“…their life shall become like a watered garden,
and they shall never languish again.” Jeremiah 31:12
Several years ago, I sat in the amphitheater of a hotel convention center, watching a man pour water through tubes of soil. The man was Ray Archuleta, who at the time worked for the Natural Resources Conservation Service, a branch of the United States Department of Agriculture. The NRCS has a mission is to help farmers conserve soil and water, work it began after the dust bowl of the Great Depression woke America to the need to build and keep soil. That, of course, has been a hard mission through the industrialization of agriculture, and Archuleta is something of a maverick, a revival preacher of the gospel of soil health. He was talking regenerative agriculture before the term became popular, and because of that he gained the attention of the sustainable agriculture community. This presentation, part of one of the Southern Sustainable Agriculture Working Group’s (SSAWG) final conferences, was like a tent revival for those ready to be reminded once again of the salvation found in good soil.
Below the tubes of soil were glass bowls. As the water poured through, the bowls began to fill. Except, between the two, there was a clear difference. In the bowl on the left the water quickly reached the rim and was the dark brown one would expect from pouring fluids through a tube of dirt. The bowl on the right, however, had less than half the water the other did, even though equal amounts were poured through the top. The water was also nearly clear though it had traveled, just as with the other through a tube of soil.
After stepping back from the display, like a magician having just completed a trick, Archuleta smiled and began to explain to us the difference between these tubes of what looked to be the same basic soil.
The soil on the left, Archuleta explained, had come from a conventionally farmed, tilled field. This meant that every year, perhaps multiple times a year, the soil was plowed by large tractors. In addition, the earth was left uncovered after harvests, with little stubble remaining on the surface. Nitrogen fertilizers were spread each spring, followed by rounds of herbicides and pesticides. Year after year it was the same, and the result was soil that had been diminished, with very little organic content, and a paltry community of microbes, worms, fungi and other soil creatures. Because of this, the carbon structures of the dirt had broken down, and there was very little surface area to hold water. When water was poured on it, as we’d seen with the tube, it went right through and carried some of the soil material with it, thus contributing to erosion. Imagine a rainstorm on 1000 acres of such dirt. Imagine how much more water must be drained from an aquifer to irrigate such soil.
The soil on the right, however, had come from a no-till farm using regenerative methods. There was no plowing used. After crops were harvested, stubble was left in place to protect the soil. Cover crops were planted to help contribute organic matter, improve soil structure, and fix nitrogen through the work of microbes. As a result, this soil could be picked up in clods that would crumble into smaller clods. The carbon structure of this soil was different due to the work of trillions of microbes. Because tilling did not destroy their hyphae, mycorhizal fungi worked through the soil and glued its particles together with a substance called glomalin. As a result, the water that entered this soil was held onto by it, with only a little passing through. And because the soil was glued together by microbes, it didn’t erode when the water flowed through.
This Sunday, churches following the Revised Common Lectionary will begin their readings with a selection from Jeremiah. It may seem strange to read the “weeping prophet” when we are still in the joyous season so Christmas, but this passage is one in which weeping is turned to dancing. Jeremiah, who was writing at the end of the Babylonian exile, was now ready to turn from the soul searching of lament and self-examination to the celebration of return. Soon, the Babylonian captivity would be over, and the people of Judah would be able to return to their homeland.
But how would they return? What kind of community would they be? Jeremiah uses an abundance of images, and among them is that of a watered garden:
their life shall become like a watered garden,
and they shall never languish again.
As I read that, I could not help but think about Archuleta, and what a well watered garden looks like. Though Jeremiah knew nothing of glomalin, at least by that name (it was only recently discovered), he certainly knew the characteristics of a good garden, of the kind of soil that could be watered without the precious liquid simply pouring out and eroding the soil. In his metaphor, I think we can also hear a call to be like the ground of such a garden, rich in diverse life, full of the community that receives death and turns it toward resurrection.
This is a truth we hear in the prologue of the Gospel of John (read this Sunday in most RCL churches, and last Sunday in Episcopal Churches). When the Word Became Flesh and set up a tent in our midst, it was not as an alien visitor, curious to make a survey of human suffering and then leave. Christ came to make a new community, one built on and toward the embrace of love. Community is what makes good soil that can receive water and turn it toward abundance. Community is what makes the continued presence of Christ possible through the life of the church. That life is formed, our deepest sources tell us, through water. It is the water of baptism that makes a Christian and thus a church, and yet, like a heavily tilled soil, one that has been exploited and used as a mere medium for chemically fertilized growth, the church will not be able to hold onto that water if it lacks a community of life. For a church to become a well watered garden, a place of incarnate life, a deep community is needed, one that will hold onto whatever water is poured on it and turn it toward the roots of good growth.
As Christmas comes to a close, and we turn toward the season after the Epiphany, the work of becoming a community that can hold onto the waters of baptism is key. I don’t have any prescriptions for what that looks like, I’m not even sure how I’d answer that challenge in my own community, but I’ll be sitting with the metaphor and the questions it raises. Now is a time when we need abundant life more than ever and it will never come unless we have the ground to support it. Winter, this time of a dormant surface, is the perfect moment to begin cultivating what lies beneath.
“Ragan”!
Just posted on my personal and Agrarian Ministry - Episcopal Church Facebook pages. Great start to New Year.