2/23: Vida campesina
Farm Life, Aparecida, and “Tilling and Keeping”
Reading
“[The Genesis creation narratives] suggest that human life is grounded in three fundamental and closely intertwined relationships: with God, with our neighbor and with the earth itself… the harmony between the Creator, humanity and creation as a whole was disrupted by our presuming to take the place of God and refusing to acknowledge our creaturely limitations. This in turn distorted our mandate to “have dominion” over the earth (cf. Gen 1:28), to “till it and keep it” (Gen 2:15)…
“Tilling” refers to cultivating, ploughing or working, while “keeping” means caring, protecting, overseeing and preserving. This implies a relationship of mutual responsibility between human beings and nature. Each community can take from the bounty of the earth whatever it needs for subsistence, but it also has the duty to protect the earth and to ensure its fruitfulness for coming generations. (Laudato Si’, 67)
Reflection
I’m not a country person. What I know of tilling and keeping comes primarily from spending a couple of weeks before a semester abroad in Chile with a family of campesino farmers and musicians in a small pueblito called San Dionisio outside of Linares, Chile. It was there that I first learned how to speak Spanish outside of a classroom, how to drink raspberry juice from actual raspberries, and how to play música folklórica on nylon guitar strings while singing parallel third harmonies. I also came across a Spanish-language copy of Aparecida, the document of the Fifth General Council of Latin American Bishops, which for me became a lesson in Spanish language translation as well as an introduction to Catholic Social Teaching.
It was late February (summer), so it happened that I was present for portions of the harvest. While I was there, the family harvested porotos (A white Chilean bean whose name derives from indigenous sources, as many Chilean food words do) and raspberries. I accompanied my host family to the fields, and, city boy that I am, developed a solid allergic reaction to the porotos and felt a little guilty after eating many of the juiciest raspberries before they went to sale. The family used their acreage to grow most of what they ate, and sold the surplus to sustain themselves. It is a model of farming that is all but nonexistent in the US.
Pope Francis draws from the second chapter of Genesis to describe our role to “till and keep” creation. This implies a dual relationship of both cultivation and preservation. As I read it, I was struck by how one-sided my current life is in this balance. I am all about “tilling” the earth — and I don’t mean actually tilling soil, I mean taking its resources for my use. But I don’t do much “keeping”. City life removes me from much of the work of preservation, and besides, that’s best left to the environmentalists, right?
In reflecting on this passage I realized that it would be impossible for the family I lived with in Chile to ever really consider tilling and keeping as tasks that could logically be separated. When you're entire life — your food, your livelihood, your vocation, your identity — are tied to the earth, its preservation is the only logical choice. When people and nature are so intimately tied together, how can one not work to preserve the life of the other?
The Aparecida document recognizes this reality when it mentions the closeness of the Church to campesino farmers who work in the defense of life and the environment:
La Iglesia agradece a todos los que se ocupan de la defensa de la vida y del ambiente…Está cercana a los campesinos que con amor generoso trabajan duramente la tierra para sacar, a veces en condiciones sumamente difíciles, el sustento para sus familias y aportar a todos los frutos de la tierra.
The Church is grateful to all who devote themselves to defending life and the environment…She is close to small farmers who with generous love very laboriously work the land, sometimes under extremely difficult conditions, to sustain their families and provide all with the fruits of the earth. (Aparecida, 472)
When we are removed from the ways in which we rely upon nature for our livelihood, it becomes easier to look the other way when nature is in danger.
Every time I pick up a package of raspberries or blueberries in the winter months I look to see if it says “Product of Chile”, and I think of the family I stayed with in San Dionisio. Now, when I pick up that package, I will also think that despite being separated by millions of miles and plastic package, I too rely on this earth that provides for me, and I have a responsibility to “keep” it for future generations.
Questions
- What are my experiences with cultivating land? With protecting it? How do these experiences inform my current relationship to environmental preservation now?
Prayer
Lord God, you have given us creation to “till and keep”
Help us to remember our dual responsibility in both cultivation and preservation.
Guide us as we find ways to restore our relationship with creation
So that we may preserve it for future generations.
Amen.
