Today, Philip and I had a conversation about living more organically.
He is California road tripping with his best friend Ben as a final bachelor adventure. On the second day of their jouney, they stopped to see another friend, Daniel, who is participating in a program called Mission Year in Oakland. Basically, Daniel lives with four other young adults in an apartment and has become a contributing and relational part of the local community, through teaching and community service and talking to people he bumps into on the street.
After going to church together, the boys played disc golf and then went to a local market to buy dinner supplies. Philip told me that he suggested that to save time, they buy a tub of hummus, but everyone attacked him, insisting that the hummus be home-made. So they bought the individual ingredients for the home-made hummus and other Mediterrainian munchies and got to work cooking together. When they had finished, they enjoyed the fruits of their labor together and stayed up late into the night talking and watching a 25-minute Mission Year promo video Daniel and one of the other Mission Year guys had shot. Philip told me that they fed seven people for the price of two people to go out to eat somewhere, and it was "GOOD."
This is what I mean by organic. It's often spontaneous, but it's not rushed. It leaves space for "the plan" to evolve; it leaves space for conversation. It incorporates moving your body; it incorporates nature. It involves being together; it involves food with ingredients you can identify. Is is creative; it is musical; it is visual; it takes a little sweat and a little thought. It requires moving at a pace that allows you to hear God speak. When you live organically, you live with purpose, you live with laughter, you live with ever-growing humility and hope. You buy less; you throw away less. You walk more. You serve more. You dance more. You listen more; you ask more questions. You heart breaks more often. People become essential. Rest becomes essential. Prayer becomes like breathing.
Per our conversation, we decided that our first intentional action toward a living a more organic life will be to learn how to make home-made pesto. Pesto is one of God's greatest and most profound gifts, and what could be more Christ-like than carving out time to create it ourselves, with our bare hands, all-naturally, and then enjoy it with friends as we talk and laugh and connect into the night?