Catch and Store Energy

The Situation
We tried to get away from it all last week, taking a few days vacation when our son and daughter-in-law visited from out of state.  In about the second day of their visit we were enjoying a lively conversation about friends and family.  As the conversation began to wind down, I turned the conversation to an idea about solving a construction problem.  My son and daughter-in-law laughed.  “And once again, back we go to talking about the greenhouse,” they said. The greenhouse project at the bioshelter has been much more all-consuming than either Cindee or I had expected…and others are noticing.

In fact, it is not just our friends and relatives, who are affected.  The whole bioshelter project has been affected.  We try to employ the principles of permaculture in our daily life, and one of those principles is to catch and store energy.  Putting so much time and effort in the greenhouse has stood in the way of our ability to do many of our normal, energy gathering and storing efforts that define the permaculture way of life.

For instance, the vegetable and kitchen gardens were late to go in, the potato garden did not even get planted this year, the apple trees never got transplanted into the orchard space we cleared last year, and the land we cleared never got properly cleaned (dead branches removed, etc.) to prepare for the fruit trees. 

Yet, we do want a greenhouse.  Have we allowed a pet dream to sidetrack us from our principles?

Apples Growing in our Bioshelter Home

A Christian Teaching
One of the challenges of an authentic spiritual life is to remain true to God’s eternal nature and claim on one’s life, and to follow God into new spiritual territory.  For Christians it often feels like a tension between remaining faithful to the eternal teachings we have received about God, and remaining true to the new teaching God is passing on to us now.

Christians have often described this as an essential piece of understanding God’s Trinitarian nature. 

·      Knowing God as Holy Creator (that is, the author and embodiment of all that is right and good), Christians work shard to be obedient to what is eternal in God and God’s teaching.
 
·      Knowing God as Savior, we recognize that God always has been, and always will be, committed to the relationship with creation, and with each creature.  But God’s commitment is always to healthy relationships.  Because of human relational un-health, God is especially committed to changing our very nature, from the inside out, away from a nature guided by selfishness and fear, to a nature committed to right relationships.

·      Knowing God as Spirit, we recognize that God is at work with, in and through all creation and all moments of history.  This means that we are called to join God in developing the future.  It is this, God’s participation in history, and our participation in God, that provide concrete hope for the problems we face today.

Permaculture Principle
Permaculture Principle #2 really is To Catch and Store Energy.  This principle recognizes that there are times when certain resources are available, and those are the times to collect those resources and store them so that they may be utilized at the proper time.

At first glance, this says to me that there is a time to plant and a time to harvest….What were we thinking to allow the greenhouse to sidetrack our potato and kitchen gardens, and our orchard?  However, this is only the first glance.

There is both a cyclical and a linear nature to catching and storing energy.  Some things are cyclical, like planting and harvesting, which happens every year like clockwork.  Other things are about creating something new and absolutely require stepping away from how we have always done it if the new is to happen.

Cindee and I plan for our home to be a site for experiential learning.  We have a long-term goal of what that means, including involving a number of people in alternative construction techniques like those employed in our greenhouse building.  By building the greenhouse, we expand the kinds of food we will be able to grow in the future and we expand the scope of the learning center experiences available through the Learning Center right now to include building with local materials. 

It seems to me that this, too, is a way to catch and store energy.  It’s not the same form of energy as before, but it opens up much more potential for the future.  It just feels strange when the gardens we have to show are not as nice as usual, and the amount of produce we harvest will be less this year.

Final Thoughts:
We live in a world where people often seem to argue about whether it is right and proper to be conservative or to be progressive.  We argue about whether we need to be committed to the routines and systems we have learned to trust—based on the principles we know and love—or if we need to be committed to recognizing the brokenness of our current situations, and therefore pursue God’s new possibilities.  Both styles of commitment flow out of streams of faith.

What saddens me is the inability we often have of seeing how people in each camp are seeking to be faithful.  The truth is bigger than one camp or the other.  If we are to catch and store the spiritual energy God is providing, we need to stop castigating others, who are seeking to embody faithfulness.  There is both an obedient, cyclical side to authentic life, and an adventuresome, risk-taking side.  All are faith work—holding on to what is good and going forward with God in service of the future.

The question is a matter of timing.  Cindee and I know that locally grown potatoes are easy to buy; we will do fine without potatoes this year.  It seems that the apple orchard has decided to surprise us by bearing fruit while still serving as potted plants in the house (who would have thought?).  The orchard can wait, too.

However, we need to be a part of the new thing God is doing.  At this moment in time, the whole world needs to see that God is calling us to be on the move.  In an overpopulated and over-consumptive world, faithfulness right now must include embracing the adventure.  
 
Ecclesiastes 3:1-8
1 For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:
2 a time to be born, and a time to die;
   a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
3 a time to kill, and a time to heal;
   a time to break down, and a time to build up;
4 a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
   a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
5 a time to throw away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
   a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
6 a time to seek, and a time to lose;
   a time to keep, and a time to throw away;
7 a time to tear, and a time to sew;
   a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
8 a time to love, and a time to hate;
   a time for war, and a time for peace.

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