Victory Gardens

Last night fellow church member Veda Kanitz and I attended a workshop on community gardens at Dakota Tech. The Dakota County Health Department is making grants available next year to organizations to start or expand community gardens. It is perfect timing for us at Open Circle as a community garden is one of the next phases of our landscaping overhaul at church. I would say based on what I heard last night that we have an excellent chance of getting a grant.

During last night's presentation mention was made of Dowling Community Garden in Minneapolis, one of the few continuing Victory Gardens in the United States. When this was said a man sitting next to me, just slightly younger than me, asked: "what is a Victory Garden?" The older-than-me man sitting on my opposite side replied that he was "too young to know."

Well, I am too young to remember Victory Gardens, but I have been using a Victory Garden Cookbook for more than 20 years, and used to watch the PBS show regularly as we once upon a time had a large vegetable garden.

Victory Gardens were begun during World War I and it is said that during Word War II there were nearly 20 million Victory Gardens in the country that provided more than a third of the produce the nation consumed.

Like many Americans our family is rediscovering the virtues of vegetable gardening. As our home yard is full of perennials and shrubs, we have been gardening on a small plot at church, as have a few other families. The community garden would allow us to open this up to the neighborhood. In particular we would have a chance to offer plots to some of the lower income families who live in the neighborhood around the church.

We need Victory Gardens again. A home or community garden not only provides fresh produce, but it cuts down on dependence on food that is shipped from across the country and world. It saves oil. It makes us more self-sustaining. It gets our hands dirty in a good way. It builds community. If that isn't a recipe for Victory I don't know what is.

Deep Economy

My newsletter post this week:

I wouldn't wish this recession with its job losses and suffering on anyone. There is nothing good about it. I have heard a few pastoral colleagues essentially welcoming it because it brings people into the church. But it is a weak and insecure church that welcomes suffering because it fills the pews. We want people to have jobs and homes and healthcare.

Here we are, though. The economy is contracting and everyone, rich and poor, is being affected. President Obama has recently talked about the need to "reset" diplomatic relations with a variety of countries. Perhaps it is also time to revisit our values and reset our priorities.

Recently I have been reading a book called Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future by Bill McKibben. McKibben addresses what he calls the "single-minded focus on increasing wealth" that has "driven the planet's ecological systems to the brink of failure, without making us happier."

How we got to this point is pretty obvious, he says:

We kept doing something past the point where it worked. Since happiness has increased with income in the past, we assumed it would do so in the future. We make these kinds of mistakes regularly: two beers make me feel good, so ten beers will make me feel five times better. But this case was particularly extreme and easy to understand, because human beings have spent so much of their history trying to satisfy basic needs... Consider, say, America in 1820, two generations after Adam Smith. The average American earned, in current dollars, less than $1,500, which is somewhere near the current African average. As the economist Deirdre McCloskey explains, "Your great-great-great grandmother had one dress for church and one for the week, if she were not in rags. Her children did not attend school, and probably could not read. She and her husband worked eighty hours a week for a diet of bread and milk-they were four inches shorter than you." Even in 1900, the average American lived in a house the size of today's typical garage. Is it any wonder, then, that we built up a considerable velocity trying to escape the gravitational pull of that kind of poverty?

But then, thanks to the genius of the free market wedded with the wonders of technology, we suddenly blew past a way of life that had marked our ancestors' lot for centuries. Good riddance. Life was better. People were happier. We don't want to go back to those days.

But we never slowed down. Everything kept getting bigger and bigger: our homes, cars, meals, our pile of toys, and our environmental footprint. We supersized everything. And we long ago passed the point where making more and having more could make us more happy. We know, too, that there is no way the mothership Earth can take the rest of the world living the way we have lived.

Now we are being forced to slow down. As I said at the beginning it isn't "good for us." People are suffering; they don't know how they are going to feed their families. We want the economy to recover and soon.

But as we recover we have an opportunity here to make choices about how we live our lives and where and how much we spend our money. Community, friendship, spiritual well-being don't take much money but they do take time and effort that can actually bring us happiness. Building a sustainable world with a healthy environment, making the world more just and peaceful take both time and money. But it is time and money well-spent. We don't want "no" economic growth. We want smart, sustainable, and slower economic growth that lifts all boats and takes care of the planet.

Over the next year you are going to be hearing much more about sustainability at the church. We are going to be studying sustainability in adult ed, actually working to make our own piece of land on Highland Drive more sustainable (and beautiful), hearing me and some guest speakers talk about it. It is a teachable moment. I hope and trust we will all use it well.

Organ Donation Myths

A friend and member of Liberalchurch found out quite recently that he must go to organ transplant training at the Mayo Clinic. He has disease that is causing his kidneys to fail and at some point, he will need to begin dialysis and get onto the transplant list. I have another friend since preschool days who is a successful kidney transplant recipient. The donor of his new kidney was someone he knew and was found during a local organ donation drive. As you may or may not know, some organs can be donated while you are still living, while others are "harvested" after you are dead. Either way, donating an organ sustains the life of another.

I'm looking into what is required to accomplish an organ donation drive through publicity efforts by LiberalChurch. While doing this research, I came upon this informative article from The Mayo Clinic which busts 10 Common Myths of making an organ donation. In the case of making a kidney donation, please pay particular attention to Myth #8!

The Tan Commandments

At liberalchurch we promote behavior that doesn't hurt but rather supports and encourages the best behavior of others. We don't hold the Ten Commandments over each other like large stone tablets. If liberalpastor ever delivered anything close to a hellfire and brimstone message, we'd likely wonder whether an intervention might be in order because it would be so out of character!

In an effort to support our Wellness Ministry and it's ministry team leader, a woman who identifies as a non-Christian, I thought I'd pass along this website--although it's not made of stone and I'm no Moses--which sets forth the Tan Commandments!

Pain and Meditation

Still on the journey of recovery from my surgery last week, I had my first physical therapy visit after my return from the hospital yesterday morning. The visit was not bad but the after effects were not as pleasant. Last night I did some recearch online to find guided meditations for pain. I found a whole list of different ones for different purposes--not just pain--from this website. I tried #14 on the list which is specifically for pain. It was good.

Slow Down, You Move too Fast!

Are these lyrics from a Simon and Garfunkle song from the 70s? Yes, but also it is the new mantra of a movement to save time, lives, and even democracy so says it's proponent. I couldn't agree more! This is definitely an important topic for our Pastoral Leadership Team and our Wellness Ministry leader to find some creative ways to spread this message and implement it.

I guess one of the primary ways would be to encourage/reward people to "take a sabbath"! Whether it be on a Wednesday evening at 7 p.m. or a Sunday morning at 10 a.m., take a pause and take time out for yourself with a large or small group of others at Open Circle!