DMZ Comminity Garden
The DMZ community garden under the hard work of Marna and Dawn is growing and becoming a truly community garden. How this garden went from another vacant lot in the central city a few months ago to this source of home-grown, organic food is truly a miracle. People in the community really respect the garden, look after it, and frequently stop by to help. They can use my help now and then, but it is not essential. I can move on. One way of ‘moving on’ is using my garden to improve on this model of growing and to be a source of aid and advice to others. Today a friend and his wife came over to check out the garden. They are in the process of making soil and building this type of garden in their own backyard. They were impressed by the vertical grower, so much growing and happening in such a small space.
I am moving on in other ways also. One is to put more emphasis on my other interests and activities. Over the next four days I am attending a conference on Ignatius Spirituality, a way of being a follower of Jesus that St. Ignatius of Loyola, found of the Society of Jesus, Jesuit, demonstrated. It also will be a chance to visit with old friends. One of those attending is Father David of Casa Romero Renewal Center here in Milwaukee. He is someone I have known since high school, and together we worked on the retreat in daily life. Sometimes I feel a little uncomfortable at these types of events, since the words or rhetoric do not always match actions.
That feeling of wanting to see practice of what we preach is one of the ways I was ‘ruined by Jesuits’. Parents of Jesuit volunteers started this phase ‘ruined by Jesuits’, to describe youth who went off to do a year or two of service. When they returned they were changed by their experience of living in solidarity with the poor, thus the phrase ‘ruined by Jesuits’. I guess we can use a similar phase with every life experience when we live with and learn from others, especially the poor and marginalized. In a sense I was ‘ruined by the DMZ’ since after this community garden experience I will never look on a vacant lot the same, knowing there are dedicated persons like Marna and Dawn whose life is built on service to others and making the best of any situation, even another vacant lot in the central city. I may be ‘ruined’, but with God’s blessings this posting will return Monday.
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