Roots in Water: Gardening as Protest, Care, and Hope

For the past five years, I’ve been tending life in water. No dirt. No plot of land. Just roots suspended in water, light calibrated to mimic the sun, and the daily vigilance of care. What started as a practical way to grow kale and cucumbers for green smoothies and salads in my apartment has become something much more rooted: a sacred practice of faith. A protest. A way of surviving—and of hoping—in a world that increasingly feels like waste and chaos.

Amidst the backdrop of climate collapse, inflation, political violence, and spiritual disillusionment, my garden has taught me to see tending not just as a hobby but as a form of truth-telling and resistance.

Tending the Unseen

“They are like trees planted along a riverbank, with roots that reach deep into the water.” — Jeremiah 17:8

Hydroponic gardening nurtures life where you’d least expect it: not in soil, but in water. Beneath the visible leaves, roots spread wide inside plastic ypods, drinking in nutrient-rich solution. It’s an unseen labor.

Seattle’s long, dark winters and constant wetness mirror the quiet struggles of my plants. Pests, root rot, nutrient-deficient water—these are my unexpected teachers. They are prophets. They remind me that presence matters.

Adjust the pH. Top off the water tank. Balance airflow and humidity. Inspect the roots. Check the leaves. Nutrients have to flow. Light has to be precise—sixteen hours on, seven hours off.

Without presence, nothing grows.

If I’m honest, some days, it feels like faith. Quiet. Hidden. Fragile.

There’s no rich soil here, no sunshine or rain. Yet there is fruit. Muir lettuce, basil, thyme. Kale pushing up toward LEDs. Tomatoes and cucumber vines curling upward on trellises. These are not just crops to me. They are parables. They are an invitation into trust—not to fear when violence comes. Trusting not what I see, but in what I nurture. A quiet refusal to give in to scarcity. A reminder: the tree never fails to bear fruit. Because there is always hope.

Hydroponics as Sacred Practice

I’ve come to understand this garden as sacramental. A daily discipline of care. A liturgy rooted in fluidity and light. Each check-in with the system is a kind of prayer. Each time I look into my plant nursery, there’s a whisper of hope. Each adjustment—every cut, every ypod shift—is an act of faith in what cannot yet be seen. And each harvest? A testimony. A small, defiant victory.

Hydroponic gardening is science, yes—but it is also faith work. It’s protest. It’s resistance.

In a world where food deserts widen, where grocery bills rise like clay minerals caught in the turbulent winds of dust devils, where time and rest are rationed, growing food becomes more than a convenience. It has become defiance.

Gardening as Resistance

Every tomato I pluck from the vine whispers protest.
Every bunch of kale is a reclamation of what empire says I don’t deserve: enough. There is always enough.
This garden resists scarcity. It is manna. It refuses to wait on systems that neglect.

This is not new. In Black and Brown communities across the U.S., gardening has long been a form of resistance. From Fannie Lou Hamer’s Freedom Farms to Soul Fire Farm in upstate New York, to community plots carved out between abandoned lots and chain-linked fences, my people have always understood that to grow your own food is to survive—and to flourish—on your own terms. Whether in soil or hydroponic water, tending life is reclamation. Every seed planted is an act of memory, a refusal to be defined by what empire perceives as uncultivable. They are practices that heal land and liberate bodies. And like them, my small hydroponic setup is part of that lineage. It is ancestral. It is prophetic.

The soil may be absent. But the struggle is not.

And I am a willing accomplice.

Tending as Faith

“I am the vine; you are the branches… and my Father is the gardener.” — John 15:1–2

At forty-three, I hear those words differently now.

I know what it means to prune—not just to remove what is dying, but sometimes to cut back what is still alive, vibrant even, yet growing in the wrong direction. To remove what is healthy but unbalanced. To tend—and, more than often—to heal what is diseased and rotting. To heal—not with haste or violence, but with patience, wisdom, and care.

And pruning demands proximity.

It’s impossible to prune what grows in the wrong direction without intimate involvement. You cannot remove what is unbalanced or unhealthy from a distance. To prune wisely, you must kneel near the soil, near the water, near the roots; you must come close enough to understand. What looks like imbalance from afar may, up close, reveal itself as survival. What seems unhealthy might be a necessary adaptation.

Pruning demands presence: the willingness to slow down, to observe, to listen before cutting. It requires patience to discern what truly needs removal and tenderness to make cuts that heal, not harm.

You cannot cultivate life by standing back. You must come close enough to see.

Jesus called God “Father”. Not a distant patriarch or punitive overseer. He spoke of a gardener. Patient. Intimately involved. The originator and master cultivator of life. One who kneels close to the soil, who understands what must be trimmed for fruit to flourish. Compassionate and nurturing, present and purposeful. Not with a sword, but with shears. Not to destroy, but to bring forth more life.

And in tending this garden, I’ve begun to understand what Jesus meant.

Daily Faithfulness vs Empire Logic

Empire always demands quick results, immediate production, and scalability at any cost. But gardening—yes, even hydroponic gardening—asks for slow, careful fidelity. You can’t rush photosynthesis. You can’t bully roots into thriving.

The same is true for justice.

In our nation, politicians speak of "pruning government." But what they call pruning is actually gutting. Cuts to education, healthcare, and public services are not made to cultivate life, but to consolidate power. And unlike the Gardener in John 15, their cuts are not to produce more fruit. These cuts do not clear the way for life to flourish. Their cuts are for control. They’re scorched-earth policies masquerading as gardening, choking the roots of our shared democracy, of our shared garden.

This is the difference between divine pruning and political gutting: one serves the flourishing of all, and the other serves the elite. But you cannot serve both God and mammon. You cannot hold office as a legislator of compassion and justice and yet condemn the most vulnerable. Any system that builds itself on division will never prosper. It will always live in deficit, not just economically, but morally as well. In deficit to its own potential. In deficit to its big, beautiful promises. In the halls of power, where bills are drafted with fanfare but rarely feed the hungry or house the displaced. Where they bolster markets, not mercy. Protects capital, not the community. And the people—ordinary, everyday people—are left to survive in the wreckage of political theater, while being told it’s progress.

Globally, the violence is even starker. We witness leaders who commit genocide with one hand while shaking hands with heads of state with the other. Children buried beneath rubble while their oppressors smile for photo ops. Ethnic cleansing is no longer hidden—it is livestreamed, and yet still met with diplomatic winks and policy silence.

My Garden as Gospel

And so, in the quiet work of hydroponics, I tend not just plants but a conviction.

Each plant, a parable.
Each root system, a reminder.
Each pruning cut, a call.

A call to resist empire’s scarcity with faith’s abundance. To resist not from exhaustion, but from a heart close to the soil.

A call to imagine politics that nourish rather than devour.

A call to root myself in a faith that is liberatory, mutual, and uncompromising in its compassion.

In a world where powers thrive on fear, rage, and scarcity, this small practice of daily tending has become my antidote. My sacrament. My resistance. A commitment to cultivate where empire supplants, and to believe—stubbornly—that flourishing is still possible.

My Gardyn System

Closing: Roots Below, Resistance Above

To grow anything in this season—faith, food, courage—is resistance work.
The roots may be hidden, but they are holy.

This is what Tending Life in Water is about. It’s not just gardening—it’s a testimony. A testimony of how I’m learning to grow, live, resist, and hope. Through soil-less gardens. Through political wilderness. Through daily acts of ordinary, radical care.

And hope will not fail. In systems overrun by rot, I pray this becomes our shared testimony as we witness the collapse of empire upon itself: we still planted. We still tended. We still believed in life.

🌿 Up Next?

📖 Up next in the series: The Garden as Gospel: From Eden to Revelation → Expected July 25th
We’ll trace how the Bible’s gardens—Eden and Revelation—frame a story not of destruction, but of restoration.

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