Away with the Prevenient and on to the Vernal

 We planted seeds today - collards and kale, tomatoes and peppers, onions and leeks, and strawberries.  Not in the ground, mind you - it’s weeks too early for that.  The populated seed trays are destined for the greenhouse where they will, if our green-thumbed prayers are answered, stir and sprout and spread their eventual leaves.  But this is where it starts:  with seeds, the granular beginnings that tilt toward fruitfulness.  It seemed like the thing to do on the occasion of the Vernal Equinox - seeding, while also pondering when it last might have been that the word “vernal” showed up commonly in casual conversation.  It was certainly before my lifetime.  That’s a loss as I think about it.  Of all the words to drop out of our vocabulary, we can ill-afford to lose those connoting “freshness,” “newness”, and “of the spring.”  In a world whose cultural graces and political discourse seem iced into winter - clinched, hunched, curled inward - words bending toward growth and light strike me as precious enough to nurture.

Here, at least, then on this particular day when the Northern Hemisphere begins to tilt toward the sun thereby stretching the daylight and warming the air, we are reminded.  It is officially spring.  Life is officially new.  

At least the newness has begun.  Perhaps that is why I like the word “tilt” so much as a description of this nascent transition.  Nothing has plopped down upon us or fallen over on us.  It is far less dramatic, far more incremental than that.  Indeed, the casual observer might well have noticed no change at all from yesterday to today.  The Vernal Equinox is, as the rock band “Chicago” used to sing, “only the beginning.”

But it is a beginning.  And the testimony is prolific.  The hens are laying, the grass is greening, the bulbs are slightly emerging, and buds are bulging from seemingly every branch, from forsythia to fruit tree.  All that, plus it feels a little contagious - at least to a guy like me who has been feeling as stark and barren as the wintering trees, brittle limbs clattering in the wind.  Without going into detail, I haven’t been my best self.  Too much crankiness.  Too much judgment. Too much anger over what I can little influence.  Too much winter in my veins.  Too much frost in my heart.  I’ve needed a little tilt toward the sun.  I’ve needed a little vernal nudge.

Right on time, here we are.  

It is, as I noted, just the beginning.  But it is beginning.  Even Easter, the grandest vernality of all, is just around the corner - triggered by this very day, calculated as it is to rise on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox.

And so we tilt.  

Toward the sun.

Toward life emerging.

Toward - dare I say it? - fruit.

Tasting the Harvest in the Seed

 "The 'already' and the 'not yet.'"

Throughout my professional life that refrain was a theological abstraction - a principled affirmation that called attention to what the Creator had already accomplished among us, juxtaposed with all that was still in process but incomplete.  It was a tenet of faith; prayers of gratitude and petition clutching hands to step over the cracks in this sidewalk that is everyday life.  

But there is no abstraction here.  On the farmstead, the observation is palpably, descriptively real.  This is the "already" anticipatory season of concrete steps that makes any derivative "not yet" abundance possible.  We are busily pruning fruit trees - a wincing exercise of obligatory infanticide that trims branches already swelling with buds so that the remaining limbs can more vibrantly thrive.  Horticultural sprays will quickly follow, affording the trees every advantage against pests and disease that organic care can offer.  In the greenhouse, the first bags from the pallet of seed starting soil have been opened and blocked into trays now germinating the first of the garden seeds.  From this point forward, additional trays will be added weekly until springtime transplanting.  In the garden, Lori has been busy uprooting the dry remnants of last years vegetation clearing the way for fresh bed preparation to welcome those greenhouse seedlings that are still but twinklings in our horticultural eye.  

And if you cock your ear just right you will hear, from the deeper recesses of the barn, cheeps from the baby chicks in the brooder that will one day, if all goes well, join the older girls in the coops out back; and still later, wait their turn for time in the laying boxes to deposit their eggs.  

Such is the work "already" underway.  If we do it care-fully, attentively, patiently, good will come of it - eventually.  We might begin to find young eggs, should the chicks survive the precarities of growth and development and predation, some 20 weeks from now - August would be my guess; about the same time we are harvesting honey from the bees should their thriving and pollinating bless us with such.  Asparagus, that perennial first-fruit of spring, should begin to emerge mid-May as a "teaser" for the harvests to come - garlic dug in July, commencing the cascade of fruitings that will continue through autumn.  We won't get the first taste of tomatoes and peppers - the Crown Jewels of the garden - until August.  The trees won't offer their gifts until September and October - potatoes sometime between the tomatoes and the apples.

Today, while pruning a limb or starting a seed or feeding a chick, it all seems a long way off - a "not yet" that feels almost mythical.  

Which it will be if we don't commence the work now, already.

As with most of the harvests we hope for in life.

And beyond.

Birds Do It, Bees Do It

It’s not what you are thinking.

Related, I suppose, but the insight I am pondering is broader than libidinal instinct.

The topic for our monthly creation conscious worship experience yesterday afternoon was surviving winter, and breaking away from the warming flames emanating from the fire pit, we began our “wonder wander” near the chicken yard to ponder how the chickens do it. There are physiological processes that benefit the birds, but behavioral choices conspicuously save the day - and the nights. Despite the fact that there are two available coops between which the chickens could spread out it spacious comfort, during the winter months they unanimously opt to crowd into a single one, and it the smaller of the two. They keep each other warm.

From there we sauntered back to the bee hives - a proximity we don’t, in more active seasons, so blithely risk - to consider their winter survival. There is no heater nearby moderating their environment, nor have I added insulation to the hive boxes. The bees, we learned, benefit as well from some physiological modifications, but mostly, like the chickens, from behavioral ones: they form themselves into something of a ball at the center of the hive - huddling together, as it were. From there they are constantly trading positions - those on the outer portions of the ball moving inward toward the warmer center, while those duly warmed migrate out to the edges; a circulation constantly underway so that everyone takes its turn; everyone does it’s part.

Walking back toward the fire where our own warming could resume by the flames and each other’s company we considered the prairie grasses beneath our feet and what strategies are built into DNA for surviving Iowa winters. Going deep is certainly key - roots that, like the frost-free hydrants supplying water to farms all over the Midwest, descend safely beneath the average frost line to remain viable. But just as the grasses create a dense weave on the surface of the soil, their roots are surely as supportively communal under ground.

What wisdom were we to glean from nature’s classroom? Perhaps, quite simply, what God’s own voice pronounced in the very beginning: “It’s not good for the muddy one to be alone,” - a declaration almost certainly more than matrimonial. The sage in the book of Ecclesiastes boiled it down to this: “If two lie together, they keep warm, but how can one keep warm alone?"

This, the birds and the bees and the grasses understand - even the logs in the fire itself. The great musical theologian, Jack Johnson, sang it this way: “It’s better when we’re together.”

Birds, bees, grasses and poets. It’s the rest of us who can’t quite grasp the point.

It’s common, of late in matters of public self-identification, to indicate one’s preferred pronouns. But most of the time we deceive. In contrast to the “he”, “she”, “they” we routinely assert, the too-common truth is “I, me, mine.”

For the many of us who self-identify (beyond our pronouns) as “Christian”, we should know better - never mind the embarrassing and contradicting, misspent public face that name increasingly wears. The Christian life, according to Jesus and those who wrote about “the Way,” is plural. “Love your neighbor as yourself,” Jesus described as the penultimate commandment,” and “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”

Or this quick recap of the New Testament letters:

From the12th, 13th, 14th and 15th chapters of the book of Romans:

• “Love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor.”

• “Live in harmony with one another.”

• “Owe no one anything, except to love one another.”

• “Let us therefore no longer pass judgment on one another, but resolve instead never to put a stumbling block or hindrance in the way of another.”

• “Live in harmony with one another...”

• “Welcome one another, therefore, just as Christ has welcomed you.

From 1 Corinthians and Galatians:

• “When you come together to eat, wait for one another.”

• “Through love become slaves to one another.”

• “Let us not become conceited, competing against one another, envying one another.”

From Ephesians and Colossians:

• “Bear with one another in love.”

• “Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.”

• “Do not lie to one another.”

• “As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.”

• “Teach and admonish one another in all wisdom”

From 1Thessalonians, James and 1 Peter:

• “Encourage one another.”

• “Do not grumble against one another.”

• “Confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another.”

• “Be hospitable to one another without complaining. Like good stewards of the manifold grace of God, serve one another with whatever gift each of you has received.”

From 1 John:

• “Have fellowship with one another.”

• “Love one another.”

• “Lay down our lives for one another.”

“One anothering.”  It is pretty common wisdom and instruction - in the first Bible that is creation, and the second Bible that is printed.

The birds do it. The bees do it. The grasses and their roots do it.

A modest proposal for the rehabilitation of our diseased culture: perhaps we should do it, too.

Cashmere Petals of Chill

Snow was falling as I trudged out to the chicken yard.  It had begun in the darkness, already carpeting the front porch by the time first light sparkled the fresh descent.  My booted footfalls crunched across the lawn’s accumulation, while the flakes fluttered and played and found their rest on bristled evergreens and hydrangea remnants, an uninhibited bird nest, and finally my eyelashes and nose.  Celestial cashmere petals of chill.

It was cold, but the temperature was hard to notice amidst the atmospheric magic.  In these moments the eyes were in charge moreso than the skin - apart, that is, from the shivers of delight.  

With my opening of the hatches and lowering of the ramps, the chickens were free to descend and range the yard, but none seized the opportunity.  Dwayne the rooster was crowing the sun up, but preferred to welcome the morning from the comfort of the wood shavings bedding the coop and the surrounding nestled warmth of the communal quarters.  They will come down eventually - they get hungry, after all, and curious - but this morning they are happy to take it slowly.  I can almost picture them inside lazying together with the poultry equivalent of a cup of coffee and the Saturday edition of The New York Times, in no rush to trouble the new day.

Returning indoors and stripping my coat, I found my place fireside with my own cup of coffee and copy of The Times, in no hurry of my own... 

...Happily content to sit, to be, to count flakes through the frosted window, and smile at the memory of more than a few of them dancing on my nose, and settling in my lashes like pines.

The Conviction of Things Unseen

 

"Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for..."

(Hebrews 11:1)

We haven’t seen an egg since before Thanksgiving.  There are multiple reasons.  Trauma was a factor.  Throughout the weeks of August and September and into October, our happy little flock of 35 was steadily whittled down to 15 by the persistence of predators I proved helpless to forestall.  However devastating to me was the demise, to the sisters who watched the carnage and had every reason to expect it to include them, it was paralyzing.  They hadn’t recovered by the time molting season commenced - that annual period of feather shed prior to winter’s repluming.  Throughout the molt, inner resources are shifted from egg creation to feather fabrication.

And then winter, itself, descended.  It’s understandable to assume that hens simply find it too cold to lay eggs in winter, but in reality the constraint is light, not temperature.  Chickens require 12-15 hours of light per day to generate eggs, and in winter the sun is simply not that generous.  Through the solstice, darkness veils 16 of the available 24, incrementally yielding minutes thereafter.  It takes awhile.

The hens contend with all these biological and celestial constraints, while Dwayne the Barred Rock Johnson, our foster rooster has...let’s just say “other impediments”.  He'll not be laying any eggs.

As the new year has ventured deeper into January, however, I’ve been watching.  Searching.  Hoping.  But not finding.  They eat, they drink, they alternately scratch in the yard and huddle for warmth.  But they do not lay.

And then this morning, releasing the flock for another winter day, I glanced inside the nesting boxes where one hen lingered.  Slowly she rose and descended the ramp to join the others for a sip of water and a bite of food, leaving behind...

...the first green glimpse of spring.  An egg, still warm and as fresh and promising as the morning sun rising in the eastern sky.  The “assurance of things hoped for,” the foretaste of the feast to come.

Deep down, I suppose I knew that the nights of winter did not hold the final word - that spring would find us as surely as the dawn.  But like Noah’s dove returning with an olive branch testifying to the reemergence of dry land, the fresh egg is a joyful confirmation that hope is not in vain.  Spring is coming.  And who knows what other gifts of new life?  Perhaps it is too much to hope for that the winter of our political discourse will yield and warm to a more gestational climate; perhaps it is too much to suppose that we might awaken to the truth that our surroundings are our siblings rather than our plunder, or that our own flourishing is linked to our cooperation rather than our domination; that fertility, as nature teaches, depends on diversity rather than sameness.  

Perhaps.

But this morning, in the midst of January - against all odds - I found an egg.  

A blessed and delicious - and promising - foretaste, indeed.

Mary, Once More Beckoning

The day started cold, as winter mornings in Iowa are prone to do.  Even the chickens were reluctant to emerge from the hatch I dutifully opened, or descend the lowered ramp.  Indeed, the only incremental movement anywhere apparent was the fog, thickening the air into opaqueness, whiskering the bare limbs with hoarfrost.  The hive boxes show no signs of bees.  The remaining patches of snow, caught between melting or glistening, simply harden into crusts.

 

This is the season when, by all appearances, nothing at all is happening, or thriving, or moving.  But yet again appearances are deceiving.  Mary has moved.  Indeed, she has fallen.

 

Friends, in recent years, gifted us with a statue of Mary, the mother of Jesus.  Standing perhaps two feet tall, she has thereafter graced the gateway to the garden – a maternal, gestational welcome to any who would pass inside; implicitly blessing hoes and hods and harvest crates passing by, or simply those with an appreciative appetite.  She is facing down, eyes firmly on the soil; perhaps in prayer, or simply and knowingly of the mind that good things come from that direction.  There she has stood throughout the seasons – remembering, blessing, anticipating; silently lending her prayer to the garden soil and the furrows inside for a fecund submission of their own:  “Let it be to me according to your will.”

 

But this morning we found Mary toppled.  It’s not that she was anchored in any reinforcing way – no cement or bolts or braces – but she is cement heavy and settled in a recess, frozen into place.  Nothing has moved her before, neither wind nor bump nor time.  Something, however, had dislodged her.  

Perhaps it was a vigorous curiosity of the groundhog who has taken up residence underneath the garden shed nearby, or nudging inspections by the deer nuzzling for food.  Perhaps it was simply the heaving of the earth below, variously freezing and thawing, swelling and contorting and tilting.  

 

All that’s clear is that the illusion of stillness is simply that:  illusion.  Mary will testify that something is happening; something is moving – motion that provoked her own…

 

…which provokes me to wonder what else is pulsing, pushing, heaving and nudging in the night, or nuzzling just beyond my sight?

 

Mary, for the record, is once again righted – once more standing hospitably by, prayerfully beckoning whatever may…

 

…to grow.

"Let it be to me..."

What is a “Real” Christmas Tree, Anyway?

I've never had a "real" Christmas tree - the kind found cut and bunched in a parking lot and sold by a church youth group or a scout troop or high school band as a fundraiser.

As a child our family annually erected that most oppositional of alternatives, the aluminum tree, complete with circling color wheel light set off to the side. A silver tinsel-like tree glistening in the front window's sunlight by day, and filling the living room walls and ceiling with rotating colored spots by night like a silent holiday disco. I suppose part of me envied my friends with their sap-oozing, needle-dropping, pine-scenting trees.  Allergies were our default rationale for the "artificial alternative", though I suspect expense and nuisance were the likelier reasons in a household with a tightly managed budget.  Nonetheless, I loved our silver tree. I loved positioning its broom handle-like trunk in the base and assembling the tree, branch by branch, each inserted into its pre-drilled hole. In the weeks that followed I remember creeping into that magical space alone while family members busied themselves with other things. I would lie down on the floor and be mesmerized by the rotational sparkle. Wrapped gifts eventually occupied the space beneath the silvery boughs, but I wasn't drawn to shake the packages and fantasize about their contents. I was there to be caught up in the graceful pirouette of the tree, the swirling of the colored spots, and the motorized rotation of the wheel from blue to red to yellow to green. That was Christmas, then, to me - the tree and the songs, the candlelight Christmas Eve service and the Christmas morning drive to visit grandparents.

In adulthood I have sustained the aversion to potential allergens and, with aluminum trees now out of fashion, have annually retrieved from the attic or basement or barn the green, more familiar style of artificial conifer. In more primitive times the decorating began with the ultimate tedium of stringing lights in some artful draping, before moving on to balls and stars and tinsel and bows, but having reached the zenith of holiday convenience and expedience, we now simply assemble the pre-lit layers and plug it in. Voila!

There are yet, I'll admit, those occasional and wistful moments when a "real" tree sounds romantically appealing, but the thoughts are as fleeting as Christmas cookies. I rather like our representational specimen.

That, and the sudden ambiguity about what is a "real" Christmas tree in the first place? Is a truncated, now lifeless cadaver of wood still a tree, and by extension any more "real" than a fabrication of bristly plastic and wires? Or cut, has it ceased to be a tree but become, instead, a product - a derivative like lumber or paper or utility pole or mulch? Is nature any more honored by a tree destroyed than by a tree imitated? Is the spiritual dimension of the symbol any better expressed by the evergreen turning brittle and brown and raining down on the floor than by the literally evergreen artificial branches from the box - or for that matter by its aluminum antecedents?

Could it be, instead, that a "real" Christmas tree isn't defined by its material composition at all, but by the life it invites me to ponder, the creation it points beyond itself to celebrate, the birth it's lighting symbolizes and its decorating reveres? Could it be that the "realness" of the Christmas tree is what happens around it?

Could it be that the Christmas tree is like a pancake which is less of a culinary star and more of a simple and unobtrusive conveyance for the sweetness that covers it?

Resuming the Christmas playlist through which Bing and Perry and Andy and Nat serenade us into the season, and plugging in the lights on the tree and sidestepping the corgi snoozing on its skirt, I finger the adorning ornaments accumulated through the years and contemplate all the sweetness they convey.

And it is real. Whatever all the accoutrements are made of, it's the sweetness - spiritually, relationally, sentimentally - that is real.

I'll go outside for the trees.