When our grandson was diagnosed with high functioning autism, we felt like we had cracked a code. We finally understood why he interacts with the world the way he does. With these insights, we can make adjustments that enable him enjoy life and accomplish goals.
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“Michael Ableman is a lifelong farmer and founder of the Vancouver social enterprise Sole Food, a five-acre farm in the city’s grittiest neighbourhood that employs people who have been abandoned by society,” writes Randy Shore in the Vancouver Sun. Shore quotes Ableman, “When we started Sole Food, we had two primary goals: We wanted to provide meaningful training and employment to people with challenges like mental illness and addiction, but also to do something on a scale that was truly agricultural . . . We produce 50,000 pounds of food every year. ” He goes on to say, “There’s something physiological that happens when you work with living soil. . . I always noticed how much better I felt psychologically after a day of playing in the dirt. Studies demonstrate that the change is real, when one is intimately working with soil. When people have a reason to get out of bed each day—and that takes courage and perseverance for some of the folks we work with—a change takes place that is pretty profound. When they know there is a team of people depending on them, when living things rely on them and they know that those plants produce food for the community, they come out of themselves, they move forward.” Isn’t that incredible? You can read more about it here or in Ableman’s book, Street Farm: Growing Food, Jobs and Hope on the Urban Frontier.
What love mischief are you and God doing to care for the earth?
Let me know and I will include it in an upcoming post.
As I listen to directees share their struggles and listen to my own, I notice that there’s a strata to our feelings and desires. Like an archaeological dig, the top layer–the first one we experience–gets our attention. It’s the hurt right under our feet. Archaeologists don’t care about that dirt. It’s where they need to dig, but mostly they need to get it out of the way to find what’s underneath. They shovel, sift and gently brush the soil away to find relics of past civilizations. These give them clues about who we are and what has affected how we live.
It was an arts worship service and the theme was “The Kingdom of God.” Artists at New Life Community Church submitted their creations based on the theme, and we worshiped God with our senses and imaginations. That’s when I first saw Wendy Linnington’s painting Mustard Seed (above). It spoke to me of the seemingly small and unseen kingdom that is within us–potent, powerful and growing. I am so grateful for the love mischief of Wendy and other painters, potters, dancers and singers that open us to the kingdom in tangible ways.
Mark’s gospel says that one evening Jesus got into a boat with his disciples to cross the Sea of Galilee. He was exhausted after a day of teaching and healing and fell asleep on a cushion at the back of the boat. A while later a fierce squall threatened to swamp them. The disciples woke Jesus. “Teacher, don’t you care if we drown?”
Insights help us all manage our behaviour. When I notice myself overreacting to something, I wonder if I could be a reacting to an unresolved hurt from the past. Knowing this frees me to engage with both the present and the past in a healthier way.
However insights only take us so far. I know why I overeat, but it doesn’t stop me from overeating.
Father Richard Soo, SJ likes to remind those praying the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises that “Insights are a dime a dozen. What we really need is encounter.”
“Get up close and personal with God,” says Father Soo. As we explore with God the thoughts, feelings and desires that come to our awareness, we can experience God’s loving response. We get a sense of how God sees us and our situation.
In last week’s post, I described how God was with me–lovingly present as each awareness emerged. God didn’t fix me or tell me to do anything. Instead, God invited me to hold all that was true about myself on various levels the way God does–with compassion. And then I was invited to hear a deeper truth that is so often drowned out by my fears.
Deep truths emerge as we encounter God: we’re made to connect with God and others; we’re never separated from God; we’re unconditionally loved, and so on. These insights are not new. We read them in scripture, hear them in church, and remind ourselves of them in prayer.
But here’s the difference. When we encounter God face to face and hear these words from God’s lips, in God’s embrace, and through God’s touch, we know it. We know it the way we knew it before we were born–without question.
And that changes everything.
For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.
My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place,
when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed body;
all the days ordained for me were written in your book
before one of them came to be.
How precious to me are your thoughts, God!
How vast is the sum of them!
Were I to count them,
they would outnumber the grains of sand—
when I awake, I am still with you.
–Psalm 139:13-18 (NIV)