By Christa Van Daele
Published in March 2018
This winter our family has tried a microgreen share, offered by The Working Centre for a twelve-week period. It seemed both winter and myself in these unsettled and distracting times were curled up in a quiet, incubating mood. My son Jonathan had unexpectedly given me a start-up kit, seeds, trays, and an LED light to get our family started with microgreens at Christmas. He planted these before my eyes a few days after Christmas in a sunny window bay that he swore was the ideal growing condition; he completed the project by hanging an LED light at just the right height to maximize good growth. At the same time, about two weeks before Christmas, I had ordered the The Working Centre’s weekly shares as a surprise Christmas present for my husband.
Now, in the winter of 2018, we have a lush green revolution on hand! Our small family went from a no-microgreen household to one literally bursting with offerings. You can’t come to our house these days without microgreens clustered lavishly on your soup, or mixed into your salad. I’ve found that I’m making certain spicy soups with the thought in mind of “what would this exact soup taste like with a pile of crunchy green pea shoots on top?” I’ve never been much of a joyful cook, so these are somewhat evolved and concentrated culinary thoughts, for me!
There’s an edible, tangible part to this adventure, and also, I have decided, a more contemplative part. I would go as far as to say that in the past few days, my ocean of sprightly microgreens has stirred me to thought, even to a bit of philosophy. For example, on certain wintry days, I have grumbled at the thought of going all the way downtown to pick them up from the Queen Street Commons, even though this location is a reasonable and friendly one. Who wants to go down there in the slush and snow? Went the thinking.
The last few weeks, I’ve been slowly, and somewhat delicately, revising my perspective. My thoughts changed in steps as tiny as the microgreens themselves. I have hovered attentively over my own grumble-fest and nudged myself to think a little more deeply. A writer and Mennonite pastor named Arthur Boer who I heard lecture locally about his time on the Camino about eight years ago has helped me out considerably. My own thick-of-winter grumbling has evolved into a consideration of Boer’s explication of the work of Alfred Borgmann, a social philosopher. Boer, who shares his thoughts about his pilgrimage in an easygoing prose entitled The Way is Made for Walking, presents a succinct synopsis of Borgmann’s work on “focal living.” You can live in a focussed way, say Boer and Borgmann, without travelling the Camino itself.
Here is Borgmann’s thinking on “focal living” as helpfully shared by Arthur Boer. When we live in a focussed way, we can deliberately pick practices, events, and activities that stir in us a concentration and a focus. These activities or concerns have a “commanding presence”. They take energy or effort; they make demands on us. They require discipline, attention, or focus. They are beyond our ability to manipulate or to consume. The activities or events or practices may require skills, patience, persistence to pursue. So, the fact that I can travel to a friendly place set apart to pick up the greens, chat with someone who knows exactly where to find them in the Café, and connect in real time with the people who grew them – these conditions make the microgreens at least three notches more delightful to get hold of than a handful of Brussel sprouts, imported from far away, that I bought under the fluorescent lights of the supermarket at the local strip mall.
Since “focal activities” as defined by Borgmann also “connect us with a wider world including people and ecosystems” (he gives examples such as gardening, hiking in the wilderness, and more), the microgreens I am picking up connect me to not only The Working Centre’s greenhouse and garden and food preparation networks, but also to the love and expertise of my son, who encouraged me to grow batches at home for the learning and fun inherent in having living healthy greens sprout around me as I write.
Third, focal activities have a centering or orienting power. They help us be in touch with something “greater than myself and of ultimate significance.” Walking into a cathedral or museum or gallery of art or wilderness are such possibilities; doing difficult concentrated things like making music, making a quilt, or walking the Camino day by day, is also a hugely centering force. In my winter world, overcoming natural consumer laziness, tedious old stuck habits in shopping and cooking – those things don’t look hard, but they can be! Nurturing my own microgreens, learning more about how they are used by talking to others, and knowing that The Working Centre community truly cares about healthy food grown in small spaces, can offer me such a sense of significance as I consider what I can give up in order to enjoy the simple pleasures of cooking mindfully with the shares on hand.
The focal things that “move, teach, inspire, and reassure” – what is your list in times of trouble, distraction, and turbulence? The list can start anywhere or be nudged into being by a modest life event around which one gives extra thought and care. Deciding to engage with microgreens at more than a casual level has connected me to paths of green, lively growth – and an abundance I had not anticipated.
“Each of us can compile our own list,” says Boer. “What each of us names in our own lists says as much about us as it does about our surroundings and circumstances.”
Four books that support practical and philosophical inquiry and discussion in focal living:
Boers, Arthur Paul. The Way Is Made by Walking: A Pilgrimage Along the Camino de Santiago. Downer’s Grove, Illinois: Intervarsity Press, 2007.
Borgmann, Alfred. Crossing the Post-Modern Divide. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992.
Borgmann, Alfred. Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life: A Philosophical Inquiry. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984.
Sanders, Russel Scott. Staying Put: Making Home in a Restless World. Boston: Beacon Press, 1993.
