Farming
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moreHow to be glad: Friday on the Farm
On Friday, April 13 th, 2012“David said it all: I saw God before me for all time. Nothing can shake me; He...
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moreHow in this World Do You Find Joy? ……. {Holy Week: Part 4}
On Thursday, April 05 th, 2012In the middle of Passion Week, we work dirt. We pick stones off the field, haul off rocks to ready a seed bed. There are eggs in an incubator downstairs in a closet. The whole world is this ticking, waiting, readying thing, on the brink of something cosmic, on the brink of the Biggest Bang — that slamming hammer and the howl of God ringing to the stars. That’s what ...
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moreso… where you from, friend?
On Friday, March 09 th, 2012Iam from dirt fields and Case International tractors and waving fields of wheat hanging heavy in the heat of August afternoons. I am from an old red brick house under a stretching apple tree with limbs like a ladder for barefeet, and Co...
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moreThe Real First Thanksgiving Keep Calm & Count On {free printable}
On Monday, November 21 st, 2011That field of beans west of the barn, it looked gaunt come October, bean pods all hanging like bony ribs. Whenever the wind sighed, the whole field just rattled skinny. That’s how my Dad always spoke of a railish man, that you could count his ribs. Nothing in me wanted to count those beans, know the yield, from this spare field. When the Farmer rolled the co...
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moreWhen You Desperately Want God to Hear Your Prayers
On Wednesday, November 02 nd, 2011When we buy her two pygmy goats for her birthday, who knew how big faith could get? We bring them home in June in a mini-van with no air-conditioning. Two miniature goats neighing back and forth — on the laps of two boys making jokes about something warm running down their legs. “We do need to name them,” the birthday girl announces. She strokes on...
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moreA Harvest of Hope: What is the Christian Response to Hunger?
On Friday, October 07 th, 2011My Dad had said we’d never see anything like it again — not in our life times. 120 combines lined up around one field — 160 acres of soybeans. A harvest of less than 12 minutes. An attempt at a world record. All crop donated to world hunger. They were calling it a harvest for hunger. The ...
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morewhen things get broken
On Tuesday, September 20 th, 2011The morning’s barely warm, early and breaking. On the way in from the hen house, she trips on the back step and drops the only egg she’s found. How do you tell someone that there are times it’s best to leave some of the pieces of your life behind? That sometimes leaving pieces of the shell behind just might release you. You never break apart — you break ...
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more{Video Concert on the Farm}How the Poor & Rich Might find Release: The Release of a Third World Symphony
On Tuesday, August 30 th, 2011So it rains the day after he leaves. The day after he walks out of the wheat field, packs his guitar into that beat up, duct-taped case and heads south again, music on his mind. But Shaun Grove’s music, his songs stay behind. Playing loud on the stereo here the next morning, the washing machine spinning and the kids all singing words by heart. Can you li...
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moreHow to Get the Most out of A Day
On Monday, August 29 th, 2011It’s a scant harvest of sweet corn this year. The rains deluging in spring, then giving up it’s obsession with us come June. From my post at the stove, out the window to the south, there the Farmer bends and bowsover the cornstalks like an offering, the only way a life can reap a harvest. The Farmer brings in cobs and the kids husk it back to kernels, to the nugg...
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moreThe Real Weather Forecast for the Weekend
On Friday, August 26 th, 2011He says he can feel it, the way fall’s beginning to blow in, the sky all undecided. She stands at the sink, elbow deep in suds and steel pots, while he tells her about weather. Tells her about patterns and forecasts and radars and frontal systems. The Farmer follows the sky the way some men follow sports. Staying up late, following the ways of God… She scrubs potato...
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morewhen somedays seem like a struggle…
On Friday, August 12 th, 2011It was right up there, after the woman in the buggy turned a corner. After she turned a corner and passed the humility of wheat, the sheaves bowed and surrendered. After she took one long breath and released her grip and let the reins lie loose across her open palm. After she’d just decided that, wherever this road l...
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moreHope
On Tuesday, August 09 th, 2011Walking east of the barn in the silence, through the field and the straw left behind after the thrashed wheat, it was right there, in the soil there under the feet — in each stalk lying … waiting — that the earth knows nothing wasted, that all that falls, turns, this long moist breath of ruin and rot, but a warm whisper of renewal of next y...
