The more I look at what is going on in the food and justice arena of this country, the more I’m struck by the reality that people have a deep hunger for ecological solutions to the problems, not just of humanity, but the problems and difficulties and injustice in the lives of individual humans. In her book, God Talk in America,Phyllis Tickle notes that “…so intense has been our new, postmodern awareness of the interface between human spirituality and human space/context that it has been almost poetic in its power and its subtlety.” What she is saying, rather poetically herself, is that space matters. Place, matters…and it can have a subtle effect on a soul so deep, that when the context or space for a culture changes so drastically over a few generations, the implications, however subtle in their onset, are vast in their ramifications. It seems there are some other books that deal with this as well. This is topic for another post altogether —though it might better fit in another context more so than it does here. Nonetheless, there is a deep longing for a connection to the healing and washing over that the presence of good old fashion beauty can bring—the beauty of creation and the simple beauty of watching a seed become something that, with a little patience and understanding, can be sustenance, not just for the physical/material parts of our bodies, but for that thing we have often referred to as “soul” or “spirit.”
Jenny sent me a fantastic video that is saying this very thing with everything it is and does and has been doing, it seems, for a long time: The Homeless Garden Project. It seems to share a common vision and ethos as our vision for Justice Gardens.
Justice Gardens 