Seeds nourish us - body and soul

“Look, Granny. Basil sprouting!” exclaimed my granddaughter as she took me to see the tiny seedlings on the table in her playroom.  Earlier that day, we had wandered around my yard, hand in hand, looking for sprouting things.  We marveled at the tulips poking through the leaf mulch, the buds forming on the lilacs, and the hellebore Lenten Rose blooming on the sunny south side of the house.  The hellebore is the first thing to bloom in my garden and I am always tickled when it blooms before Easter.

A few days later, my husband and I took our granddaughter to Seedy Saturday, a nationwide movement that promotes the cultivation and preservation of heirloom and endangered varieties of food crops.  Our local event had a kids’ planting table, and before our granddaughter planted her seed in the Styrofoam cup that she had filled with soil, she cradled it gently in her tiny hand as if she were in the presence of something holy.

I have a healthy respect for seeds.  Coming from an Italian background, I grew up with a vegetable garden in the backyard. It was a riot of plants that produced abundant crops, many of which my father planted from the seeds he saved annually. Tomato seeds germinated in little pots by the basement window; others we sowed directly into the ground.  From seed to table, I grew up with crunchy carrots, juicy tomatoes, meaty roman beans, tender lettuce and bitter radicchio that tantalized (or tortured) my taste buds and nourished my body. 

Image courtesy of KEK064 at freedigitalphotos.net

Seeds keep up rooted

I used to wonder why my father kept seeds when it would have been so much simpler and tidier to buy them.  But, keeping the seeds was a symbolic way for my father to stay connected with the land that his family had farmed for generations in the old country. My father’s method of gardening, including his insistence on planting according to the phases of the moon, kept us rooted with our past.

I shared some of this with Mohawk seed keeper Terrylynn Brant, who sees an intimate connection between the seed, ancestors and land, and who, like my father plants her crops based on the moon. 

Brant grew up in a family that was able to maintain its agricultural practices despite government policies that threatened the traditional agricultural way of life of the communities of the Haudenosaunee. From an early age, she had a passion for gardening, which she believes is her gift from the Creator, and she has always been mindful of the importance of keeping the seeds of her ancestors, some of which, she told me, go back to time immemorial. 

A seed is a sacred thing

For Brant, a seed is a sacred thing and a metaphor for the innate dignity and goodness of the individual.

“Seeds have their own inherent responsibility given to them by Creator. It’s basically to grow and to reproduce themselves. That’s the duty and responsibility they’ve been given…to continue who they are and what they are” and the seed will always do its best to honor the task creation had in mind for it.

Brant applies this concept to people.  “The Creator sent us here as beautiful, perfect beings. He intended us to grow beautiful, to be compassionate with our fellow man, to share everything we have, to love one another.  And yet, we are the ones who mess that up…We should look at the seed, and we should be reminded every time we hold it in our hands what is pure, what is good, what is right, but we do not.” 

There is a genius to a seed that we miss when we lose contact with the soil and the source of the food on our table.  Sowing a seed, nurturing its growth, and plucking its fruit off the vine does more than feed our bodies; it nourishes our spirit.  

When we wonder at basil sprouting or feel our heart leap up at the blooming of the Lenten Rose after a dark winter, we touch the goodness inherent in our selves, and intuit the possibility for our own transformation and that of the world. The seed helps us get back to the garden where we glimpse the perfection and harmony for which we long.

Laudato Si': Care for our Common Home

Dubbed the "climate change encyclical",  Laudato Si' is really about relationships.

In Laudato Si’: On Care For Our Common Home, Pope Francis calls the world to rethink and transform the “outdated criteria which continue to rule the world.”

From the first page, this encyclical hooked me with its straightforward and direct language, occasionally surprising me with its bluntness, such as when Francis described the world as resembling a “pile of filth”, or criticized politicians for lacking “breadth of vision.” Other times, the language is more poetic, particularly when the pope praises the beauty of creation.

In Laudato Si’, Francis attempts to gather the thought of the universal church on the connection between the environment and social issues. Not only does he refer to the teachings of his predecessors, Francis makes numerous references to statements on the environment from Catholic bishops’ conferences around the world. He also devotes several paragraphs to the teaching of Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew. 

Although it has been dubbed “the climate change encyclical”, the discussion on climate change is only a small portion of Laudato Si’.  Those who focus on the pope’s comments on climate change miss the point. This encyclical is about three key relationships – humanity’s relationship with God, with the created world, and with one another – and it reflects on the problems existing within the web of these relationships.

At the root of the environmental crisis, says Francis, is a “misguided anthropocentrism” that places human beings at the center. In our hubris, we have fallen prey to “unrestrained delusions of grandeur”. We seek mastery over nature instead of respecting it as a sacred gift. We are turning ““a magnificent book in which God speaks to us and grants us a glimpse of his infinite beauty and goodness” into something that “is beginning to look more and more like an immense pile of filth”. 

Francis talks about the utilitarian mindset that leads us to treat others with disregard, valuing them only in so far as they are useful to us. We are more interested in convenience and consumption, economics and power than in the intrinsic dignity of the human person and nature. In the theology of this encyclical, our lifestyle and mindset blind us to the destruction of the environment and deafen us to the cries of the poor.

Francis cautions that if we continue to see ourselves as independent from others and as separate from nature, our attempts to heal the environment will be piecemeal at best. Healing the environment requires healing the other two key relationships; “our relationship with the environment can never be isolated from our relationship with others and with God. Otherwise, it would be nothing more than romantic individualism dressed up in ecological garb”.  A true ecological approach is therefore always a social approach; “it must integrate questions of justice in debates on the environment, so as to hear both the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor”.  

Less we feel overwhelmed and discouraged by the reality of the challenges facing humanity, the encyclical offers hope.  Human beings have the capacity to transform the present environmental and social crisis, but it will require a change of heart and attitude.  We will do well to heed an ancient lesson common in religious traditions,  ‘less is more’, and to cultivate a spirit of moderation that is happy with fewer goods even if it is contrary to today’s culture of consumption and waste.

From developing enforceable international environmental polices to small individual actions, everyone has a part to play in caring for our common home.  We renew the social fabric, break down indifference, and forge a shared identity, says Francis, when we promote the common good and defend the environment.  “Social love moves us to devise larger strategies to halt environmental degradation and to encourage a “culture of care” which permeates all of society.” 

Laudato Si’ challenges us, individually and collectively, to confront the environmental crisis and to resolve the inequalities of human society. The future hangs in the balance of our response.