By Andy Wade –
Photography by, AFWade
“God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.” Genesis 1:31
If you see my posts on Facebook, then you know that I’m a fan of mushrooms. I’m fascinated with their diversity and delicate beauty, not to mention their taste (the edible ones, that is).
You may also have seen my earlier posts exploring the amazing role mushrooms play in keeping our world healthy. Today I ran across another talk from mycologist Paul Stamets, this one from the Bioneers Annual Conference in October, 2014.
What has once again captured my imagination is how God invites us into what has already been created, discovering and finding applications for this “very good” design.
As Stamets points out, often our human-inspired solutions to so many of the issues we face create more problems than they solve, frequently making worse the very problems we were attempting to address. We’ve seen this played out in the farming industry, first with mass tilling of the soil, then the application of copious amounts of chemical fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides, and now with the advent of GMOs.
What Stamets may not recognize is that his work (and I have no clue about his religious inclinations) is actually a theological exegesis of creation, God’s very good creation. He is a prophet, of sorts, calling us to re-examine, or perhaps examine for the first time, the micro-workings and inter-relationships of all that God has formed.
Photography by, AFWade
Here at Godspace // Mustard Seed Associates we talk a lot about imagination and innovation. These are essential aspects of our faith as we are created in the image of God: Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer. It makes perfect sense that God’s creation would reflect these qualities, qualities we ignore to our own — and creation’s — peril.
As you watch this video I encourage you to reflect not just on the information you’re hearing, but on how this approach to discovering solutions by observing what God has already created can move us into truly uncharted waters.
“In this 6th Age of Extinctions, the biosphere’s life-support systems that have allowed humans to ascend are collapsing. Visionary mycological researcher/inventor Paul Stamets illuminates how fungi, particularly mushrooms, offer uniquely powerful, practical solutions we can implement now to boost the biosphere’s immune system and equip us with benign breakthrough mycotechnologies to accelerate the transition to a restored world.”