Blessed are those who trust in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord. They shall be like a tree planted by water, sending out its roots by the stream. It shall not fear when heat comes, and its leaves shall stay green; in the year of drought it is not anxious, and it does not cease to bear fruit. Jeremiah 17:7-8
“Mature materiality requires that we inhabit our right place as partners with the place. Thus rather than the place belonging to the “owner,” in partnership the place and the owner belong to each other and are cast together in a long-range destiny. It follows that the owner is assigned to a purpose not of maximizing production, but rather of enhancing the well-being of the home place. Wendell Berry writes of “kindly use” of the land that depends upon intimate knowledge of the terrain of the property. The purpose of such “kindly use” is the prospect of durability in the right place, an assumption that coming generations may inhabit this right place. Thus the owner of the right place is not the final occupant but in fact belongs to a long chain of those who have inhabited and who will inhabit in time to come.”
Walter Brueggemann in Materiality As Resistance: Five Elements for Moral Action in the Real World (Louisville: WJKP, 2020), 73.
Imagine if every follower of Christ aimed to enhance the well-being of the place God planted them instead of focusing on maximizing production. We would appear as “partners with the place.”
I was walking through the market in Centro Bogotá before dinner two nights ago. Many t-shirts said, “parce,” and I asked, “What does that mean?” My Colombian friends said, “Partners.”
They echoed Brueggemann. They said, “We are partners in this place.” It means that we serve each other to help each other stay green, bear fruit, and flourish. But they admitted, there is not much flourishing in Colombia.
They said with the rollout of Palmful of Coffee, we will not just be “partners with the place” in word, but we will do it in deed. What would it mean for you to serve as a partner with the place where God has you in deed?
To live this way, to abandon the focus on maximizing production, to act as stewards and not owners, and to demonstrate the kindly use of the land calls for us not to assimilate to culture but to live radically differently.