August sojourn

This August, I took a sojourn of 17 days as a student in an “Earth Literacy” program at Genesis Farm in northern New Jersey. Situated a few miles southeast of the Delaware Water Gap, Genesis is a farming and educational center on 231 acres of cropland, wetlands, and forested slopes in rural Warren County.

Founder and director Miriam Gillis began her own sojourn there 26 years ago, soon after her Dominican religious order in Caldwell, NJ acquired the land and a few run-down buildings.

With hard work and determination, she’s founded a highly esteemed learning and resource center, and has earned the thanks of county residents for her strong support of locally owned farms and shops, and for organizing a Community Supported Agriculture program (CSA), whose 300 shareholders pick up fresh produce at Genesis on appointed days.

“Earth literacy,” a keystone of Genesis’ educational programs, has been inspired by Gillis’ belief that the deepest source of our present ecological crisis is rooted in the western imagination, in beliefs (partly biblical) that humankind is radically different from, and “above” the rest of creation, which allows us to treat the earth as a gadget and to tinker as we please.

Meanwhile, modern science has been unfolding a “new story” which links us physically, genetically and spiritually to the entire cosmos, but which hasn’t been incorporated into the thinking of most Americans, and certainly not into our “spirituality.”

And that’s too bad. For as this amazing story advances, and continues to manifest itself, in Albert Einstein’s words, “as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty,” it has the capacity to open hearts and minds and to kindle a respect for the planet and our beleaguered fellow creatures.