Planting seeds in fertile ground. Nurturing young, fragile
seedlings. Patiently awaiting growth. Harvesting the fruits of
labor.
These are more than farm terms; they are meaningful
metaphors that are part of the everyday vocabulary at The Food
Project, a Massachusetts nonprofit organization that grows organic
produce and distributes it through a variety of community programs
and a farmers' market.
And though the group is not a "faith-based
organization" with any religious affiliation or directly religious
principles, The Food Project is like a living parable, a testament
to the uniting spiritual power of the land and the positive force it
exerts on the people who work it.
The Lincoln, Mass.-based Food Project was founded
in 1991 as an experiment in how creating sustainable agriculture can
have a byproduct other than healthy produce—a unifying sense of
community that can span racial and socioeconomic barriers. At the
Project, young people from posh suburbs work together with youth
from some of Boston's most troubled neighborhoods to farm the land.
They follow the path of fresh, organic produce from seed to the farm
stand or dining table, and share their harvest with soup kitchens
and homeless shelters in the area.
Today the organization—which hopes to harvest
200,000 pounds of produce this year—includes a dizzying array of
paid fellowships and internships, suburban farms and urban community
gardens, and summer and year-round programs that are aimed at
creating a generation of youth who are committed to organic farming,
sustainable agriculture—and each other.
Part farming cooperative, part small-business
training ground, part environmental justice advocate, part
interracial dialogue, The Food Project is a seed that is sprouting
many shoots, both in the United States and globally. Last January,
the Project sent a delegation to the World Social Forum and Via
Campesina conferences in Porto Alegre, Brazil, and the group is in
conversation about replicating its success in countries including
Mexico and Korea.
At the heart of the program's success—the number of
applicants for the summer internship has increased each year—is a
unique sense of spirituality that, while understated, pervades the
group's activities.
Greg Gale, the program director at The Food
Project, is a graduate of Harvard Divinity School and a Quaker.
Instead of becoming an ordained minister, he found his own ministry
in environmental and housing justice work before coming to The Food
Project. Gale has formulated a set of philosophical and spiritual
principles that undergird The Food Project's work. At the heart of
these is a reverence for the earth and humility at realizing that
soil, weather, and seeds are out of human control.
"This food comes from the earth," Gale said. "When
you labor with the earth, you can't have mastery over it, you have
to work in partnership with it." Gale says that there is often an
inverse relationship between being in control of the natural world
and truly benefiting from its fruits. "People value healthy food.
The less healthy you are willing to have your food, the more you can
have mastery over nature," he said.
The Food Project believes that human beings
can have mastery over some things, like decontaminating urban
garden plots from lead and other toxins. In addition to the 31 acres
the group farms in Lincoln, they now farm 2 1/4 lead-free acres in
Roxbury, a city neighborhood that more often makes news for urban
problems like poverty and crime than for community initiatives and
farmers' markets.
"To me, farming is similar to trying to be
faithful," Gale said. "God asks us to try to unearth and face and be
who we were made to be without believing we can control all the
outcomes, but working in partnership with God."
For the young people who till the land and staff
the modest offices at The Food Project, the lessons that Gale and
other leaders teach them are as valuable as they are challenging to
learn. And many of the youth develop a spirituality all their own
from their work with The Food Project.
Wil Bullock is a 22-year-old who lives in
Dorchester, another city neighborhood with its share of typical
urban problems. An African American who attends services at his
neighborhood's Southern Baptist church every Sunday, Bullock says
that his faith is a perfect fit with his work at The Food
Project.
"My religious belief is that I was created by God,"
says Bullock, who is seated in a conference room just feet away from
a giant pile of freshly harvested lettuce sitting in the Lincoln
offices waiting for a home. "To actually have the opportunity to
work in the soil, in the dirt—to create and give life to these
vegetables, it's really amazing," he said. "It's a way to come face
to face with creation."
Bullock, who has worked with The Food Project since
1995, is ebullient with the meaning he gleans from the work. "How
many different vegetables God gave humans to nourish themselves
with!" said Bullock, who, as part of his fellowship at the Project,
is currently working at the group's commercial kitchen developing
recipes and marketing concepts for fresh salsa that is sold at local
co-ops and health food markets. "That shows me how much God loves
us, how much he cares about us, how much he nurtures us."
Seated across the table from Bullock is Beth
Mullen, an 18-year-old recent high school graduate who has worked
for The Food Project for two years, first through the summer
program, then a series of internships. While Mullen was raised in
the Congregational Church, she says that her spirituality is a
garden of ideas from Eastern philosophy, her church, and her
political beliefs.
"I believe that people should be treated with
respect, and I believe that people should have the right to be
heard," she said. "People should have a connection to the land—I
believe in human dignity, I believe in peace."
The Food Project doesn't have to be overtly
religious to share in those values, Mullen said. "We're a very
humanitarian organization. That sort of spiritual side of me has
been cultivated at The Food Project because we share the same
values," she said.
And you can be sure that Mullen uses the word
"cultivated" as more than a farm term.
Holly Lebowitz Rossi, a Sojourners contributing writer,
lives in Arlington, Massachusetts.
Read other articles by:
Lebowitz
Rossi, Holly
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