Our kitchen fills with the aroma of grainy bread, baking for the feast. The loaves slide effortlessly our of their lined steel cradles, and I pat butter atop the brown loaves; it melts, seeps, slides down hot sides. I cut a thick slice and step out on to the porch to savor in quiet, the swing gently rocking.
In the west, where the far off fields of earth touch the sky, light is falling, sinking, golden and orange and brilliant. Closer, moving closer, the dark underbellies of clouds writhe and roil, a heavy grey pressing down. The sky rumbles. And again, low growling, hot and gaining. The deafening crack of a whip, lightning splinters. The air is charged.
I watch it, feel it, fall. The open ground receives heaven’s drink. The plough point’s glinting steel has pierced and crumbled the land’s hard surface. It’s done its necessary work. The tearing open of the earth lets the rain in. And the rain now falls and softens, filling in the open places. New seeds will grow come spring.
Cold rain pouring down chases me into the house. Shattering light flashes, forks, fractures. The rooms flicker…and fall still. Night comes in on Thanksgiving Eve with only the sound of tears falling on plowed fields.
Henri Nouwen writes, “I still remember an evening meditation on Dutch television, during which the speaker poured water on hard, dried out soil, saying, “Look, the soil cannot receive the water, and no seed can grow.” Then after crumbling the soil with his hands, and pouring water on it again, he said, ‘It is only the broken soil that can receive the water, and make the seed grow and bear fruit.’ “
My father knows. He “no-tilled” his soybean seeds into the ground this past year. There was no breaking of up of the soil. Instead of plowing or cultivating, the plates of the planting drill penetrated the crust and tucked the seeds in dark earth. The seeds germinated, tender sprouts pushing towards light. But they struggled to poke through the untilled field. Many, many, many rains over several weeks would have eventually broke up the field, making a way for breaking through growth. But the sky remained cloudless this spring. And the seeds remained in the earth. The harvest this autumn is poor. Breaking up of soil, looming of storm clouds, and the wagons would have overflowed.
This plowing breaks our hardness. Will I grow bitter, resenting this breaking? Tears water us. Will I see the gift in these losses, this mourning, this brokenness? There is hope for a new crop, a coming yield. Will I, in the midst of crumbling and rain, believe?
heavenly Husbandman,
that my being may be a tilled field,
the roots of grace spreading far and wide, until thou alone art seen in me,
thy beauty golden like summer harvest,
thy fruitfulness as autumn plenty.”
~Valley of Vision
Plow me. You must, Husbandman, to bring in a harvest.
And in all things, breaking and orange rain, we will give thanks.
Father? We bow low and give thanks for the harvest. And for the plowing and raining that must always come before.
