After dinner and a walk last evening, we sat down to a dish of blackberry cobbler. The sweet treat, topped with ice cream, was delightful. I had picked a couple of quarts of berries on Sunday afternoon during a visit to our son’s farm. But I could easily pick a couple of quarts every day right now. Himalayan blackberries are considered an invasive species in this part of Washington. Farmers and landscapers are constantly seeking ways to trim back the rapidly growing plants.

There is, however, a kind of wonderful abundance to the plants that strikes me. We walk every day and each path that we walk has place after place where one could stop and pick blackberries. We see people picking them every day. Some just pick a handful for a snack. Others have buckets or other containers and are picking them to take home. They are easy to freeze and can be used to make a wide variety of different recipes.

The thing is that there are enough blackberries for everyone. It doesn’t matter if you are homeless or live in the fanciest house in town - you can get free blackberries by just taking a walk on any of the city’s paths. It doesn’t matter if you are a bird or a human - there are enough blackberries for all. The blackberries don’t know and don’t care what language you speak or what color your skin is. They just produce berry after berry. Even areas that have been heavily picked show fresh berries every day. The ripe berries nearly fall off in your hand at a touch. The only problem is that the plants produce spiny canes, similar to rose bushes. The canes grab at your clothing and you have to be careful to avoid being poked.

The plants spread both by seed and by the canes. Wherever the canes touch the ground, they soon take root and the plant spreads. If the city didn’t use machines to cut back the bushes, they would take over the paths so completely that it would be impossible to walk. Folks like our son, who have bushes in their yards, have to set limits and carefully cut out the extra canes.

This is a productive time of year for fruit around here. We have a food dryer that is kept busy drying apples. There is no way that our son and his family can keep up with their apple trees, even though our ten-year-old grandson gets a kick out of tossing them and hitting them with a baseball bat. The spat and explosion of a ripe apple has a particular satisfaction and if someone will take time to pitch, he’ll hit apples for a long time. Some of the apples and bits get fed to the chickens. They’ve put up lots of applesauce. Both their family and ours are drying apples. There’s been an apple pie. There are still lots and lots of apples.

Although the season for blueberries is over, gathering a pint or so is still really easy by just walking along our son’s driveway. And the raspberries are as abundant as the blackberries.

Free food in quantities enough for everyone to share is an amazing thing.

It hasn’t solved the homelessness problem in our city. It hasn’t emptied the shelters. It hasn’t ended the food deserts in neighborhoods where there are no stores that sell food.

Still, it is fun to live in a place where there is free food for everyone.

That abundance is a natural part of creation. Food for all is one of the essential parts of the planet where we live. The stories of our people tell of food for every creature as a design feature of creation. Food is a gift from God. We remind ourselves of that truth with our thanksgiving prayers at meals.

Blackberries, however, are free to people who don’t pray. They are available to those who practice every faith that exists and to those who have no faith at all. Atheists are allotted the same quantity as priests and practitioners of religion.

I’m not much like a blackberry bush, but one thing we have in common is that I’m a transplant from some other place. To the indigenous tribes of the Pacific Northwest, it might seem if all of the rest of us are a bit like blackberries - we are everywhere. We compete for houses and space to live. Folks who weren’t born in this place continue to move into this area and fill up the roads until traffic slows to a crawl and fill up the stores until it is difficult to shop in peace and fill up the parks and open spaces with our constant presence. Non-natives are part of the makeup of this place. We’ve moved in and I’m sure it sometimes feels like we are taking over and squeezing out those who were here before we came.

Unlike the blackberries, however, I’m retired - well, sort of retired. I’m not producing much to share. In fact I’m consuming more than I produce these days, living off of savings set aside for retirement. Maybe that is why it feels so good to me to be back at work. I’ve only been at this new job for a week, but it makes me really happy to have a job and to be doing things with my time that have a tangible benefit for others.

Life has been good to me. I’ve enjoyed meaningful and abundant work. Not every day of working has been fun and games, but there has been substantial enjoyment in the work that I have been given. I’ve been allowed to work alongside wonderful and generous people and to learn from wise and experienced congregations. I’ve been loved and nurtured by churches wherever life has taken me. I’ve been blessed with family and health. I’ve witnessed enough trauma, suffering and grief to recognize how truly fortunate I am.

Fortunately for me, I still have some energy to reach out and help others. And, I have the example of the blackberry bush to inspire me to keep giving.