“When it was time, he sat down, all
the apostles with him, and said, “You’ve no idea how much I have looked forward
to eating this Passover meal with you before I enter my time of suffering. It’s
the last one I’ll eat until we all eat it together in the kingdom of God.”
Taking the cup, he blessed it, then
said, “Take this and pass it among you. As for me, I’ll not drink wine again
until the kingdom of God arrives.”
Taking bread, he blessed it, broke it,
and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body, given for you. Eat it in my
memory.”
He did the same with the cup after
supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant written in my blood, blood poured
out for you.”
–Luke 22: 14-16, The Message
I grew up in an “open-the-box-insert-into-microwave”
kind of house. Two parents that worked full time plus two kiddo’s that
exemplified the American extracurricular nightlife meant that meal time
comprised anything fast, portable, and consequently void of nutritional and
spiritual sustenance. In spite of this subtle retrospective critique on the
kitchen practices of my family of origin, I should share that as a teen I
reveled in the lifestyle. No meal time meant I didn’t have to slow down for the
inconvenience of community. A kitchen stocked with easy to grab processed foods
meant Nutty Bar after school communion with neighborhood kids before heading
out to the soccer field. My youth was
ritualized by the fullness of high caloric food and the emptiness of an extra
serving of busyness.
In college, however, the reality of
being both physically full and spiritually starving culminated into chronic
depression and a search for a fullness I had yet to experience. I felt heavy,
weak, and perpetually lost. For me, the journey through the emotional labyrinth
called ‘college’ led me straight to seminary and a financially costly education
in all things theological. It felt like I was doing everything “right” and
still so much felt innately wrong. I got married, graduated seminary, had a
child, and began my pastoral career and still
searched for something to fill me in a way I had yet to know.
I hoped very much, as perhaps many of
you have, that church would fill me up. It might just be the leadership role I
have been blessed with or the reality of what church has become, but more often
than not church leaves me with a Nutty Bar hangover as opposed to the fullness
of the slow roast family dinner I craved as a young adult. In “To Garden with
God” author Christine Sine hypothesizes that “one of the reasons people are
moving away from Christianity at time-warp speed is that we have divorced our
faith from the rhythms and practices of the natural world.” If it is the quiet
work of the summer garden, the deep flavors of a slow roasted meal, and the
rising smell of expanding bread that people are seeking, the Sunday morning
worship experience can be received as a quick trip Elitches on a 100 degree
day. As a pastor I see people wander in and out of the sanctuary the same way
my friends wandered in and out of my kitchen when I was a teenager. They may
partake in what I serve but will go home to fill their souls up. Or, like me,
they will wander seeking that place others call home where their souls and
bodies receive the fullness they have always hungered for.
Shouldn’t the church be that place?
The place where food slowly grows in the deep, dark soil? The place where the
harvest awaits a community of eager, soft hands? The place where the table is set
and the chair anticipate the arrival of a perpetual One More? For eight years
these questions stewed in my soul until slowly the answer began to grow within
me; If feeding my body had required relearning how to cook shouldn’t feeding my
soul require relearning how to worship? The Land is a vision of a faith
community that attempts to do just that; relearn worship as the way in which we
live our lives opposed to an obligation we fulfill once a week. This relearning
to worship is not meant as
invalidation of the experience of persons who are filled by traditional forms
of worship services. This relearning is
meant to offer an alternative; a sacred gathering place that integrates
agricultural practice and spiritual ritual for those who, like me, crave the
sight of the sky and the smell of the soil as the context for their spiritual
growth. Although today the physical site of our Aurora faith community is 9.7
acres of overgrown weeds where cows lazily graze, eighteen short months from
now it will evolve into an experimental site for spiritual growth with an edible
labyrinth, a greenhouse cathedral, an outdoor amphitheater, and a long table
with wooden chairs, set, ready and waiting for the emotionally heavy and the
spiritually hungry.
The message of The Land is that you Beloved Child of God were created to be filled; spiritually, emotionally, physically. It is okay to listen to your soul growl and decide you need to partake in a new spiritual menu. It has taken me a long time to embrace this truth; God is calling me to participate in a new thing. I believe that similar to the ways in which we care for our bodies, feeding our souls isn’t cured by stuffing ourselves with more, but by having access to the enough of the right type of nutrition. The Land is as much about physical nutrition as it is spiritual, and if you are hungry, heavy, and lost I want you to know The Land is a safe place to graze, to wander, and to awaken the hunger within.
