I am starting with possible plans for daily scripture readings. Obviously there are hundreds out there. Written, online, downloadable you choose. I have tried to provide these from a number of theological backgrounds. If there are others you think should be on the list please let me know. And by the way the photo is of a 500 year old Bible – seemed appropriate for the season especially (at least to me) that though the method we use to study may change, the message is timeless.
Daily Readings
Sacred Space – Daily Prayer with the Irish Jesuits
Pray as You Go – also from the Jesuits. Daily prayer for portable MP3 players.
Biblegateway.com’s Reading plan for Lent – can also be downloaded as an app.
Church Father’s Lenten Reading Plan
A Reading Plan for lent and Easter from the Salvation Army
Download The Bible App – The plans deliver a relevant scripture verse to users each day that are themed around the topic selected by the user with one specifically for Lent.
An interesting 5 apps for Lent from ccr.org.uk.
Seven Apps to Help You Through Lent
The Daily Office From the Book of Common Prayer
Presbyterian USA daily readings
The Daily Office from the Episcopal Church US
Reflections from Forward Day by Day
Godspace Resource Lists
A series on Lent and creativity:
Our new free download: What Do You Hunger For: Creative Exercises for Lent
Get Creative and Play Games for Lent;
Five Ways to Foster Creativity in Kids During Lent
Seven Tips for Creating Sacred Space For Lent
Let’s Get Creative – Doodle Your Way Through the Lenten Calendar
Meditation Videos
Were You There When They Crucified My Lord? This meditation is designed for Good Friday and does not have music.
Lenten Reflection Video by Christine Sine
As you know I am getting ready for the celebration of Lent. Probably you will not be surprised to hear that this year we plan to use A Journey Into Wholeness for our daily reflections. I will also use the amazing new Lenten prayer cards as a focal point on my desk. I plan to write my weekly commitment on the back of the appropriate prayer as a constant reminder throughout the day of how seriously I need to take this commitment.
Monday the MSA staff will talk about the practices we plan to adopt for the season. Usually Tom and I assume the discipline of the $2 challenge, restricting our daily expenditure on food to $2/day for at least one week of Lent. That means a lot of lentils, beans and rice. Pad Thai is also good. It also means relying on vegetables from the garden. Definitely vegetarian. No eating out. Making everything from scratch – maybe even getting back into bread making.
In researching recipes to get ready for this challenge, I have read about lentils. The lowly lentil has been sustaining human kind for thousands of years. Some foodies once considered lentils as poor man’s food and refused to eat them because they are so inexpensive. Ironic isn’t it? Although they may be cheap, lentils are very nutritious, filling, and more importantly, arguably the most flavorful of all the legumes. The name lentil has nothing to do with Lent but they make a great Lenten staple. So lets go on a diet this Lent – not to lose weight but to identify with those live on the fringes of society.(more info here)
The Ayme family in their kitchen house in Tingo, Ecuador, a village in the central Andes, with one week’s worth of food.
Believe it or not I love this. I revisit the images in Hungry Planet, by Peter Menzel, like the one above that depict what people in different parts of the world eat each day, (see other images here) and am reminded of the privileges of our lives – the food we take for granted and the blessings of always having enough. Yet in other parts of the world many still struggle to find enough to eat each day. Bread for the World tells us that worldwide, the number of hungry people has dropped significantly over the past two decades, but 842 million people continue to struggle with hunger every day.1.2 billion people still live in extreme poverty — on less than $1.25 per day not just for their food budget but for everything. And most sobering of all, each year, 2.6 million children die as a result of hunger-related causes.
So will you join me in taking Lent seriously this year not just for your own inner journey but for those at the margins and for our planet as well?
One of my favourite Australian stories is a children’s book called The Bunyip of Berkley’s Creek. It tells the story of a bunyip, a mythical creature from aboriginal folklore which emerges from a billabong (swampy lake) and sets out on a journey of discovery.
Who am I the bunyip asks those he meets. Now it is a long time since I read the book but here is what I think the responses where. A duck says the platypus as he looks at the bunyip’s huge webbed feet. Ugly says the kangaroo when he catches a glimpse of the bunyip’s grotesque face. You don’t exist at all says the scientist ignoring the mythical creature in front of him. Tired and dispirited the bunyip returns to the billabong alone. Then as he watches another creature emerges from its depths. Who am I? it asks. You’re a bunyip responds the delighted first bunyip and you look just like me.
All of God’s creatures, even the mythical ones need a sense of where they come from and where they belong. I was very aware of this last month as I spent time with my family in Australia. This was my first trip since my mother died last year and I was not quite sure how I now belonged to this family I hardly ever saw.
As you can imagine much of our time was spent reminiscing, sharing stories not just about our childhood but about our ancestors.
My father was Greek but it is probable that my maiden name Aroney is a rendition of Aaron. Perhaps way back we have Jewish blood in us. My ancestors migrated to Constantinople, then to Spain and finally to the island of Kythera off the southern coast of Greece. In the early 1900s many headed for Australia. Blue eyed Greeks, maybe mixed with Viking blood, no one is sure, but we all wonder and speculate. We want to know where we come from. We want to know where we belong.
My mother’s family is harder to trace. Her parents migrated from Scotland in the early 1900s, her mother from Aberdeen, her father from Keith. Her maiden name was Milne, a common Scottish name and her Dad’s family probably goes back a long way in Scotland. But Mum’s mother’s name was Cato. Is it Spanish? Again no one knows but we can speculate. Her family was part of the aristocracy and the Scottish nobility had close ties to the Spanish Court.
These discussions have been very important for me. They have assured me that I will always belong to this family, not just the present generation, but all those who have gone before too. This provides a sense of rootedness, an anchor for my soul.
As a follower of Jesus however, I know that the sense of identity I gain from my biological family is not enough. My identity is now rooted in being a child of God and my sense of belonging is tied to my true home in the kingdom of God.
Becoming a Christian asks all of us to take on a new identity and a new place of belonging. It challenges us to be reshaped according to a different culture. Old priorities are turned upside down and we enter a process of unlearning, learning and relearning. The kingdom of God culture of love, generosity, compassion and mutual care, transcends the cultures in which we grew up and from which we draw our stories. Living into this culture is meant to anchor us in ways that the stories of our birth families never can.
So my question for all of us today is: Where do we feel we belong?
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