Market Blessing 2011

For the past 14 years our church has hosted a farmer's market in the parking lot.  By comparison, our market is tiny -- 20 or so vendors in contrast to the 200 or more downtown  -- but it is wonderfully accessible, delightfully relational, surprisingly multi-cultural, and, to summarize it in a word, neighborly.  From Kettle Corn to Barbecue, hand-turned woodcrafts and baskets and games, to artisan bread and local honey and vegetables of wide description. 

One of my favorite writing assignments for the past few years has been to offer a "Blessing of the Market" prior to the opening whistle on the opening afternoon -- a blessing and a whistle that both blew last evening.  I'm always amazed and more than a little humbled by the attention paid in those quiet and prayerful moments by eager vendors and hovering shoppers alike.  This year the sun was shining and the breeze was gently wafting and it couldn't have been more perfect.  And amidst all the anticipation, this year's blessing went like this:

God of the soil and those who tend it; of the seeds and those who plant them; of rabbits and weeds and those who contend against them; of running vines and swelling fruit, and all those who harvest them; of satisfying food and those who prepare it, we give you thanks for all those miracles of nature and ministrations of humans that go on in fields and kitchens and craft rooms to enable such a market as this. Bless our weeks together – we buyers and sellers, poppers and barbecuers, diners and growers and groaners carrying bags delightfully overfilled. Bless the conversations we initiate, the efforts we appreciate, the playfulness we stimulate, and the community that, in our comings and going and setting up and tearing down, we create. Bless this market, we pray, with a taste – a foretaste, even – of life as you intend it. Amen.

Let the Market Begin

Today they gathered -- the dozen or more volunteers, the 20 or so vendors, and who knows how many shoppers. Even WHO-TV Channel 13. For the 14th time now, opening day of the Drake Neighborhood Farmer's Market went off with only minor hitches. In truth, I don't even know what those hitches might have been. I manage to stay aloof from such nitty gritties; but I'm assuming there were some. That said, whatever they might have been, they did not interfere with the positive spirit of opening day. The air was mild, the breeze was gentle and cool, the music was upbeat, the vegetables were glorious, and the people were hungry.

So it was that this 14th season of the Farmer's Market got underway. And as I have for the past few years, I offered a "Blessing of the Market" prayer just before the opening. Along with a few visual impressions, here is the prayer that launched us:

We have been waiting, O God. All winter long we shivered from the cold, but shivered also from the disappointed bites from red and green and yellow objects that looked, for all the world, like fruits and vegetables but tasted like nothing in particular. We have waited for that glorious delight of buying what was picked ripe and delivered fresh in place of that which was picked green and shipped across countless miles. Which is simply to say, O God, that we have been eager to shake the hand of the farmer – and gatherer -- and baker – and barbecuer – and corn popper – and egg roller – and pupusa patter – who feed us; and the artisan hands that cleanse us and bejewel us and provide for us the baskets in which to put it all. Eager, and hungry for this very day to come.

And so we ask your blessing on this market and all who give it life and color and flavor. We give you thanks for the soil that produces what we find here; for the patience that tends the plants and gathers the eggs and harvests the fruits and fashions the objects. We pray for the vendors, and the volunteers and the workers and the shoppers and the children who play the games; we pray for the music and the traffic guides and the health testers and for those who come simply to enjoy the community and the time outdoors. For all, then, that might transpire here, week after week, June through September, we ask your blessings.

We have been waiting for it – hungry for it. And we are grateful that you have brought us to this day – now for the 14^th time. Even as all these unite to create blessing, bless them in return, we pray. Amen.