Not Taking Everything, or the Memory of Calamint

“When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. Do not go over your vineyard a second time or pick up the grapes that have fallen. Leave them for the poor and the foreigner.”
Leviticus 19:9–10

🌿 For the universal rules of foraging, see the bottom of the page.

“There is a poor one greater than all the other poor.”
So says Paulo Barbosa da Silva (8’51 of the conference linked below). The Brazilian theologian speaks of Mother Earth — or Pachamama — and presents this affirmation as a historical awakening: a shift within liberation theology, prompted by the material violence inflicted on the earth, especially through Amazonian deforestation. This “shift” marks an evolution of liberation theology from a focus on social injustice toward an inclusion of ecological issues — recognizing the Earth as a vulnerable being, a “poor one” among the poor.

I was brought back to Paulo Barbosa da Silva’s words today. Many of us return to the garden at this time of year, or to walking outdoors. Either way, our gaze returns to the soil — and perhaps sharpens our awareness of the vegetal life around us, this living world with which we cohabit and which we sometimes overlook. For me, these days always bring the question of plant identification — even for plants that grow right at my doorstep. This is the season when I begin to pay attention again to calamint (Clinopodium nepeta). Often mistaken for wild mint, calamint is minty, discreet, wild, thriving in the dry spring light. It often grows in the cracks, where the land is neither cultivated nor trampled, evoking a modest but resilient presence.

In my theological and liturgical reflections, I’m often tempted to pick some for my “pray station” — or what we Protestants don’t quite know how to name: a fixed point for watchfulness, for prayer. A place without a name, but not without a body — a space where the sense of smell might be engaged, where nature might take its place not as a prop, but through some of its representatives, like calamint. (I can already hear the objections: isn’t picking a form of killing? A new kind of sacrifice? Let’s say simply that picking with restraint is a way of entering into dialogue with the living — not of dominating it.)

Foraging Calamint

Watching the calamint leads me to reflect on its place in a broader ecosystem, on how it occupies the margins — those unexploited spaces that recall an ancient and universal practice: not taking everything. This brings to mind an Occitan notion, la talvera, which refers to the edges of fields left unharvested or untilled. Calamint, by its presence in these liminal spaces, embodies a living form of talvera: it thrives where humans have chosen not to intervene, where the land is left to itself and to others. This connection between calamint and talvera is not merely botanical — it is also theological, illustrating a principle of restraint, of respect for limits, which is at the heart of the biblical texts we are about to explore.

This meditation on Clinopodium nepeta and the talvera also brings to mind what’s coming: the feast of Saint John in summer — a date rooted in another calendar, another rhythm — not that of Resurrection or Ascension, but that of foraging. This parallel rhythm, which I can only describe in terms of body, soil, and breath, evokes a different liturgy — more rhythmic than discursive. I am not attempting syncretism, nor reviving some imagined paganism. On the contrary: I observe that we have lost seasonal, communal, and measured practices — like those of women who, in relatively recent European history, gathered Saint John's herbs according to precise rules. Far from being “pagan” chaos, these practices reflected a deep respect for the living. In destroying such knowledge, we have paved the way for what I call “the worst kind of paganism”: consumerist exploitation of nature, without rule or restraint.

The Talvera

This rule of moderation — embodied in foraging and in the talvera — leads me back to the Pentateuch, to Leviticus 19:9–10 and Deuteronomy 24:19:

“When you are harvesting in your field and you overlook a sheaf, do not go back to get it. Leave it for the foreigner, the fatherless and the widow, so that the Lord your God may bless you in all the work of your hands.”

These texts don’t speak directly of foraging, but of harvesting. They don’t mention Saint John's herbs, but gleaning. And yet they share the same ethic: restraint, sharing with the other — whether poor, foreign, or, in a contemporary reading, with the Earth itself. The talvera, as an unharvested border, is a concrete embodiment of this biblical principle — a space where the land can breathe, where what grows is not possessed but left for others.

Occitanists know how deeply structuring the word talvera is. The talvera is not waste, but intentional reserve — a threshold between exploitation and abandonment. It is a place where an ethical relationship unfolds: what grows without being forced, what is left for others, what escapes ownership. The calamint of the causse, thriving in these margins, converses with the talvera, just as Indigenous peoples and marginalized communities occupy social “peripheries.” These spaces — which could be called los tèrmes in Occitan (from Latin terminī, the borders) — are the outer limits. They recall the farthest zones from the center in medieval parishes, such as those described in Montaillou, Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie’s account of an Occitan village in the 14th century. He describes concentric circles extending from the central village with its church and cemetery, out to the forested and uncultivated edges. I myself live pels tèrmes, alongside the calamint, in these places where centrality yields to the unknown and the imagined.

Pope Francis

This idea of the margins finds an echo in the first words of Pope Francis on March 13, 2013, from the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica:
“The conclave has chosen a bishop for Rome… The cardinals went to the ends of the earth to find him.”
He was made into the “pope of the peripheries” — a term that, in his mouth, referred to a real position: geographical (Argentina), political (the poor), spiritual (humility), and theological (a Church turned toward the margins). In Laudato si’, Francis wrote:

“There are not two separate crises, one environmental and the other social, but one complex socio-environmental crisis.”

What we read in Leviticus and Deuteronomy, what we find in the talvera, what we sense in the gestures of women gathering herbs for Saint John’s Day, what we glimpse in the quiet presence of calamint, what we hear in the words of the pope del fin del mundo — it is all one same elemental rule: Do not take everything. Leave a portion. Leave for the other. Leave for what comes next. Leave so that something might remain alive.

This conviction — that everything is connected — is not just an idea or a moral principle. It becomes visible in forgotten practices, in peripheral words, in foraging gestures, in unharvested zones, in plants we no longer name. It is here that the bond between the poor and the fragility of the planet reveals itself — not as a metaphor, but as a concrete weave of restraint, attention, and rhythm. A bond theology does not need to invent, but rather to recognize where it still persists.

🌿 Universal Rules of Foraging

Never take everything
Always leave part of the plant, the patch, or the population in place, to allow regeneration, species survival, or simply so that something may remain.
→ Leave for the other, for what comes after, for the plant itself.

Do not take the first or the most beautiful
Do not begin with what catches the eye or is most developed: this reflects a respectful approach, a kind of humility in gathering.
→ The first belongs to the place, not to you.

Do not gather all from one spot
Harvest in a dispersed way — never concentrate your gathering in one location. This helps avoid disrupting the micro-ecosystem.
→ Forage while walking, not by emptying.

Know the right time
Each plant has a moment of potency: an hour of the day, a phase of the moon, a precise season. This is as much about respect as it is about efficacy.
→ Do not gather in haste, but in rhythm.

Use a clean tool or your hand
A knife, scissors, or fingers should treat the plant with care. One does not yank or uproot — unless justified.
→ Harvest, don’t tear.

Say thank you, even without words
In many cultures, one offers a word, a breath, a silence, or a gesture to the plant or the spirit of the place.
→ Acknowledge that you are receiving — not taking.

Use what you gather
Never harvest out of curiosity or for hoarding, but only when use is clear, respectful, and limited.
→ To gather is not to possess. It is to answer a rightful need.

Excerpt from the lecture by Paulo Barbosa da Silva
From the symposium “The New Green Theology” organized by the Protestant Faculty of Theology in Strasbourg, February 6–7, 2020.
📽️ https://regardsprotestants.com/video/bible-theologie/pachamama-la-pauvre-terre-mere/

Laudato Si’ Encyclical
📖 https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si.html