While reading the introduction of Dave Jacke's Edible Forest Garden, I happened to look out the front window to see the back of the brick Baptist church in front of me.
The back part of their lot is fenced in with a metal fence - a fence that has repeatedly had to be repaired because of kids hanging on it. A "No trespassing" sign was put up at one point after that happened, but I think that's gone now- someone must have taken it down. One of the back windows, which I imagine is connected to the sanctuary, is broken, and the two doors that go out to the symmetrical walkway are boarded up, as if the building was abandoned. But it is not abandoned. Rather, it is quite vibrant, with every Sunday lively gospel music streaming from the windows, through the brick walls into the street. Especially on holidays and Easter where you can hear the strong female voice wailing away with an organ and drum set rocking right along. On the one brick wall on the back, there is a little graffiti with white spray paint- the only thing the young kids could get a hold of, I guess. A few times during the summer season, the moment comes for the crew to come out back and mow the grass, pick up the litter, check on the fence. It seems laborious. There is a metal guard rail along the street that creates a guided pathway on the sidewalk, and the kids like to sit on that in the summertime, and bang on it with sticks when they're bored- completely unaware of really how loud that "TING! TING!" sound can be. That guard rail, I only recently learned, was put there after a car plowed through it while in a car chase fleeing the police. The man quickly crashed the car and was shot to death at that spot, after having shot a cop and driven through several people's front lawns. That all happened there, in front of my house, about a decade ago. My neighbor Mike told me about it, like it was yesterday. He said he still had the bullet hole in his upstairs window from when the cops began firing at anyone who was out or may be a possible suspect for shooting the police officer. He said, till this day, he still hasn't found where that bullet went, but he imagines its somewhere in the walls.
That all happened there. And now what to make of it. When we first moved in, it looked like a crematorium, or a factory because of its stark cold brick and tall chimney at the back. The only thing to mark it as a church is a cross, which I took to be a blessing of sorts for when we moved in- considering it was the one thing we saw when we looked out the front of our house.
In the introduction of the Edible Forests book, Dave Jacke describes the Garden of Eden- and the vision sunk in. There- at the back of the church. Where it is now a place of nuisance. It must become the Garden of Eden. At the back of the building on the North side, it functions as a perfect place to keep fruit trees, and it can be a little sanctuary spot- mostly walled in, just enough to create a safe and prayerful space and to keep it sacred and not trashed. The kids could transform their graffiti into murals of scenes from the Garden of Eden. There can be a bench, and flowers, and nitrogen-fixing plants, dynamic accumulators, plants to attract pollinators- a whole system of plants & plant guilds that will do the work of maintenance so the Maintenance workers can become Harvesters primarily.
There is a lot of work to be done before this vision can come to fruition, but when the seed is planted- it wants to grow, and so it shall!
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