Spirit and Conscience

One day my friend Jovani called to see if I wanted some free seeds to plant. He said he could get them from a place called Solomon’s Porch. I was interested but hadn’t actually decided yet to make a garden this year.

I had considered it, though: My two backyard elm trees had always provided too much shade to even consider a garden. Then, this past spring one of the elms had to be removed because of Dutch Elm disease and my back yard was suddenly brighter.

Should I make a garden? The invitation from my 94-year-old neighbor to cultivate half of her garden was ongoing. (She plants the other half!) I thought I would just stick with that space. But when Jovani brought the seeds, so carefully labeled and accompanied by a chart of information about each vegetable, my enthusiasm grew and I saw that my part of Betty’s garden would be too small.

Before I knew what I was doing, I was digging up my back yard—not just loosening the ground, but double digging!!! Double digging is a bio-intensive agricultural technique in which you remove the dirt a foot down (in the area you want to cultivate) and then save it in a pile. Then you dig down another foot and save that dirt in a separate pile. Then you put the first dirt in the bottom and the second dirt on top. The first pile is all clay and surface weeds. The second pile is the rich, black dirt you want. Needless to say, this process is labor intensive.

I had tried double digging once before, but had given up after a few shovelfuls. This time I decided to go for it. A simple 6- by 6-foot patch seemed manageable. Jovani and my daughter Gloria helped a lot. By the time we got to 8 inches, though, I thought, “Why don’t we just loosen the floor of the hole and return the dirt? This is too much work.” But when I started to loosen the floor, I saw where the black dirt started. It was like striking gold. We had to finish.

Strangely, when you put the dirt back in, there’s more than you took out.
So you make a “raised bed.” Mine is only 4 inches high because that was the width of the free boards I found in the alley. Even after filling in the frame, there was still lots of the rich, black dirt left, so I loosened another patch of ground and put the black dirt on top for a cucumber and zucchini hill.

Everything was planted by the middle of June and it came up five days later.
If it weren’t for the Vecinos (Neighbors) program at Solomon’s Porch I wouldn’t have a garden. One of the things they do is give free seeds (oddly enough, donated to Vecinos by Starbucks) to people in their neighborhood and help them plant gardens. They gave me seeds through Jovani—he goes there for English classes—who brought them to my neighborhood and offered the energy needed to make a garden. (It was easy to accept his help because he seemed to truly enjoy digging.)

The seed gifts reminded me of Amish friendship bread or a chain letter—something that starts at a tiny point and fans out and fans out until strangers are connected to each other. I picture a trail of seeds spreading out from Solomon’s Porch and producing lots of food and lots of good will. It’s a very nice image. It made me want to meet the strangers.

One day I drove by 2824 13th Avenue South, where Solomon’s Porch is housed in a large industrial building called Northwest Charcoal and Chemical Company. Banners with the church’s name on it mark the entrance.

I called Solomon’s Porch and left a message that I’d like to write about who they are, if they didn’t mind. The new administrative assistant, a woman named Hannah Lieder, called back. She lives five blocks from the church and discovered it while trying to get a look at the used airplane parts warehouse across the street. She thought Solomon’s Porch was a factory that made sun rooms or something.

But when she found out it was a church she checked out its website and liked it. The first time she went to the church, she was “dumbfounded.” The upstairs “sanctuary” left her with her “mouth hanging open.” It was a huge kitchen and living room with sofas and easy chairs. She loved the “intimate, casual, family-type atmosphere” with all the seating in a circle around a central swivel stool where the speaker sits. She said it was like a “first century church” where people met in homes. In a short time she felt it was where she had to be, although she and her husband are involved in another congregation that she supports equally.

What she likes passionately about both groups is that people live with their faith at the center of their lives—faith is not a nice little component added in to balance out one’s life. It is everything. I think she meant that all one’s questions about how to handle money, relate to God’s creation, relate to the government, live out one’s sexuality, and the place of work, recreation, hobbies, friendships, etc., in one’s life are spiritual questions.

Lieder said that at Solomon’s Porch everyone is very involved in each other’s lives. Community is very important. And being a blessing to the larger world is also important. Solomon’s Porch offers whatever it can to the neighborhood—community meals, English classes, gardens, art shows.

I learned from Lieder that this vital congregation supports seven paid part-time employees. It was formed only six years ago, in Linden Hills, and moved to the Phillips Neighborhood three years ago. They will move again soon because the Somali Community just bought the entire 60,000-square-foot building for a community center and mosque. She also said that historically, the church is not affiliated with any denomination, except for a loose connection to the Covenant Church. And, it is involved in the Emergent Movement, “experimental in form but orthodox in doctrine,” she said.

On Solomon’s Porch’s website, I found a sincere and intelligent group of people “seeking to live the dreams and love of God in the way of Jesus … We are seeking to be a redemptive, transformative community living as a blessing of God in all the world. The people of our community are from varied backgrounds and perspectives, but find unity and commonality in seeking the things of God in this world, ‘as they are in heaven,’ in the generous Orthodox expressions of Christianity.”

I didn’t get the impression they think they are superior to other religious people in their faith and works, etc. At one point on the website it says, “Churches all across America are doing wonderful things. Their great accomplishments and ministries are an inspiration to us in the creation of Solomon’s Porch. Many of the dreams articulated here were born from many of these churches.”

I also saw they were more concerned with alleviating the problems of poverty as well as living in relationship with other people than with convincing people that Jesus was the Messiah. That was a relief.

The next day I spoke on the phone with the pastor, Doug Pagitt. A very articulate graduate of Bethel College in St. Paul, he sounded almost excited about the upcoming move. He is not at all hurt that they can’t sublet from the Somalis and is deeply moved that six churches, of six different denominations, have invited Solomon’s Porch to use space in their buildings until they can find a new home.
He reiterated Hannah’s attitude that “faith consumes one’s whole life and is not just a nice supplement.”

Pagitt talked a lot about communication. At Solomon’s Porch dialogue is essential. Pagitt described the process of listening to other people’s views and experiences about any topic, be it taxes, abortion, homosexuality, engagement with the government (war), and trying to live within the other person’s thoughts for a day to see what merit might be there and what understanding you might reach. He said their church does not have a party line. “When you have a firm opinion there’s no room for the prophetic voice.”

He said that in the 21st century it is impossible to simplify issues. “Things really are complicated—we look at all sides.” And because of the open dialogue, people who normally wouldn’t talk to each other are part of their community. He gave the example of a young man in the National Guard and a young woman peace activist who are part of the group. He said he is proud that people in their group are reconciled with each other and all voices are equally important.

Pagitt and the congregation wrote a book, “Reimagining Spiritual Formation: A Week in the Life of an Experimental Church,” and this is where you can really see the scope of this group’s work. Feeding people, building houses in Guatemala, Bible study, alternative healing, such as massage and yoga, and an active interest in the arts by a fairly large group of professional and semi-professional artists of many disciplines are covered. The idea, I think, is that one’s spiritual formation comes out of the kinds of things one does, not that one does “good works” because of one’s a priori spiritual formation.

In the margins, people from the congregation write about their personal spiritual journeys. It is refreshing that they don’t hide their doubts and fears and struggles. And they appear to genuinely care for one other.

I went to visit the worship service, held on Sunday evenings, and sat with Lieder. She told me that PBS was there the previous Sunday night filming the service. But that was all she knew about it.

The “bulletin,” showing the liturgy, song lyrics and sermon points, was projected onto two large screens. Everything was extremely casual—people were knitting and eating in between standing up for the liturgies. There was a mountain of food served buffet style, left over, I was told, from the previous day’s wedding between the church janitor and the worship coordinator.

I liked the beautiful voice of one of the singers in the band (Lieder said he is an opera singer), but even more I liked the sermon/lecture by Pagitt. He sits in the middle (and moves around so he faces different people at different times), and everyone is on the same level, he said, because they have no hierarchy and no one is above anyone else.

The lecture/sermon was in a series on church history. He was talking about the church councils of Nicea, Constantinople, Ephesus and Chalcedon. He said their purpose was to create uniformity, not unity. The sermon message was that it is more important for the Church to be loving and unified than right. Anyway, the “rightness” of the statements that came out of the four councils was relative because they were answers to specific questions of the time and culture, not final answers for all time.

He talked extremely fast—he said his wife had told him not to talk so fast—but he has a lot to talk about. As a speaker, he is dynamic and excited about his subject, so you just try to understand as much as you can.

The last thing I wanted to know about Solomon’s Porch was its connection to the Emergent Movement. Lieder had said Pagitt was nationally known in it.

According to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, “The emerging church developed in the late 20th century into the 21st century as a conversation in Western Europe, North America and the South Pacific concerned with the deconstruction and reconstruction of protestant Christianity.” There is some debate over whether it is actually a movement or still just a conversation. Themes of the conversation are: a return to ancient Christian tradition, the need for an ecumenical Church and a suspicion of market-driven, mega-church, institutionalized Christianity.
Critics of the Emergent Movement say it tries to make the Church entertaining and attractive to sinners. They also say followers of the Emergent Movement “conform the Church to the image of the world and modern cultural trends in order to make the Church a comfortable place for the unsaved.”

I’ve enjoyed my emerging friendship with Solomon’s Porch over the past several weeks. They are good people embarked on a journey that ought to be taken seriously. Their emphasis on dialogue and listening to each other is the foundation for peace on earth, in my opinion.

612-874-6333
www.solomonsporch.com
2824 13th Avenue South (until July 28)