As someone who has struggled to find the time and presence for both spirituality and farming in the past few tumultuous years, reading Gary Paul Nabhan’s book was a grounding force to me in a number of ways. His work is endlessly readable and relatable but also a deeply and carefully complex love letter to the poor and marginalized agricultural worker. In it, I felt my own call back to my roots in farming, but also the call that the ancient farmers and fishers must have felt. I held in my heart the suffering and the grief of centuries of marginalized agricultural workers striving to keep food on their own tables while also feeding the masses. No wonder Jesus, so dedicated to helping all humanity at the sacrifice of his own life, spoke in parables of sowing seeds and planting wheat.

“Waste Not, Want Not” is a familiar old adage, but looking at it through the technicolor lens of 2018 makes the phrase feel antiquated and empty. What does it mean? The dictionary will tell you that the idiom’s intended warning is that “wise use of one’s resources will keep one from poverty.” In modern day America, where there is a surplus of almost everything, it may not feel very applicable.