The Long Game

 I watch the young chickens while I water on the deck.  The labor allows for considerable watching.  Our deck is ringed with vertical PVC pipes - 18, plus the 14 French flower cans suspended in a steel frame - filled with potting soil, sown various herb seeds.  Watering doesn’t require much concentration.  The pipes stand just taller than the deck rail, no bending involved, and aim is the only requirement.  It is slow, quotidian work; mindless in that liberating way that untethers my attention, allowing it to drift like a stringless kite and snag on whatever branch or chimney or light pole happens into its path.  

Those, or chickens.  The young ones are segregated into a partitioned section of the chicken yard. With only a wire fence between them, there is plenty of opportunity for mutual observation and curious envy between these 12-week-olds and the mature ones on the other side.  Eventually the adolescents will make the great migration into the big yard, making room for the next round of chicks even now trading down for feathers in the brooder in the barn, but for now their sequestration affords them a little kinder, more protected environment while they continue to grow.  There will be time enough in the weeks ahead for their skirmishes with the big girls, and their introductions into the ways of life administered by Dwayne the rooster.  For now, they flit and flurry their way from water to feed to bug to whatever else they happen to see.  

And I tip the watering can from pole to pole, spotting tiny sprouts slowing emerging.  

These early days of the growing season recalibrate my sense of time.  What a tuning fork is to the ears, a seed - a chick - is to the soul.  Someone once said, “Never travel faster than your guardian angels can fly.”  Carrie Newcomer lyricises that wisdom into the caution not to “travel faster than our souls can go.”  The farmstead constantly counsels me not to live faster than seeds can grow; than buds open into flowers; than bees make honey; than fruit ripens.  To live at the speed of soul.  Pouring on more water, after all, won’t speed up the process.

Every day, then, I fill the can and sprinkle the seeds, and wonder with awe at all that might be happening around me.

And within.

This Sanguine Moment in Time

 

There is a soulful sanguinity to this transitional moment.  Garden planting is complete, save for a few more flowers intended to feed the bees (and our own aesthetic hunger).  The supportive systems – the wire cages, the trellises and the plastic drip lines – are in place and functioning.  After a frenetic and tiresome few weeks of furrowing and transplanting, the initiating work is done.  Exclamation and exhalation are both warranted and earned.  There is always work to do, but in this still and transient moment, we rest in the transition between construction and maintenance.  On this holiday weekend we intend to do a little of both: basking in the satisfaction, and taking a deep breath.

 

But as that opening sentence suggests, it is not simply that the startup work is completed.  More than anything it is that the work is a down payment on hope.  We haven’t sored our muscles and exhausted our energies merely for the good and righteous discipline of it.  It was all in service to the prospect of growth – that the work would eventually lead to something, produce something, that is profoundly good.  And “here” is the only place to start if we want to arrive “there”, at harvest.  I am spiritual enough to know that grace is real, and that blessings quite often fall on the undeserving and the unprepared.  Good things sometimes simply come whether we have seeded them or not.  I have been the beneficiary of too many of those to count to scoff at the wonder and the joy of them.  But cultivation never got in the way of grace.  I don’t think God takes offense at the little bit of spade work we can contribute to the alchemy of abundance.  Hence, the sweat and the fatigue and the ever-sore muscles.

 

But even harvest is not the ultimate denouement.  It, too - as good and celebratory as it will be – is but the precursor to the kitchen, which is the on-ramp to the dining room with its plated wonders and delights, and the satiated, satisfied smiles that result. 

 

For now, of course, the garden is more brown than green; more loosened soil than sturdy plants.  But those nascent seedlings, both transplanted whole and popping up from below, will have their day.  Hope will find its height and breadth and, if the malefactors are held at bay, its fruit. 

 

That is a question for another day, the predations that are always lurking and how to counter them.  This morning I am sitting on the deck in the cool of a quiet holiday, admiring the work and its promise. 

 

Hopeful. 

Sanguine. 

A deep and grateful breath. 

Rested.

Smiling.

Savoring the anticipation of the flavors just beginning to stir.

Holiness in the Dirt

The work days were interestingly bookended.  We started the week spreading worm poop – a ton of it; literally 2000 pounds of it – and ended the week spreading chicken poop.  It’s a sentence that I couldn’t have imagined writing not too many years ago, but there it is:  manure in all its glory, large and small, put to the ancient use of fertility.  Reality is more exciting than the facts might sound.

 

It is planting season of course.  The grass is growing, the chickens are laying, the dandelions are blooming, the flower beds are bursting, the rain barrels are filling.   And we have been working.   The garden beds have been prepared – cleared of remnant detritus and lightly tilled; scored with a hoe and drilled with an auger, the seeds have been meted out and the greenhouse seedlings have been transplanted.  The tomato cages have been placed - though their securing still needs reinforcement - and the irrigation drip tapes have been unrolled into place.  

 

Life has been nudged forward in the direction of color and fruit, and thanks to the earthworms and the chickens, it has been encouraged.  Fed.  Nourished. Beckoned.  With the manure.  Small and large; worm and hen, bucket and shovel wielded by Lori and me.  It gets down to basics - far from any glamour, it’s about the humble building blocks.  The occasional rains will surely help, and when it refuses, the faucet.  Sunlight will do its part, as will we with the hoe.  But it’s the soil that will make the difference – the soil, elevated by the excrement.

 

I once heard a famous chef observe that cuisines were born out of the creative use of the poor leftovers, the discards, the refuse.  The result, he said with a smile, was the inversion of desire.  Having discerned its quieter value, that creative use elevated and popularized the previously maligned, overshadowing the once-preferred. 

 

I have no idea who figured out this miracle of manure – above who’s ancient head the bulb of insight flashed on – but it’s funny to recognize that same inversion in the garden.  What comes out of the ground as food is beneficially returned to it in digested, concentrated form.  As important as are the seeds and the seedlings, it’s the shit that is the salvation.  

 

I suspect that truth is resident and operational in all manner of pursuits – for those with the patience to wait for it, the vision to discern it, and adequate humility to wield the shovel and carry the bucket and entertain the possibility that mouths are not the only valuable orifice.  I have work to do in that regard, but in the chicken yard and the garden I have good teachers. 

 

And plenty of opportunities to learn.

 

We shovel, then, and turn in the promise:  a kind of genuflection amidst the sacrament of the soil.

 

 

It’s a Smile of Course

You could take my word for it.  I am, after all, 66 years old and have seen a thing or two.  I have climbed my way through the educational system, earning a diploma and a degree or two or three.  I have put in my years of employment of one kind or another - selling ice cream and communities, camps and congregations, eggs and tomatoes and a point of view.  Or two.  I have some credentials and credibility and some trips around the sun.  Whether the sum of any of that is wisdom is anyone’s guess, but nonetheless you could take my word for it.

Or you could consult the scientists who routinely ask questions and seek credible answers.  They have scanned the skies and attended conferences and published articles and calibrated distances and distilled the gases and charted the relevant rotations.  

You could retrieve the almanac, assuming you can remember where you shelved it, check the date and trust the ancient wisdom.  

You could consult the poets because poets, with their poetic eye and ear, routinely paint the truth and beckon us to stand beside them, shoulder to shoulder, and witness awes larger than life.  

We could flip through the scriptures, righteously and “rightly dividing the word of truth,” but chances are the verse we would land on is from the muttering Micah who would quietly shake his head and remind us, “God has shown you, O mortal, what is good.”

“Goodness,” we might exclaim by way of response, “is there anything good?”  

There is plenty to make us wonder. In my town a mother just killed her newborn.  At the Capitol they are passing laws that amount to suffocation.  At the bank they are wringing their hands - I am too when I look at my eroding reserves.  In Eastern Europe, Goliath is bombing David who, so far, is successfully slingshotting a few well-aimed stones in return.  And at schools, teachers must now set aside their teaching to assess genitalia and monitor bathroom access.  

We could ask the churches, but what ones haven’t fallen asleep are largely fighting amongst themselves and aren’t likely to hear the question.  Or are too busy gearing up for the Easter Egg Hunt to answer.

You could ask Siri or Alexa and they would surely have some well researched Wikipedia article to succinctly summarize the details.

Or, you could simply look up and draw your own conclusions - seeing for yourself that it is a smile - the moon whimsically offering a blessing for your night, your sleep, your punctuating period at the end of this day.  

A smile.  

It’s up there.  You could ask someone or never even notice.  Or in the process of walking the dog or turning off the light or peeking out the window or simply taking one last deep breath of this day, look up, zoom in, and claim it for yourself.  A smile.  The corners of Creation are curling upward in affirmation.

And returning a smile of your own - for whomever and whatever might need one - offering the world a blessed and happy “good night.”

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.