08 01 11 Space to Learn

I am not good at remembering how to identify the indigenous plants surrounding our bioshelter home. My best understanding of why I have trouble with this has led me to take a look at two different reasons. The first is that I may not be passionate enough about the subject. Realistically, I have a lot more that I am doing than studying plants. The plants that I intend to do something with right now probably become memorable enough, but if learning to identify plants is mostly an academic exercise and not immediately useful, then I don’t really put enough effort into it. Second, let’s face it, I’m 54 years old and I don’t memorize as easily as I used to. I have to work harder at it if I want to retain it—which is another way of it takes some real passion to learn it.


A good example is the lambsquarter that grows on our property. Lambsquarter is much like a wild version of spinach. Its leaves are great in salad and it has a lot of vitamins and fiber in it, making it both a tasty and a nutritious plant to identify. Unfortunately, I am only good at identifying lambsquarter by recognizing the seed stem when it begins forming on the top of the plant. Lambsquarter needs to be harvested young. By the time the plant is so mature that the seed stem is forming, the leaves are just too chewy and not all that palatable. I really have to learn to identify this plant at a younger stage…but there is so much to learn!


And that is part of the awe that I feel as a part of bioshelter/permaculture living. Just on our two-acre tract of land there is so much life—so many partners in the ecosystem relationships—that I marvel at the complexity and the diversity of it all. The air, water and regional soil elements combine with the bacteria, plant and animal life in hugely complex ways.


One of the marvels of for me as a person of faith is the way that the Creator has obviously chosen to create through evolutionary principles. Simple forms of life are always adapting, finding more complex ways of working together to allow more life in more forms. It appears that God and nature enjoy a great sense of delight in allowing the new to emerge, and over time the new has trended toward increasing complexity and greater possibility. It is this very process that has allowed humans to evolve with brains capable of perceiving the wonder of it all.


I also marvel at God, who created the potential for all this through the Big Bang (I know, there is a lot of theory behind what happened before the big bang—but my point stands just the same). And I marvel at God, who participates in relationship with and in each individual in all creation. As life evolves in all its complexity, God’s huge capacity for relationship and love is also revealed as greater, and more wonder evoking, than I think I will ever grasp. After all, what am I compared to that? I can hardly recognize lambsquarter—one individual on my own small piece of property.


Christians have always marveled that God, who is transcendent—that is beyond nature and therefore capable of choosing to be Creator—is capable of being found through the Spirit as also in and through nature. The point that Christians find so wonder-evoking is made most fully in the person of Jesus Christ. How is it possible for the fullness of the transcendent God to reside in one individual, Jesus Christ? In Jesus, God was revealing something hugely important to us about God’s closeness to us and to all creation. However, in Jesus God was also revealing something about the sacredness of the whole created order. It is sacred because God creates it, chooses to be in relationship to each individual in it and, in fact, is also mysteriously present in it.


There is so much to contemplate in this. Today, I just marvel at the immensity of it all. Today, I hope to learn about lambsquarter (how can I recognize this plant younger?). This also raises the question of what more immediately important relationships, with the people around me or with the bioshelter or land, am I missing? God seeks to pay attention. In my limited ability, I have to choose where I put my attention—but I am motivated by God to seek to pay attention well.


Today, I also marvel both at the complexity of it all, and at God who delights in this emerging complexity. God clearly delights in creation and chooses to enjoy[1] each moment of it, each individual in it, and the complexity of relationships that make it all possible.


The mystery in a nutshell is just this: Christ is in you…(Colossians 1:27)


3 When I consider your heavens,
the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
which you have set in place,
4 what is mankind that you are mindful of them,
human beings that you care for them? (Psalm 8:3-4)

[1] Enjoyment is here a theological term, meaning upholding the best potential for each moment, though God grieves when we creatures do not choose for that best potential.

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