Stewardculture magazine
Herrick Kimball, the Deliberate Agrarian, shares insights on homesteading that is God glorifying
A place for standing stones on our farms Lessons from a first-time bee keeper Is there something theological about eating a meal? Essential oils may find a place in your garden
Stewardculture magazine is a quarterly electronic magazine containing news, articles and features about regenerative farming and gardening that is God glorifying. Stewardculture seeks to promote Bible-based stewardship agriculture. This simply means we advocate for creation-friendly thinking that emphasizes the fact that we do not own the Earth or even some small piece of it. Creation is simply a gift given to humans who are commanded to be its stewards as God’s representatives. Our editorial and promotional content is designed to inform, educate and motivate nearly anyone connected with growing things, with content targeted to redeemed Christians. Each issue will cover a wide range of editorial and promotional content including tips and how-to articles, opinion pieces and feature stories. Stewardculture’s editor happily accepts by-lined editorial submissions with the right of final editing for style, tone, length and voice. Editorial and graphical content may not be used in any form, printed or digital, without permission of the editor and attribution. Publisher and editor: Dan Grubbs Stewardculture Magazine 13605 Jesse James Farm Rd. Kearney, Missouri 64060 816-729-4422 stewardculture@gmail.com
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INSIDE
Stewardculture
Cover story
A rare interview of Herrick Kimball, also known as the Deliberate Agrarian, where he shares his thoughts on homesteading as a Christian family...................Page 3
Five lessons of a first-time beekeeper
We hear once again from our friend Jared at J&J Acres where he relates their experience about beginning beekeeping...............................................Page 10
Do not fear the world
Fear of the world can lead to allowing the world to be our driving force instead of God. Tony Konvalin helps us not fear, or revere, the world.......................Page 12
Making a meal of it
Tim Chester writes about his thoughts on food and its importance to our relationship with God and to each other.................................................................Page 16
Oily gardening
Sandi Grubbs points out some unique ideas for using essential oils in our gardening. When dealing with pests or fostering healthy plants, essential oils may be an option for you..............................................Page 24 It starts in the heart Jonathan Dodd continues his examination of the creation account, but this time, it’s personal. Dodd relates a first-person anecdote to make his point........Page 26
Sage words from Herrick Kimball, the Deliberate Agrarian - Part 1 by Dan Grubbs I recently was able to have a virtual dialog with Herrick Kimball, also known as the Deliberate Agrarian. After reading his book, Writings of a Deliberate Agrarian, and following his blog, I wanted to share some of what he has to say with our readers. Kimball homesteads with his family while blogging and sharing his practical genius through his mailorder business Planet Whizbang. Yet, it is his insights into what he observes about society, faith and the landscape that I am particularly interested in exploring and present here in the first of two parts. Stewardculture Magazine: For our readers who are not yet familiar with your blog or other writings, give us a brief description of your homestead. Kimball: We live on a 1.5-acre rural lot, near the top of a hillside, on a backroad, in the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York. Most of our property is wooded. Fields and woods and streams are all around us. The nearest small town is six miles away, and the nearest small city is a half-hour drive. There is a single neighbor within sight of our house, up the road a ways. As far as homesteads go, ours is unremarkable in outward appearance. We have lived here for the past 31 years. There is, however, an unseen specialness to this little homestead. It is the realization of a defined objective that my wife, Marlene, and I had when we were married back in
1980. Simply stated, we wanted to put down roots and pursue a more self-reliant, rural-based lifestyle. First came the most necessary element… land. We worked and saved (while living in a two-room apartment in town) to buy a piece of rural property that we could afford, without going into debt. As soon as we had land, we started gardening. We bought a pressure canner and learned to preserve our own food while living in the apartment. Then came the house, which we built ourselves, as time and money allowed (the original structure was only 16’ x 24’). Then came children (three boys, now grown). Marlene pursued the traditional role of full-time homemaker, mother and helpmeet to her husband. She also homeschooled our boys. I worked for 22 years as a carpenter, then I took a job working in a state
prison for 13 years. I never made a lot of money, but we made do with my one income. We drove used cars, shopped in thrift stores, and grew much of our food. The concept of a man and wife, along with their children, all working together, within the context of a homestead, to provide for the needs of the family is known as a “family economy.” Our family economy here (when our kids were growing up) centered around things like creating and eating meals together, growing and preserving food, raising chickens, cutting, splitting and stacking firewood, making maple syrup in the spring and apple cider in the fall. Good memories were made, important life lessons were learned, and family relationships were strengthened when our family intentionally pursued a family econ-
see Kimball on page 6 3
From My Tractor Seat Observations and opinions from the editor stewardculture@gmail.com
Do we have masseboth on our farms? No, it’s not some newly-discovered mold or a trendy new mineral-accumulating plant. Masseboth are a marker of legacy. A legacy is generally understood to be anything handed on from the past, as in something passed from one generation to the next. Included in this concept is the perpetuation of an idea, a practice or some memory. A legacy can even be our farms and homesteads. Some of you may have visited the Vietnam War Memorial or the USS Missouri in Hawai’i. These are examples of legacies to ensure that future generations not only remember critical milestones in our nation’s history, but also to honor that past. This certainly isn’t a modern idea. Societies have been establishing memorial legacies for thousands of years. There are examples of when one tribe would agree to a treaty with another and they would erect a large stone, often at the common border, to mark the occasion and remind both peoples of the agreement. These stones were usually stood up and planted in the ground so they wouldn’t fall over through the passage of many generations. In Hebrew, these stones that were stood up are called masseboth, or standing stones. Masseboth is the plural form of the Hebrew word that simply means “to set up.” The Hebrews in their exit from Egypt set up standing stones for these purposes. One of the most famous examples of this was when God gave the Hebrews His law and Moses inscribed them and gave them to the people, and the people unanimously agreed to the terms of this covenant, Moses built an altar and set up 12 masseboth (Exodus 24:1-8).
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Each standing stone was a reminder to each tribe of their bond with God and that it was not to be broken, but also a reminder that God had given them the instructions for their relationship with Him, a way for
sinners to have a relationship with a holy God who can abide no sin. It had to be a stunning sight to see these erected stones and the altar with Moses performing the ceremony with Aaron and his sons looking on and the 70 elders of the nation assembled before the people. Those generations present, I’m sure, couldn’t forget it. Anyone passing by that place later would have an instant reminder of God’s law and the people’s solemn agreement with Him to keep the law. When someone’s child or grandchild would ask, “What do these standing stones mean?” They could be reminded of how God worked in their lives and of God’s mercy for sinners. Would our farms be a good place for this? There is an interesting archeological fact that there are many more masseboth in the desert where the Hebrews wandered than in the Promised Land. It’s interesting that when the Hebrews felt most dependent on God they may very well have erected more standing stones to serve as reminders of God working in their lives. But, in the Promised Land the presence of masseboth are scarce. The correlation to the number of standing stones and Israel’s fluctuating dependence on God cannot be proven. Yet, it does illustrate the fact that when we are more dependent on God, He is more active in our lives and when God is active in our lives, He not only meets our needs, but performs miracles. I suggest that our farms and homesteads can be reflective of what God is doing in our lives. When we are aligned with God, there is often productivity. When we drift from God, there can be trial and hardship and it can be directly seen on our farms. Don’t misunderstand me. If you’re a believer, don’t think God abandoned because your calf didn’t make it or your son was disobedient. But, the farther we drift
from God, the more we are reliant on our own means – that can be daunting on a farm. I have intimate knowledge about moving water. It’s a powerful force. Large rivers are immensely powerful. And the power grows during flooding. So, when the Bible teaches us that God stopped the Jordan River during the flood stage, it’s something the world would see as extraordinary. It was a miracle when God parted the Red Sea. A vast body of water and God made it dry for the Hebrews to cross to escape the Egyptian army. We all know this miracle very well. Yet, somehow God’s miracle of parting the Jordan River isn’t seen as quite the same. We don’t picture Charlton Heston standing at the side of the Jordan watching the Arc of the Covenant go into the river and the waters get held up by God. Yet, it is this miracle that God commands Joshua to commemorate with masseboth (Josh. 3:15 – 4:9). What about our children and our grandchildren? Do we have things in our life that cause them to ask,
“What happened at such-and-such a time?” How will we pass on what God has done in our lives and on our farms? How will we ensure that God’s miracles are remembered and we remind everyone that our God is a living God and active in our lives? When God performs that next miracle in our lives – and He will – I suggest we write a letter to our family, or record a video, or start a blog to relate the story. It’s my observation that God is active in so many ways on a homestead or farm. Even seeds are a testimony. Do we examine our own history with God and ask the question what is the godly legacy we’re leaving? Do we find ways to remind ourselves of God’s presence in our own history and to lead others to Him? In a sense, we must become standing stones ourselves – living testimonies to the power and love of God – pointing beyond ourselves to the God who is at work in our own lives and on our farms, just as He was in the world of the Hebrews.
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Kimball from page 3 omy. Our sons have now moved out of our home but Marlene and I still do all the same things, though now on a smaller scale. We set out on this life journey by intentionally rejecting so many modern cultural expectations, opting instead to embrace more traditional patterns and values. More importantly, this homestead has been a place where numerous intangibles have been cultivated. Concepts like contentment, patience, humility, and hope are not mere platitudes to us. They are the spiritual fruits of our Christian faith as lived and nurtured within this agrarian paradigm. These are the things that contribute to making our homestead a beloved refuge in the midst of an increasingly chaotic world. My agrarian writings are, essentially, a celebration of this Christian-agrarian way of life. Stewardculture Magazine: We often hear about the struggles of agrarians or homesteaders, financially and otherwise. It seems clear that you have been able to develop several income streams for your family. Can you describe a few of them and how you made them work for your family? Kimball: It has only been in the last eight years or so, with the success of my Planet Whizbang mail-order business, that Marlene and I have realized a measure of financial abundance. Prior to that, there were a lot of lean years. But I’ve had an unrelenting entrepreneurial urge since I was a kid. I’ve dreamed up all kinds of ideas for making some extra money over the years. And, within the limits of our means, I actually pursued
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some of the ideas. A couple were marginally successful. Most were failures. But every idea I pursued was, in some way, a learning experience. So it was that after developing my own homemade chicken plucker design (back in 2001), and seeing how amazingly well it worked, I wasted no time in putting together a plan book. I titled it “Anyone Can Build A TubStyle Mechanical Chicken Plucker.” I had 100 copies printed at a local copy shop. Then I went to the internet to let the world know. That was the beginning of what has become an amazing home-business journey. More than 30,000 copies of that book have been sold so far. My small initial investment in printing those first 100 books launched and financed everything that followed. While continuing to work full time at my prison job, I produced more how-to books. And I started thinking of other things to sell. My family helped with the Planet Whizbang business. A new dimension was added to our family economy. By 2013, Planet Whizbang was consuming so much of my time (and generating sufficient enough income) that I left my prison job
in the city. Now I work here on my homestead full time. The modest success I’ve realized didn’t come easy, and it didn’t come overnight, but it eventually came, and it is a powerfully satisfying reality. If I can do this, others can do the same, and many are. The internet has made it possible for homesteaders in remote locations to create niche products, sell them all over the world, and make a living at it. It has never been easier to start a homestead-based business that generates a decent income. My advice to anyone who wants to generate a homestead-based income is to avoid business ideas that involve growing food or raising animals to sell. Although there are people who make money with
Herrick Kimball with some of his homestead-crafted Classic American clothespins.
such businesses, I believe they are the exception. I’m persuaded that raising food for yourself and your family is a fundamentally important pursuit, but when it comes to making money, some sort of a cottage industry will be a better source of income. Create a product or service (based on your personal skills and passions) that you can package and market to the world via the internet. Invest your spare time in learning how to do this. Start small. Think long term. Take it a step at a time. Let the business grow organically. If your product or idea does not resonate with buyers, develop another product. Once you have a product that sells, develop other products that
will interest the customers you already have. That’s exactly what I’ve done. Not every product is as profitable as the poultry processing resources I have, but every product does provide its own income stream. Innovation and diversification are important elements of my business approach.
You also need to develop an online presence. This is critically important. In my case, I started my Deliberate Agrarian blog back in 2005. I didn’t start blogging to sell products but, in time, I realized that my blog was a significant marketing tool, and I started using it more for that purpose. The fact is, people would much rather purchase a product from someone they know instead of an anonymous business entity. When you sell yourself to people first, they are then more inclined to buy the products you have to sell. If you want to make money with a book, I recommend it be one that will enrich people’s lives by teaching them how to do or make something for themselves. Howto books tend to sell well for a long span of time. They needn’t be overly attractive (unless you want to sell them in a traditional book
store), but they need to be neat, clear, complete and well organized. My plucker plan book is a perfect example. The book is a very humble production, but it delivers all the information. Next to the plucker plan book, my best sellers are “Anyone Can Build A Whizbang Apple Grinder & Cider Press” and “The Planet Whizbang Idea Book For Gardeners.” Novels and memoirs may generate significant income for some homestead writers but they are exceptions to the rule. My own memoir, Writings of a Deliberate Agrarian is (in my opinion) the best book I’ve ever written, and it has generated some truly endearing reader response, but it hasn’t generated much in the way of income. Fortunately, I didn’t write the book expecting to make money. It was a labor of love. If you have a memoir in you, and you yearn to share it with the world (or even just your family), then do it, but don’t expect to make money selling it. Now, with all of those things in mind, I would be remiss if I did not point out that I believe there is a spiritual element to the success of my Planet Whizbang business. That is a story in itself but, suffice it to say, Proverbs 3:5-6 provides key foundational wisdom for starting and succeeding at any homestead enterprise. Stewardculture Magazine: Debt and the family economy is an issue you take on in your writings. Help us understand your thoughts of where debt might, or might not, fit into the family economy. Kimball: As a Christian I take the biblical admonitions about debt very seriously. Proverbs makes it clear that
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Herrick Kimball with his grandson whom he refers to as Futureman.
borrowers are slaves to their lenders, and in the New Testament, the apostle Paul says that if Believers can be free of slavery, they should be (1 Corinthians 7:21). The idea of freedom from debt slavery has appealed to me from a young age. As a result, I’ve always put a higher value on security and financial freedom with little in the way of material possessions over perpetual debt slavery with lots of new stuff. Fortunately, I have a wife that has respected my convictions in this regard and embraced the same vision for financial independence. This way of thinking is, of course, totally contrary to our modern financial system. Such a system encourages debt bondage and employs various schemes to draw people into the debt trap. More often than not, these schemes appeal to the “lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, and the pride of life” (1 John 2:16). That isn’t to say that Marlene and I have never borrowed money. But I can tell you we’ve never borrowed much, never borrowed for long, never borrowed for frivolous things, and have never had any credit card debt. In Writings of a Deliberate Agrarian I tell the story of how we built our house without ever having a mortgage. We did it by borrowing $10,000 from Marlene’s father to get started. The house was small (16’ x 24’), had no basement, no central heat, and tar paper “siding” for many years. Everyone’s situation is different and sometimes debt slavery is necessary, especially when starting out in life, or when facing a crisis situation. It isn’t a sin to borrow money. But I’m persuaded that
being free, if at all possible, is a far better way to live. One final point on this subject: With the availability of so much easy credit in this day and age, there is a tendency for people of faith to NOT exercise their faith when it comes to what they want in life. Which is to say, they don’t wait for God to provide (or not to provide, as may often be the case). Contentment with little is profoundly difficult to achieve in the midst of our materialistic culture. However, there is a difference between being content with little and being satisfied with little. It is the difference between working diligently and intelligently, while exercising faith, as opposed to striving to satisfy the “lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, and pride of life” that so easily besets us. It is a difference worth understanding. Stewardculture Magazine: You and your family been able to resist the “want-it-now” mentality that is so much a part of our Western culture. How have you cultivated this, especially with your children? Kimball: If someone is as passionate about avoiding debt as I am, “want-itnow” naturally gives way to a lifestyle of delayed gratification. For example, I tell people that I’ve wanted a successful homesteadbased mail order business since I was 16 years old, and it only took me 39 years to get it. That’s a true story. I’ve also long wanted to own more land beyond our 1.5 acres. I didn’t need more land, but I had a vision for more land. Debt free, of course. Then, just three years ago, the 16 acre parcel of woods and field next
to us came up for sale. By then, our Planet Whizbang business had generated enough savings to buy the land. We didn’t have the money before that. The timing of land and money availability was a Providential orchestration, and it was a dream come true. Our three boys have grown up knowing my strong convictions about debt. They’ve seen how hard Marlene and I have worked, and how we made do with little for a lot of years. They know we rarely took vacations, and didn’t indulge them with expensive playthings (while the neighbor boys had new four-wheelers that their parents bought them). But they never lacked for any of the material necessities of life. They had a home in every good sense of the word. And they had the rural countryside for all kinds of boyhood exploits. They also had opportunities to work at home and for local farmers to earn their own money (starting when they were around 13 years old). If they really wanted something, they worked and saved to buy it, just like mom and dad did. In the final analysis, none of my sons are ideological clones of their father. But the examples they’ve grown up with have positively impacted them and will serve as a reliable foundation for all their life decisions, financial and otherwise. I see clear evidence of this, and it pleases me greatly. But I also see instances where they’re learning some life lessons the hard way. You can find Herrick’s blog here. -----Be sure to look for the final installment of our talk with Herrick Kimball in the summer issue of Stewardculture Magazine.
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Five lessons from a first-time beekeepe by Jared Stanley
Jared Stanley, along with his young family, enjoy life on their small farm J&J Acres in Toomsuba, Mississippi. You can view his active YouTube channel here where he posts many how-to videos for homestaders.
a er So you haven’t even started keeping bees yet and you’ve already been stung. Stung with that lust for everything beekeeping promises to provide. Namely, an endless supply of golden sticky sweet stuff. Sure, we know the bees will help with pollination and, if we’re really industrious, we could harvest the wax and process it to make our own candles, lip balms, and a wide array of other products. But let’s be honest. Honey. Before you haul off and invest in your first hive, here are some things we’ve learned during our first 2 years of beekeeping that you might want to keep in mind: • Real Estate: Contrary to popular belief, we found it easy to move our hive to another part of the yard when we decided we’d rather it be in another place. However, would we want to do it again, no. Be certain you know where you want your bees so you aren’t trying to move a potentially +100lb colony after the sun has gone down. • Woodenware: There are certainly several ways to keep bees from the popular 10-frame or 8-frame langstroth hives to top bars and many more. For us, the problem was that we decided that, while we liked langstroth hive, we’d have rather had the 8-frame “medium” hive bodies. Woodenware can be a very expensive investment. The more hives you can work in-person before buying your own, the better. Then you’ll know exactly what you are getting into and can make the correct investment in your hives the first time. • Pollinating: I know. Honey. But still, if you are into bees, then you are probably into growing food as well. As such, the prospect of your honeybees pollinating your fruit and vegetables might sound enticing. However, remember that our native bees and many other pollinators are the real powerhouses behind pollination. Give them some habitat as well. • Backup Plan: It is possible that something unexpected is going to happen - like a grassfire we had. Our bees were fine, but a pair of gloves, queen clip, queen marking cage, and marker all burned up. Have spares of your equipment, unless you are prepared to wait for shipping time. • Grab a Chair: I’m a chicken. I wear all my protective equipment when I work the hive. However, I enjoy putting a lawn chair a few feet from the hive, off to one side, and watching the amazing aerial acrobatics taking place. One day you’ll rob these bees of a vast majority of their hard work - take a moment to enjoy and respect their efforts. As with most all things, perhaps the best lesson is to always be in touch with others who practice whatever you are practicing. You will always want to ask a question or see how other people’s colonies are performing. Whether that is a local beekeeping group or a well monitored online forum, seek out friends to go through the journey with you.
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Let us not fea Fear, it is a great motivator and instigator. It has been used for centuries to get people to do what they may otherwise not desire to do. Fear can also lead us to do what we need to do if seen as a sign to do something. In the day and age we live in fear seems to motivate the vast majority of what we do, not do and let be done. From giving up our liberty to taking knee jerk reactions in “fear” some other action may be taken. God’s word speaks of fear but we are told we are to only fear one thing, God. Some may say that is an Old Testament view of God, however, Matthew 10:28, Hebrews 10:31 and others would say differently. The fear we are to show God is not a cowering fear, even though if we understood God we would, but a reverential fear for the One that is over all, yes even creation, and knows what is best for His creation. So how does fear and living a Christian Agrarian life relate to each other? Instead of fearing God in our seeking to see how we are to be faithful stewards of God’s creation we fear the world that puts forth a plethora of ideologies with the focus on “saving” the creation, the creation they worship. Professing believers so often hear a viewpoint from the “other side” and instead of weighing its merit they instead tend to jump to the other extreme, often just as detrimental, assuming the other side cannot be correct because they worship the creation rather than the Creator. Non-believers may come to the wrong conclusions but their observations may be correct, but we are still to be diligent to search out God and His word instead of making assumptions. We need to remember that the unbeliever, as pagan as they may be, is also made in the image of God, Imago Dei, and in being so often does indeed see when there is a problem. However, since they do not have a worldview equipped to deal with what they perceive from God’s perspective they will lean on the only paradigm they have which is something other than Christian. As believers, instead of rearing back and taking a course that is 180 degrees, we are to stop and ask what is it they see and then see how that aligns with God’s word. Yes, God’s word not man’s wisdom. The biblical action may not even necessarily be the most cost effective either since God’s economy is not one of monetary values but simply one of what best stewards God’s creation. Now when we are done we may indeed be 180 degrees from where the unbelieving
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by Tony K
ar the world
Konvalin
world wants to go. But lets get there not simply by snap judgments and taking what some want to label a conservative approach but by seeking God and His word for the answer. Many claim the sufficiency of scripture but live lives that say something else. Scripture has the answers. They may be difficult to extract and uncomfortable to institute, but we were not created for comfort but for Him. Let us not see our task as one of unbridled dominion, but dominion under God’s purview and guidance that when enabled by the Spirit and bolstered by the Word is one that seeks to be the best steward we can be. One that at the end will stand before God to hear: “Well done my good and faithful servant” – Matt. 25:21. We are made in the image of God and that entails not only worth but also built into us is a measure of what God would have us know. Even though that knowledge is blind to us till we are called to Him, the knowledge makes itself known in differing ways. I leave you with a quote that was recently shared with me that says much about God’s work in us, His creation: “Moreover, because man is created in the image of God, we may say that he has the revelation of God’s presence built into his constitution. His knowledge of God is innate, in the sense that his own constitution reflects to himself the presence of God. “And this innate knowledge as revelation of God is correlative to the revelation of God in man’s environment. Thus man’s knowledge of God never operates independently of the knowledge he acquires from observation of his environment. “Still further, man’s knowledge of God through observation of his own constitution and his knowledge of God through his study of his environment do not function independently of God’s direct person-to-person covenantal communication. “Thus the whole of man’s relation to God, and indirectly the whole of man’s relation to his created environment, is a person-to-person, a covenantal affair. Man is he who as God’s image bearer answers to God. He answers to God. He answers to God always and everywhere.” (Cornelius Van Til in The Case for Calvinism pg. 96-7) You can find Tony Konvalin on Facebook here.
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Almost Manna: Can’t Miss Recipes
Oatmeal Date Bread Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups milk
4 teaspoons baking powder
1 cup chopped pitted dates
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1 cup rolled oats (not instant) 2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons salt 1 egg
Bring milk almost to simmer. Place oats and dates in large mixing bowl and add milk . Set aside to cool to room temperature . Preheat oven to 325 degrees F. In another bowl , whisk together flour, baking powder, salt and sugar. When oat mixture is cool , beat in egg. Stir in dry ingredients, mixing well . Pour batter into a buttered 9 x 5-inch loaf pan . Bake for 45 to 50 minutes, until top is crusty and golden . Cool before slicing.
Country Meatloaf Ingredients:
1 lb 80/20 ground beef
1/2 teaspoon dry ground mustard
1 egg
dash of hotsauce
3/4 cup milk
3 slices of bread , torn into small pieces 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce 1/2 tablespoon onion powder
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder 1/2 cup tomato ketchup
Heat oven to 350 degrees F. Combine all ingredients in a large bowl , except the tomato ketchup. Mix well with hands. Fill loaf pan with mixture . Cook for 1 to 1 1/4 hours or until meat thermometer reads 160 degrees. Spread on tomato ketchup and let loaf stand for at least five minutes before slicing. You can place several slices of bread in the bottom of the loaf pan before filling in order to absorb the extra rendered fat.
Editor’s Picks Here is a list of some of the things we’re reading and watching that you may find of interest, too.
Prof. Ellen Davis’ book
Prof. Norman Wirzba’s book
Scripture, Culture and Agriculture
Food and Faith: A Theology of Eating
“Cooked” a Netflix documentary
“The Lessons of the Loess Plateau”
by Michael Pollan
a documenty by Dr. John D. Liu
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MAKING A MEAL OF IT by Tim Chester 16
How did the Son of Man come? Luke 19:10 and Mark 10:45 tell us why He came – to seek and save the lost; to give His life as a ransom for many. But how did He come? What was His modus operandi? Preaching? Healing? Teaching? He certainly did those things. But Jesus Himself says ‘the Son of Man came eating and drinking’ (Luke 7:34). Eating and drinking – a lot. New Testament scholar Robert Karris says: ‘In Luke’s Gospel Jesus is either going to a meal, at a meal, or coming from a meal.’ So much so that His enemies accuse him of being ‘a glutton and a drunkard’ – someone who eats too much and drinks too much. ‘The Son of Man’ is a reference to the representative of God’s people who comes in glory before the Ancient of Days to receive authority over all nations (Daniel 7). What is the Son of Man doing when He comes to earth? The Jews expected Him to come with a bang, defeating God’s enemies and vindicating His people. Instead He shares a meal. Meals are a powerful of expression of welcome and friendship in every culture. This is why Jesus’ meals are so significant – they embody God’s grace and enact God’s mission. Jesus ate with tax collectors and sinners. Tax collectors were traitors not only to the nation, but also traitors towards God for they were collaborators with the Gentile occupiers who had defiled God’s holy land. So the table companions of Jesus led the Pharisees to conclude that He couldn’t be from God (Luke 5:30; 7:39; 15:1–2). A reasonable conclusion – unless God’s grace is so amazing that it allows Him to eat with His enemies and unless God’s
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grace explodes all our expectations (Luke 5:27-39). of refuge in God. We use food – or avoid food – to Meals are central to the mission of Jesus because they make ourselves desirable so others worship us. Our embody and enact the grace of God. fractured relationships and greed mean many in our world go without food. We over eat. We under eat. Meals still have this power today. What was true in the culture of first century Palestine is still true in the Food is integral to our humanity, so it’s no surprise to find that our brokenness shows up in our relationship present day universities and colleges of Britain. to food. In Luke 14 Jesus is eating at the home of a Pharisee. He suggests we shouldn’t invite our friends to our parties. Instead we should invite ‘the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind’ (Luke 14:13). Why? Because God Himself invites ‘the poor, the crippled, the blind and the lame’ (Luke 14:21) to His great banquet. Our experience of God’s grace should shape our mission. Often we do things for the needy, which is good. However, it puts us in a position of superiority – we are able; they are unable. We may proclaim grace, but it’s readily interpreted as ‘you should be like me’. But what happens when we eat together? We share food as friends. We sit at the same level around the table. Then we can talk about our shared need of God’s grace. We love to run projects, but nobody wants to be someone’s ‘project’. They want friendship. It’s not just that the table is a great context for community and mission. Food is central to who we are, how we relate to God and to the story of salvation. Food reminds us of our dependence on other people. We are tied into a network of farmers, traders, shopkeepers, cooks, families, traditions of gastronomy. Above all we are dependent on God. We are finite beings who need sustenance to sustain us. We need to ‘refuel’. But food is so much more than fuel. Think of all your favorite foods. Steak and chips. Thai green curry. Crumble and custard. It didn’t have to be this way – biscuits would have sufficed to sustain our lives. But God is ridiculously lavish in His creativity and generosity. God’s first act after creating humanity was to present us with a menu: the fruit of all the trees in the garden. Every meal is an opportunity to receive God’s good gifts with thankfulness – perhaps we need to refresh the practice of saying ‘grace’ before meals as an expression of our dependence and God’s generosity – and food is an opportunity for human creativity and generosity in the image of the Creator. But food is also at the heart of our rejection of God. The very first act of rebellion was an act of eating. Ever since that time, our relationship with food often goes wrong because our relationship with God has gone wrong. We find comfort in food instead
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Against this backdrop of food-gone-wrong, God promises a feast. Again and again in the Bible salvation is pictured as a feast with God. When God leads the Israelites out of Egypt, the leaders of the people are invited up to Mount Sinai to eat and drink with God (Exodus 24:9–11). The rescue from slavery in Egypt – the defining act of Israelite identity – is itself commemorated in a meal, the meal of Passover. At the high point of Israelite history, in the reign of Solomon, we are told ‘the people of Judah and Israel were as numerous as the sand on the seashore; they ate, they drank and they were happy’ (1 Kings 4:20). Even when things begin to unravel, God promises another meal on a mountain, ‘a feast of rich food for
all people’ (Isaiah 25:6–8). On this occasion death itself will be on the menu and God will swallow it up. This is an eternal feast that no one need ever leave. Jesus provides a foretaste of this feast when He feeds the five thousand. Here is a feast which need never end. Indeed there’s more food at the end than there was at the beginning. It’s a pointer to the fulfillment
deserve. He becomes the ultimate outsider – pushed out of the world onto the cross; forsaken by His Father. As a result we become insiders, friends, included. The invitation goes out to all. It’s not an accident that at the heart of what it means to be the church is a meal. Jesus told us to remember Him not in a pattern of words, but in a meal (scholars believe communion was celebrated in the early church as part of a meal). The film Little Miss Sunshine is the story of a girl, Olive, who by default gets through to the regional final of the Little Miss Sunshine beauty contest. So her dysfunctional family head off in their dysfunctional van. She’s a fat girl with big glasses about to enter a beauty contest. At one point Olive says: ‘I don’t want to be a loser because Daddy hates losers.’ Her father is a failed motivational speaker and his conversation consists of clichéd aphorisms that berate people for being losers. The irony, of course, is that he’s a loser and his family are losers. At one point he says, ‘There are two kinds of people in this world: winners and losers.’ On the word ‘losers’ the camera pans round his family: his foul-mouthed father, his suicidal, homosexual brother-in-law, his son who refuses to speak, his down-trodden wife, desperately trying to hold them all together, and himself, the failed businessman who can’t face his failure. And they’re thrown together in a VW van, which is itself dysfunctional – the door falls off, the horn is constantly on and they must push start it every time.
of God’s promise: that one day we will feast forever in His presence. So the meals of Jesus represent something bigger. They represent God’s coming world. But at same time they give that new reality substance. They’re the real thing in miniature. Food is stuff, it’s not ideas. It’s something you put in your mouth, something you taste, something you eat. And meals are more than food – they’re social occasions that represent friendship, community, welcome. Our invitation to the feast of God comes at a price: the precious blood of Jesus His Son. We are outsiders, enemies, excluded. But Jesus takes the judgment we
I sometimes look round my congregation and see a bunch of dysfunctional people thrown together, somehow managing to be family. And I smile at the ridiculous grace of God. There’s a moment in the film when they suddenly realize Olive isn’t in the van. They’ve left her behind at a gas station. We see the van moving across the screen in one direction and they whisk her up into it, without stopping (because if they stop they won’t be able to restart it). Then we see the van moving back across in the other direction and we hear the father’s voice: ‘No-one gets left behind, no-one gets left behind.’ That’s the church: the place where no-one gets left behind. We live in a graceless culture. A culture of competition in which we’re all trying to get ahead. A culture of insecurity in which we’re all trying to prove ourselves. A culture of spite in which we hold grudges, envy success, protect ourselves. In this culture our shared meals offer a moment of grace. A sign of some-
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thing different. A pointer to God’s coming world. ‘Life in the kingdom,’ says Peter Leithart, ‘demands that we adopt a new set of table manners, and as we observe this etiquette, we become increasingly civilized according to the codes of the city of God.’ Around the table we offer friendship and celebrate life. Our meals offer a divine moment – an opportunity for people to be seduced by grace into a better life, a truer life, a more human existence. Jesus ate meals with people. If we routinely share meals and we have a passion for Jesus then we’ll almost certainly end up doing mission. It’s not that meals alone save people, people are saved through the gospel message. But meals create natural opportunities to share that message in a context that resonates powerfully with what we’re saying. One of the great things about mission through meals is that it enfranchises the people of God. We don’t have to understand missiological jargon or hold a crowd with our oratory. We don’t even need to be able to cook. We just need to be people who eat and people who love Jesus. I’m not suggesting adding something new to your all too busy schedule. You already eat three meals a day – that’s twenty-one ready-made opportunities
each week to do mission and community. You could meet up with another Christian for breakfast on the way to work – read the Bible together, offer accountability, pray for one another. You could meet up with colleagues at lunchtime. You could invite your neighbors over for a meal – better still invite them over with another family from church. That way you get to do mission and Christian community at the same time – all the while letting your unbelieving neighbors see the way the gospel impacts our relationships as Christians (John 13:34–35; 17:20–21). Francis Schaeffer says: Don’t start with a big programme. Don’t suddenly think you can add to your church budget and begin. Start personally and start in your home. I dare you. I dare you in the name of Jesus Christ. Do what I am going to suggest. Begin by opening your home for community … You don’t need a big programme. You don’t have to convince your session or board. All you have to do is open your home and begin. Tim Chester’s book, A Meal with Jesus is available here from amazon.com and ThinkIVP. This article is reprinted here by Creative Commons and originally appeared at Tim Chester’s blog.
Now you can order your own personal copy of Polyfaces: A World of Many Choices, the award-winning documentary by Regrarians featuring the work of Joel Salatin and his family at Polyface Farms. The vision and execution of this documentary is only surpassed by their subject matter which is displayed beautifully and passionately. Read our full review here.
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Or who enclosed the sea w ing forth, it went out fro made a cloud its garmen its swaddling band, and it and set a bolt and door you shall come, but no fa your proud waves stop’?
with doors when, burstom the womb; when I nt and thick darkness d I placed boundaries on rs, and I said, ‘Thus far arther; and here shall
Oily gardening by Sandi Grubbs
If you are like me, when little samplings of Spring weather happen I start thinking about tomato plants, cucumber vines and feeling the dirt on my hands and feet. This Spring will be a little different for us. We are rapidly learning to use essential oils in most every area of our lives. We have learned that essential oils can be used to support our health, to clean our house and to improve our moods. But, this year we are using essential oils to help us have a toxin-free gardening experience. Many people have a hobby. And in America today gardening has gained a lot of attention. People are focusing on good nutrition, clean food, frugal living and physical activity. For those reasons and more, gardening has become one of the top hobbies for men and women alike. And we are even getting the kids involved. Whether you live in the city or the country, you can have a garden. Gardening is an amazing way to enjoy the sunshine. And the physical exercise you achieve while gardening can reduce stress, improve sleep, sharpen your memory, improve your self-confidence, inspire creativity, boost your mood, increase your energy levels and improve your overall health. But, the best thing is that gardening provides your family with delicious and healthful foods. It is a win-win activity. This year I am researching the use of essential oils in my gardening. It is amazing to see the many benefits of using just a few drops of good essential oils. Here are a few recipes and ideas that I have discovered. 1. Basil: A great companion for tomatoes. Use a little in your watering can. It gives the plants a dose of the oil that can be absorbed by the roots or as a foliar spray. It helps give tomato plants vigor for good growth and plant resistance. 2. Metaleuca: Add 10 drops to 33 ounces of distilled water and use it in a spray bottle to clean every inch of the green house.
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g
Contrary to what you may have heard in the past, essential oils are not just for aroma therapy.
3. White Fir: Mix a small amount in water and spray to keep slugs away. 4. Peppermint: This oil solution can repel ants, aphids, beetles, fleas and spiders. I put a couple of drops undiluted on my kitchen window ledge. The ants hate it and it smells so good. Very safe to use as a spray diluted in water around the strawberry patch. 5. Lavender: Soothes skin irritation due to certain plants or bugs. 6. Clove: Dilute a little in water and use in a spray bottle to ward off flying insects. 7. Rosemary, peppermint, thyme and clove: Mix 10 drops of each diluted in water volume? in a spray bottle for a broad spectrum repellant. 8. Rosemary: Dilute a small amount for a mosquito and cat repellant. If you are a beginner, there are many ways to find the facts that will help you learn how to garden in your area. Your Cooperative Extension Office can offer expert advice on your climate and soil types and the right time to plant. Or take a walk and see which grandma and grandpa has the best neighborhood garden. Take your list of questions to them and just listen. It’s not likely they’ll have knowledge on essential oils, but they have plenty of other knowledge. There are plenty of resources online to learn more about or to purchase essential oils. One thing to note, I recommend you use only glass spray bottles; essential oils and plastics do not go well together. Also remember, with essential oils a little goes a long way. As the itch to get outside and garden continue to grow, consider making essential oils a part of your gardening strategy. We love this safe, effective and inexpensive way to enjoy our time in the garden. To learn more, contact Sandi Grubbs at her Facebook page.
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It starts in the heart
by Jonathan Dodd 26
As I sit down to write, I find myself once again in the community of Santa Martha, Nicaragua, a place I have been working in and traveling to for six years. This trip marks the beginning of my seventh year in relationship with this off-grid and rural coffee farming community, a beautiful story of people and place.
off of all that we have been given. It is a story about shifting the focus away from all that we do have, and focusing on what we don’t have. It is also forgetting about whose we are! It is about forgetting our purpose and function.
Santa Martha is a place of beauty and poverty, a place where we have built water catchment systems, grey water systems, composting toilets, clean stoves and ovens, kitchen gardens, and off-grid fish systems. We have seen community come together - groups, churches and people - to install a water system that is now delivering clean drinking water to more than 900 people and 70 homes.
As the account goes the man and woman give in to the temptation and indulge in the forbidden fruit. The result is broken relationship. When the Lord God comes in search of the couple they are found hiding amongst the trees covering their nakedness and shame with leaves. The woman blames the serpent for his trickery and the man blames the woman. The result is the unraveling of relationship, and the effects go beyond the couple to their future children and the land which is now cursed because of them. It is not that God cursed the ground because of their sin; the curse is the result of their choices, a byproduct of selfish people doing selfish things for the immediate fulfillment of their desires for delight, control and wisdom.
The first garden story
A cursed Earth
However, right now, I want to continue another story of people and place, one that began in a garden, a story of broken relationship and redemption. I will continue our story of Genesis chapter three. I my last article, I described the situation of the garden and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, calling it the Technological Tree. I believe that what I wrote in the last article is true; however, it is incomplete.
The result of broken relationship is pain, pain in childbirth and a new pain coming from the ground in the earthling’s attempts to work and live from it. Relationship is also broken between the couple. The woman desires to rule over the man in the same way that sin desires to rule over Cain in Genesis chapter four.
The story of the forbidden tree and its tempting fruit is really about the first earthlings (us too) grasping at what is not ours to take. It is about taking our hearts and eyes
The serpent is cursed to be a snake and an ongoing battle between the woman and serpent begins, a battle that points the way to something and someone greater who has come and is coming again. God’s curse is now upon the creation and the creatures He has
made. It is not a curse out of spite, but a curse of inevitable consequences - broken relationship results in the breaking of everything. To not listen and to not obey the ethic written upon the land - to sin - is to break connection and relationship, which in turn affects and breaks everything else.
A redeemed Earth But it is not just a story of curse and failure, but one of redemption. The earthlings must now leave the garden in toil and pain, yet God clothes them, not from the skin of plants, but from the skin of an animal, the first sacrifice on their behalf. I am pretty sure that they also ate the meat, since every Old Testament sacrifice of an animal also resulted in eating meat (a discussion for another day). After the earthlings leave the garden to serve and work the ground, an angel is placed at the entrance in the east (just like all ancient temples whose entrances were in the east) to guard it. It is the great irony of this story. The earthlings were placed in the garden to “guard” and “serve” it. Now they are kicked out to now only “serve” the ground, and an angel is given the responsibility to “guard” instead. The angel is now the guardian of the garden in order to keep the earthlings from getting back into the garden and eating from the Tree of Life to live forever. I want to stop here and talk about the why, the problem. Why did things come unraveled, why did they take what was not theirs only to end up with a life of toil, angst and death? Maybe the better question is why do we do the same thing. Why do we make the choices for wealth, superiority and
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control, an immediate satisfaction at the detriment of our families and children? Why do we make the same choice to eat from the forbidden tree every single day? Why do we focus on the one thing we do not have and bring our attention and desire to the things that are not ours to take?
the world. It is life lived together, a place to grow, and equipping to do good. It is about building connections and relationships and watching the walls that divide be turned into places that bring us together. It is not just about a return to the garden, but moving toward the garden city.
which is working in the Omaha inner city to train urban farmers and establish community gardens and food forest parks on 30 inner city lots with Habitat for Humanity. Keipos is also working internationally, specifically in Nicaragua, the place where I am writing from today.
Issue of the heart
Starting at our heart - our home and farm - moving toward the heart of Omaha, the inner city, the heartland of the United States, and then rippling out into the world. It is about planting seeds and transforming hearts, healing the land and healing the people. But it must start at the heart, a model and demonstration with relationships rippling out, to share our seed. It is a place for the bees to get the sustenance they need to go and do the work in the world.
I would love to talk at length about all the amazing things we are doing and building on our farm, in our city and in the world, but for the context of this article, I want to focus on the problem. Not on the problem of our polluted and destroyed land, air, water, and social structures, but on my problem.
In order to answer this, I want to tell you my story and the story of the place from where I am writing this. Ultimately, the problems that we face today in our world, the problems within ourselves, start in one place. It starts in the heart. It starts in the heart that beats in our chests. The heart that became broken; our own gardens of Eden. For me, it starts with my heart and the place in which I live. Two years ago I began to speak of my farm as the heart. I wanted to create a farm, a model, that would begin the healing of the land in the heart of the United States, Omaha, Nebraska. I began to learn the history of my place and craft a story that would ripple out love, like glomalin, the glue that builds aggregates and holds the soil together. But I have discovered that for me, it has truly been a story about my own heart. It is a story of people and place, from our heart, to the city, and in
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Dangers of self interest
I realized that the problem is not ‘out there’ somewhere, the problem is inside of me. Last year, in my attempts to build a better world, focusing on the outcomes I (we) could achieve, I forgot about the people I was serving. I worked way too hard and expected everyone Our farm, around me to proNew Earth duce as much as me. Farm & I drove people into Goods, is the ground (figuralocated in tively). I eventually Papillion, Neherniated a disk in braska, just my back, which on the outskirts of Omaha. We live ruined my growing 5 miles from where the Missouri season. Everything I River meets the Platte River, next planted earlier in the to Offutt Air Force Base, home of season began to rot strategic and central command. in place because of Our farm is at the zone 0, the cenmy inability to harter, the heart of the United States. vest it. Then, I got diOur farm, located in “butterfly” agnosed with a cyst Nebraska, is a place for people to the size of a baseball learn and grow. It is the ground on my heart, requirzero training center for our noning a very painful and debilitating profit organization, Keipos (which surgery for removal, from which means ‘garden’ in Koine Greek), I am still recovering almost five
months later.
Beginning anew
I had hoped that our farm would be a place where bees could come to receive pollen. In fact, our farm really is a flower. My six touching neighbors’ properties are the petals surrounding our farm, which is at the center. It is like a place for bees to not only get pollen, but a place for bees to grow their colony and swarm out, rippling love to a fractaled world.
Today, now back in Nicaragua, I visited many of the people and homes in Santa Martha. I see the same brokenness I saw more than six years ago when I first visited. I see some of the models we have created here, now lying in ruins. However, I also see new models better than mine, made from the imitation of our work! It feels like every time I come. I am beginning anew again. In my attempts to create change, I am reminded that the only change that needs to happen is inside of me.
Instead of achieving this, we have experienced great loss, hardship and pain. New Earth Farm & Goods, and the work of Keipos is not the garden of Eden, though we have tried to make it that. It is a feeble attempt and broken model that can only point to the solo model and example that truly heals hearts.
I see the brokenness and failures of those that I am trying to help. However, this time I am not angry over their failed attempts and ignorance, nor am I reminiscing on some of their amazing accomplish-
ments. Instead, I am content. I am trying to listen and be still. I am no longer trying to change people and place. I am no longer trying to “do” the change but only to “be” the change. A change that must begin in my heart, receiving and being happy with all that I have been given, and then in return, giving fully. Change and healing can happen, but only when we are ready for it. It starts in the heart, a transformed heart, like a butterfly coming to life out of metamorphosis, like the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the only real healing model. Sin and death are real, but so is the life and love of a Creator, Sustainer, Redeemer and King who has given us everything we will ever need.
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