Paradise was a garden 27 MAR 2013

Paradise was a garden. This post is inspired by my drive today thru Oregon farmland, & all my wonderful ag memories it stimulated. The farms nourish us, Creation nourishes us & the farmers & gardeners nourish Creation. I think Christ can identify with my deep love for farming as he was always using farm illustrations to teach lessons. Nature is to be interacted with, tended & communicated with, not controlled & tossed away like a paper cup. If only the PTSNB could learn from nature, rather than torture & enslave it like everything else their greedy hands grab. It is sad that our urban society has been cut off from Nature’s lessons. That disconnect has assisted the Powers That Should Not Be in doing such things as: creating attractive nutrition-defective food, giving us fake images of food (90% of corn now is GM “corn”, & 75% of processed food uses GM food) & convincing people that we will starve without genetically altering our food.

Instead of assisting the Creator & creation, they want to recreate them for their own greedy agenda. They are spending billions of dollars on genetic research to imitate the real thing, while smugly ignoring the Frankenstein disasters they are creating. In reaction to this, France, Germany & Austria (& a few others) have outlawed GM food. But research into it continues in Germany, so an activist network Gendreck Weg (Gen=genetics, Dreck=shit, Weg=path) has been destroying the experiments. Grolm, a Gendreck Weg leader, hangs around after their destructive work, to make sure he gets arrested. Back in the good USA, we have coming to a supermarket near you this year GM sweet corn whose modified DNA produces natural insecticide in the plant! I think they (Mansanto, et al) have weeds in their minds. (And I don’t mean weed, an innocent plant DuPont targeted for extinction, but appears to be surviving.)

Nature teaches humility (storms & draughts), a balanced awareness (ecology), sharing (life shares), the beauty of the Creator (indeed: The whole earth is full of His glory” ISA 6:3), how to appreciate the gifts of the Earth, the interconnectedness of all life, and its need for our compassion as its caretakers. The artist enjoys the colors of life. The fragrance of lemon-sage, peppermint, & the therapeutic scent of: cucumbers (scent helps claustrophobia), apples (scent helps burn fat), citrus (which has a clean smell) and fresh rain are gifts of the Earth. Plants help us to celebrate life! Have you experienced the companionship of a tree, or been relaxed by its strong calm demeanor? Been uplifted by birdsong? Laughed at a puppy, a giraffe, hyena, or monkey? Need I ask??

Gardens have randomness & order, wild & unexpected events, farms are both inconsistent & stable, dynamic & wild. Yin & yang originally meant the sunny & shaded sides of a mountain and the qualities of those two environments. Orthographic precipitation drenches the west sides of our mountains, & leaves the other dry. Life is like that.

Final thoughts. Life is like a garden. “One sows & another reaps.” (JN 4:37) As we work for the future of our children, let us weed out the negatives that would weaken them, let us have the same faith that inspires the farmer & gardener to sow his good seed, and let God be our increase, our effectiveness.