The Challenge
“...the care of the earth is our most ancient and most worthy and, after all, our most pleasing responsibility. To cherish what remains of it, and to foster its renewal, is our only legitimate hope.”
― Wendell Berry, The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays
Our Response
Cultivate58 is born from serious reflection upon the connected challenges facing the world today and a need to move toward an integrated solution. It is profoundly practical and at the same time spiritual. It is personal and yet communal--even global. We're endeavoring to rediscover a whole host of life skills lost to our generation. We're about reforging strong connections in our communities, the breaking of which has left us all vulnerable.
Although we are interested in sustainability, creativity, community and spiritual growth, Cultivate58 is more than the expression of any one of these things. Our desire is to facilitate a relational network of people looking to grow in all these ways. We are not interested in prescribing what anyone should do, but more in encouraging each other to share this journey and share discoveries along the way. This is more than a gardening or social club. It is a collective and proactive invitation to respond for those who feel there must be another way.
Cultivate 58 is about cultivating or intentionally nurturing the right environment for us to embark on this journey together, and connect with those already on their way.
What’s 58 about?
The fifty-eighth chapter of an ancient spiritual text explores the relationship between a people and the Creator of the world. The Creator says to them that he sees all their religious activity and notes their sincerity. However their focus is nearly entirely self-centered and has failed to impact the the way they relate to others. Only when they devote their effort toward caring for other people--the poor, the marginalized, those left behind by the wider culture--will they be the kind of people and community they're intended to be. When this becomes their identity they will be like a well watered garden whose springs never fail, they will restore everything that's been broken in their society and re-inhabit the abandoned places. This is the kind of people we want to be. The heart of Cultivate 58 is a joining together in the pursuits called for in this text.
Those of us initiating Cultivate58 have been deeply involved in leading faith communities. We are profoundly impacted by texts like Chapter 58 because our spiritual pursuits often became trapped inside our faith communities and failed to consistently impact the lives of those around us in a practical way. We believe we are invited into a whole different way of being and living than that offered by our culture.
Cultivate58 is:
- A collective of people seeking to demonstrate and cultivate compassion through sustainable urban agriculture for stronger, healthier communities.
- Gathering people and stuff to make fertile compost, learn how to grow through permaculture design, and to produce food for ourselves, the poor and organizations that feed them, while growing a deeper sense of community through compassion.
- We want to encourage creative solutions to community problems through collective sharing and caring. Join us with your skills and talents as we embark on a new adventure, learning together, sharing together, and doing together.
- We are about stewardship, not ownership, sharing of abundance, not hoarding of resources.