Heirloom Seeds
In 2020, we held our first, and we thought hopefully at the time, perhaps our only Zoom Thanksgiving Craft Hour. We invited the child within each, age being unimportant, to gather round as closely as possible in the virtual room, to bring crayons and colored paper and scissors and glue and to spend some time imaginatively giving thanks. From this hour, we sprouted a tree of leaf-hands decorated and inscribed with our gratitudes–of family, home, health, beds, water, mountains, animals, earth and stars.
While we hoped we might continue this new tradition in-person this year, we again brought color and textured materials to a virtual table along with all the creativity we could muster for our 2nd Annual Zoom Thanksgiving Craft Hour last Saturday, November 20, 2021. We scooted our chairs and imaginations in close again this year in order to plant some little acorns of hope from which “mighty oaks might grow”.
Last Saturday, we “planted” seeds of creativity and of beauty…acorns designed and inscribed in the language of vates and each bearing the hope of coming to fruition as great trees with branches laden with: “beauty”, “wisdom”, “kindness”, “dance”, “art”, “brotherhood”, “hope”, “patience”, “imagination”, “love”, “color”, “joy”, “poetry”—and oh yes, “coconuts”— as was 4-year-old Zoe’s singular choice!
As I sat looking at the Zoom matrix of the group, each person busily designing and decorating their beautiful acorns, the phrase “heirloom seeds” came to mind. Here in Colorado, home gardeners had an extraordinary harvest of tomatoes this year—our gardening neighbor invited us to a “tomato tasting” and for the first time, I truly came to appreciate the difference in an heirloom tomato from a hybrid. The Brandywine tomato from our neighbor’s garden was one of the most delicious plant foods I’ve ever tasted.
Heirloom seeds are open-pollinated--meaning that unlike hybrids, seeds you collect from one year will produce plants with most of the characteristics of the parent plant. Many heirloom varieties were preserved by home gardeners who saved seed from their family gardens from year to year. Other seeds travelled around the world in the pockets or letters of immigrants, which is why, though the tomato evolved in Central America, we have varieties from Russia, Italy, Japan, France, Germany and Kentucky. And, heirloom seeds aren’t all about tomatoes and other food plants – there are also cherished varieties of heirloom flowers–roses, most notably. Heirloom roses are sometimes collected from cemeteries where they were once planted at gravesites by mourners and left undisturbed in the decades since.
Heirloom seeds hold in memory the flavor of gardens. Here, watching the screen of heads—old and young—all leaning in to this simple act of coloring and gluing and trimming and naming and chatting and gentle teasing and laughter and storytelling, my realization of the heirloom seeds of Christuman. Suddenly, I catch the scent of roses from the gardens of Bill, Mary and Barb’s lives. Suddenly, the taste of so many sweet garden times of Christuman are on my tongue—the sweet taste and scent of Atrium times, of moments around the communal table, of sacred celebrations, of evenings of conversation, of prayer calls. And yes, there’s those slightly exotic tastes and scents of pilgrimage, of travel, imaginal and real, from heirloom seeds pocketed, embedded in messages, poems and nightly blessings. And now, yes, in our newest tradition of a Thanksgiving Craft Hour–here, in this virtual matrix, we gathered in our hands and planted yet again, the heirloom seeds of Christuman for future gardens and gardeners—keeping alive the taste and scent of human creativity, love, joy and hope—preserving the legacy of Christuman, all believed and all beloved.