Rachel

This afternoon Loren, Stacy and new baby Rachel came over for dinner. Loren, a good friend of my son’s, was living in our home when I first got into Growing Power. In fact he was the builder of the GP Box in the Sunroom and the Worm Condo outside. Today we talked about some new garden projects dealing with irrigation systems that Loren will be helping with. However, the star of the visit was new baby Rachel. Her innocence stole our hearts. I often talk about how my life has evolved and now is returning to younger days. I used to say to teens as a youth minister that when I grew up I wanted to be a three year old. (Some adults may think I have already achieved this goal.) Looking at this one-month-old baby I can see where our lives come from, innocence and where they are destined to return, innocence. In spirituality we say that we came from God and are returning to God. Seeing this baby also made me realize how I much I need to catch up with innocence. Paradoxically the only way for an adult to catch up is to slow down and become more in touch with the child or God in us.

After church today I exchanged a bucket of worms for a bucket of compost. This was no ordinary compost. It looked like rich top soil, which it had become with aging. My friend from Church had gotten the soil from a compost pile in a nearby municipality, which allows residents to take out of the city dump all the rich compost they desire. The City of Milwaukee dump lets us have wood chips but does not make compost. Waste Management, a major company, takes away all the good compost making materials and probably makes rich topsoil out of it that we can purchase at stores. Compost with aging reduces itself to a form of rich fine soil. The disarray of waste catches up in time to make good soil.

Baby Rachel will grow in time into a child, teen, adult and with God’s blessing will catch up as an elder with her innocence. Our compost piles expand and than compress. From innocence to innocence and from unneeded excess we call waste to soil ready for new life. Our lives, like a good compost pile, turn.

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