07 26 11 Wonder and Responsibility

As Alaskans, Cindee and I have always gathered wild berries, salmon and moose or caribou to provide for a significant part of our diet. Even so, we are really beginners in much of the processes of gardening and forest gardening. Only in the past two or three years have we begun to take more seriously the amazing variety of edible plants available all around us. Summer has therefore become a very interesting time of watching the plant life come alive and sampling the seasonal menu as each plant has its own time for fruitfulness.

This summer we are enjoying finding some of the new plants that are beginning to impose their presence on our property. A beautiful sour dock plant sprang up in the fruitful soil where we have been letting some of our compost age. Sour dock is a plant especially to flourish in northern climates and has long been a favorite of Native Americans and other Alaskans for preserving berries otherwise adding to diets. This year the chamomile also decided that fertile space was going to be its home, and so we have been harvesting buds for tea. Wild rhubarb, lambsquarter, fireweed—the possibilities just from gathering wild things are amazing. Now we are moving into the wild mushroom season and so we are watching for boletes and hericiums to appear.

It is impossible to be aware of these amazing plants without noticing how each has evolved to work so well in this particular environment. God has obviously chosen to create through evolution, which requires a great many principles including great swaths of time, the flourishing of those societies of creatures that cooperate well over those that do not and, unfortunately the reality that survival and evolution includes struggling against adversity, suffering and death.

There is great mystery in all of this. On the one hand it is exciting to recognize that the ability to cooperate gives a great advantage to life, leading to multi-celled creatures moving up the food chain beyond single-celled creatures, and cooperative societies (like wolves and humans) moving up the food chain above loners. On the other hand it is sad to watch individual creatures suffer and die, let alone whole species. God is clearly in all of this—in life and death, and in the evolving nature of life on planets like ours.

I will reflect later on the reality of suffering and what that means about God, who creates us and loves us. For today, I want to comment on the amazement and the responsibility that are part of the reality we see.

We see that the natural world around us is replete with life, much of which is available to sustain us. Although we have our garden, we are beginning to understand how much has been growing all around us, as if waiting for us to participate in the give and take of life together in this place. In all the years that Cindee and I have lived in the north, we have been aware of only a small part of this amazing community of life. In our current life we are discovering more and more, requiring trying new recipes (some better than others!) and new techniques for preservation. Because we have other jobs and can still buy our groceries, we can afford to move at our own pace in advancing the learning that comes with this growing awareness.

However, that suffering and death are also a part of the reality we see should open our eyes to the responsibility we have to not exacerbate the suffering or the die-off of species. We now live in a time when humans are the single most significant environmental factor that the species of the world face for their survival. This is true because our technology has allowed us to proliferate like rabbits, overpopulating and overtaxing the environment of the entire planet. This is also true because our technology and proliferation is based on cheap, carbon-based energy, and the burning of fossil fuels has kicked off a series of cascading events that are all contributing to great suffering in the natural world and huge die-off of species.

I have no profound insights to add. None of what I have written is new. It is just that today I am struck by the wonder of the community of life around our bioshelter home, and that wonder also causes me to feel afresh the grief of a world of life, the suffering of which is so exacerbated because of people. Jesus told us to love our neighbor. Why is it so hard for humans to see and recognize their neighbor? It takes a world of relationships to create the environment in which we humans thrive. Why can’t we humans see our neighbor throughout those relationships? And why can’t we change our own behavior when we see the suffering we cause and know we can do something about it?

²⁷ All creatures look to you
to give them their food at the proper time.
²⁸ When you give it to them,
they gather it up;
when you open your hand,
they are satisfied with good things.
²⁹ When you hide your face,
they are terrified;
when you take away their breath,
they die and return to the dust.
³⁰ When you send your Spirit,
they are created,
and you renew the face of the ground.

Psalm 104:27-30