what shapes you

As part of our Lenten observances, we've been watching a series of videos called "The Powers of the Universe."  Each segment is an hour-long talk by Brian Swimme, a mathematical cosmologist and one of the leading figures in "the new cosmology."  Cosmology is the study of the universe--a huge topic, undertaken from a wide variety of disciplines, including science, philosophy, mathematics, and religion.  

For me, what's important about cosmology is that what we believe about the universe has great implications for what we imagine to be our human role, and therefore for our behavior.  Our beliefs might be shaped strictly by physics, or by our spirituality, or both.  We tell ourselves and our children "origin stories," which are bound up in our culturally shaped cosmological beliefs.  Are humans simply the result of chance mutations, over billions of years?  Are Adam and Eve the progenitors of all humanity?  Is Earth the center of the universe, or just one tiny speck among billions of specks?  Most likely, we hold more than one perspective on the universe and the role of humanity at a time. 

From the Hubble Telescope. Credit: NASA, ESA, and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA) Acknowledgment: P. Knezek (WIYN)

I recently visited the Rubin Museum in NYC, which is holding a great exhibit about different attempts at understanding the universe, in the Hindu, Jain, Buddhist, Christian, and current scientific traditions.  (Learn more about the exhibit here; it is open until May 10, 2010.)  There I watched a short video produced by the American Museum of Natural History that was simply amazing: called "The Known Universe," it takes the viewer from gazing upon the Himalayan Mountains to zooming all the way out to the beginnings of the universe, 13.7 billion years ago.  You can watch it online: Take a look.  It's well worth it a few minutes of your time!  

Getting your mind blown like that is a good thing to do, and regularly.  I think too often, and too easily, we get caught up in the minutiae of life--what to eat for dinner, whether to go here or there, what color to paint the walls . . . all the multitude of choices in our lives.  Stepping out of that whirlwind to remember how tiny we are in the great cosmic lightsky helps me focus on what really matters.  For me, that means remembering that this world, this universe is alive.  The whole thing is alive.  And I can tune into that life, that energy, or I can stomp around in my little world, getting pissed about trivial things.  If you see yourself as part of the universe, connected to this unfathomably long history and unimaginable expanse, it's easier to let go of the small stuff.

This awareness is related to something Brian Swimme says in his talk on "Allurement."  His talks are fascinating and complex, and too much to summarize here.  But to give you a sense: having spent years studying gravitational dynamics, and coming to understand gravity mathematically inside and out, Swimme suggests that we think of gravity as a larger universal power of allurement.  That just as we are drawn to our lovers, to artists or musicians, to passions of all sorts, there is a power that pervades the universe that draws things--objects, planets, stars in galaxies--to one another.  That we are always orbiting, and in relationship with, other beings.  I'm sadly inarticulate here, and I urge you to check out the DVDs yourself.

Anyway, Swimme says that what we focus on shapes us.  We are drawn to a person, or a practice, or a context, and focusing on that "other" will shape our life, our sense of self.  This seems to me to be undeniably true.  When I've focused on an emotional wound, and nursed anger and resentment about that wound, my world has been characterized by that attention, growing smaller and darker.  When I've focused on loving relationships, and on becoming a worthy partner, my world has become energized, and full of possibility.  One might argue that in these two simple examples, the physical world around me hasn't actually changed, only my attitude.  I think that's true, at one level--but my embodied experience tells me that more is at work than simply one's individual mental outlook. 

We are in orbit with one another, and when I focus on light and life, that not only shapes my world, but the effects bleed over into the lives of those in my orbit.  Recent research shows that all sorts of behaviors and conditions (obesity, smoking, loneliness) are impacted, even "transmitted" through social connections. Examining some of these studies, Jonah Lehrer writes: 

We imagine ourselves as individuals, responsible for our own choices and emotions, but that sense of independence is a romantic myth. There is no wall between people. . . . What we all too easily forget . . . is that we're also part of a social network, which means that if we lose weight then it's easier for our neighbors to lose weight, and that if we quit smoking than everyone we know is also more likely to quit smoking. Being socially connected, in other words, makes us more responsible for our actions, not less. 

We are in orbit with one another, and we a part of the cosmos.  It matters what we focus on.  It matters what stories we tell ourselves about our place in the universe.  In these last months, I have found that learning to see myself as part of, emerging from the flow of energy and life and ancient particles, all of which have arisen into being and been reconstituted in new forms over and over again ever since the Big Bang . . . this focus imbues my life with a love for the world.  We are stardust, literally.  Formed, for the merest of moments, as a human being, on a tiny blue-green speck, in a sea of stars.  If we can just hold on to the magic and majesty of that awareness, we can live in true relationship with Earth, rather than being consumers and disposers, drillers and miners, polluters and poisoners.  A new cosmology means being part of creation, rather than standing outside or on top of it.  In these rainy, stormy days of March, my wish is for us all to marvel at the powers of the universe, and to wonder about our own roles in it.

springing: giddy with seedlings and maple syrup

The seed room is nearly vibrating with life.  We've got hundred of little baby plants shooting into the light, and I think we're all a little giddy from it.  After a lovely, quiet, snowy winter, the seedlings are the embodiment of new life, and they are feast for our eyes and our imaginations. 

In the span of less than a week, the tiny seedlings have grown enough to be transplanted into larger containers filled with potting soil, which will sustain them for the next month or so until they get into the ground.

Above are tiny seedlings of a Swiss Chard variety called "Bright Lights," after its colorful appearance.  Red, pink, and yellow, this chard's stems are so attractive when they're fully grown.  

 

You can see how delicate the stems are at this stage, just wisps of green, shooting toward the light.  After the plants first emerge, they send out little neo-leaves called "cotyledon."  This is actually an embryonic leaf, already present in the seed itself.  After the seed germinates, or sprouts, true leaves are formed.  And after the first set of true leaves emerge, it's time to transplant.

These plants, once transplanted, have a lot more room to grow.  Rather than 36 tiny plants squeezed together in joined "cells" on a single tray, each plant gets delicately delivered to its very own container, at least twice the size of that where it germinated.  Here, these Chinese Cabbages are 18 to a tray.  They go back to the grow room after transplanting, until they get a bit stronger.

When the weather gets a little bit warmer, we'll start the "hardening off" process, which means bringing these plants out into the fresh air during the day, and then back into the barn in the evening to protect them from the cool night temperatures.  

But before then, we've got peas to plant and maple sugaring to do.  Peas are planted traditionally on March 17, if possible.  Maple sugaring is going full steam right now, with this weekend's temps in the 40s and today projected to be 55.  Yesterday, we gathered more than 100 gallons of sap, and we'll hopefully get another good amount today.  With the weather turning to such extremes this past year, we don't know how long the sap will run, so we're making the most of it while we can.  

And with great result.  The first couple of batches of maple syrup have been incredibly light and delicate. Syrup is classified into various "grades," according to color.  Our most recent batch, in the left-most bottle, is just a tad bit lighter than the "Vermont Fancy" grade exemplar, just to its right.  As the weather gets warmer, the sap changes, and will become a darker syrup.  If you want to learn more about the maple sugaring process, from tapping to bottling the syrup, check out the videos made by Sister Catherine Grace and Bill Consiglio, another resident companion here at the farm.

It's just warm enough to go without a jacket, and it seems that everything wants to stretch and move, including little seedlings and the sap within trees.  We're so lucky that we can play a role in cultivating that movement in such healthy and tasty directions.  

spirituality and self-sufficiency

Some folks have asked me, "How do you manage all winter without fresh produce?"  For most people, it probably seems unimaginable.  We're so used to being able to buy fresh veggies and fruit all year long, whenever we want.  But I can assure you, here at the farm, we've hardly been left wanting this winter.  The Sisters have food storage and preservation down pretty well.  This week, for example, we had a wonderful salad made up of raw carrots and sweet red onions, little sprouted greens that grow from the stored roots (even in the dark and chill of the root cellar!), and defrosted spring peas, which had been blanched and then frozen last summer.  Take a look, and tell me that doesn't look delicious!

We also ate a grain and veggie dish, made up of whole oats (which, when not processed into oatmeal, look a lot like rice), frozen broccoli and peas, and small pieces of steamed root vegetables.  The dish also included raisins, which were the only ingredient we didn't produce ourselves.

The Sisters have been working toward becoming increasingly self-sufficient over time.  We still buy a few staple items, like milk, butter and some cheese (though we're beginning to make cheese from the milk we buy!), flour, sugar, salt, yeast, and some treats, such as popcorn and raisins.  As much as we can, though, we're trying to grow what we need to eat.  We've learned to make pizza with a polenta crust, to use oats as rice, to use maple syrup instead of sugar . . . all sorts of tasty substitutions. 

It's hard to imagine giving up all store-bought items altogether, but we think it's a good goal to be working towards, as best we can.  I'm enthusiastic about this idea for many reasons: I'm livid about the amount of packaging that is used to ship and store food, and the plastic in our landfills and oceans that's never going to decompose. I also think our culture has undergone a long and unfortunate period of forgetting--forgetting how to cook food, how to store food, how to grow food.  I was saddened, but not surprised to hear that first-graders can't identify common vegetables like tomatoes, potatoes, and mushrooms.  Jamie Oliver (a British chef and advocate for healthy meals in schools, who recently won the TED prize--see his great 20-min speech here) is heavily involved in food education, and has videoed children's attempts to identify common produce (watch the video here).  He also has a new show, about his efforts to change the food culture in one city in the US, called "Food Revolution" that premieres on March 26 on ABC. (By "food culture," I mean how we actually grow, select, buy, prepare, and eat food, and all our commonly held ideas about how we should do those things.)

In my experience so far, I've found that growing and storing food encourages a certain amount of creativity in the kitchen.  I was looking, for example, for a simple dessert to make that would be appropriate for a lunch during Lent, and came up with this:  frozen berries, topped with yogurt.  At the freezer, I thought I was choosing blueberries, but accidentally grabbed a bag of garden huckleberries.  Garden huckleberries grow easily around here, and look like a large, purplish blueberry; they aren't particularly sweet or tart--so I drizzled a teaspoon of honey on the berries, then covered them with yogurt.  Fresh, tasty, healthy--fruit in winter!  

I enjoy the challenge of cooking with what we grow, and I treasure this time of healthy eating.  I'm so thankful that I'm not purchasing plastic.   And I'm hopeful that more and more Americans are learning to grow and cook food, that school gardens are making a resurgence, and that people are starting to acquire those basic life skills that have gone by the wayside.  It's going to take conscious effort and time to rebuild a healthy food culture in the US, to make sure that young people are better equipped to weather recessions through simple cooking, to turn toward a healthier future.  

One of the concepts I've learned through my exposure to the Transition Town movement, which is focused on getting communities to organize themselves to face the challenges of energy insecurity, economic instability, and climate change, is the notion of "resilience."  The idea is that resilient communities can withstand economic, political, environmental "shocks" to their system, and be able to survive stressful changes.  A community becomes resilient by reducing its dependence on oil (developing local renewable power grids, greening buildings, and conserving), by shifting consumption and production patterns to increase the production of staple goods locally, and by building social networks and strengthening neighbor- and community-level interaction.  Part of this whole equation is increasing the amount of food grown locally.  It's said that there's about three day's worth of food in your local grocery store.  A resilient community, with a good level of local food production, would be able to handle a gas shortage or other kind of economic crisis that might affect the food supply chain.  The Transition Town folks suggest that for a community to be truly resilient, all the teenagers in that community should be able to know how to grow and harvest at least 10 crops.  How far are we from that, today?

The longer I'm here at the farm, the more I'm coming to understand how much our culture has lost in terms of commonly held, basic life skills.  I scoffed at "Home Economics" classes in seventh- and eighth-grade, but now wish I had paid more attention, and that the classes had continued on into high school.  

I'm also realizing that there's something spiritual--maybe not inherent to, but certainly present in--the practices of self-sufficiency and sustainability.  When you grow your own food, or buy it from your neighbor, it takes on a different quality than your typical mass-produced consumer item.  You realize your dependence on the Earth, and you treasure what you can learn from and what you can share with your community.  Somehow, trying to become more self-sufficient has made my relationship to the Earth and to my community more deeply felt; becoming more resilient has meant becoming less of an isolated entity.  It's meant realizing the truth: that we are all part of the same whole.

Drinking sap; starting seeds; eating the sun

It seems like all of a sudden, we're into spring and we're bustling with activity.  The maple trees are flowing with sap, and we're collecting it by the gallon.  It takes specific temperatures for sap to get flowing--over 40 degrees and sunny in the day, then dropping to freezing temperatures at night.  We've got more than 100 taps in place, in trees all along the property, and today there's about 160 gallons in the evaporator.  It takes 40 gallons of sap to make a gallon of maple syrup, so that's a lot of labor and a lot of love in every little drop!  

We've also been treating ourselves to drinking some of the sap just fresh.  It's delicious--clear and clean, with a slight hint of sweetness.  Somehow it feels alive, and refreshing.  I did a little reading into sap-drinking, and it turns out that it's been considered a healthful and purifying practice in Korea, Japan, China, in some eastern European places for as long as a thousand years.  Sap, it turns out through lab analysis, has lots of good minerals in it, including calcium and iron (NYTimes article here).  Native Americans also drank sap for purification after the winter, and used boiled-down sap to season food.  You can drink sap fresh, or use it to make coffee or tea with, to cook beans or grains in, or to freeze for summer iced teas.  For those of you with a tree or two in your yard, you can collect sap on your own--a single tree can yield 10-20 gallons of sap, enough for you to use fresh, and to try boiling down into syrup, as well.

We've also begun planting seeds by the hundreds:  kale, collard greens, broccoli, brussels sprouts, cauliflower, cabbage, bok choi, tat soi, broccoli raab--all members of the "Brassica" family.  We've got tray after tray lining the shelves and stacked on the floors, waiting for the first signs of sprouting.  When the plants show their first green shoots, we'll take them into the grow room, where we've got lights strung from the ceiling to keep them warm and stimulate their development.

Parsley seeds, from last week (not a Brassica)What's amazing is the fact that each tiny seed has enough nourishment to sprout itself and begin growing, without any additional nutrients.  All that energy and information, in a tiny, tiny package. Typically, you start seeds in a light, sterile mix called "seed starting medium" (clever name, huh?).  Then, after they get going and start to outgrow their small cells, we transplant all of them to slightly larger pots filled with denser organic potting soil. 

We're following this regimen for the Brassicas, which apparently "get leggy" really quickly.  This means that they sprout up pretty tall and can get spindly and fall over if they are not planted in larger containers where they can spread out their roots a bit more.  But for the other plant families, we're going to try something new: starting them directly in the potting soil.  At the NOFA conference, we heard from one family farm that skips the transplanting step completely, which saves a great deal of labor.  We'll see how it goes!

We're also planting a "trap crop" this year.  We've got slugs in our garden, and they love to chomp on all sorts of leafy greens.  Last summer, we'd go out on "slug patrol" in the mornings and evenings, and . . . um . . . "dispose" of any slugs we could find.  We noticed, too, that the slugs seemed to just love the Chinese cabbage.  So this year, we're going to plant a Chinese cabbage at the ends of each row of Brassica plants, and hope that the cabbages lure the slugs away from our food crops.  I think this is a key aspect of gardening and farming--noticing, and making adjustments!

And as we go about our days, planting seeds and collecting sap, we say little prayers of thanksgiving.  What an amazing world this is, that we can drink nectar from trees, and grow large leafy greens from little tiny seeds.  The natural world sustains us, nourishes us.  

You know, I've reprogrammed a lot of my eating habits.  Mostly, we eat what we grow, here at the farm.  When I'm in the city, or eating out, I buy local and organic whenever possible.  And when I'm not sure of how a restaurant sources their meat, I select vegetarian options.  Sometimes organic food costs more, but the savings you get by avoiding all processed foods balances things out.  These individual acts are important to me, because I take comfort in knowing that no animal had to endure squalor and disease, that no worker was exploited, and that the natural environment wasn't poisoned in order for me to eat.  Living on the farm, you see those connections directly.  

But I am sometimes surprised to realize that I still find it hard, in the grocery store, to remember that food comes from the natural world, not from a corporation. (You have to wonder: are stores designed to help us forget this fundamental fact?)  To remember that good food is full of life, that it was nourished, itself, by the sun . . . that in essence, whenever we eat, we are eating the sun.  Sometimes, when that bag of chips is sitting there, invariably at the checkout line, it's hard to remember that there's really no sun in it.  I think if I could just remember to visualize the sun's energy shining through food, I would see that emptiness, that void on the junk food shelves, and be repulsed . . . 

Lent -- A season of healing

I remember Lent, in my childhood, as a dreary affair.  There was fasting, and we were supposed to give up something important for the duration.  My mom seemed to have a thing for filet of sole, which my young tastebuds could not abide.  You'd get the ashes on the forehead, and it was kind of just embarrassing.  Here was a ritual that didn't remain within the church walls, but that traveled with you and marked you in the world.  But I don't remember all that much about the meaning of Lent . . . the "why" of it all.  Just that we were sinners and should be penitent.

So it was with some trepidation that I started thinking about this Lenten season, but part of me was curious--what *is* Lent all about, anyway?  The more time I spend here with the Sisters, the more I realize that I have so little knowledge about the liturgical calendar, the meanings of feast days, the names of saints . . . There's a near-bottomless trove of history and commentary and interpretation about these religious traditions, emerging from Judaism, encompassing the Desert Mothers and Fathers, including mystics, pre-Christian pagans, medieval scholars, and more.  I'm such a newbie, in reality . . . 

Most people understand Lent as a time of repentance, as a period of introspection and self-denial.  The Eucharist service this morning referred to our human "wretchedness."  We knelt on the hard stone floor and asked for forgiveness and mercy.  I could help the thought: "oh drat, I haven't chosen anything to give up for the next 40 days."

But a few things I've read in the past couple of days have been pointing me to a more encompassing reading of the meaning of Lent, and for that I'm very thankful.  We've spent today in retreat, which has given me an opportunity to think more, and integrate what I've read.

First, one of the blogs I follow had a post entitled "40 Days of Delight."  I thought, "well, that's another take on it altogether!"  And it is.  The post begins with a quote from Thomas Merton (a Catholic, Trappist monk, 20th c):

"Lent is then not a season of punishment so much as one of healing."

 
Whoa!  That's not the Lent I remember.  Reading on, I find that the blog author, a dancer, is embarking on a healing period by not watching TV for 40 days, in order to rest her overstimulated mind and to get better, healing sleep.  Intrigued, I looked back to her previous post, where she explains her understanding of Lent: 

The ashes are not a morbid reminder of our impending deaths, but they are, I assert, meant to wake us up to the opportunity of these bodies.

The opportunity is brief and therefore precious.

Many of us are squandering the opportunity, wearing these bodies heavily, as burdens, rather than inhabiting them joyfully. We diminish the Body, placing it at the bottom of a hierarchy of Spirit and Intellect.

Yet...

It is through this body that we enter the ocean and feel the salt water and contemplate our connection to the whole.

It is through this body that we embrace those whom we love and know we are not alone.

It is through this body that we celebrate, that we mourn, that we play, that we rest.

The word Lent itself is of Anglo Saxon origin and simply means spring.

Over these 40 days, the ground will less often be white where I live, and I will start to hear a low murmur of water trickling in the ground. There will be small green shoots pushing up through the top crust of earth. By the time we get to Easter, there will be strongly scented flowers at our front door.

The body of the Earth awakens in these 40 days, and I wonder if we are not meant to go through the same process.

What if the practices of Lent typically observed--fasting, self-denial, penitence--were part of this framework, a way for us to make ready our individual bodies, our collective body, the body of the soil, for the spring that is to come?  What if we fasted not because we are wretched, but because we are preparing ourselves for new life?

With this spark in my mind, shining a little ray of light onto my aversion to Lent, I went a'googling for more about Thomas Merton and his understanding of Lent.  Looking beyond the gendered language, I found in this quote an amazing, deep challenge--to prepare myself to be joyful, to be without fear.

The purpose of Lent is not only expiation, to satisfy the divine justice, but above all a preparation to rejoice in His love. And this preparation consists in receiving the gift of His mercy–a gift which we receive insofar as we open our hearts to it, casting out what cannot remain in the same room with mercy.

Now one of the things we must cast out first of all is fear. Fear narrows the little entrance to our heart. It shrinks up our capacity to love. It freezes up our power to give ourselves. If we were terrified of God as an inexorable judge, we would not confidently await His mercy, or approach Him trustfully in prayer. Our peace and our joy in Lent are a guarantee of grace.

I want to make this Lenten season meaningful to me, to find in it an opportunity to continue my spiritual inner work.  One major piece of that inner work is learning how to reconcile my pain and angst about the all-too-flawed institutional church with my joyful experience of the Spirit that moves in this world.  If that doesn't rift doesn't need healing, I don't know what does.  Seems to me that Thomas Merton, and his call to healing, fearlessness, and joyfulness, is a pretty good place to start.