In today’s world, we talk of time as a possession. It is a commodity that can be gained, spent, or lost. But before the invention of the clock, people understood time as God’s time, something too big to own or use. Days, lunar cycles, and seasons marked the turning of a cosmos; they reflected a sometimes scary and mysterious universe whose time we inhabit rather than control.
In a moment, the pandemic grounded to a halt the daily hum of our ordered sense of time. And even though much of daily life returned to normal, a sense of uncertainty hung over us like a cloud, or like a broken clock. Forces, in some cases too mysterious to name, are reducing certainties. These forces bring to a halt many of the myths that previously sustained our collective life.
Organic farmer, Steven Hebbard, believes that good farming, like many traditional crafts, can reorient us to a larger sense of time: something we can humbly receive, embody, and even celebrate. Uncertain times demand a new orientation, or perhaps a very old one.
"I will lead the blind by ways they have not known,
along unfamiliar paths I will guide them;
I will turn the darkness into light before them
and make the rough places smooth.
These are the things I will do;
I will not forsake them."
Isaiah 42:16
This episode was recorded in the fall of 2021.
Moving into a home a few blocks from one of Austin's most notorious intersections, Steven discovered a thriving community centered around a garden. Where the scene might have communicated hopelessness, on trips to his neighborhood community garden, Steven found a passion tending both the local culture and agriculture. After an internship up the road at the Austin's landmark, Boggy Creek Farm, Steven decided to take his new found knowledge of neighborliness and farming to create a program that actively knit the two together. In 2009 he founded Genesis Gardens, a program within Mobile Loaves & Fishes Inc. dedicated to providing meaningful work, a stable paycheck, and food for the largest community for the homeless in the country. He has since built a career farming with communities in poverty. He is a passionate advocate of local, organic, and dignified work, and continues to study the way agriculture and urban life can work together to create a humane and thriving environment for all people.