Por Jessica Hearne, personal de campo de la CBF
“Then he said to me, “Prophesy to these bones and say to them, ‘Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord! This is what the Sovereign Lord says to these bones: I will make breath[a] enter you, and you will come to life. I will attach tendons to you and make flesh come upon you and cover you with skin; I will put breath in you, and you will come to life. Then you will know that I am the Lord.’” —Ezekiel 37:4-6
“Listen to carrion – put your ear close, and hear the faint chattering of the songs that are to come.” — Wendell Berry, “Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front
In this very familiar Scripture passage, Ezekiel was standing with his feet in dead soil, a soil covered in bones. All around his feet, across the land, as far as he could see, there was nothing but bones. As he’s being led through the valley, I imagine the dust swirling around his feet. I imagine him gently nudging bones with his sandals, trying desperately not to step on them and cause further desecration. This place is a place of death; can there be any life left here? I’ve read this passage many times in the past, but reading it again this year I felt these images in a way that I had never felt them before. I found myself thinking about the soil in that valley, just as dry and lifeless as those bones.
So the question, “Can these bones live?,” has taken on a different meaning in my mind this year than it ever has before. During this past winter, I was working with bones as I was trying to learn how to bring life to our soil. These bones were from the beef short ribs that I had prepared last summer for a picnic celebration with the leadership team of our Urban Farm ministry. In February, I took the saved bones out of the freezer and set them to roast on my camp grill as part of the process of making “Water-soluble Calcium 
and Phosphorus.” I wanted to see how this process would work so that I can teach it to my Urban Farm leaders this year. The calcium and phosphorus in these bones are essential nutrients for growing our garden plants, and extracting it from beef or pork bones is an accessible and inexpensive way for our leaders to feed their garden soil and create new life from this symbol of death.
In the garden, creating life in the face of death is a regular occurrence. As a matter of fact, most of the fertilizers and amendments that we use in our garden, things that create the conditions for new life to flourish, come from things that have died. Beef bones, egg shells, leaf mold, compost and bioactivated charcoal (made from the fallen limbs and dead wood in the forest around our farm) are all necessary components of a garden that is grown without chemicals.
All of these dead things feed and strengthen the living things in the soil: bacteria, fungus, nematodes and other microscopic creatures that are necessary to help the plants absorb nutrients and fight off pests and disease. In that way, the garden is a constant reminder of the joy of resurrection: out of death comes abundant life. Almost like Ezekiel in the valley, we get to see the bones live.
Learn more about Jessica Hearne’s ministry in Danville, Virginia here.