“Plants and perfectionism don’t mix.”
Last Fall, my wife and I went to an exhibit here in Kansas City that featured an unbelievable amount of Mayan artifacts. The exhibit came at an interesting, synchronous time for me. I was beginning to really lean into decolonial, theological studies and trying to learn about my own indigeneity as a Chicano. The exhibit was fascinating and heart-breaking as we learned about Mayan culture, religion, art, community, and agricultural practices. There’s a lot I could talk about, but one thing that stuck out more than anything else,1 was the sacred place of corn in Mayan society. I’m no expert in Mayan society, but from what I understand, the growing cycle of ixi’im2, of corn heavily influenced Mayan culture and understanding of the world. To this day, farmers in Yucatan have ritual practices throughout the growing season.3 There was a deep relationship between the “stuff” of ixi’im and the human being, as there was between ixi’im and the cosmos. The Mayans believed that humanity had been made from ixi’im and therefore there was an ontological and metaphysical bond to it. Ixi’im, for the Mayans, was quite literally the stuff of life. To say that ixi’im was sacred almost feels like an understatement.
I couldn’t help but notice a correlation between the way Mayans thought about ixi’im and the way Jesus talked about the bread of the New Covenant, “This is my body, which is given for you” (Luke 22:19). I don’t want to say too much, and make something out of nothing, but the resonances were too much for me to ignore. I couldn’t help but think also of the different times priests in latinoamerica have consecrated tortillas in the Eucharist during times of struggle with government. One example is Rev. Victor Salandini, affectionally called the “tortilla priest,”4 who consecrated corn tortillas during his time with the United Farm Workers.5 In those moments, when the priests consecrated the tortillas, Jesus said of the tortilla made of masa,6 “This is my body.” Jesus’ living body is the dust of the earth, it is the crushed wheat of the unleavened bread, and it is the nixtamalized7 corn of the tortilla.
By the time we left the exhibit, I knew two things. I needed to experience, at least once in my life, the Eucharist performed with a corn tortilla. I also knew that I needed to grow corn. I had no idea how to do this. I knew next to nothing about growing food or tending to plants that needed anything more than the light available in an office space and inconsistent watering. But it felt important. It felt vital.
I immediately messaged my friends Kristen and Beau of the Laird Woodland Farm and asked for their help. They walked me through some things and I’ve been bugging them all along the way and they’ve been very helpful all along the way. I prepared a bed for planting seed in early winter and… waited.
I am Maíz
This was the first lesson I learned. It wasn’t a hard lesson, and I was prepared for it because I knew winter was approaching. I think I also knew that waiting was a lesson, so it felt romantic because I was doing it. As winter was ending and spring approached, I got excited and bought seed. Not just corn, but two different types of squash and black beans as well because I intended on creating a milpa, the Mayan word for the “Three-Sisters Method” used throughout the two continents in corn farming. In this method, the farmer plants corn, beans, and squash. These three plants work together in a symbiotic relationship that creates healthier plants and healthier soil. I didn’t stop there, though. I also bought seeds to plant tomatillos, purple tomatillos, jalapeños, serranos, and cilantro.
All the tomatillos and peppers are planted, and I don’t think I have anywhere to place them. Another lesson, and one that I get over and over again in so many areas of life, don’t get ahead of myself. Don’t make impulsive decisions. Especially when you don’t really know what you’re doing. Thankfully, along with Beau and Kristen, my wife comes from a family of plant people, and she has long walked in their footsteps, and has been with me at every step helping and teaching me how to live with plants. Lessons noted, and I think learned, or at least taken account of, but there’s a big one ahead.
The night before I was going to plant the corn, I read and read about how to do it because I didn’t know. It’s a feeling I don’t like to confront if I can help it. The thing I learned about plants is that there’s not a single right way to do things, that there a lot of ways the people do things, each with their own reason, and that you have to make decisions based on, not just what you think is best, but what kind of ethics you want to embody. Not everything is that deep, but a lot of it is. This first decision was easy. Should I plant straight into the ground or wrap the seeds (which are just corn kernels, if you didn’t know) in a damp paper towel either for a few hours, or twenty-four. I chose twenty-four, largely because that’s the number I read first and it felt right. So far so good.
The next day, I asked Katrina if she’d help me plant the seeds (I didn’t know that corn seed was just corn kernels). She said yes, so I grabbed my seeds and we started getting the ground ready. I pulled the seeds out and she asked how many stalks I wanted to grow, and I said, “at least ten, but probably twelve, because I was reading they need to grow in groups.” She looked at the paper towel in my hand and noticed that I had only ten seeds. In my mind, if I wanted ten plants, I needed ten seeds. Not so! Apparently not all seeds germinate, and for every plant you want, you should plant at least two seeds, if not three. I wanted twelve plants, but now that I had to plant more than one seed per spot, I only had enough to plant six spots. Here’s where I started to freak out.
I got angry and snapped at Katrina, snapped at my dog, and wanted to give up. None of these is abnormal for me when I feel stupid. Anger, for me, is the last line of defense I (subconsciously?) use to protect myself from experiencing that forbidden feeling: stupid. I had connected about a year before with the fact that I did not like to feel stupid, that I got angry when I felt stupid, but it wasn’t until that day planting less corn than I wanted that I began to realize the anger was a defense mechanism. Katrina told me she didn’t want to help me if I was going to be angry and take it out on her. Reasonable. So I did my best to calm down, but I could feel the rage inside still. We planted the corn in five plots. Two plots had three seeds, three plots had two seeds. We finished, watered the garden, and came inside. The heat of the anger was subsiding, but I could feel another emotion coming on that was also not uncommon for me when I faced things I wasn’t immediately good at. I wanted to quit. In that moment, not having corn, something that felt so meaningful and vital to me as an idea only months before, wasn’t worth feeling stupid.
Apparently, at some point that day, Katrina had text Kristen and told her about my rage moments. I found out because I hear Kristen responding to Katrina over Marco Polo, “Plants and perfectionism don’t mix.” When I heard those words, I knew I was running up against my deepest insecurities, and it was surprising because this had no bearing on my worth or measure on my intelligence. Yet, I was struggling. I don’t feel like I’m good at many things, but knowing things is what I’m good at, and if that is taken from me, or worse, if I am shown to not have that, what do I have left? Sure, that’s not “true,” whatever that really means, but that is what I feel when I am confronted with my lack of knowledge and my lack of know-how. I pondered these things the entire weekend, and journaled about them Sunday night.
Plants and perfectionism don’t mix. Why? Because they do unexpected things. They don’t sprout. They die. They get eaten by bugs or rabbits or who knows what else. Storms come and destroy. They get sick. There’s so much that can happen that over which a person has no control, over which I have no control.
Mind you, I have been part of inner healing programs for around eight years. I was in therapy for six. Never once in those years had I connected with why I got angry when I felt stupid, that anger and quitting were how I protected myself from feeling that way. But in those few days, the ixi’im was my teacher. In the same way the trees had been St. Anthony of the Desert’s books, the kernels were my books, and I learned a valuable lesson. None of this is to say the years of inner healing and therapy were useless. All that work prepared me for that moment when the realization sprouted from my heart as suddenly and explosively (as I just found out this afternoon) as beans from the ground.
But the lack of control isn’t only associated with negative emotions. Planting the corn had me realizing that neither was I in control of the life I was hoping would spring from the ground. I know Paul was using agriculture as a metaphor, but as I sat looking at the small milpa I was creating, his words rang very literally in my heart. God gives the increase. I can do everything, but without the gift of life placed in each seed by the Creator of life, what can I do? I have some anxiety around this tiny little garden I’ve planted because I’m aware of just how vulnerable it is, and how vulnerable I and my emotions are.
I find myself praying a lot for this little farm, asking Jesus to bless it, asking him to make the corn continue to grow and grow strong, to protect it from destruction, to help me know what to do and when. And every sprout that comes from the ground feels like a miracle. Every miracle a reminder that there is a force at work beyond me. That “force” is nothing other than the very life of God breathed into each living thing on this planet. Every sprout is a gift. Every life a gift. My own life and breath, something I can tend to and care for, but ultimately a gift I cannot give myself.
Why am I maíz? Because my ancestors were ixi’im, were elotl,8 and something of their life still lives in me, still grows in me. I am maíz because I am fragile and my life depends on the goodness of the Creator to sustain me, because I am prone to death but the love of God wills me to grow and become part of my world.
This first experience of growing corn, which has not even reached the fruiting stage yet, is not a magic formula that suddenly cured my of my insecurity. I still get defensive when I feel someone questioning my intelligence. I still feel rage when I drop something. A small palette of unused water colors sits next to me as I write this. All because I am afraid to fail, I am afraid to feel stupid, to prove myself stupid and a failure in front of others, and maybe worst of all, to prove to myself that I am stupid and a failure. There is still a lot of work to be done in my own being, much like there is still work to be done in the milpa growing in my front yard. What my brother the ixi’im has shown me is that the fear is present, that my anger is a defense, and it is teaching me a gentler way of letting go of that fear and embracing the gift of God already present within the soil, within the seed, and within my own body.
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Here are some photos from the milpa showing the stalks and a sprouting black bean, as well as a beautiful blue butterfly that came to visit a couple days ago.
On the positive side, that is. The sadness I felt at the absolute devastation brought on by the advent of the Spaniards has stuck with me as well.
While talking about the Mayan relationship to corn, I will continue to use the Mayan word for the plant.
https://maya.nmai.si.edu/corn-and-maya-time
https://www.nytimes.com/1971/09/12/archives/-tortilla-priest-aids-strikers-on-coast.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Farm_Workers
Corn dough/flour.
Before corn can be eaten, it must be cooked in order to make it easily digested by the human body. In order to make corn flower, masa, the native peoples of Central and South America developed a process of washing and cooking in lime-water and being milled between stones to produce nixtamal. The last part of this word is the Nahuatl (Aztec) word for corn dough, tamalli, from which we get the beloved tamal, as in tamales.
Nahautl (Mexica/Aztec) word for the young ear of corn with already formed kernels.
This was really good, Joshua. Thank you for sharing this journey!! I feel both very convicted and encouraged
HAHAHA I chuckled at the explosive beans