The Assertive Bloom of Grace

A rogue cherry tomato plant is sporting fruit in the midst of the beets.  Another is peaking through the wildflower bed that replaced the compost pile.  Last year a zucchini plant surprised us, flourishing in that very pile.

And then there are the sunflowers.

We planted several sunflower seeds around the property this spring, but so far as I can assess nothing has come from them.  Perhaps they lacked moisture when it was most critical.  Or perhaps they were crowded and smothered by competing growth.  I certainly could have been more attentive to their needs, cultivating and coddling and coaxing.   All I can say with certainty is that those chosen locations are silent and void. 

But we have sunflowers.  Towering up between the cabbages and tomatoes are a handful of volunteers that took it upon themselves to grow where their last-season ancestors dropped their seeds.  Never mind the intervening tiller and hoe; never mind the crowding, otherwise-assigned real estate of the garden, it was quite apparently in their interest to grow.  And now, as July dissolves into August, they tower over the garden rows as sentinel observers – whether with welcome or warning I cannot say. 

A more fastidious gardener would have yanked them long ago as intrusions in the orderliness of the plantings.  But I rather like them there – random acts of nature’s kindness – contributing beauty, to be sure, and whimsical novelty; but also because of their silent but stately reminder that I am not finally in control of this soil.  There are underworkings of which I am completely unaware – silent and minuscule machinations beneath the surface that, yes, sometimes produce weeds and other invasives against which I will wage horticultural battle; but also, from time to time, and in always surprising places, the very towering blossom of…

…grace.

Though I haven’t adequately rehearsed the discipline, this garden experience prompts me to survey the corners and rows of the other parts of my life; suspecting the very real likelihood that unexpected graces could well be showing their faces there, too – among the grocery store aisles or the freeway lanes or the pedestrian steps of the sidewalk…

…nudging and elbowing their way into bloom; parading their colors to any with the eyes to see; preparing, in the coming weeks, to scatter their seeds for yet future surprises; next year’s garden plan be damned.

The Neglected Woods Where God Surely Dwells

”When God practices Shabbat, God takes complete delight in what is made. Delight marks the moment when we find whatever is in our presence so lovely and so good that there is no other place we want to be. All we want to do is soak it up, be fully present to it and cherish the goodness of the world God has made.”

------Norman Wirzba, in Making Peace with the Land

The back half of our property is blanketed in woods. The view of it from across the prairie presents tall trees against the horizon, but the few times we have ventured into the thicket we have encountered mostly scrub. A narrow creek interestingly cuts through it, but between the brush and near constant muddiness, reaching its embankment isn't easy. It would take a bulldozer to make much use of it -- an undertaking and expense for which we haven't identified much purpose. The deer take delight in its shelter -- and no doubt other creatures -- but we have happily confined ourselves to the cleared and more accessible acres nearer at hand. Apart from its recent tax designation as “timber reserve” which will save us a few dollars, that portion of the land to which we hold title has been relatively useless. Unfamiliar.  Slightly mysterious, and prickly.  As far as we have been concerned, worthless.

This morning in church we heard again the story of the Hebrew patriarch Jacob’s flight from his angry brother, the dream-filled night that occurred along the way with its angel-trafficked ladder, and the protagonist's morning realization that, “surely the Lord is in this place; and I didn't know it” (Genesis 28:19).

Whatever else Jacob might have been acknowledging, there is the implied observational confession that the problem before had not been with the “place”, but with his own ignorance. I don't understand why we despise what we do not know or understand, but that seems to be our human default. Neither can I comprehend why the fearful prejudices born of that ignorance are only incrementally dismantled. “I’ve come to like and respect you, but you aren't like the rest of your kind.” It's an odd compartmentalization, and sadly wasteful of each other.

Each other, and more.  He probably didn't intend it, but the preacher got me thinking, among other things, about those wooded acres and my base assessment of them; and how Jacob’s problem is actually my own. The deficiency isn't with that “place”, but with my ignorance of it. Against my noblest intentions I’ve fallen into the trap of assessing value according to utility -- what it's good for -- rather than what it simply is: one precious part, along with me, of this wondrously divine creation.

…A creation that will surely heave an epic sigh of relief when we finally comprehend how far it is above our pay grade to name or assess where God might be. 

“Surely the Lord is in this place; and I did not know it.” 

This place.  
These people.  
These moments.

It all gives me the urge to step into my boots and hike in amongst those trees and along that creek -- to get better acquainted with it and the God who is surely full back there, treasuring every square inch of it, never mind the mud, the prickly branches, or the muggy heat.

The Inspiration and Challenge of Vacant Rows

I’ve always been fascinated by second acts – people who intentionally or serendipitously reinvented themselves for a subsequent chapter of their life.  I think of people like Ina Garten who was working as a nuclear budget analyst in the White House when she bought a small food store in Westhampton Beach, NY called “The Barefoot Contessa” – the moniker by which she has ever since been known through her television cooking shows and string of published cookbooks.

I think of JK Rowling who started out adulthood as a researcher, later taught English as a second language in Portugal, eventually becoming a single mom on welfare when she began to write stories of a young wizard orphan boy named Harry Potter.

There are politicians, like John Glenn who first orbited the earth as an astronaut and later walked the halls of the Senate chambers. Like Elizabeth Warren who was an elementary school teacher before she went to law school, practiced law out of her home, and after a few more turns was elected to the United States Senate.  And like Ronald Reagan who was a radio sports broadcaster before becoming a film actor and ultimately President of the United States.

There are business types, like Jeff Bezos who had a computer science career on Wall Street before launching Amazon.

There are star athletes who reinvent themselves, like OJ Simpson…. OK, maybe he’s not the best example.

And there are ordinary types like Clara Peller who was a manicurist in Chicago when she was hired as a temporary manicurist for a television commercial.  One thing led to another and, after starring in a Wendy’s Hamburger commercial asking the famous question, “Where’s the beef?”, went on to enjoy a second career as a character actor.

Second acts.  Explosive second careers.  Loving second marriages.  “Re-wirements”, as a friend of mine once put it, instead of “retirements”.  Putting oneself first to one use and then another.  Less, "and finally;" more, "and then."  Perhaps something like a preacher becoming a farmer.

Perhaps something like the garlic rows in the garden.  Planted last October in a 12-row section in one zone of the garden and an 8-row “spillover” in another zone of the garden, we harvested the mature bulbs this week.  It’s a satisfying feeling, after all these months, to finally dig and pull and bundle all those aromatically bulbous stalks onto the empty shelves of the greenhouse to cure for storage.  But it leaves a big vacancy in the garden – a mere half-way through the season.

We could, of course, start to coast.  We could simply retire those sections until next year.  After all, there is plenty growing in the other reaches of the garden.  We have more than enough to do with what remains – weeding and watering, watching for bugs or diseases, gathering into the kitchen a thing or two as they ripen.  And we have other interests and projects to occupy our time and imaginations.  But leaving those spaces fallow seems like missed opportunity.  There is still time before late autumn frosts.  There is yet fertility in the soil.  There are storage crops we would later appreciate.  I ponder the question of stewardship and how we responsibly use ourselves and our resources.

And I’m haunted by the sound of Clara Peller’s voice, asking over the image of that vast and empty bun, “where’s the beef?”; knowing that ultimately she’s not talking about hamburgers at all.

And so we planted seeds in those vacant rows – beets and carrots, turnips and parsnips, fall cauliflower – and already salivate with the anticipation of a subsequent harvest.

A second act.

And wonder about seeds and empty rows of other and different and more significant sorts.

Carrots and Marrow and Tasting the Deliberate Life

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.  ...I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience..."
                                ----Henry David Thoreau, Walden

Very shortly after moving to this farmstead we named it, for reasons as inscrutable then as now, "Taproot Garden."  I don't know from where the name came.  I wasn't even aware of the need to select a name.  When one brings home a dog, a name becomes a pressing imperative; but never before had I considered a name for a new home.  Nevertheless, the boxes were scarcely unpacked and the pictures hung on the walls before the name had emerged, we had commissioned a graphic designer to create a logo, and not too long after taking possession of the finished art that we contracted with a sign maker for the entrance.  The name, it seemed, had chosen us.

In some small way like Thoreau before us, we had gone to the land because we, too, wished to live deliberately and deeply.  I don't think we anticipated a lot of marrow sucking, but we were indeed intent on drawing from the wisdom of life's core.  If a taproot reaches down into the depths of the soil to more solidly anchor whatever stems and leafs and fruits above, and to gather richer, more remote nutrition, then a taproot was precisely what we were after.  Our move felt and continues to feel like one that brings the marrow of life closer to hand.

This is not to suggest that my prior vocational endeavor was artificial or fruitless.  I am forever grateful for the calling, for the evocative mentors who helped discern it with me, for the grandeur of its purpose and imagination, and for the people into whose proximity it drew me.  But something about the execution of it always chaffed -- the machinations, the protocols, the institutional expectations and obligations both implied and stated.  Like the teeth of transmission gears that never quite meshed, the operational and the vocational aspects of the work never quite found in me their rhythm. 

This, of course, says far more about me than about the work.  I have no real idea how the work should be done; I only know how I did it.  To be sure, there were peers and role models that I watched and variously celebrated and derided.  But I don't truly know what it was like for them.  A wise teacher once noted that we are always comparing the "outside" of others with the "inside" of ourselves, and it's never a fair or accurate comparison. 

All that, plus a certain inexorability about it.  I recall a comment my brother made after returning with his family from the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.  Describing the incredible density of the crowd he observed that you could almost pick up your feet and the crowd would carry you where it wanted you to go.  My prior work had an element of that.  For all its flexibility, it had a way of carrying me along in the directions it wanted me to go, and always swept along I never quite felt capable of reconnecting with the pavement and initiating an alternative direction of my own within it.

Stepping, then, outside of it, we settled on the land....deliberately...to "front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach."  I wouldn't assert that it is the only way to do it -- resettling onto a piece of land -- but I suspect it's harder the further away from it we move. 

Once grounded and home, we began to send down the taproot that this stretch of soil invited.

And we have been anchoring and learning.  This morning I weeded a few garden rows, nestled into the soil a few dozen transplants from the greenhouse, harvested several more cucumbers, a pepper, along with the first of the garlic and the squash.  Later this afternoon I'll gather a dozen or so eggs.   

And pull some carrots -- taproots. Then, with every sweet and crunching bite I will savor the earthy richness of the minerals and micro-nutrients drawn up from the deep, and consider how the same has been happening in me. 

And gratefully resolve to continue Thoreau's deliberate deeper growth and experiential learning...

...tasting the marrow as I come to it.

The Breathtaking Chorus of Our Respective Voices

"The universe would be incomplete without man; but it would also be incomplete without the smallest transmicroscopic creature that dwells beyond our conceitful eyes and knowledge."
----John Muir

 By this time 6 years ago Lori and I had abandoned a quixotic quest for one rural property and, on the rebound, visited two others.  We felt utterly no connection with one of those, but the other one lingered in our souls like a song you can't get out of your head.  Still, we retreated; hesitant to jump at one pretty place just because we had been denied another.  We thought about other things.  We talked about the weather.  Eventually we called the realtor and initiated a second look which led to an offer which led to a counter-offer and a counter to the counter...and signatures on a purchase agreement.  Two months later we were arranging furniture, unpacking boxes, and nervously, almost wordlessly wondering what in the world we had done.  The ten rural acres that, in the coming months, would be named Taproot Garden was ours. 

At least the legal documents on file at the courthouse attest to that premise. 

But the very first time we walked around the property after making it our home we couldn't shake the recognition that that description was more technical than real.  It was an insight only deepened during the subsequent winter when, with little else to do, I picked up the property's abstract and read the story of this land.  Acquired in the 1800's by the U.S. Government through a treaty with the resident Native Americans,  this parcel has variously welcomed and endured numerous settlers -- "owners" -- who have come and gone, bought and sold, cleared and planted.  Whatever we do while settled here, and however long we stay, our fingerprints will quickly dissolve into the smear of those left here previously amidst the land's ongoing story.

It's not that our presence here is immaterial.  We have cut trees; we have planted others.  We have planted prairie grasses and wildflower seeds.  We have plowed ground.  But it's hard to assert much of a case for primacy.  Regardless of how many thistles we dig out, countless others find their way up and out of the soil in spite of us.  Regardless of how much we clear away the growth around the fruit trees, by the time we turn our backs to walk back into the house its re-encroachment is already under way. 

Who, then, is the most significant player on this precious parcel of ground?  Who really "owns" this land?  Is it us with our deeds and abstracts and power saws and earth augers and tillers and hoes and irrigation systems?  Is it the deer who routinely traverse the property indifferent to our presence?  Is it the dandelions loosening the packed soil? Is it the bees hived just before the treeline who pollinate the flowers and the trees?  Is it the earthworms beneath the surface or the trees standing watch around the edges?  Is it the birds who overfly, or the garden snakes who do their part? 

Or is the very question, as Muir hints in the opening quotation, an absurdity in its assumption of any hierarchy at all?  Is it arrogance or is it insecurity  -- or an even more destructive ignorance -- that leads humans, completely alone among all these other players and the literally billions of others, to posit such a dwarfing stupidity as superiority? 

I only know this:  when I see the squash vine blackened and withered, despite my most valiant efforts, by a squash bug; or when I see a ripening plum on a branch where only months ago was but a naked branch; or when I pinch a young cucumber off the vine after I had simply dug a hole and dropped a seed...

...I can do little more than note the swelling gratitude that overtakes me for the privilege of participating, in these few tiny ways, in the immense wonder of it all.  Along with the bees and the worms and the butterflies and blossoms; with the seeds and the fruits and the sun and the rain; with the innumerable microscopic factors and fungi at once inhabiting and nourishing the soil, we make a pretty good chorus.  All of us -- each of us -- simply singing our part.

Fireworks-- and Hope -- in a Jar

Walking back toward the house after securing the chickens for the night, the young darkness is alive – electrified with the twinkling of fireflies.  It happens every night this time of year – especially dramatic in the tall rough grass around the front trees, as if the stars in the sky had condescended to kneel down to human scale affording us earth-bound ones a better view.  Those with a quick hand and a childlike sense of wonder can capture one and contain the lightening in a jar, but either because I've grown older or slower (I pray it's merely the latter) I content myself with watching; marveling at the magic just outside our door.

I suppose there are fireflies in the city, but I rarely saw them in all of our years there.   Perhaps it was that all the street lights and porch lights and headlights around camouflaged them hiding in plain sight.  Or perhaps I was too busy to pay them any mind – or once parked inside and the garage door motored down behind me I never reemerged until morning.  We miss things, I know, wherever we are.  Out here in the rural recesses -- absent cable, satellite TV, pavement and street lights -- I'm sure we miss plenty. 

But not the fireflies. Fireflies we see.  And it's something close to magic.

After several decades of illegality, and amidst great controversy, the Governor signed a bill this spring, passed by the legislature, legalizing the sale of fireworks in Iowa.  Curiously, the new law allows municipalities to ban the USE of such explosives, but not their SALE; making me wonder whose interests the new law is intended to serve.  But I digress.  The result of it all will almost surely be that the afternoons this 4^th of July weekend will be crackling with strings of Black Cats reaching the ends of their fuses, and the nights with fizzing sparklers and the bursts of Roman candles and bottle rockets.

It seems to me that it would have been a lot simpler – and cheaper and quieter – to just encourage everyone to drive down a country road, park near a field, turn off the headlights, and watch nature’s own fireworks display. 

And I do encourage it.  You might find yourself spontaneously humming softly about “rockets red glare” and “bombs bursting in air.”

You might even find yourself trying to catch one in a jar…

…giggling, pretending, if only for the evening, that we are all children. 

But even if only for the evening, who knows where it could lead?

Just imagine.