Guest post by George Elerick

My mini-garden | Photo by Jonathan Blundell

I have been ‘Americanized’. I am a consumer at heart. I really am.

I am label-junkie who seems to always need a quick fix.

Well, maybe that’s too harsh — I am a recovering label-junkie.

I grew up in California, tabloid central, right in the heart of one of the most cosumer-driven states.

I grew up around it. Better said, it grew up around me.

Things have changed though, and they are still changing for me.

I no longer live in America, I am on the verge of becoming a Brit — don’t worry though, I am not defecting!

One of the things I have learned since I have lived in the land of unsettled weather patterns is that the world isn’t about me and I don’t have to consume.

That what has been silently ingrained within me by commercials, grocery stores, radio spots and my next-door neighbors unhealthy need for beer doesn’t have to be true.

I don’t have to sit around consuming all my resources, in fact, I can do something about it.

And it does make a difference.

My wife, I, and the in-laws live on the same plot of land. We live in community with one another. We also share a nearby garden.

Over the last couple weeks my wife and father-in-law were outside getting the vegetable patch ready for the summer weather.

They started with the traditional drills (a shallow depression into the bottom of which seed is sown – normally formed by pulling a hoe or a gardening trowel (backwards) through the surface of a prepared bed. Drills are used where the planting depth is relatively shallow and seeds are planted close together) and then we watered each bed, saturating it, readying it for life.

This is what vegetables are about, what they can teach us, is that when we are creating life — wherever it is, we are most like God.

A few days ago we inspected the drills and to our excited amazement there are signs of life. There are seeds sprouting and vegetables giving way.

Living in community and sharing a food garden has really given me perspective that life isn’t about the labels on my back but more about how I am helping the environment.

How am I giving back not just to my community but to the earth?

God instructs us to ‘rule’ over his creation.

That word is actually a bad rendering there, because the Aramaic word means ‘to care for’ or ‘tend’; God has entrusted humanity with the responsibility to tend and care for creation.

When we do this, what we’re essentially saying is that we believe the earth that God created has value and that we realize our need for it and its need for us.

Gardening and growing vegetables is a spiritual thing.

We also recycle.

It’s a legal thing here in England.

Everyone everywhere has the responsibility to recycle what they can. If they don’t, you will be fined.

England is very earth conscience.

California didn’t teach me this.

I had to go outside of my country to realize the unintentional damage I had been perpetuating and the responsibility I had to change and do something about that.

I learned that if we do nothing, if we don’t add to creation than we are taking away from it.

I may not always like the weather here, but England has taught me a lot more about the importance of our role as people who believe in an earth worth saving.

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