Gardening as a Spiritual Practice

I am Jessica Paguirigan and I have been involved with the Campus Community Farm for about three years now. In a few weeks, I will be graduating from St. Mary's College of Maryland. I will be leaving this beautiful campus, but I will take away so many memories with incredibly-inspiring people. A lot of things about this campus have shaped who I have become as a person, but I would like to take up this blog post to talk about how the Campus Community Farm has influenced me.

My introduction to the Campus Community Farm was seeing a student-made documentary about the farm at TFMS night during my first year. At this point, I had started to become enraptured by the activist and environmentalist platforms raised by so many of the students here, and was inspired to join the members of the farm in their contribution to creating a sustainable community.

Before long, I began to realize everything that gardening at the farm actually meant to me. Gardening was not just a way to enrich the sustainable principles of the campus and an environmentally-friendly practice, but a spiritual teacher and counselor. Quite honestly, I feel that gardening has taught me the virtues and methods for understanding how I must grow and forge ahead in my future. 

I could go on for hours about everything that I have learned from the garden, but I think that this is best portrayed in the website that I have created for this very purpose at www.liturgiesoftheearth.com. Please visit the site to know more about my own perspective on gardening as a spiritual experience! Here is one of the videos you will see on the website that visually reflects upon the lessons I have learned while gardening.

I want to thank everyone who I have interacted with at the farm, and those who started the farm a mere five years ago for being a part of this crucial experience of my life. I have learned a lot about the earth, about the true definition of community, and about myself. I look forward to learning even more about farming, and hope to spread the joy of farming to others in the future!