I'm the Farm Manager for Opal's Farm - a non-profit5 acre urban farm in Fort Worth that grows for neighborhoods denied access to fresh, nutritious produce through food apartheid. I firmly believe that not only is healthy food a human right, it is also what brings us together Everyone has a seat at the table!
Today is the Thanksgiving holiday here in the good old USA. To my friends here I wish a happy feast day filled with family, good friends, and food. We’re having an intimate family dinner here at the Joel home.
As our family has grown, so to has the amount of scheduling going into the holidays. Kids and grandkids balance time with in-laws, other grandparents, and our extended family. Thanksgiving becomes several days long. The final get-together for our family will be on Saturday. In-laws and outlaws, you know…
I will be joining my oldest son for breakfast. Over the past year we’ve grown closer than we’ve been in a long time. He calls every morning on his way to work. It’s one of the joys of my morning. I can’t think of a better way to start the day.
Have a blessed and Happy Thanksgiving. I’m off to the diner…
Things are moving along nicely at Opal’s Farm. Many thanks to Ms. Smith’s Dunbar High School seniors who came out to help harvest and work the beds! We love our volunteers; especially the young people who come to work and learn about urban farming.
Giving Tuesday is one week from today.
Please give to Opal’s Farm on this special day of giving. Your donation to Unity Unlimited, Inc. and Opal’s Farm grows (quite literally) to bring fresh, healthy produce to area food deserts and neglected neighborhoods.
Giving Tuesday may be global but it’s never been more important to give to your local community. Every dollar you contribute to Opal’s Farm helps end food insecurity (a nice way of saying hunger) right here in Fort Worth; your neighbors and your community.
You can give via our Facebook Page, Opal’s Farm, or through the Unity Unlimited, Inc. website, www.unityunlimited.org
“When I use the word spiritual, I am not contradistinguishing it from the material. I have little patience with any philosophy or religion that seeks to transcend the material realm. Indeed, the separation of the spiritual from the material is instrumental in our heinous treatment of the material world. So when I speak of meeting our spiritual needs, it is not to keep cranking out the cheap, generic, planet-killing stuff while we meditate, pray, and prattle on about angels, spirit, and God. It is to treat relationship, circulation, and material life itself as sacred. Because they are.” – Charles Eisenstein
Thoughts From the Porch: A gorgeous Fall day greeted me this
morning as I stepped out on the porch. Every day is gorgeous in my mind, but
this morning was especially bright and inviting. My “porch time” has included an
email series I’ve been receiving from the Center for Action and Contemplation.
I’ve always appreciated Father Richard Rohr and I hope you will appreciate
today’s meditation as well.
Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditation
From the Center for Action and Contemplation
Week Forty-eight
Economy:
Old and New
The Gospel Economy
Sunday, November 24, 2019
Jesus said to the host who had
invited him, “When you hold a lunch or dinner . . . invite the poor, the
crippled, the lame, the blind; and blessed indeed will you be because of their
inability to repay you.” —Luke
14:12-14
I’d like to begin this week’s meditations
by contrasting two economies or worldviews. The first economy is capitalism,
which is based on quid pro quo, reward and punishment thinking, and a
retributive notion of justice. This much service or this much product requires
this much payment or this much reward. It soon becomes the entire (and I do mean entire!) frame for
all of life, our fundamental relationships (even marriage and children), basic
self-image (“I deserve; you owe me; or I will be good and generous if it helps
me, too”), and a faulty foundation for our relationship with God.
We’ve got to admit, this system of
exchange seems reasonable to almost everybody today. And if we’re honest, it
makes sense to us, too. It just seems fair. The only trouble is, Jesus doesn’t
believe it at all, and he’s supposed to be our spiritual teacher. This might
just be at the heart of what we mean by real conversion to the Gospel
worldview, although few seem to have recognized this.
Let’s contrast this “meritocracy,”
punishment/reward economy—basic capitalism which we in the United States all
drink in with our mother’s milk—with what Jesus presents, which I’m going to
call a gift economy. [1] In a gift economy, there is
no equivalence between what we give and how much we get. Now I know we’re all
squirming. We don’t like it, because we feel we’ve worked hard to get to our
wonderful middle-class positions or wherever we are. We feel we have rights.
I admit that this position
satisfies the logical mind. At the same time, if we call ourselves Christians,
we have to deal with the actual Gospel. Now the only way we can do the great
turnaround and understand this is if we’ve lived through at least one
experience of being
given to without earning.
It’s called forgiveness, unconditional love, and mercy. If we’ve never
experienced unearned, undeserved love, we will stay in the capitalist worldview
where 2 + 2 = 4. I put in my 2, I get my 2 back. But we still remain very
unsure, if not angry, about any free health care (physical, mental, or
spiritual) or even free education, even though these benefits can be seen as
natural human rights that support and sustain peoples’ humanity. All too often,
we only want people like us to get free health care and education and bail outs.
Brothers and sisters, you and I
don’t “deserve” anything, anything. It’s all a gift. But until we begin to live
in the kingdom of God instead of the kingdoms of this world, we think, as most
Christians do, exactly like the world. We like the world of seemingly logical
equations. Basically, to understand the Gospel in its purity and in its
transformative power, we
have to stop counting, measuring, and weighing. We have to stop saying “I deserve” and deciding who does not deserve.
None of us “deserve”! Can we do that? It’s pretty hard . . . unless we’ve experienced
infinite mercy and realize that it’s
all a gift.
Gateway to Presence: If you want to go deeper with today’s
meditation, take note of what word or phrase stands out to you. Come back
to that word or phrase throughout the day, being present to its impact and
invitation.
[1] “A gift economy, gift culture, or gift exchange is a mode of
exchange where valuables are not traded or sold, but rather given without an
explicit agreement for immediate or future rewards. This contrasts with a
barter economy or a market economy, where goods and services are primarily
exchanged for value received. Social norms and customs govern gift exchange.” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gift_economy)
