From One Angle

[Tension & Renewal - VIII]

Picture someone in a dimly lit room, headphones on, playing a video game or watching Stranger Things reruns. For, say, 12 hours. Hungry? That’s what GrubHub is for. Need a box of tissues or water? Order it on same-day deliver with Amazon. Friendship? You have access to everyone right in front of you via any messenger app. 

From one angle, this is the height of Aristotelian independence and Western isolation. In other words, it’s the purest example of human advancement. 

From another angle, this is the epitome of human unhealth. All aspects of a life well lived—on this one day, at least—are missing. 

Empathy starves in that environment. 
Virtue atrophies.
Goodness withers away. 
Spiritual vitality dies.

Spiritual, physical, and mental renewal requires concrete engagement with others. Even further, it requires giving others access to and authority over real estate in our lives. 

The Base of Sanity

[Tension & Renewal - VII]

I've heard that all non-physiologically-based mental illness is the consequence of loneliness. I understand that is a generalization, but anecdotally it measures up. 

When I worked in homeless advocacy, I encountered every day the the most extreme versions of mental and emotional unrest. My friends on the streets suffered from addiction and mental instability. 

But more fundamentally they suffered from being alone. Separated. Cut off. Living in isolation. 

Eventually one forgets how to relate. To be trustworthy and trusting. To be intimate and loving. At the base of sanity is not individual willpower or executive functioning; at the base of sanity is connection, support, and love. 

Any genuine renewal embraces this fundamental truth of human health. It includes the willingness and commitment to stay in relationships.

Searching for Soul

[Tension & Renewal - VI]

We all live our own autobiography, beginning in our childhood home. No one can live it for us. Apart from our mothers ushering us into this world, we must walk it on our own feet. 

But our story doesn’t start at home and end on the horizon of possibilities. Home is both our beginning and end, our launch pad and landing pad, our origin and destination. It’s what we’re all after. And no one can find it for us. 

Every spiritual odyssey is a leaving and returning home; but home is never the same when we return. We must reimagine it before it materializes. 

Here’s the point: we think home is something we leave, and then with some life experience (and a big loan) we build another and live in it. A home is not what you live in; it’s the guiding principle of the whole thing. It’s the target. The dream. The desire. 

All homemaking is a placeholder for the inner work we are delaying. All spiritualizing of our home as a place far off in the eternal future is a denial of the work. A sign of revival, of genuine renewal, is the turn toward the home we’ve all been searching for: our souls. 

Paradigm Shift

[Tension & Renewal - V]

In Thomas Kuhn's The Structures of Scientific Revolution he makes a case for why science evolves through dramatic paradigm shifts rather than slow evolution. Paradigm shifts are “forced" upon a field of study when the field is confronting with an inability to incorporate and explain some phenomenon. 

The same is true in religion. Religion seeks to explain the depth of human experience until it can’t. Then it must shift. The old paradigm must be replaced with a new one, and this either happens naturally when the gatekeepers of the old finally die off or there’s an undeniable breakthrough in insight. 

Either way, the new paradigm, which is merely a new way to explain something old, appears destructive; the old appears the victim.

Spiritual renewal often looks like a paradigm shift.Both promising and destructive. Both refreshing and cataclysmic. Both hopeful and full of tension. 

Something always dies before it’s reborn. Sometimes rebirth looks like a paradigm shift.

Humble Asterisks

[Tension & Renewal - IV]

When we’re young and building our boxes of understanding, we’re hungry for answer, algorithms, explanations, definitions, and defendable theories. Answers to life’s hardest questions have such an appeal. 

We look upon others that don’t have answers as intellectually lazy. Even weak.

As we age—spirituality, not necessarily physically—all of those definitions and theories gain asterisks. And the asterisks state: *tentatively or *provisionally. 

Our most meaningful, deepest insights, which we might call spiritual knowing or even divine revelation, are all, at the end of the day limited by language. They are analogies and metaphors. They are approximations. That’s the best human language can achieve, because anything of ultimate meaning is in the realm of transcendence and mystery. 

A real sign of awakening is not more confidence in our answer but more humility in our asterisks. 

Critical Connection

[Tension & Renewal - III]

The greatest disease of our time is disconnection. From each other and from the natural world. From our own bodies and from the social bodies that keep the world running. From purpose and meaning and the divine.

How much organic matter is in the soil in your front yard, and why does that matter? How is your neighbor handling her sister-in-law’s death and her husband’s career change? Why’s the new levy being pushed through this year when it was voted down four years in a row?

While these questions seem arbitrary, they share a critical similarity: they require connection. To your neighbor, the natural world, and the institutions governing our local community.

The antidote to the disease, says our medical mindset, is to isolate the source and thereby inhibit its spread. Unfortunately we’re far beyond that point—it’s already a pandemic, as far reaching as plastic waste or air pollution. No sweeping solutions exist. Only small, intentional acts of nourishment, engagement, learning, intentionality, and connection will do.

Find those, and you’ll find the beginning of healing.

Out of Control

[Tension & Renewal - II]

Too many preacher types have abused the line, “God is in control.” Just stop saying it, please. That phrase is one of those rare religious artifacts that gets a get-out-jail-free card. And the jail, of course, is the interrogation of critical thinking. It just doesn’t hold up. 

I’ve never met someone that experienced renewal in response to that message.

Never heard a conversion story.  Never a healing.  Never inspiration.  Never reconciliation. 

What I have seen, though, is everything staying the same. I wonder if “God is in control” is shorthand for, “God is in control, so I don’t need to do a thing.” 

If God is in control, what’s our part? 

The problem is NOT that we have the wrong phrase, and if I can replace it with a better one (and a better theology), then it can be helpful; the problem is that we think in the middle of hardship we must speak at all. (And when we do, we show our “spiritual cards.”) Even more basic than this problem, however, is the problem that we have too few people that have fully experienced the hardships of this life because they’ve remained on the surface, floating on denial about just how out of control the waters really are. 

“God is in control” is just a coping mechanism for hardship, and it really says, “I’m unwilling to face up to the chaos, pain, or grief right in front of me.

Ditch the cliches. A truly inspiring (in-spire = indwelled-by-spirit) message is this: “The whole thing is indeed *out of control* but I’m here with you.” 

December Challenge 2.0

[Tension & Renewal - I]

I’ve spent four years reflection on everything from vocation to social change to some of the deeper themes in my own life. I’ve realized that each post is an attempt to name what is true to my experience *and* consistent with my convictions without getting bogged down with religious jargon. 

Are my reflections religious? Well, sure. Sometimes it’s more obvious than others. 

But are they jargon-y? Never (I hope). 

This month, as I did last December, I’m challenging myself to use this same tact but speak meaningfully about a more traditionally religious topic. Can I avoid religious jargon and still speak/write poignantly about spiritual awakening? Conversion? Religious experience? I believe I can. 

For the next 30 days, I’ll be wrangling with how to communicate truthfully and with precision about what I’m calling “Tension & Renewal”—articulating spiritual meaning and growth for those uninterested in cliches and jargon.

Welcome to the second annual December Challenge. (Of course it’s not a challenge for anybody but me. Which probably just puts on full display how I motivate myself to write.) 

Persimmon Recovery 3

[Garden Memories: XXXIII]

Everywhere I walk on my farm, I think of landscapes from my childhood. The grass field reminds me of the lawn we played so many hours of volleyball on; the small forest on the east side of my property conjures of memories of the the “Black Forest” I used to play in on the back hill; the chicken coop invokes images of Nonno harvesting a rooster and Mom’s chicken houses; the herb beds remind me of our manicured flower beds that bordered the front and back of the house.  

So much of my gardening is a return to my childhood; it’s an effort, in a way, to recover something lost that only lives in my memory. 

I’ll never recover my childhood taste of persimmons. Not in a literal way. (And I can’t bring myself to buy them from Whole Foods, so I’ll likely never taste them again.) But the 48 fruit trees that I’ve planted are undeniably an effort to recover lost landscapes, lost sensuous encounters with nature, lost tastes and smells.  

We long for a connection with nature again. It’s hardwired in us. For many of us, it’s been since childhood that we were embedded in the wild. For some, we’ve been outside, but it’s for exercise or fresh air or for the view. 

But in us all there’s a need for unrestrained, unprogrammed, undocumented encounters with nature. Our hearts would sing with just one messy spoonful of a ripe persimmon. 

Persimmon Recovery 2

[Garden Memories: XXXII]

Nostalgia is considered a positive experience, defined as an emotion associated with a sense of longing for the past. The past is often desirable because it’s perceived as better in some memorable way than the present. 

But I’ve never considered nostalgia, which my mom used to call “memory lane,” a positive experience. The physical sensations associated with nostalgia are closer to the feelings I have when I’m coming down with the flu: not fully symptomatic, but my mouth becomes a little dryer, joints stiffen a bit, and my appetite shrinks. It feels more like mild grief; the memory is a trigger for re-experiencing something lost. 

Consider my first garden memory: heaping, creamy spoonfuls of autumn-ripe persimmons. The very writing of that sentence sinks to the bottom of my stomach, knowing that mere memory cannot recover the youthful utopian experience of sharing my neighbor’s seasonal offerings. So much of that memory is gone forever. 

I wonder if all my gardening is an attempt to recover some of my childhood innocence. I wonder if it’s embodied nostalgia. Perhaps my conscious mind is in denial—hence the feelings of mild illness—but my spirit deeply craves the innocence and beauty of neighbors sharing their harvest, children filling their pockets with fruit, and a close connection to the seasons and land. 

Maybe nostalgia is positive after all if I learn to see it as a spiritual craving. 

Persimmon Recovery 1

[Garden Memories: XXXI]

My earliest garden memory is not even from my childhood home. Just over the fence—Isn’t that where all good stories begin?—our neighbors planted a handful of persimmon trees. In general, there are two varieties of persimmons: the crispy and the squishy (to use the technical terms). 

The soft variety requires patience. Harvest and wait. Wait. Wait. And eventually, after a few days on the window sill, perhaps even a week or more, they ripen. You know a persimmon is ready if the skin remains firm but the flesh softens to the consistency of yogurt—spoon required.

Persimmons are distinct from store bought fruit in almost every way. The flavor is exquisite and delicate. Bright orange in color and tropical in smell, a well ripened persimmon resembles the flavor of a generously sweetened sweet potato or a honey drenched squash. 

I remember mom’s smile when she scooped a spoonful of yogurt-y, orange flesh out with a spoon. “They’re perfect,” she said. I salivate as I recall my first taste of exotic creaminess. It was foreign but familiar, like my mouth was it’s intended home. I think I ate a half dozen that day. 

 I believe all my gardens since have been an attempt to recover that first persimmon experience. 

Source of Life

[Garden Memories: XXX]

I suppose I’ve spent the last 30 or so blog reflections remembering my childhood gardens because the memories themselves are containers; in them is a world of associations, connections, meaning, and clues to my existence. 

In other words, remembering how my life intersected the natural world in those formative years, is an invocation of the building blocks of who I am. In every memory, I’m summoning up the blueprints of my childhood landscape so I can grasp the landscape of my soul. They are signs that point inside.

Michael Pollen said somewhere that “memories play around the edge of every garden,” and that has popped up in my mind from time to time. In approaching the gardens in our lives—the gardens of our current environment or the garden-like landscapes of our youth—we run into the formational influences of who we are. 

I tend to think the Hebrews knew this deeply, for in that beautiful creation poem from the book of Genesis, humanity is charged with the holy responsibility of caring for the soil of Eden. Tending gardens is at once stewarding the land and stewarding the source of life. 

We always remember our gardens because it’s in and from our gardens that we are made.

Empty Beds

[Garden Memories: XXIX]

While I was in middle school my family experienced quite a disturbance on our small five acre property. A welcomed disturbance, but still a destabilizing shakeup. We renovated our entire house while we lived in it.

We included a detached garage in that renovation. And as part of the garage—a humble 8x8 square in the southwest corner—we finished out an office space for my dad. Finally, after decades of sharing space with a bunch of rambunctious sons, Dad had a private domain, furnished with the bare necessities: a metal file cabinet, an old oak desk, a stuffed pheasant on the wall, and peace and quiet.

To the right of Dad’s door, just under the singular window, was a raised garden bed. For vegetables, herbs, flowers, or otherwise, I don't know. No one will ever know. To this day that bed serves no purpose other than to hold a half cubic yard of soil. And weeds. 

Dad finally got his oasis but didn’t put the finishing touches on it. He finally had peace and quiet but left the entryway incomplete. There’s always that one final project we never get to on the house, that scratch we never buff out on our car, that bare spot in the yard we never cover with grass. 

It’s as if our subconscious refuses to allow us to pretend that we’ve finally arrived. If the exterior of our lives was totally polished, we might actually start believing it. Truth is, all our lives are undergoing renovation; all our gardens have an empty bed with weeds. 

And it’s okay.

Killing Figs

[Garden Memories: XXVIII]

We had two huge fig trees in at my childhood home. Come to think of it: by all measurements figs are disgusting: seedy, granular flesh; porous, sappy pith; soft and puncturable skin. 

If figs had any of the self-degrading traits humans have, they’d shrivel up and die. Every last one. 

Consider all the self-critical “material” a fig could come up with. Every last trait of the fig tree seems inferior to other trees. Figs would struggle with an imposter syndrome, posing as a real fruit tree but hardly offering recognizable fruit. Think of the self-doubt a fig would wrestle with, always questioning if it could give anything of value to a world that prefers hard wood and big, juicy fruit. Would a fig be stricken with depression, given that its offering to the world is mostly ignored? Would a fig feel paralyzed by a life full of negative feedback loops? 

And yet a fig has one of the highest concentrations of regenerative growth hormones, which means it’s incredibly resistant to dying and can be easily propagated. Its fruit is the simplest to dry and preserve—no cutting and prepping necessary— and both celebrated and revered for thousands of years across the globe. It’s fast growing, abundant, and its foliage is both useful for animal feed and human textiles. 

It’s not our mistakes and weaknesses that kill us. What we choose to bring to the foreground does. 

Mulberry 3

[Garden Memories: XXVII]

Mulberries are humble fruits. They don’t have the divine tenderness of a raspberry or the exotic sweetness of a mango or pineapple. They fall short of the burst of flavor in a blackberry or the succulent flesh of a strawberry. They’re C students in the fruit class. 

Because they don’t overwhelm in flavor and sweetness and because they are so common, they can be eaten by the fistful without getting sick (or feeling guilty). Their versatility makes them delicious: they work with cereal, on salads, and in deserts. At any time of day, they can be incorporated into a meal. 

But very few people know of them. Even fewer love them. 

Perhaps, in a way, it’s because we rarely think of (fruit) humility as a high virtue. I mean, we appreciate it exhibited in the people we encounter, work with, and consider part of our community, but how many of our heroes are humble? Courageous, sure. Bold, of course. Principled and zealous, always. 

In a specialized world, the same seems true about the gift of versatility. But with as quickly as the world is changing, it seems adaptability versatility are increasingly difficult and coveted. 

Maybe we have some things to learn from Mulberries. 

Mulberry 2

[Garden Memories: XXVI]

The Weeping Willow created a magical land under the awning of its branches. The Blue Oak dropped just enough bark and branches to support my open-fire cooking needs when I wanting to “camp out” in the back yard. The Liquidambars shaded the whole front of the house and demanded attention in the fall when their leaves put on a light show. But it was the Mulberry that probably had the biggest influence on me as a child. 

How many trees are both good for climbing and eating? A tree usually excels at one or the other (or neither). But our Mulberry had a sturdy trunk and established, evenly spaced, gently rising branches: perfect for climbing. And it bore millions of delicious berries. 

Its huge, round canopy didn’t demand attention, as it was out of the way, hidden behind the garage. Like a village elder, it was there before anyone can remember and carried with it memories of the property. 

We often think of influence in the same way we think of Hollywood movies: either it’s a box office hit or it’s a dud. Influence—the capacity to have an effect on someone—is not usually abrupt and ostentatious but rather the result of steady investment over a long period of time. 

Influence is more like the Mulberry than a movie. Always there. Reliable and supportive, included in the backdrop of all our memories. 

Mulberry 1

[Garden Memories: XXV]

When a tree is injured, be it due to fire, wind, pruning, or otherwise, it releases Salicylic Acid, which is a hormone that triggers the tree’s Systemic Acquired Response. Basically the injured branch tells the rest of the tree, “Lock the doors; beware of intruders.” 

The potential intruders are a broad spectrum of microorganisms, and the tree has specially trained “guards” to help: Antimicrobial Pathogenesis Related Proteins are one of them and can attack the cellular walls of bacteria and fungi. 

If that’s not cool enough, Salicylic Avid can become volatile, releasing into the air and communicating the threat to surrounding trees. The trees literally talk to each other. 

We had a huge mulberry tree on my childhood property. It was a biannual chore to prune off most of its mass of branches. Without fail, it would grow back bigger (and healthier!). In light of the way trees communicate, I wonder if the other trees on the property considered the mulberry tree the boy who cried wolf—every year screaming to others to beware, and yet there was rarely a threat. 

Communication is going on all around us at all times. Very little of it is verbal or linguistic in nature. 

He who has ears, let him hear. 

Liquidambars & Fall Colors

[Garden Memories: XXIV]

Only after I moved away from my childhood home in California I realized there was such a thing as “autumn colors” in other parts of the Unites States. And people traveled to observe them. And photographers prioritizes capturing them. And states debate whose colors are most spectacular. 

I wasn’t unaware of the rainbow colored foliage because I was geographically ignorant, in the way someone might be that never ventured beyond the moderate climate of the California coastline or never left the season-less Central Valley. I wasn’t unaware because it was unfamiliar; I was blind to it because it was too familiar. 

Our home was landscaped in fast-growing Liquidambars, also known as Sweet Gum trees. Notorious for dropping spiky balls every fall, they grow to nearly 70 feet and put on a foliage fireworks show when the weather cooled at the end of summer. Annually our property swam in “autumn colors,” every tree varying from electric yellow to neon orange to blood red. 

My normal was relative to our small plot of land: every year was an arboreal light show. It was what I knew, but it was abnormal by California standards. Not more or less true; not better or worse. Just different. (And gorgeous!)

Our blind spots aren’t the result of not knowing but often the result of knowing with full certainty only a portion of the larger reality. While it might align with others elsewhere, we may be alienated from those close to us because we’re assuming they too share in our assumptions and experience. 

Larger reality—Divine Reality—is always bigger and more diverse than the “property” you live on. 

Grandmothers of the Garden

[Garden Memories: XXIII]

Several Japanese Maples bordered the back of our house. These small, elegant maples were confusing to a child. What’s the point of a tree that can’t be climbed, bears no fruit, and lacks in shading ability? Better yet, why grow a maple that can’t be tapped for Saturday morning pancakes? 

As I aged, the answers came. Not directly to my questions, as though I met a tree apologist (also known as a nursery employee) that argued for the virtue of this ancient eastern foliage. No, the answers came as I learned to see. 

To see value beyond utility.  
To see purpose behind human service. 

Perhaps now, and only now, can I see a Japanese Maple’s essence. They exude wisdom, grounding, and gentleness. With no effort but that of mere being, they are stunning in the stories their twisted branches can tell. They cannot bear weight like many of their relatives, but they reach far enough to offer comfort—to the eyes and the heart. To fix or train one by pruning seems an act of dishonor. They are the grandmothers of the garden.

Redwood Removal

[Garden Memories: XXII]

At some point, we landscaped behind the waterfall with Coastal Redwoods. I say “at some point” because the time one plants a coastal redwood matters less than the stress over when to remove it. And that stress happens soon, as they grow so quickly. 

There was a two-decade period when they were the big jam for landscapers in California. While native to CA, they aren’t native to sprawling suburbs where the demand for them was the highest. Everyone it seemed had Coastal Redwoods “installed” because the gratification came so soon. They grew like weeds!

Our three huge redwoods—since removed and replaced with far less intrusive plants—remind me what it means to live a life of meaning. Not of influence or fame; not comfort or luxury; but a life of purpose. 

This is a spiritual consideration because living a life of purpose is less about accomplishments and goals and more about living consistently with our *native landscape*. The small decisions, beginning with how and when you wake up and how you spend your early morning hours, for example, are the things that accumulate into a life of purpose or not. 

The critical question is not “Do those decision help you get to your goal?” but rather, “Are those decisions *native* to who you are suppose to be?” If they’re nonnative, you’ve likely made a thousand compromises trying to grow someone else’s garden. 

Don’t plant Coastal Redwoods (unless you live on the coast, of course).