By John Pitney
50 years ago, September 28, 1974, Debbie and I were married in a ceremony with way too many clergy, down by the duck pond on our seminary campus, the Methodist Theological School in Ohio (MTSO). Surrounded by a sacred human community of seminary students and faculty with family gathered from far flung coasts, we sang our songs, vowed our vows, placed rings on the proper fingers and shared the joy of our first wedded kiss. In that Garden we got our start, hand-in-hand before the altar of a gnarled stump made wise by its persistence. We were not to be alone. Ducks quacked from the pond close by. Turtles snapped and dragonflies chased. In the shallows, the Great Blue Heron crept through pond scum to spear a sleepy frog. Overhead the kestrel flew home with a shrew for her mate. At the woods edge, the groundhog, who snatched way too many tomatoes from our seminary garden that summer, wore a holy smirk. Earthworms beneath us in their tunnels carried on, renewing the humus. Beside us mushrooms made life from death. Every Eden has its Tree of Life. This was our first.
Before
After
For our Jubilee, we were eager to return to that altar of origin. You have to get those before and after pics to show the kids right? So we borrowed a friend’s Tesla and drove 3,000 miles from Oregon in June. We stopped in Bloomington, Indiana, to see Chuck and Jan Foster. Chuck was our Christian Ed professor and the lead officiant back then, and Jan had hosted the rehearsal dinner at their home, arranging all the flowers they’d planted in their home garden that summer, just for us. Since our visit Jan has died, returning to her Ground and such is the circle of life.
Arriving at MTSO, the seminary put us up for two nights in the same student dorm where we came to know each other in our young naivety. We knew somebody had burned the stump to the ground a few years after our wedding, so we did our best to find the magic spot and snap the “after” shot. I know y’all will be thinking to yourselves “Wow, they haven’t aged a bit in all those decades!” So, go ahead, say it aloud! Anyway… knowing how United Methodists are always in search of new altars, we kept on. Of course we had heard of Seminary Hill Farm, so we met up with Laura Bergman, a recent MTSO graduate, who runs the farm’s Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) and coordinates volunteers. She spent several hours with us, telling the stories and showing the farm. I would say “OMG.” But it’s really more like ‘HRGOHHABTWWGIT!’ I mean Holy Regenerative God of Humble Humus And By The Way, What Got Into Them?’ God is doing a new thing! We have indeed perceived it and it is Freeking Awesome.
Red-brick dorm with potato rows in foreground
Aerial view
Back in our time there this used to be a campus of academic red brick and studious gasoline-manicured lawns. The turf where Debbie once integrated the male-dominated after-class flag football game now grows long rows of spuds breathing the afternoon air and beds of succulent asparagus watering the mouths of those who taste and see. Adjacent the once vacant woodland, where a vast sod desert once laid, is a diverse cornucopia of hoop houses full of greens, plantings of peppers and tomatoes mulched with homegrown hay. A mobile hen house just arrived anticipating a harvest of cackle-berries and chicken poop compost to build the soil. I think there was even okra! Most of the campus lawn hasn’t been mowed for some time now as the land is slowly going native. A block of buildings are heated and cooled from geothermal wells beneath the pathways seminarians walk daily in search of the Divine and a ground-mounted rack of 60 solar panels, facing the same dining hall where we cut our wedding cake, makes it clear and visible what our people believe.
And here’s the thing, the 60 member CSA scheme planted there keeps Seminary Hill produce on the menu of the MTSO dining hall and abundant on the tables of 60 households across the larger neighborhood. Seminarians don’t have to imagine what “every family sitting beneath their own vine and fig tree with none to terrify them” looks like. They re-create that economy every day. In that gracious space, one suspects Jesus is mistaken for the Gardener most of the time; and the community, with soil under their fingernails, has a hands-on chance to discern where their real treasures lay.
What it has meant to return to our first Eden after 50 years has been more than a homecoming. As a clergy couple, we started marriage and ministry by the duck pond and were launched wide-eyed, determined to save the world and the church while raising a family. As we were leaving, the language in our United Methodist Discipline had just been changed, and we would spend five decades trying to convince our LBGTQ+ neighbors that we weren’t what our denomination said we were.
Since we packed our bags and set out for our first appointment in Idaho, two-thirds of critterkind have vanished from the face of the Earth as humanity has cursed the ground and climate in every realm possible. And now on the eve of an election, all Creation groans as we choose between life and death, blessing and curse. And of course we have also persevered. Across our communities of faith, we have spawned new ministries of social holiness and regenerative justice never dreamed of. We have supported CSA farms and marched with field workers. We protest modern lynchings, create community gardens where church lawns once ruled, and cover church tops and parking lots with solar panels. This spring we, at long last, replaced that language of hate with words of justice and hope, while, at the same time, we called for creation justice organizing in every annual conference and advocated divestment from fossil fuels.
So returning to our first Eden has gifted us with an unbelievable validation. I said we have persevered and we have. But for how many decades did we think we were the only ones, as we experimented with new ministries we didn’t know anyone else was trying or even cared. It was lonely. So yes, revisiting a transformed campus reaffirmed the original vow we took standing before the old gnarled Tree of Life 50 years ago. We are not alone.
Laura with lettuce and asparagus
Laura’s husband grilling
As we finished our tour of the place, we asked Laura Bergman if she had recommendations for good eating places in town. Pondering for a moment, she said, “You know what, why don’t you eat with us out here tonight.” Without thinking, I replied, “That sounds great! I was hoping for rhubarb pie!” So she gathered asparagus and romaine from Seminary Hill and later that evening her husband joined us with lamb chops from their home place. We grilled the chops and ate fresh asparagus and romaine sitting around a picnic table with us two and those two and a couple seminary interns. As we sat surrounded by these heavenly hosts, we realized we were literally 100 feet from where we first laid eyes on each other in the dorm parking lot in 1973. At the close of our wedding that next fall, we served each guest the bread and the cup, a small eucharist in those inspired woods. This in 2024 was a much larger Communion. And we had home baked rhubarb pie!
I leave you with this blessing, born of that community of caretakers, hung permanently on a hoop house walls—
The Soil Keeper’s Prayer
We give thanks for the blessing of all life on Earth.
We give thanks for the Mysteries of the elements
blending into infinite forms: our shared heritage.
We honor the divine nature of All That Is,
as Rivers running into the same Ocean.
May the light move through our hands
and steady our feet as we travel this Sacred Way.
Rev. John Pitney is a husband, father, and grandfather to five-year-old Jackson. He is a member of the Oregon-Idaho Conference, co-leads the Oregon Interfaith Solar Campaign, and is on the Creation Justice team for Oregon Interfaith Power and Light. He believes in the power of congregations to make a difference!