Have you ever just walked into a environment and had this ‘sense of place‘? Like the moments you were now spending meant more than most others? In Christianity we would define this as a holiness- there is something in that moment or place that is ‘set apart’. We don’t show up to every job we do expecting this but we did find it when we visited with Dave and worked on his property this Wednesday Jan. 31! Dave is an Orthodox practicing Jew who lives in Seattle, WA with his family. They have invested heavily in their backyard to make it a beautiful place of rest and rejuvenation, and you could feel that as you walked through it. Along with a real “Sukkot” in their backyard (A booth or dwelling used to live in during the feast of Tabernacles) they also had a life sized chess board measuring about 14×14′! Talk about a cool spot! But what I really wanted to get to was something that I learned from Dave. Every year, around this time there is a jewish holiday where Jews are instructed to take trees and plant them! Jews all over the world on January 31 were planting trees! Dave’s children in their school were taking time out of their studies to plant trees. Wall street execs and business CEO’s were planting trees. The elderly were planting trees. How cool! I will let Dave in this video explain it better than I can:
This is definitely something we can get on board with at Restoring Eden. We often share with people that there is just something so profound and spiritual in touching the earth, in putting your bare hands in soil and just letting it ground you. Remember this is the material we came from- everyone basically agrees on that! Cultivating and caring for the land and the earth is not something we can just delegate to a few large corporations and agricultural companies. Its something that we must experience for ourselves, not only is it instructed in many religious texts but our souls themselves cry out to be reconnected to the earth as well. As any gardener can attest, working with and touching soil is beyond just stress relieving and rewarding, it can, if allowed transport us, realigning us with something much bigger than ourselves.