On Stewardship

Thinking about theft and dust bowls and what it takes to thrive

Yesterday, a friend of mine told me this story. They took a pack of brats and a watermelon and some other snacks to the community pool. It’s a gated pool in a nice new-ish neighborhood, with a clubhouse and kitchen. They went into the fridge to make dinner, and the food was gone; cleaned out, stolen. It had to have been someone who lives there, someone with an access code, someone for whom this neighborhood, this town, this community, is home. How does one steal from one’s own life? It’s the psychology of a looter, of a pirate, someone who can’t be bothered to stay in one place long enough to feel guilt for making it worse.

Our neighbor turned off the irrigation ditch this year. The water is technically his, ours comes from another source, but it runs through our land and others, an object lesson in collective consequences. So the ditch sits, taking up valuable real estate by not doing what it was meant for, instead it is dusty and barren. The chorus of summer evening frogs has gone silent. My boys can’t float popsicle-stick man-o-wars and hunt for water bugs, there is no water feature to remind my horses they aren’t made of sugar. The trees just on the other side of our fence have all died, they had years of wetland and were used to feasting, so now in famine they lean in brown dejection over the fence. The land aches to be cared for, even sagebrush and rocks would be a welcome change to the blowing dust and sad, thirsty bits of grass poking up.

My husband and kids making friends at Sisters Rodeo last weekend

By contrast, our pastures are my husband’s point of particular pride. Any bald spots or brown patches are a dig at his abilities and must be rectified forthwith, to have our neighbor care so little about his is mind-boggling, not to say upsetting. It’s a shame, because when one neighbor decides to stop caring about his parcel, it affects everyone’s land.

Bad neighborhoods don’t simply become bad one day. It’s not like everyone bands together and agrees that they hate clean streets and unlocked doors so it’s time for a new era of mistrust and trash. It starts with stealing some cookout food or not watering your grass.

Many faith traditions have a theology of stewardship, such as in Genesis 2 when God tells mankind to take care of Eden at the very beginning. Despite our higher impulses, we don’t often get it right. There’s frequently fighting about what stewardship should look like, and times when we just don’t care if we’re getting it wrong, we want it our way. But at our best, we know that the only way is this: start with goodness and work from there. We can’t wait for our neighbor to turn the water on, we have to fertilize our pastures, irrigate them, care for them, and give our kids the example of healthy stewardship. It’s caretaking that isn’t easy or cheap, but it is right.

Obviously the land is on my mind. Agriculture is near to my heart and Oregon has a plethora of local meat and produce and wine and beer and outdoor activities: this is our own Eden. But it’s true of culture, too. We have to steward kindness and neighborly acts, just as we do the land we live on. Slow down for the mom and young kids in the crosswalk, even if the four-year-old has decided to study a bug right then and there (this may or may not be the voice of said mom.) Be a courteous user of trails and campsites, shop local when you can. Our neighborhoods are only safe because we watch out for kids on bikes and we use the honor system for food left in the shared fridge. Our towns are only cute because we smile at babies and dogs, we support our local businesses and we tip our servers well. Our land is only beautiful because we care for it, we water the pastures and work the land and leave the wild places beautifully wild.

We can’t do everything: we can’t fix all the problems or mend all the fences or irrigate all the grass. But I hope for all of us, the grace to steward our parcel well.