Sometimes caring for creation begins with something as ordinary as a bit of dirt.

Turn that soil into a native plant garden, and it feeds pollinators and restores habitat. Add compost, and yesterday's food scraps become nutrients for tomorrow's plants. Grow vegetables, and a church yard can help feed neighbors. Bring parishioners, scientists, and Master Gardeners together, and that same patch of ground becomes something more: a place where faith takes root in action.

Now, there are a lot of reasons Jesus and the Gospel writers may have given us so many stories about wine and vineyards. And no, I don't believe it's because they were all lushes. Again, the alcohol is not the point. It's because this is what people knew. It was relatable. Cultural. Communal. And more than that — the longer I spend in wine country, learning from vineyard managers and winemakers myself, the more I understand that so much goes into growing good grapes and making good juice that the opportunities for teaching are simply abundant.

In this particular parable, the farmer who is scattering seeds on the ground has no idea how the seeds sprout and grow. It is not by the sowers efforts that a bountiful harvest comes to fruition. This is how it is with the kingdom of God, Jesus says. The kingdom is inaugurated according to God’s will and purpose, and we cannot know when or how this will happen. 

All of these things are connected. When we protect our planet, we protect people. When we care for the lost, the least, the hungry, the unhoused, the stranger, the orphan, and the widow, we are making our planet more whole. And the scripture says that once the bones are reassembled, new life — the Spirit — will come from the four winds, from every direction, from places you could not even fathom, breathing new life into worn-out bodies.

The Season for Nonviolence offers 64 lessons grounded in the teachings of Gandhi and Dr. King on nonviolence and the transformative power of peaceful action.

What these daily resources don’t always highlight is the historical and spiritual connection between the movements that shaped these teachings. In 1936, during the nonviolent struggle for Indian independence, Gandhi met with American minister and theologian Dr. Howard Thurman. Thurman would later be known as the spiritual architect of the Civil Rights Movement and a spiritual advisor to Dr. King and many other activists.

Thomas Berry writes, “It’s all a question of story. We are in trouble just now because we do not have a good story. We are in between stories. The old story, the account of how we fit into it, is no longer effective. Yet we have not learned the new story.” In the book Coming Back to Life, which serves as the foundation for group practices known as the “Work That Reconnects”, Joanna Macy and Molly Brown write about the “Three Stories of Our Time” - all of which are happening. Of course, these stories are just one way of making sense of what is occurring in the United States and other industrial growth societies, but I have found them a very helpful orientation as I find myself fluctuating between them on a daily - if not hourly basis.