Praying for Rain

Fal•low / [fal-oh]
–adjective
1. (of land) plowed and left unseeded for a season or more; uncultivated.
2. not in use; inactive: My creative energies have lain fallow this year.

Source: Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1)
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006.

There is something sad about it. We drove around the circumference of the Bee County farm land yesterday – a giant bald expanse carved out of a brushy thicket; clear, except for random tree; flat, except for a runoff ravine or two. Ready, but empty. Fallow, for the moment. There has been no rain – less than two inches, Troy tells us, since September – and so it makes no sense to plant…yet. There is, of course, still hope. A growing season deadline approaches, but there is still time. It could rain today and everything would change tomorrow. And today has begun with clouds – as did yesterday and who knows how many days before. This isn’t the first time this land has demanded of us patience – and forgiveness. It could rain anyday; we’ll have to wait and see.

In the meantime, the land simply sits: ready, turned, cleared, full of capacity; opportune.
But empty. Unused. Dormant.
If the land were a child it would be parked in front of a TV with an opened bag of chips, numbed by the innocuous drone on the screen and sated by the nutritionless crunch from the bag.

It is, as I say, somehow sad all this fallow possibility. But, then, I’ve known people similarly dormant, with reasons far more inscrutable – rich, gifted soil of the spirit, uncultivated; inactive; waiting, less for rain than for some unfathomed initiative or inspiration or, perhaps, some catalyzing invitation. In truth, I suppose, I have been that person more than once in my life, and I am grateful for those personal saints who came upon me in those dusty seasons and sprinkled me into vitality. Such graces received invariably makes me wonder about graces I dispense – or don’t.

Meanwhile, I pray for rain in Berclair – on all of us, I suppose – that our vast and fertile soils might give rise to that of which we are capable.