Building Organic Community
My daughter recently joined Garden Club at her elementary. The name of our church is an obvious inspiration, but I think the opportunity to take on a new experience and responsibility was the bigger draw for her.
Like any new enterprise, she was wide-eyed with excitement. We were right there with her. We spent a day together picking seeds, buying containers and soil, and planting what we hoped would (eventually) become fresh flowers, tomatoes, cucumbers, strawberries, cantaloupes, basil, arugula, lettuce, and eggplant. We really went for it. Go big or go home.
At first, we found ourselves very impressed with our efforts. Things began to break through the soil. The cucumbers especially stood tall, hovering over the fresh leaves of the other plants. We had done it. Master gardeners on the first try.
About a week after things started to grow, we started to learn some lessons. In the middle of a frozen, rainy week, with each plant starving inside for sunlight, the reality of the importance of seasonality became apparent. Watering and overwatering didn’t help. Some plants needed to be repotted much earlier than we realized. Each seed carried its own sense of rhythm and timing and necessary conditions. We missed a lot of that in our eagerness.
We’re not too disappointed that most of what we planted has died. The delusion of a massive garden after our first attempt at this has faded into realism and resolve. Next time will be better.
The lessons are pretty obvious for us though, and as I considered the promise of a possible organic garden in our future I started to think hard about that word. “Organic.” Most of the time, we know that to mean “more expensive.” It’s the fruit and the vegetables that we might throw in our cart when we’re feeling good or have the space to care for things we didn’t before. For me right now it’s the stuff I got a lot more of before kids changed the budget.
In any case, the premium price is there for a reason. The way we speak about “organic” when using it as a metaphor seems to be off. I hear people speak about organic friendships, organic conversations, organic community, organic career moves. It all has the feeling of happy accidents, people stumbling upon ideal conditions and realizing that life around them is just blooming in unexpected ways.
Organic food doesn’t happen that way. In fact, the reality is quite the opposite. Unlike the massive machinery and processes that go into modern farming, where the name of the game is efficiency and expediency first and nutrition somewhat second, organic food requires more time-consuming and labor-intensive processes. It happens on smaller plots of land. It requires strenuous focus and sustained work.
Whether or not we look at organic fruit and vegetables as worthy of our budgets, we all know that the label “organic” means more nutritious and better for the environment. It might not be a premium we’re willing to pay, but unlike organic relationships or organic conversations, the word in this case implies care, toil, and commitment.
When I was making plans for a talk this month, I really wanted to focus on building organic community, but that difference in meaning was pretty striking. Most of us enjoy friendships we have made with people in surprising or unexpected moments. But the truth we know is that anybody can drop a seed in the soil and watch something pop up in a week or so. Caring for growth requires attentiveness and commitment. It requires work.
The Garden will be a place for community. God is even now building relationships within our team and with people who will one day walk into our gatherings in ways only He can. But to be a flourishing organic community, we will have to do the work. If we settle for mass-produced, expedient relationships, we will miss out on what is best for us. We’ll learn to live with things we were never meant to consume. And we’ll wonder why all this seems to be missing something.
This week, as we enjoy our fellowship together, I am grateful for the work that is happening. Every week we spend time praying together, hearing one another in struggle and joy, and binding our hearts together in expressing our faith in songs and sacraments. This is what it looks like to build an organic community. It is time-consuming and labor-intensive. It happens on smaller places and spaces. It requires strenuous focus and sustained work. And it is always, always worth it.
- Caleb Saenz
