“The humility we aspire to at our very best is inseparable from the humus beneath our feet—the ground that someone must till if we are to eat, that someone must tend if we are to survive. Stability of place begins with the humble acknowledgment that our life depends on the land we live upon. Barbara Kingsolver, one of our most articulate contemporary advocates for the land, reflects on her adult life, noting that she has dug asparagus beds into the yards of every house she has owned and some that she has rented. Why bother? we might ask, when asparagus is readily available at any good supermarket, and for much less trouble? Kingsolver answers, “I suppose in those unsettled years I was aspiring to a stability I couldn’t yet purchase.” The trouble for most of us isn’t so much that we cannot afford stability as it is that we don’t value it. We idealize and aspire to a life on the move, spending what resources we have on acquiring skills that make us more marketable (that is, more mobile). We want to “move up in the world,” which almost always means closer to a highway, an airport, or a shopping mall. I cannot deny that this is why I left the rural farming community where I grew up. But neither can I ignore the fact that this is what has been unraveling the neighborhood where I now live since the late 1960s.”
~ The Spiritual Discipline of Staying Put: Planting Roots in a Placeless Culture, Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove
Personally, I prefer the stability of my garden, my chickens & rabbits, and my tiny house with it’s wood burning stove. Upward mobility may be attractive to some at almost any price, but I prefer my freedom to a big pile of cash any day of the week.
