From the Water and the Dirt: Learning About our Place

10/18/24 – By Evan Maxwell

Why is this the way it is? 
Can we change that? 
Who made that?
Can we cook that? 
Can I do that? 
What is it called? 

These are all questions that echo around dinner tables, living rooms, hiking trails, sidewalks, and kitchen sinks at Act Five these days, amongst students and residents. They are begging to lean in, to know more, to be more connected with what is around us. 

For us, it involves a lot of food.

In this season at Act Five, students have been learning about “Place, Home, and Land”. They have been engaging with ideas of indigenous knowledge, our relationship with the place we are in, and how we affect it as well as its effect on us. 

Part of this learning involves what is most delectable and appetizing to us: food. 

They learned how to improvisationally cook, to get creative – to use the resources that were practically available to them: right in the house. The students cooked using leftover ingredients, elements we still had available in the home, and even right outside. We dug up some potatoes from our garden, and harvested some herbs to spice things up. One group of students cooked a puffball mushroom into steaks, and garnished it with sweet potatoes, rice and parsley. Asking questions like, “What do we have available to us?”, and “Can we use that?”

This is the space where we really learn to ‘pay attention’, and to improvise together. As Christians, and as people embedded in a neighborhood, or a home, we learn to observe and make a difference. We want to notice what’s going on and how we are a part of it all. 

Food is just the first step in this journey. 

Autumn Learning

The fall leaves and crisp air remind us all that we are affected by what’s around us. We are placed here in Hamilton this year – connected to it, in a deep sense. This week, students followed our friend John Terpstra on a hike out along a portion of the Chedoke watershed. He taught us about the place we are in, how it has changed and the beauty of that change. And we learned of the difficulty – in the ecological damage to our watershed and its multiple diversions over the years. We are slowly stepping into a greater understanding of this place, and in turn we are beginning to understand why we must choose to engage, to lean in, to pay attention. What are we meant for if we are not a part of what is around us?

We are digging into what it means to be in this place; to be active participants of a home and community. As we do so, it becomes increasingly apparent that our ‘place’ impacts us necessarily. If we are actively knowing, learning, and working in a place it supremely affects us. The students are looking ahead to visiting the Six Nations reserve next week, to listen to stories and find out where they can go from here. 

In the words of Nina Schuurman-Drenth, inspired by the prophet Jeremiah, ‘If you nurture the land, it in turn, will nurture you.’ (Jeremiah 29:7).