As someone who loves gardening, I am fascinated and curious about how to help the plants do the things they do best. For them to grow strong and be fruitful. So together, we might help work with God in adding to the beauty of this wonderful Gift we call Earth. Reading, learning, and talking to those who have been growing and cultivating is a small joy of mine. One of the insights that I have had about gardening recently, is that there are thousands of different species all working together in harmony in order to create a better environment for all of them to flourish.
When you compost you are returning life, nutrients, minerals, carbon, water, nitrogen, etc. back into the cycle of life. The soil is so much more than dirt. It is a million bacteria, fungi, protozoa, and little creepy crawly things of every sort. Not only did God make these all, but God deemed them good. We are just now beginning to learn how good they really are. Rather than get bogged down in the details of cellular respiration and the carbon, nitrogen, and water cycles, which are all fascinating and will help you become a better gardener, I will make this point. The food we eat is a product of many people: the seed farmers/distributors, the chemical engineers who make all kinds of poisons and fertilizers, the people who work in the mines, the semi and train drivers, CEOs, government agencies, and policymakers, farmers, sales representatives for all these companies, grocery store workers, and finally cooks who prepare the food. All of these people, their work, and their livelihood is dependent on the millions of microscopic organisms that are enabling life to exist and to do so in abundance.
When we think about God's first commandment in the garden to humanity to be fruitful, I offer that we think about the complexity of life and its abundance. Of all of it! All the various species, some of which we do not even know exist yet. If we kill the pollinators, we will lose so much of our ability to feed ourselves. If we kill the fungi with fungicides, we will lose so much of our ability to feed ourselves. If we do not protect the natural cycles that God put into motion and that we learn about through science, and use instead linear man-made processes instead of cyclical ones, we will lose much of our ability to feed ourselves.
When we lose our sense of wonder, of awe of God's great goodness, and try to fit this explosion of beauty and life into little boxes that give us a false sense of power over what God has created spoken into being, we set ourselves up for failure and conflict. Instead, I humbly suggest that we come to know more fully who God is by looking at, learning about, and loving life. Life in all its forms, in all its intricacies, and with all the amazing, gross, wonderous, and imaginative ways of being. We must hold a deep respect for all of what God has deemed good. It was our first commandment from God. When we live with this joy-filled curiosity and wonder, our spirits will be enriched as will our communities and our bellies with all of the blessed food!
Food for thought: there are around 50 billion bacteria in a handful of compost. That is 50,000,000,000. All of these were lovingly created by God, and give us the tiniest glimpse into who God is. What a rich prayer life we could have to praise God for all of this abundant life!
