Wildness

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Dear friends,

It is a mellow Sunday afternoon in September, and I am on our back porch here in Costa Rica, enjoying the beauty of our yard with its pots of herbs, medicinal plants and ornamentals, as well as beautiful flowering bushes, glowing with three or four shades of purple. On the grass lie fruits from “our” Cas tree that also jump out, bright yellow against green. Cas (Psidium friedrichsthalianum) is a fruit tree typical to Costa Rica that makes a delicious sweet and sour drink, even better when I add some leaves from our mint plants. The tree was not the main reason we picked this home to rent, but it helped clinch the deal. Looking online I just discovered that another name for Cas is “wild guava.” Interesting, because when I started pondering this letter, the idea of “wild” and “wildness” jumped out as ideas I wanted to share. By the end of this letter, I hope that both you and I will know why!

As you all may know, Jenny and I have been serving in Costa Rica for over four and a half years with the Latin American Biblical University, UBL for its initials in Spanish. Our work is with the Green UBL team, a group of students, faculty and administrative personnel working to make practical sense of the university’s focus on Climate and Environmental Justice. Jenny and I created a YouTube presentation of the kind of work the Green UBL team does. Give it a look! ( ">youtube.com/watch?v=e40Rxy5uHo8 )

[ngg src="galleries" ids="1252" display="pro_horizontal_filmstrip" show_captions="1"]This year one of the projects of the Green UBL team is to create a “Prayer Path,” a series of spaces within the campus where we will invite visitors to stop, to look, and to reflect. Several of those spaces are in the Sunflowers Community Garden, where neighbors from near the UBL come to work together to produce healthy, affordable herbs and vegetables. In addition to stopping amidst the gorgeous beds constructed in a circular or mandala pattern, visitors will be invited to reflect on a small wild area of trees, shrubs and herbaceous plants where spiders and other creatures have free reign—God’s creation continually creating.

We have built a short path through the middle of the wild area and every time I walk it, I am renewed in so many ways. As I go through, brushing spiderwebs off of the path, I remember my older brother, Keith, bragging when were young, of always letting the tallest person go first on hikes through the forest, to make sure the webs were gone for the rest of the group. Memories of the freedom of being in those forests center me; they reconnect me with the home for which I often yearn.

Another space where visitors will stop on the prayer path is by the area where we have a production of Asian redworms, Eisenia fetida. Brainstorming with my friend and colleague, Mía Umaña, on how to describe this space, I shared with her that for me, the redworms also embody the wildness of God. The wood bench, built by community member Julio Arce, supports six re-purposed car tires in which we deposit weeds from the garden, hoping that the worms will find our offerings acceptable. Sometimes they do, and sometimes they don’t. I joke with visitors that in all likelihood the tire I choose to open up to show the worms at work will almost surely be the tire where they did not like our weeds much. Sometimes I have to open up three tires before I find one where the worms decided that the mix we provided was “good” and are living well, producing vermicompost in abundance and depositing dozens or hundreds of egg casings, each hatching three to five at a time. These worms teach us to always bring diversity to the table—new types of weeds, compost and manure—until we get it “right.”

I realize, as I think about wildness, that gardening in regenerative ways is very much about setting the stage and then letting go. Julio built the structure to hold the tires, and we add the ingredients as best we know, hoping the small wiggly creatures will flourish. We create the garden beds and add the mulch and the manure teas that we believe will help the plants to thrive, and we water to keep the soil moist and alive. But we can’t stop the heavy rains, which are normal, or the extra heat from global warming, which is not. We can’t guarantee that we will harvest before viruses or fungal diseases come in. We create space, but it is the Spirit blowing through, wild and untethered, that gives or takes away.

This morning in church, I listened closely to a message offered by the longtime pastor about the sanctity of the Bible and its unquestionable authority for every aspect of our lives. I understand, I think, her desire for fixed rules and definitive answers. But I don’t find that message very helpful in my life. I am searching for different wisdom, the kind that can help me and mine live more wholly and more fully within the beauty and abundance of God’s wild Creation, pointing us to where life and death are tangled and twisted, but always, also, infused with love:

Psalm 104

10 [The Lord] makes springs pour water into the ravines;

    it flows between the mountains.

11 They give water to all the beasts of the field;

    the wild donkeys quench their thirst.

12 The birds of the sky nest by the waters;

    they sing among the branches.

Well. I don’t know if we got to where I thought we would, but we got somewhere. Thank you for sharing this brief journey. Also, on Jenny’s, Keila’s and Annika’s behalf, as well as mine, thank you from the bottom of our hearts for the support you provide in our honor for the work of Presbyterian World Mission. Without you, none of us PC(USA) mission co-workers would be where we are, serving in more than fifty countries, throughout God’s wild, wonderful world.

In Christ,

Mark