One Way or the Other, It's All About the Rain

"It was a dark and stormy night..." 
OK, I know that sounds like a Mickey Spillane novel, but in our case it is true.  Close and jarring lightening, punctuated by thunderous grumblings and splattering rain whipped by severe winds spooked the night.  It was a meteorological melodrama that prompted more than one query as to whether we should sleep in the lower level.  It isn't a storm cellar by a long shot, but it is lower and at least feels more grounded, with a few more corners remote from the prospect of flying glass. 

Morning, however, finds all well and mostly in its place.  The sky is blue, with scattered clouds -- like a guilty child trying to pretend its innocence.  Walking Tir through the neighborhood we were serenaded by gurgling storm sewers while dodging puddle-bloated branches blown drown from trees and damming the gutters.  My deck garden seems to have survived intact.  My single pea-sized tomato looks no worse for the disruption, and the half-dozen or so peppers curling and dangling from their stems managed to hold on as well.  The rest of the tomato plants and tomatillos are still covered with blossoms.  Tir and I offer a sigh of relief.

Hopefully we will be able to get some work done at the big garden.  The almost daily rains will have elevated the mowing alert status to "red," and the trenches will be inundated with weeks.  It would be funny if it weren't aggravating:  at the Berclair farm, nothing can be done because of the drought.  At the Baxter farm, nothing can be done because of the rain. 

Go figure.

The Neighborly Equivalent of a Song

It's somehow friendlier early in the morning.  Perhaps it is the coolness before the summer sweat simmers all the flavor out of our congeniality.  Perhaps it is the spirit of possibility still fresh before the day's inevitable jostles and sharp edges.  Perhaps we haven't yet turned on the morning news to see what new travesties nature -- or other human beings -- have inflicted on us overnight.  Perhaps it is simply that our muscles and demeanor have not yet had the chance to fist themselves into defensive postures. Or maybe there is simply a relational expansiveness early in the day that, like morning glories, opens only briefly -- beautifully -- before folding back up again until tomorrow.

Whatever the explanation, it was in delightful bloom this morning as Tir and I enjoyed a first walk through more remote portions of the neighborhood.  Sprinklers were already busy in lawns; one early riser with hose in hand was washing off his driveway -- and smiled and said, "hello."  Drivers of passing cars waved.  Even the hostas in the manicured landscaping seemed to swell into greeting, and the vibrant purple of the sage seemed to glow luminescent just for us. 

Before long I will be back at the garden, weeding out the interlopers, and trimming back the encroaching blades.  Someone, sometime in this day, will almost certainly speak a jagged edge.  But early, the day began with the neighborly equivalent of a song.

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.

Pencil Marking the Growth

 LT calls it "Post Gardening" -- planting in a soil-filled PVC pipe.  The 20 such posts I have planted and ringing our deck are progressing nicely.  The lettuce is ready for a salad, the swiss chard is leaning toward saute, at least one pepper plant is showing off,

  and the tomatillo and tomatoes are starting to blossom. 

Rain has relieved some of the watering responsibilities, but the truth is I rather enjoy the chance to survey the progress and bond with the emergent harvest. 

How else, for example, would I have noticed the vivid yellow stems of the swiss chard, reminding me of the varietal's name -- "bright lights"? 

Now that the third garden is planted -- a community garden plot downtown -- there will be even more to water; hopefully even more to pay attention to and, if there were a door frame nearby, pencil mark the height progress like I used to do with the kids. 

The Slow and Gentle Moves of Disentanglement

“So how does it feel?” a friend and colleague asked yesterday.

“Strange” was all I knew how to respond. It has been just short of a month since I announced my decision to conclude my ministry here at the end of August, and the responses from others have been quite diverse. “I didn't know you were mad,” said one. For the record, I'm not. “I didn't know anything was wrong,” said another. I'm not aware that anything is wrong. “I am sure you are off to something bigger and better,” responded still another. Well, not so much. I am off to something smaller and dirtier. I'm planning, after all, to farm. More specifically, I plan to learn how to grow food, and to write about the process.

I know, that sounds bizarre. To me, however, it has come to feel compellingly important. For one thing, I don't know how to grow food; and while I am eternally grateful to all those who have done it on my behalf all these years, I am no longer satisfied being the passive benefactor of their efforts. If the truth be told, deep down I am more than a little jealous of them. There is, I am coming to realize, something powerfully mystical and fundamentally, elementally spiritual about participating with God in this process of growth, nurture and nourishment. And I have been missing out. Never mind that I am starting from scratch; I intend to catch up.

But it isn't simply a matter of my own spiritual vitality. There is something missional in all this, as well. As I have increasingly felt competent enough to talk about out loud, we can talk all we want to about “feeding the world,” but if the means we employ are not sustainable in the long term, then I am not sure our efforts stand much chance of success. If, as it seems increasingly clear, that our entire food system – from preparation, to cultivation, to fertilization, to harvest and eventually processing and distribution – is predicated on cheap and readily available energy, what happens when either one of those provisos ceases to be a given? Or both? What happens when energy becomes too expensive to afford, or too short in supply to service the requirements? It seems to me that the answer is, "we get hungry."  Will this happen in my lifetime? Probably not. Will it happen during the lifetime of my children? Perhaps. But will it happen sometime? I don't see how we can forestall it.

So, what should we do? It seems to me that somebody better remember how to grow food on different terms, on a different scale, closer to home – in back yards rather than epic but distant fields. I don't know very many in my generation who know how to do that. I haven't yet met anyone in my children's generation with that kind of knowledge. I am not delusional enough to think I can save the world, but I am hopeful enough to want to be a part of that “great cloud” of collective memory that keeps such knowledge and skill alive; to learn, but then also to teach. I figure that no one is better equipped to chronicle and share the process than someone like myself who begins by knowing absolutely nothing about it.

So, yes, I know it sounds a little crazy. But it feels, as I have shared with my congregation, every bit as strong of a calling as the one that brought me to Des Moines in the first place. I could refuse and ignore that call, but I haven't a clue how I could meaningfully live with that decision. And so Lori and I have made the other decision. To be sure, as I told my questioning friend, it feels strange now in this “time between times.” I am here and working for another few months, but daily becoming increasingly irrelevant to the plans and decisions and visions of the congregation that necessarily continue apace. And I am not accustomed to feeling irrelevant. Or, in some odd and disconcerting way that I don't even like to admit to myself, out of place.

But the transition is important to both the congregation and me. Our lives have been intertwined for almost two decades, and some patient gentleness is required for proper gratitude and disentanglement. Strange, after all, isn't bad; it's simply...well...strange.

It's All in Having the Right Kind of Tools

The problem, of course, with transforming the backyard of friends into your version of a farm is that you become hyper-sensitive about how it looks. It would be one thing if my seedlings were sprouting out on some random property off the highway, but given the fact that my 40-foot trenches were dug within sight of their sun porch means that they have become defacto agricultural landscaping. So yes, we mow the grass paths between the trenches, but that still leaves the edges. It is, I trust, a short term problem, as the flourishing plants will presumably and eventually spill out over the ragged edges. But at this point the naked shagginess requires some detailed attention.

We have tried the weed whacker - that gas-powered, twine-whirring whiz. But, alas, it's macro-trim, coupled with our unpracticed wielding has already decapitated nascent flowers and peppers. The world is already short on food; it can't afford such horticultural abortions. With a great deal more precision, we exchanged the weed-whacker for old-fashioned squeeze trimmers, but with 10 trenches that represents a lot of squeezing.  Our hands can only dream of being that strong -- and our knees that padded!  What is an aspiring farmer to do?  How to keep my hosts happy and my body functioning:  those are the questions.

The answer almost surely involves, as my late uncle routinely asserted, the right tools.  In this case that means a rechargeable handheld grass trimmer, and a manual grass trimmer with an extension handle that enables trimming without stooping or dropping to our knees.


Why is it that no local store seems to carry either one?

Never fear:  the internet is a wonderful thing.  The latter will arrive on Friday; the former on Tuesday.

Life is good!

Hopefully the trimming will be as well.

Eternity in This Moment

It is an odd thing to contemplate the End of the World. Today, after all, is the day all that is supposed to begin. I suppose I should feel chagrined that I have been up now for over an hour, am well into the enjoyment of my second cup of coffee, and am only now recalling the dire predictions.

I don't quite know what to think. Apparently there are only two options - being "Raptured" into bliss or being left to be embroiled in torment. To be sure, the whole timing issue has been murky for me, but here it is almost 8:30 a.m., and I am neither feeling any particular torment nor experiencing any supernatural transport. The birds are still fluttering and feeding just beyond the front porch and the cattle are mooing beyond the trees; the breeze is cool and the peacefulness is palpable. Is the Rapture scheduled for later in the day - after we have had breakfast, perhaps, so we can travel to paradise on a full stomach - or did the biblical calculators and code breakers get it wrong yet again?

If, as I suspect, it is the latter I don't quite know how to feel: relief or disappointment. After all, we have important plans for today that surely God would want us to see consummated - celebrating the 60 years of my parents' marriage. But, then, what are 60 years in the face of eternity? And aren't we supposed to be focused on eternity?

Well, despite all the hype and the titillating expectation, perhaps the answer is finally "no." Instead of spending every moment thinking about eternity, perhaps the divine intent is for us to spend eternity thinking about each moment - the gift that it is, the beauty it contains, the music of the spheres intrinsic in every every breath, blink, heartbeat and taste bud. Maybe God's most fervent desire is not that we spend all our time getting ready for something else, but treasuring the time that we have. And that the real torment is not something God imposes, but is the natural consequence of missing out.

So I think I will blow off the waiting and watching, and get on with the living - attentively, mindfully, gratefully.