Ellen Davis,
biblical scholar, ponders what it might mean for this generation to
“work the garden and serve it, to observe and thus preserve it.”
This matter is critical for our survival on earth. Now we have the
productionists in control. Quantity rules. The matter of land
care/food production is drastically simplified. The agriculturalists
are outside looking in.
It would seem we
have more pressing matters. The coronavirus decimates our elderly
and infirm, as well as our working population. The police too often
carelessly use and even murder our black fellow citizens. Our
attention is, as always scattered among a multitude of urgencies. We
have not yet considered the possibility that this might be one big
question.
Greed brought black
Africans in chains to our shores because southern planters could not
make enough money by actually hiring the poor whites they were
surrounded by. Land hunger wrenched black people violently from
their homes and enslaved them.
Of course land
hunger must have land. The land was taken violently from the native
population, which was corralled up and starved on a tiny portion of
what they once were at home on.
Human populations
push relentlessly into wild areas. Agriculture is often the point of
the spear. Viruses then jump from wild populations across specie
lines and infect us with one pandemic after another.
This was brought to
a head by my sudden realization that the farming business I had found
so pleasing-livestock on the land-depends upon people poorer than I
taking large risks with their own health to work in slaughterhouses,
while our government structure does nothing to protect them, rather
choosing to protect their employers from lawsuits over poor labor
practices.
What would be the
endlessly ramifying results if we began to see ourselves as keepers
of the garden rather than as entrepreneurs? Can we push greed down
and bring care and a sense of belonging up? Do we have a choice?
