East of, but Still Carrying the Dust of, Eden

"Taproot" is what I have named the farm, and thusly this new blog.  Horticulturally, the taproot creates an anchoring center from which other roots may sprout.  That's not a bad description of this next chapter in my life, and the life of my indulgent wife who joins me in this new endeavor.  At the end of August I left my job of the past 19 years -- as Senior Minister of a fine and supportive congregation in the Drake neighborhood of Des Moines -- indeed of my life work of the past 30 years, to become a farmer of sorts.  More precisely -- and perhaps less pretentiously -- I have taken this turn to become a student of food production.  For the past few years, Lori and I have been learning about food -- what it is, how to cook it -- and now I am determined to learn how to grow it.

There is more to it than mere curiosity.  The more I have learned, the more I have become convinced that the way we grow and distribute food in this culture is not all that healthy, far less interesting than it could be, and decidedly unsustainable.  Collectively, I have become convinced, more and more us better remember how to grow food ourselves or one of these days we are going to start getting hungry.  In my case, it isn't an act of memory; it is a process of learning.  I haven't done this before.  Warmly, I have discovered that familiarity with the soil and its great dance with seeds is a part of my ancestry, but it hasn't been a part of my experience.  We had some fruit trees and berry bushes in the yard when I was young, but I didn't pay much attention until their fruits wound up on our table.  Suddenly, at this later stage of life, I am interested -- "hungry" in a different sort of way.

And so we sold our urban town home and bought a house on 10 acres out in the country.  Taproot Farm -- or perhaps more humbly "Taproot Garden." There I plan to create my classroom of the land.  People ask me if I am going into business.  I rather doubt it, I tell them.  My priority is to learn, not sell.  If I become a wildly successful student, I'll figure out what to do with the excess harvest.  In the meantime I plan to sow seeds in the greenhouse, harvest rainwater, develop a manageable garden out back, learn about dirt and manure and plant nutrition and natural, sustainable growing methods, and do what I can to pass along the learnings.

It isn't, however, simply a pragmatic undertaking.  There is a spirituality to all this that I hope will be as nourished as the body.  I am, after all, a pastor at heart.  Paying attention to -- and participating in -- this holy work of delicious creativity is part of what I mean by sending my own taproot deep into grounding of God's own image by which we were created.  We have long since acknowledged our location as somewhere "east of Eden."  While that may call confessional attention to something theologically "fallen" about our condition, it is significant, I think -- and ultimately hopeful -- that our spiritual GPS remains fixed on the coordinates of a garden.

I don't pretend that I am recreating Eden, but I do intend to tap into that which is ultimately divine, good, and orienting -- grounding and centering myself along the way in that which makes for life.