When I introduced this series, the world and all its big problems were on my mind. But the origin story for the series is a lot closer to home. Like many people, over the past twenty years or so, I’ve become increasingly interested in finding ways of living more sustainably, and over the past five, permaculture has come up time and time again as a way forward. Because the principles of permaculture are about shifting how we relate to the world around us, they are inherently spiritual even in their direct application: How we relate to our food, energy, and resources is spiritual, full stop. How we relate to consuming and producing is spiritual. How we relate to waste is spiritual. But as I began to apply these principles as much as I could given my limited space and even more limited control of my space, I saw how resonant their wisdom was with what I’ve seen work best in those areas of life we more readily ascribe to ‘spirituality’. And that’s really what this series was all about: How these principles about how to relate to our environment in a way that is sustainable, resilient, and, at its best even beneficial, can also inform a life that is similarly built to last able to withstand life’s ups and downs, and benefit the world around us in the process.
We started by looking at the importance of patient observation before acting, of being able to describe what it is we’re seeing before assigning value judgments upon it or trying to fix any problems we identify. Then we looked at systems theory as a way of developing a shared language to understand our faith, life, and commmunities as wholes that are greater, and more complex, than the sum of their parts.
The main body of the series talked about specific principles to keep in mind as we think about our life-systems, principles like:
- Looking for general patterns before looking at the specifics
- Understanding how energy flows through the system
- Obtaining a yield, or, in Christian terms, bearing good fruit
- Making good use of feedback
- Minimizing waste, and changing our attitudes towards it
- Going and growing slowly
- Valuing and promoting diversity
- Exploring, expanding, and making good use of edges and margins
These are simply ways of ensuring we approach our faith — or any single domain of life — in a way that understands it in terms of an integrated whole. If we want it to be robust, healthy, and sustainable, faith can’t just be something for Sunday morning or our ‘quiet time’, but rather must pervade every area of life. And if we make any changes, we need to see how those changes might impact the rest of the system.
That last paragraph mentioned the world ‘integrated’, and indeed, integration is another principle of permaculture design. I didn’t write a post about it because I’ve written so much on this theme already on the blog. (After all, the blog’s tagline is “an integral approach to life and faith.”) For some relevant posts, you can check out God in Three Perspectives: An Integral Approach to Knowing God, my whole series on Integral Basics, but especially Integral Basics, Part 3: Life for the Whole Person, and the post Integral Growth & Christian Spirituality from the end of the series on Growing with Intention. The point, though, is simple: We aren’t minds stuck in bodies, or souls warring with matter, but whole creatures; so, if we’re going to grow and live well, we need to do so with all of us, holistically, integrally.
As immense as the problems facing our world today may seem, it’s also true that life on earth and in human communities has always been hard. Our faith can be a huge help in managing these difficulties and anxieties, but if we aren’t careful — and if our faith is itself fragile, isolated, or un-integrated — it can also add to them. I hope that this series has provided some helpful questions or ways of thinking about faith that will help you build a faith, and faith communities, that are built to last, no matter what life may throw your way.
Matthew Root 