ecology and faith formation
a conversation with lauren grace daniels-judge
Just over a year ago, I co-hosted an Instagram LIVE with Lauren Grace Daniels-Judge, a dear friend who, at the time, was returning to Chicago after a year-long farm residency in Florida.
Lauren is an emerging leader in the international agriculture sector, She spends her time growing food, studying permaculture design, and dropping off extra pints of tomatoes on her neighbor’s front porch. Lauren and her husband, Darius, live in Fort Myers, Florida
Below are both an audio excerpt and corresponding transcript of our conversation.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Amar: I wonder where you see an intersection or an overlap between ecology and faith formation, which sound like two things that shouldn't relate to one another, but I think when we dig a little deeper, we find that they're very related to one another.
In other words, how does gardening or cultivating land, or simply paying attention to the space that is around us form us as humans and more specifically as Christians?
Lauren: Yeah, absolutely. I, I love this.
Let's start with whenever I am eating food. Whenever I go outside, I am reminded that I am dependent on so many things to survive. We're all dependent. We're all interdependent on the air, on each other, on food, on ecosystems and all of these things.
I think that as we learn to love Jesus more, we think more about the world in a holistic way where everything's connected.
…Where every little thing matters and there's depth to everything because God created everything, right? He's the creator of all these things, and [in] his creation, each thing has special significance.
As I started to learn more about ecology [and] about the need for food access and food security, you can't escape from the theological significance of growing things and how the Lord sustains us through all of his relationships. And I think we've spent so much time, not really thinking about the relationships of food and us and where food comes from and how the earth is cared for. We haven't spent a lot of time thinking about the significance of that and now we're finally realizing as, you know, global warming comes to the forefront and we see a lot of issues, we're having to take a step back and say, wow, these things are interconnected. A
As a Christian, I can't separate my responsibility to creation and to care for these interdependent relationships. I can't separate that from my faith. I think that that's a really beautiful thing.
A: I think that we're in desperate need for a, we could call a resurrected imagination of, of land. And I'm thinking of this in the, in the sense of, as you mentioned, some of the global crises happening around the world.
I think we see, especially in Scripture, this visceral response of the land to the actions of creation. I think that language of resurrected, you know, evokes the imagery of Jesus on the cross.
Jesus dies. The second person of the Trinity dies and the world changes. And the land doesn't remain still, it reacts.
The earth quakes, you know, darkness covers the land.
In the [Hebrew Bible], we see the land mourning and crying out and dying. We see it in several cases where the land vomits up those who enact evil in particular places. And then in Romans 8, Paul says the whole of creation grounds together in the pains of childbirth, as it awaits liberation and resurrection from bondage and corruption.
And that of course brings us to Genesis 3. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the land is never cursed in Genesis three, only humans are. Adam is certainly set against the land and yet the direction or the direct object of the curse is Adam, not, not the land.
The land is, from Genesis 3, subject to the futility of man's relationship with God.
Paul [also] has the image of childbearing, which is also fascinating. Why childbearing? He could say death…or lots of other things that evoke a sense of groaning or pain.
But childbirth in specific is one of the few pains that it is not a groaning unto death, but a groaning unto life. [It is] Something that gives way to something new rather than something passing away. And so it's a groaning almost of anticipation, which then goes back to, you know, Genesis 3 where, in the midst of God's curse, is a proclamation of the gospel—the protoevangelium—that is specifically talking about the seed of a woman.
I think, In talking about a resurrected imagination of land, that stewarding and caring for creation is not only about the interactions between humanity and earth, but also humanity to humanity - for us, the way that we interact with one another, I think in our society today that is so deeply polarized and, and vengeful and filled with hatred that, yeah, we see consequences upon the land for the actions of, of creation.
And so I think the way that you have worked so intimately with gardening and cultivating land and space, that you are just a great person to, to speak to this and where you've seen this as well.
I'm curious if there have been some folks that have been helpful for you that you've been reading that have physically and mentally brought together these concepts of caring for the earth, gardening eco-friendly rhythms and habits, and faith.
L: As you talk about that— living and dying, how we see that resurrection within the ground itself, within our ecosystem. and then within the Scriptures—that over and over again, not just with Jesus, but so metaphorically that brings to mind, not only authors that have been so significant, but actually getting to garden and seeing how death is so necessary for life.
Even when we pick fruit like that or pick veggies, that's a dying right there. That's a death and organisms that are in the soil, they have to die. They have to decompose for us to be able to thrive for anything, to be able to live.
The metaphors of that gospel theology there in the ecosystems around us are insane and so, so tactile and so tangible when you're in the garden and you have to go through the slow process of waiting for things to grow and letting things die back and like, gosh, getting to see that played out in a physical way when I recognize that I need that to happen in my own heart and through my own sanctification.
Talking about authors and I think that there are so, so many, how do I narrow down a list??
I think of maybe if someone's coming from the standpoint of wanting something very theological— if that speaks to them— Norman Wirzba’s Food and Faith: A Theology of Eating has really changed my perspective. [It has] sparked a lot of matches for me as far as understanding food and the earth in a very robust and theological way. So I cannot recommend him enough.
If somebody really loves poetry, that's something that speaks to them. We all know Wendell Berry. If you're getting started, if you wanna know where to start, that's the perfect person to pull you in with the beauty of what life can be, what life should be, and how God speaks to us through the dirt and the grime of everyday life.
If somebody is wanting to know where to start and is just very practical, honestly, I would say like pick up a “how to garden” book. Come find an ‘encyclopedia of organic gardening.’ If that's what speaks to you —the like practical, pragmatic "here is how plants function"— this is what you need. This is the biology and how that all works together. Even just a book like that, I think can really speak to some people about the beauty and importance of the ways that God has made everything interconnected and interrelated and like the depth of intricacies that I can't even wrap my brain around put me in awe of where we are in the grand scheme of everything.
Amar: Yes! The Lord meets us in the dirt and in the text, in walking down the street and in the classroom or in the sanctuary. These are all sacred spaces that the Holy Spirit is active within.
L: I think that so often the physical things like planting a tree or even taking a walk, all of these things that necessitate us going a little bit slower. That's when God really gets to meet us.
Like when my bike breaks down and I have to walk to the grocery store instead of bike to the grocery store, it takes twice as long. But, dang, there are some blessings in that, (although I often overlook them because I'm salty), here God meets us in the slow things, planting trees, having to weed for a little bit or prune for a little bit.
God's there. I can speak from experience. That's the thing.
A: Could you say more about that? Is there a moment over the past year where God has met you in the dirt?
L: A bit of background is that I completed my college degree in education and theology.
And in the midst of that, I had a really big interest in community gardening and what that might look like within a school context, especially here in Chicago. And so I knew about this basically a research farm in subtropical Florida, and they equip missionaries and send out resources to subsistence or small scale farmers really across the globe. So they focus on a lot of international agriculture support to tropical farmers, but they also have a community gardening extension and arms.
So I was there interning on the community garden end, and because my background is not in agriculture, I don't have a master's degree in ecology or things that a lot of my coworkers at the farm did have, I really came in feeling much like I [was] starting at square zero. I [didn’t] have a lot of the knowledge bank that a lot of my coworkers did. So there were a lot of really practical, textbook things that I needed to learn about how to care for plants and what plants needed and what the parts of a plant are.
So while there was so much depth in theological understanding that I got to learn about and study and then see hands-on—like God met me reading Wendell Berry. Incredible.—but also when I'm taking a seminar about entomology, which is the study of insects.
I'm taking this seminar from someone who has a Master's degree in the study of insects. And get this: eighty percent of the species on earth, like animal species, eighty percent of the species that we know fall under the category of insect. Eighty percent! I don't know that, that blew me away.
I'll never forget. I was in the community gardening one morning and I'm just caring for these plants that have some fungus on them. Looking at it, even to my like untrained eye as I don't even have a microscope, there are more things that I know how to identify. And I think about the soil needs the pH the things that are underground, like fungus and all the hierarchy, all the things that are there, that we are just scratching the surface of knowing.
God designed so intricately these things that we might never even notice, but he made them because he's a creator and that's who he is. And that's what he does. And he does it out of love, not out of need or lack, but because he thinks it's beautiful.
And so I think that as I got to be in the dirt and see all of the things that God has created and only scratched the surface of the depth of the beauty of all of these things that made me sit back in awe.
That was such a sweet foundation to then kind of step out with like, I want to say a little bit of righteous anger or a drive for justice and mercy. As we see the lacking in our world and the exploitation of workers. And as we see the waste in our food systems and we see just a lot of really hard and sad things that are going on with the food, the global food economy, it was a gift to be able to start to learn about those things from the foundation of, "wow. I am in a beautiful place with a lot of beautiful plants and I see the beauty of creation all around me and that spurs me on to want to love more."
And I think that just getting that exposure to be on a farm or to be in a place that was so cultivated and so beautiful. It was really wonderful because I think most of us really don't feel or see the problem of pollution or climate change. If you live in the Midwest or you're in the Bible belt, there's not a lot of variances, but once you hit these other regions, there are things like red tide or in Florida, agriculture is a big fuel for a lot of unpaid labor in a lot of exploitation of workers in such a way that you see that face to face or like we are now planting this field, but we have to pick plastic out of the field before we can plant, just because the level of pollution that's just normal now is unprecedented.
So I am grateful that I got to step out of a bubble to really see the issues that are at hand. And I just really hope that other people get to explore and see and experience things for themselves to say, "wow, these things do matter and caring for things bigger than ourselves does matter."