What We Think About

This winter Cindee and I (mostly Cindee) have been planning our main permaculture project for the summer: a greenhouse constructed with clay-straw construction.  On June 1 and 2 we will be offering a hands-on workshop on clay-straw construction, with local clay-straw builder, Lasse Holmes, teaching the class.  Since he will be using our building site to teach his class, the class will also give us guidance, and hands-on instruction when we begin the clay-straw part of the construction.

The Construction Site Before the Greenhouse

When we talk about projects like this, some people tell us it all sounds terribly romantic...and...I suppose it is.  But the romance gives way to the practical once we immerse ourselves in the research, the networking and the labor it takes to make it all happen.  For instance, using clay-straw to build has meant that we have already had to invest ourselves in finding and harvesting  (that is, digging and hauling) the clay and the straw from local sources.  Projects like this are a combination of vision (what I call the romantic adventure of living "really different" for a reason) and of the sweat equity that it takes to make a vision take form.

Typically, permaculturists (my word for people who practice permaculture) are people who combine vision with hands-on, can-do values.  Although permaculturists vary in personality and motivation as much as anybody, it seems to me that all long-term permaculturists combine two important values:

1.   permaculture is most practiced by people who with a vision for the future, and a willingness to
      sacrifice today in order to make that future a reality, and

2.   permaculture is most practiced by people who interpret it to be a to be an adventure and a joy to
      do the work that goes along with developing their lives, their relationships, and their
      locale according to that vision.

From a Christian perspective, this visionary work is wonderful.  It is wonderful, because permaculture is primarily about transforming the unsustainable, and catastrophic, dominant way of human life today into a truly sustainable way of life tomorrow.  This transformation is perhaps the most important world-wide work that humankind must do at this moment in history; anything less courts disaster for all God's beloved creation--human and non-human.

This visionary work is also wonderful from a Christian point of view, because whatever vision captures our hearts will be the vision what we ultimately live for.  God made the whole created order to thrive in relationship with God.  The future to which God is calling us is that future--a thrivable futre--and the task of living for a sustainable future is basic to that call.

What is needed though, besides vision, is an enduring desire to live according to this new life--and that requires the ability to embrace living different as an adventure. Living life as an adventure means we don't know how it is going to turn out.  It means daring to risk, and daring to have real faith in something that is not proven.

This is one of the reasons why people who look deeply, really deeply, into the life of faith are sometimes hesitant to take the plunge into that faith life.  People like that see what is at heart when we pray that part of the Lord's Prayer that says, "Thy Kingdom Come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven."  If heaven is where God's will is absolutely followed, then praying that for the earth is to pray for real change--the kind of change that leads to a better future; and to pray for something without living for that same thing is empty.  It is not prayer if we ask without also committing to the adventure.  If we are going to pray "thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven," then we must be willing to take action to help make that prayer come true.

For Cindee and me this includes experimenting with a clay-straw-built greenhouse on the steep, south-facing slope below our garage.  We are terracing the slope to allow for greenhouse garden boxes and walkways.  We are using locally produced lumber, and locally harvested clay, straw and sand for the construction.  We are recycling windows that would otherwise be trash from old buildings.  And we are inviting specialists to use our work site as a hands-on classroom for teaching both how to do it and why this is earth-friendly.  That is, we continue to pursue our long-range vision for developing our property and for building our community, and we are trying to do it in ways that publicly demonstrate that living the earth-care adventure is better for the land and for people.

A Cut-Away View from the Back

What is not always communicated when we do such things is that our long-term permaculture design puts us in the habit of concentrating on the positive nature God’s desires for us, the potential, rather than on the tribulations of the day.  Clearly, we are not unaware of what is going on in the world around us--we wouldn't be engaging in this vision without it.  However, this romantic-vision-way-of-life is about putting our focus on the good that can be, and then living out of that awareness.  In my mind, this way of life puts me back into that way of life that God intended for us from the beginning.

Clearly, none of this is particularly new.  The Bible for instance, written so long ago, lifts up again and again this truth for every age: that concentrating on God's possibilities is central to what it means to live out of the God's abundant life.  St. Paul incorporated it right into his teachings on how to live the Christian way of life.  Paul put it this way:

Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.            Philippians 4:8

Peace,

Curt Karns

Hope is God’s melody for the future;

Prayer is to listen for it;

Faith is to dance it.  (Rubem Alves)

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[1] Frost and Hirsch, The Faith of Leap: Embracing a Theology of Risk, Adventure;
Friedman, Leadership and Courage in the Age of the Quick Fix,
Roxburgh, Missional: Joining God in the Neighborhood.

[2] Butler-Bass, Christianity After Religion: The End of Church and the Birth of a New Spiritual Awakening.