Did you know that if you put a potato in the ground at the right time of year, you can return to that ground sometime later and find it full of potatoes?

The ground becomes like a dough in which a small bit of levain was hidden and a miraculous multiplication occurs.

The potatoes don’t ask any questions.

They do not require your opinion.

They simply proliferate.

What’s more, if you first infuse that dirt with the manure from a cow, the potatoes get really happy. Isn’t that something; the bi-product of a cow is conveniently sized portions of immensely rich and diverse soil amendment.

I know that you know that, and I knew that, but really, isn’t that wild?! Have you paused recently to remember it?

We, here in the Morgan household, are not accomplished gardeners, so this year’s experience really reminded me of how unbelievable nature is. I mean it, truth is stranger than fiction, right?

Keeping animals, growing a garden, waiting on blooming seasons and desperately hoping for rain on the dry fields that are meant to sustain cattle, really does ground a person. It is humbling. It is sobering. It is awe inspiring to grasp my smallness and helplessness against the whims of nature.

Maybe encountering and participating with nature tugs at something deeper within ourselves and also connects us to something bigger outside of ourselves.

There is something about onions with dirt on them, or honey dripping from the cone, or deep, cold, clear water, that feels like looking through a keyhole into somewhere else.

Those things are only the creation, though, not the Creator.

They are the art, not the Artist.

They are the gift, not the Giver.

But they do tell us about Him.

Apparently, He likes for insects, against all odds, to make dripping gold out of trees. He likes for massive, gentle, awkward creatures to produce cream and for dark, damp dirt to grow vibrant fruit. He hides delicacies inside pearl-lined rocks under salt water.

Maybe somewhere in our fallen blood, we miss the garden. Maybe we somehow know to want for the river that flows between fruit trees. Maybe we feel perilously close to the milk of the Word and the Bread of Life when we encounter the earthly symbols of the eternal: earthly milk and earthly bread.

It’s almost like seeing something from a dream you had that you can’t quite remember… the feeling you have when something is entirely foreign and familiar at the same time.

“For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.”

Romans 1:20

It is the beauty of food that I love; the beauty of the process and what it points to.

There is nothing inherently righteous about raw milk or fresh-milled grain or home-grown vegetables. But there is something really beautiful about it.

It is a regrettable scandal of our culture that many people miss out on this kind of beauty; this nature-weather-soil-labor-fruit-enjoyment paradigm.

Convenience food is not wrong so to say, but I think those who live off of it are missing out on a deeper nourishment than what’s on the label.

And I realize farming isn’t a viable option for all people. But a potted tomato or a homemade loaf of bread has every bit of the magic (real life magic, I mean) as the farm.

Even if your hands can’t find the means to produce food whatsoever, they can still lay hold of the labor of cooking it. Cooking the food is like unwrapping a gift and putting it to good use!

And beyond the cooking there is the eating, the fellowship, the gratitude.

Jewel chugged a glass of milk today out of an old jam jar and said, to no-one in particular, “Thank you Cinnamon, thank you Layla, thank you Daddy!”

(Cinnamon and Layla are the milk cows and Daddy does the milking.)

And I felt a little part of myself become whole, because she received a simple glass of milk and gave thanks for the labor and the love that went into it. She sees it and participates in it everyday. She is fully receiving the goodness of God’s creation and expressing it with gratitude. And that makes me happy because sometimes I wonder if this work is worth it. But I think that makes it worth it.

I guess my point in all this is to sort of put a landmark here.

I want to tell myself (and anyone who sees my posts about beautiful food) that the food itself is not the virtue. And by that logic, other food is not a vice.

But that the food and the beauty of the process of growing or producing or cooking it, is to encounter the creation, the art, the gift, and to look up to Him from which it came with gratitude.

It is to really come to terms with our creaturely reality, to remember we are of the soil and will return to it. To think of where we will be after that, at what table we will sit, and what fruit, bread, milk, wine and meat we will partake of then.

To labor for good things from the earth and rejoice in the fruit thereof, and feel the deep, contented happiness that only an honest potato can bring.

“Go, eat your bread with joy, and drink your wine with a merry heart, for God has already approved what you do.”

Eccelesiastes 9:7

-Courtney