Rogation Day

The closer spring gets, the more you want it to get here. You think that somehow you can make it get here more quickly if you do spring-like things. In one of our breaks from the intense cold of this winter, Jessie and I took a look at our compost heap. We had not done a thing to it since the last time we dumped grass clippings into it. So imagine our surprise when we had some finished product!

We set to work to turn and reform the pile, and we shook out as much compost as we could, leaving the stuff that still needs to rot down. We got about 4 cubic feet out of it, and that went immediately to the raised bed in the front yard where we expect to grow lettuce this year. [Did I mention that our lettuce seeds for sale are the best selection I have seen in one place?]

I think that you need a visual, physical picture of some of the abstractions that are so important in our lives. “Love,” for example. Or “together.” Jessie and I may say that we love each other. And we may say that we are blessed to have the opportunity to work together. But the work of ministry can be abstract. And we all know that love cannot be just a word.

Doing the first spring-like thing was also doing, seeing the first love-like thing, together-thing. It was not a warm day, really, but it wasn’t snowing! As we got to work with the pitchforks, it was not long before the clumped and moist pile had us breathing heavy and sweating. We quickly found a rhythm of shaking the heavier matter away from the finished “dirt,” and twisting and turning and loosening it up for the new pile.

There was not a lot to say, no need to say anything. It’s one thing to imagine that you are at work in the fields of the Lord; that the sowing and reaping of the Word and souls is every bit as real as broadcasting seed and mowing hay, and yet… a large part of me has to have some tangible ritual, some training by motion and posture that keeps me from flying away; propositions and logical conclusions are fine enough, but I can’t seem to get a point unless I see it. [Chris Baker knows this better than anyone!]

When I think of being human, of human culture, the rock-bottom sign of being human is work together, the work that the Lord gave to husband and wife and families. We pray every night that God will make us “preachers together.” Who knows if that is His will? But I can say that I do not understand that except when I can remember (or better yet, do) the work of raising food with the people closest to me. (Already on the floor are all the things we need to make a sieve for our compost, to get as much of the finished stuff as we can and put the rest back to rot; we all went to Lowe’s together, and we’ll get the saw and hammer out and hopefully John and Joe can see what all those trips they made to the backyard with a bucket full of slimy eggshells and coffee grounds was all about!)

It is at once our glory and tragedy that we do not depend on each other. Glorious, because to some degree, Sartre was right when he said, “Hell is other people.” We don’t want to depend on another for our survival. At least not in the direct ways we would if, for example, we were on a prairie farm in 1825. But it is our tragedy as well, because we have lost connection. It is just as easy to love someone and then not love them if it is only a word, an abstraction, or a “feeling.” If we have to cut wood, mow hay, and put up the harvest, it will be harder for me to simply say I am walking away from my family. But when we have jobs away from home, and a world that responds to the independence of cash, we can and do easily walk away.

All this is to say, I am looking forward to a long, hot summer. I love to sweat, to get dirty. I love it when you have to give the boys a pre-bath bath. And I can’t wait to be in the garden with Ica, the place where we really met and got to know one another, saying sometimes nothing and sometimes everything…