Small Enough to Manage, Big Enough to Matter

By Andrew K. Barnett

Start Anyway. Sorry to lay it all on the first line, but there it is. None of us knows enough, has enough money, pulls enough strings, or carries the clout to justify a new project. Start anyway.

We can all pose unanswered questions that will kill a new idea before it gets out of committee – how will we pay for it, what will the neighbors say, what if ______ (insert the name of your local curmudgeon) gets upset, who’s to serve on the committee, what will we call the committee, do we even need a committee? These legitimate issues could clog a year’s worth of meetings.

Finding Answers Faster

But when we start anyway, we find answers faster. Invited to the inevitable messiness of new ideas, people take ownership and solve problems – tomatoes in need of stakes, say, or hungry guests waiting for bread. Intractable social ills suddenly offer concrete solutions and specific ways to get involved. Theology gets done.

Food justice is an element of the larger global fight for human dignity. As the 21st century trends toward 10 billion people and a very harsh global climate, we can only love neighbor as self when we work for a stable climate, a just society, and food security. When we synchronize initiatives that are small enough to manage and big enough to matter, devising solutions that make sense in specific places and times, then we pair local cost with local benefit, and things actually happen. Parks get built. Gardens get planted. Food gets served. We tunnel through political barriers. We mobilize pockets of political will. We cultivate partnerships and invent possibilities that we had never imagined. We get out of the office and onto the streets. Engaging our communities, enriching our spiritual and physical wellness, it’s possible to make measurable progress on issues Jesus cares about most passionately: human dignity for all, love for neighbor and self.

Planting Seeds of Hope

Two years ago, when Bishop Jon Bruno asked urban farmer Tim Alderson to help the Episcopal communities of Los Angeles build an integrated harvest and food distribution system, the bishop’s first words were, “We’ll start in January.”

Courageously, Tim took the job, built a program called Seeds of Hope, and I was thrilled to join his team recently. The work matters, because South-Central LA is a food desert, where 72 percent of the food shops offer nothing but fast food.1 Despite the energy, water, and pollution costs of a bacon double cheeseburger, it’s a shocking irony that the meat sandwich is still cheaper and easier to buy than veggies in low-income communities. Fresh produce is a luxury good in the city.2 Drive across town to the wealthier western side, and you’ll find only 41 percent of the restaurants serving fast food. The difference in life expectancy is about 12 years, due largely to food-related illness in poor communities. That’s the same gap that separates the United States from North Korea, and it’s wrong.

Twenty-four months ago, Seeds of Hope started as a new idea with lots of unanswered questions. Now it coordinates gardens at 75 churches and 22 schools, and we share fresh produce with 60 food pantries and 50 feeding programs. We won a $900,000 grant from the LA health department to help community leaders support nourishing food cultures. The Seeds of Hope innovation is to coordinate land, people, money, and community centers, all dedicated to bringing healthy food to people who need it. The goal is to farm the diocese and feed people real food.

Food allows us to sow relationships, re-cultivate a sense of gratitude, and fertilize community in ways only God can predict. Praying shapes believing. Doing does too. Lex agendi, lex corandi: What we do, we believe.

Does this work matter? Only time will tell. I can say it’s exciting to see people become aware of capacities they didn’t know they had. It is holy to partner with faith communities venturing beyond the stained glass and stone walls to break bread together. In a complex system, we only have control over ourselves. But I am in charge of me and you are in charge of you. If we want to spark a movement, start moving. Even and especially when we don’t know all the answers, start anyway.

The Rev. Andrew K. Barnett holds the Bishop’s Chair for Environmental Studies and Food Justice in the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles. He is a 2012 graduate of Yale’s Divinity and Environment achools and is the pianist with the Theodicy Jazz Collective.

1. “Food Systems Snapshot 2013,” Los Angeles Food Policy Council. See http://goodfoodla.org/goodfood /2013-food-system-snapshot.

2. “Food Systems Snapshot 2013.”

Sidebar: Yale Divinity Farm: A Story about Starting

By Andrew K. Barnett
 
Here’s what happened when an idealistic bunch of Yale seminarians decided to start anyway. Five years ago, global climate talks had just collapsed, and a lot of us were feeling hopeless. I read the essay Michael Pollan wrote after Al Gore’s documentary “An Inconvenient Truth.” Pollan basically said, in the face of daunting odds, he would go out back to plant a garden. He thought it was the least he could do, it would make a dent in his carbon footprint, and it would be a beautiful thing to plant veggies with his kids.
 
About that time, members of Yale Earth Care Committee (YECC), a YDS student group, considered what we might do with the last few weeks of school and how we might use our last funds. I mentioned the Pollan article, and folks were interested. The next day, the YDS dean had a BBQ, and he got several of us talking about how fun it would be to grow cucumbers sometime.
 
“Funny you should mention that,” I said to Harry Attridge, who was dean at the time. “We were hoping to plant a garden next week. Can I talk to you tomorrow morning?”
 
We met at 7:30 a.m. “YECC has $1,000 and 15 volunteers who would love to plant a vegetable garden. Whadyathink?” I said. He took me for a walk and made some phone calls. Two weeks later we broke ground near the YDS dorms when an anonymous (and amazing) maintenance employee drove his bulldozer over at 7 a.m. to avoid detection from the shift supervisor.
 
Later that day six volunteers showed up, but the rain made us quit early. We had just converted 2,000 square feet of country club lawn into a mud hole, and we were facing disaster. I could just imagine the Monday morning hecklers, to say nothing of the University bigwigs who lived nearby. Start anyway? Really? How’d that work out?
 
That night, we called everybody we knew. I was texting like crazy between songs at a concert. “Urgent: we need hands at the farm tomorrow morning. Can you make it?#therewillbecookies.”
 
The next day at 7:30 a.m., four folks met with a rototiller and a big pile of cow poop. By 8:30 we had 10 people hauling soil, and by 9:30 we had 20 people planting seedlings and spreading mulch. Over the course of that day, more than 30 people joined in, and we built the garden in two days. We went on to craft a compost bin, shed, irrigation system, and integrated community garden. Today, YDS community volunteers compost the salad bar waste from the cafeteria. Future pastors tend the veggies. Neighbors bring their kids to play.
 
This little farm took us beyond theory, toward action, and it changed hearts. I love the relationships that formed when we jumped in, learned to garden as the plants grew, and met people who stopped by. Someone met the guy who runs New Haven’s farm-to foodshelf program, and we brought him produce. We shared food for seminary meals, and with apartment residents. There’s this great kid Robert who planted a giant pumpkin and started bringing his friends to the garden every day to watch it grow.
 
Five years later, YDS now funds a student farm manager who coordinates volunteers and keeps the place running. None of us knew enough or had enough to start. But, guided by idealism and a bit of naïveté, we started anyway.