Why Glean?
Glean
verb
to gather slowly and laboriously, bit by bit
to gather (grain or the like) after the reapers or regular gatherers
to learn, discover, or find out, usually little by little or slowly
Like people searching through the remnants of a field to find what we need to live, Glean is on a mission. We slowly gather people and insights to help us do a few essential things: love enemies, live in joyful solidarity with the poor, and foster reconciliation.
Glean pursues this mission at every social scale. That includes personal, family, local, national, international, and in the many cracks between.
So why call it Glean? We don’t let any part of the word’s meaning go to waste.
Reconciliation involves a slow and laborious process of learning, discovery and integration. It brings peace and wholeness by addressing problems, correcting mistakes, making amends and deepening our understanding of reality. Gathering and integrating information from different places is already a kind of reconciliation, and it is a necessary aspect of deeper peacemaking and reconciling work. In gleaning knowledge well, people are always already oriented toward the broader goal of bringing people and perspectives together into a true and coherent whole. We aim to slowly gather and reconcile truth wherever it can be found, especially when it has been left behind and dismissed as scraps.
Joyful solidarity with the poor involves joining with others who are in need, so that we can find what we need to survive and thrive. We’re inspired by the ancient practice of leaving the corners of fields unharvested so that they can be more easily gleaned. This practice is a little sign-post pointing us toward a better future: a world where there is plenty for everyone, because we all learn to take what we need and leave the rest. In embracing the challenge of learning to live this way, we don’t mean to romanticize or idealize material deprivation in the least. Just the opposite, in fact. We emphasize ways that human beings can learn to flourish in simplicity, and this message is especially helpful for those who have a lot of room to simplify. When enough of us know that enough is enough, we will all have enough.
The idea of gleaning also provides an easy on ramp into the philosophy of non-violent resistance through enemy love, a perspective that deeply animates our work. When we glean, we look for the good that remains even where conflict and contempt have swept almost everything else away. Where hatred has taken its share of attention and relationships and lives, this question remains: Who and what is left to gather? When we can draw out the good from people who are doing real evil, we are able to disarm some of the rationalizations and illusions and hypocrisies that enable wrong-doing. Gleaning is a powerful tool for those learning to replace violence with resistance through enemy love.
The animating ideas behind Glean can be found in various cultures and traditions throughout history, although they aren’t trumpeted by dominant and domineering actors.
Our own understanding and abiding commitment to these practices comes from the Sermon on the Plain and the Sermon on the Mount, the core practices that Jesus treats as foundational. They can be found in chapters 5 to 7 of Matthew, and chapter 6 of Luke. We think that these practices lead to sustained and sustainable flourishing for individuals and societies, even if no individual gets rich in the process. When people deviate from these practices, they build their institutions and legacies on a shaky foundation that will ultimately fail and collapse, often catastrophically.
We’d rather see people flourish instead.
We hope you join us.
Glean Editorial Team
#gatherslowly