Thinking time

While I have been waiting for classes to start, I have spent most of my time just reading and reflecting a lot. Sometimes I think about what we are doing here, sometimes about people and places back home, sometimes about our new community we are trying to be a part of, and a lot about ecology and the meaning of agriculture since that is what I will be studying here shortly, Lord willing. I guess my thoughts today have wandered around the meaning of agriculture, work, and community. I have spent most of today writing a research project and thesis proposal for school, and while I was skimming through some of my books reminding myself of some theories I came across my good author-mentor Wendell Berry and he seemed to be thinking along some of the same lines as I.
Talking about the meaning of work he says: "If human values are removed from production, how can they be conserved in consumption? How can we value our lives if we devalue them in making a living? If we do not live where we work, and when we work, we are wasting our lives and our work too." This is something I have observed being a part of a community and culture where home and workplace are essentially, if not exactly, the same. In our culture we have become so removed and disconnected from the way things are made, where our food comes from, and where the product of our work goes, that it is hard, or maybe impossible, for us to find joy in our own work and to do it well, and to know and respect the people that work all along the way to bring us the socks we wear and the food we eat.
The people here are so connected to the land. They know the very sheep where the wool came from that their blanket or coat is made with. They know where the food came from and who grew it. These relationships create such a respect and love for other humans as well as the rest of creation such as I have not experienced since I was with the Awajun indians in Peru. Sometimes observing these people and the way they treat their environment, human and non-human, I wonder if we Christians in the USA are not more guilty of sin simply by our lifestyle than the Quechua indians here who I'm sure most of those Christians up there would not consider to be followers of Jesus, so to speak. We have a lot to learn about living here, and working.
I am beginning to see how important the land really is to our life, and to the Christian life too. In our culture we have forgotten how utterly dependent we are just on dirt for our life. We are a part of the creation, we are not gods of it, and we need to take care of it. It is wonderful to watch here how agriculture, social life, and religion are so intimatel intertwined in the Quechua tradition. I think we can learn something from their example. I leave you with another Wendell quote that goes along with that observation:
"The word agriculture does not mean agriscience. It means "cultivation of land." And cultivation is at the root of the sense both of culture and of cult. These ideas of tillage and worship are thus joined in culture. And these words all come from an Indo-European root meaning both "to revolve" and "to dwell." To live, to survive on the earth, to care for the soil, and to worship, all are bound at the root to the idea of a cycle. It is only by understanding the cultural complexity and largeness of the concept of agriculture that we can see the threatening diminishments implied by the term 'agribusiness,'" and the by the separation of humans from the land.