“Each moment is a gift from God to be lived to the full.” Laudato Si’ 226.
It all began with a spark at the start of the lockdown in March 2020. “Let’s have a garden!” exclaimed Fr Rene Javellana SJ. So with the arrival of a truck load of top soil, some bamboo, and logs Rene ordered, Fr Ro Atilano SJ and Fr Albert Alejo SJ collaborated with Fr Tej Kujur, an Adivasi Jesuit from India, in weeding and tilling the garden of the Jesuit Residence in the Ateneo de Manila University. Soon the erstwhile bushland was transformed into what Ro named CoVeg 20 Garden (Community Vegetable 2020 Garden).
In looking for more bamboos, a hut for selling bibingka (rice cake) was spotted at the Ateneo High School and transported to the garden. With the seeds Ro bought, the garden flourished with okra (ladies’ fingers). It expanded with the addition of a new site, plush in sunlight and nutrients for growing ampalaya (bitter melon). After several harvests, the trio returned to the original site which became very productive, occasioning Albert to put up a trellis for the patola (silk melon). Other Jesuits attended to the trio with juices and snacks. Many more Jesuits gathered for the blessing of the CoVeg 20 Garden, presided by JR Orberta SJ. With Ro’s social media promotion, donors blessed the garden with hose, seeds, and, later, Agapornis (lovebirds), peacocks, and pigeons.
In conjunction with the Jubilee of Creation in September last year, the garden inspired Ro and Albert to produce 26 episodes of Karaniwang Karunungan (Everyday Wisdom), a Facebook series that has gone viral featuring Albert’s philosophy and wisdom of everyday life. “Serene attentiveness” in Laudato si’ 226, Albert explains in a pensive mood, “is about ‘practical mindfulness’, being attentive and alert to what is there, without overthinking, overspiritualising, taking one little thing in nature and connecting it with the bigger world of life, making us appreciate the small things. You learn to be satisfied with small things; there is no need to grab other people’s resources that leads to conflict.”
A year later, after clearing a few trees, setting up two benches and a coffee tray, and with a good view and sunshine, CoVeg 20 Garden has become a community space for the Jesuits during the uncertainty of the pandemic. Ro quips: “It has become a place for picture-taking, sharing of joy as everyone was a part of it; it is really a community effort. It has brought so much sanity to all of us.”
Albert recalls how the search for more bamboos led him to discover Bishop Francisco Claver’s amphitheatre of stonework, signifying his hitherto unknown cultural-ecological-political spirituality that will be unveiled in the upcoming Karaniwang Karunungan episode, “The Unsilenced Stones of Bishop Francisco Claver SJ”.
The garden, now flourishing with ampalaya, chili, bok choy,eggplant, malunggay (moringa), okra, papaya, and patola, continues to mentor us in curia personalis: “You have to personally touch the vine, and guide the vine and direct the patola to come back to the trellis,” chuckles Albert. “I recall when we were kids, we used to entice, induce the patola and upo (calabash) to bear fruit ahead of their time based on the belief that the animals and plants interact with humans,” Albert shares.
Tej, who belongs to JEPASA (Jesuit pastors in South Asia), translates the Universal Apostolic Preference of Care for Our Common Home into greening his parish in Nepal. He shares: “Farming is part of my DNA. I am so attached to nature. It gives me positive energy. Every morning, when I go and see the plant grow, I feel happy. My community asks me about the garden, about the next harvest. It makes my communication with them better. I will bring what I’ve learned back to Nepal.”
The garden is Mother Earth’s way of mentoring us in the wisdom that “we are all interconnected” (LS 16, 86). Personally, I feel the need to reconnect with Earth-Mother by feeling the texture of the soil with my bare hands. Touching the soil with gentle love is feeling “a caress of God” (LS 84), which allows the soil microbes, for instance from ingesting a single spinach leaf with over 800 different species of bacteria, to fortify our gut microbiome. Touching the soil allows the Mycobacterium vaccae found in the soil to stimulate serotonin production in the neurons and protect us against brain inflammation due to stress.
Indeed, gardening is God’s gift of green creativity and sanity to countless individuals, families, and communities during this pandemic in the global south and north.
Jojo M Fung SJ is a Malaysian Jesuit priest teaching at the Loyola School of Theology in Manila, Philippines.