Corn for our seeds

     In today’s Common Prayer – February 22 – we read this prayer:

“Lord God, extend our faith so that even when we fail to see the fruit of our planted seeds, we may have the assurance that every inch of soil overturned will lead to a harvest some day.”

     Last summer our organic farmer friends gave Anita bag of seed corn that was a year old. Joe and Becca said plant however much you want, we can’t risk low germination from old sweet corn seeds. They also generously gave her space for six 100 foot rows. It has always been her dream to grow enough sweet corn for eating delicious golden kernels all winter. The thing is, you might have a good harvest off the ten to twelve corn plants you put in your small urban garden, but that’s still only three ears per corn plant? Three dozen ears altogether? Unless you have room for a lot, it’s a waste of time and space. So the possibilities of corn through the roof had her hungry-eyed.

     This is what happened. We had so much corn we could have begun a factory farm of feeder hogs. We raved over the sweet, tender ears, we ate them like chainsaws – sawdust flying, protective goggles over our eyes.

     It had reproduced itself five hundred fold with wild energy. We ended up freezing 46 quarts and giving away at least 20 dozen ears. For the first harvest we picked three or four wheel barrels full and pushed it up to the yard where we set up a little canning factory. Anita picked, Denis shucked, I cut the kernels off the cob, and together we heated it to boiling point on a camping stove and then put it all in zip lock bags. Tato, the dog ate cobs as he could and all the leftover greens and cobs were dumped over the fence to the chickens and pigs. And that was just the first picking. It’s almost March and we still have plenty of corn to eat.

     thought a lot about that harvest and everything that had to coalesce under sunny days and warm nights to make it so darn good. This rarely happens in life. Sometimes. But rarely. You invest and invest and once in a blue moon you get to see where that seed went and what it did. The prayer above is mostly how it is. Maybe years later you get a facebook message thanking you for all the pizza you served the youth group and how they’ll never forget listening to Purple Rain and thinking about Ferris Buellers Day Off in your living room. We need to keep stumbling down the row year after year because you never know when the corn will come home. But even if it doesn’t, we are assured by God that he grows a great harvest that will overflow all our wheel barrels and burst our freezers. 

Anita and I picked the first load.

 

Denis did the shucking while I began cutting it off the cobs.

Anita took a turn with the knife while I began blanching the corn.

The Chickens feasted on all the leftovers.

   

We made a huge pot of corn chowder on the camp stove in the yard and ate it with Joe & Becca and all the interns. All fresh - even the milk came out of the Jersey cow that morning.

The Perils of Pride

This week (Feb 6) TheNew Yorker published a humorous essay –  “Flight of the Concord” by Jeremy Denk, a classical pianist. It’s not about the French Concorde, nor the Flight of the Conchords, the crazy New Zealand music-comedy duo – it refers to a sonata by Charles Ives and Denk writes about the perils of the recording studio. Really worth reading, even for folks who have no idea what it means to "lay a track."

A critic heard Denk play Concord and insisted he needed to record it; “You’re having A Moment with it, and one never knows how long such things last.” Suddenly, Denk is prey to the idea that he can do this better than any other. And maybe he even did. He writes, “You might imagine that making a recording is a lovely occasion: you go to the studio with your entourage; there is banter; you lay down tracks, locate our groove; the producer gasps in admiration…”   

It’s that gasp of admiration I recognize. Denis gave me one at supper last night, about a pretty little thing. I’d gone to the kitchen about an hour before, looked in the pantry, pulled out wild rice, dried apricots and cranberries, a few other ingredients, toasted some pecans and dished up a savory main-dish salad. It gave me a flash of pleasure for having hit it just right. But that he concurred? Even better.

Is this universal?  That we have moments of thinking we can distill 50 lifetimes of thought and practice into X better than anyone else? I don’t think it’s wrong to find genuine pleasure in doing something well, or in receiving recognition for it, but I think my problem is hungering for that gasp because it cancels a sense of self-doubt. I don’t like to admit it, but it’s a sneaky form of pride.

Bruce Ray Smith’s insights during his battle for humility at least give me hope that I’m not alone in the struggle to ferret out the wounded pride that just crops up everywhere – in writing, raising children, or just living. I even want someone to tell me how well I pay the bills! In WinterLight, He writes,

“As for my pride, what is it I renounce? Myself: that grand self I imagined, an illusion, something which does not exist.

            I said no, I am saying no, to nothingness.”

And so, as we head over to a L’Abri conference that begins tomorrow morning I will be aware of that Grand Self that accompanies me. We will listen to a roster of eloquent speakers, people who love God and love to love people. One of my heroes, Jerram Barrs, will be there. I will plunk myself down among folks who’ve seen every relevant movie, read all books published in the last decade, understand quantum physics and how it applies to postmodern art – and oh, they can also remember all the details – but I will admonish the Grand Self, “You’re listening to a demented voice. They haven’t. They don’t. We all have broken hearts and that’s what this Christian thing is about. We can’t fix ourselves, but we can get a few pointers on which way to go for help.  

Honeysuckle and son drink together

     And so it goes. Unquenchable thirst. On and on and on and on. Two of Honeysuckle's sons are left. Jack-in-the-Pulpit awaits his new home. Jake and Joie Meador will be here for the L'Abri conference Feb. 17 and 18 and he will go home to Lincoln with them. Blackberry, the remaining son does not have a home yet. So if there is anyone out there who would like a clever little guy who can nibble your shoes and eat your apple cores and jump a barrier all at the same time ...  you may apply for ownership.

Life is like this:

 

Our six-year-old granddaughter, Paige-y, came home from school the other day and told her mom she had the worst day of her life. When asked why, she replied that on the school bus on the way to school she had eaten her snack. She said, “It looked so good, I ATE it.” So when snack time came around she had nothing. Thus: “The worst day EVER!”

At the end of the day, with no one to blame but ourselves, when we find our snacks are gone,  we are often mysteriously blessed with mothers who replace them overnight.

Illuminating the unknown way

We have friends, David & Naomi Wenger, friends I’ve never met, who direct TheHermitage – a place of rural beauty in southern Michigan. A place of retreat, prayer, silence. In their recent letter Living the Hermitage Way, David wrote these words which I would like to heed and apply. Perhaps you would, too. And though it sounds simple , – “we don’t need to hold on to our work, we simply do it” – I must often, a hundred times a year, try to reestablish the rhythm of work and rest that God prescribes for my life, which, of course, is going to look different from yours.

A recent volunteer likened The Hermitage to a dairy farm. He said the rhythm here is as steady as a farmer’s milking schedule and the work is never done. He asked the question we hear repeatedly, “How do you do it all?” Of course, the answer is, “We don’t do it all.” But still, we do plenty. So when pressed further we go on to say, “We begin each day in the chapel with Morning Prayer, we stop our work and eat at regular intervals, we take a walk, we sit still, we finish our work at 5:30 and leave what is undone for another day. We take a weekly Sabbath, we

sometimes leave our work for others to tend and go on retreat and vacation.”

It often feels like an unsatisfactory answer. How can any of these practices contribute to getting things done?

The Hermitage Affirmation prayer liturgy refers to this rhythm of being as a “framework to live our discipleship.” The framework provides an order in which to move through our days; it is the liturgy of ora et labora, prayer and work. Whether our morning liturgy (meaning “work of the people”) is in a barn with cows or a chapel with candles and scripture, there is a comfort to rhythm that quells the troubling thought, that illuminates the unknown way, that quiets the excess of demands. The familiar framework holds us so we don’t need to hold on to our work. We simply do it.

Thank you, David and Naomi.

Ten favorite moments of 2011

1. When Anita walked in and announced, “Honeysuckle had ten babies last night!”

2. Learning that people who hate cilantro lack an enzyme which makes it  taste like soap. Too bad.

3. On a day when Ransom’s coffers are dry; a large-ish check arrives to help out with bills.

4. Ava Lou, our two-year-old granddaughter, empties all the salt and pepper from the shakers, then eats most of it.

5. When Denis learned he’d brushed his teeth after I’d dropped the toothpaste container in the toilet.

6. The William Baffin Climbing Rose is climbing and blooming 4 weeks after being planted.

7. Harvesting, shucking, processing three wheel barrel-loads of our own sweet corn at Heartbeet Farm’s.

8. Pulling a volunteer marijuana plant nearly as tall as me from the sidewalk flowerbed and using it to garnish a mojito for Sandy O.

9. Watching the The Princess Bride with seven-year-old grandson, who thought it sounded like “a movie for girls!”

10. That Jesus loved me even as I envied someone with a perfect life and hair.

                               Honeysuckle's naked bunny babies

                                      Ava tries on her mom's mascara

                                                    Denis shucks corn

                                                   Mint mojito

                                          Toad Hall painted

                      

New Year - with Leonard Cohen

January 1. 2012. Am still alone. In the quiet of this evening spent with Leonard Cohen watching the concert video again – Live in London. Cohen is in his 70s, a gracious man, and this is obvious as he kindly and often turns to members of his band to praise and introduce them. It's uncanny. His smile is so like Jerram Barrs, another hero of mine. I’ve always loved his music from the first time I heard Suzanne Takes You Down years ago, sung by a young woman who lived in our commune. It was so different from the Christian choruses I grew up with, or any other music for that matter – it was mysterious, sexual, beautiful.

This concert is filled with common Grace and Truths that are powerfully strung in Cohen’s poetry and music. Though I’m quite sure he doesn’t share my faith, still through his art, he does me great goodness. I am linked to spiritual concepts that can sound weak and boring if I tell you them outright. Like: “Believe me, one day things will be different. Jesus is coming back to fix things.” Well, yes. He is. And I believe it, but how to express it?

When I listen to Cohen sing one particular song -  Democracy  everything together – the inexorable rhythm, the drum of time, the lyrics, the wind instruments that march on, the voice harmonies that rise – I sense in its richness this is a little like how the Holy Spirit might come to us. On the day when Jesus returns, when all injustice, and illness, and the poverty of people, and the dearth of shelter and love, and the corruption of nations; people everywhere will see that Someone coming through all the static. If “Democracy” is what this poet wants to call it, that’s okay. But, to me, “Democracy” speaks of Christ. About the longing to have things be right, of being human and made whole in  our essential selves, our bodies, in our loves, “We'll be going down so deep / the river's going to weep, / and the mountain's going to shout Amen!”

            Perhaps you’ll give his work a listen one day and join me in my obsession?

Democracy

It's coming through a hole in the air,

from those nights in Tiananmen Square.

It's coming from the feel

that this ain't exactly real,

or it's real, but it ain't exactly there.

From the wars against disorder,

from the sirens night and day,

from the fires of the homeless,

from the ashes of the gay:

Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

It's coming through a crack in the wall;

on a visionary flood of alcohol;

from the staggering account

of the Sermon on the Mount

which I don't pretend to understand at all.

It's coming from the silence

on the dock of the bay,

from the brave, the bold, the battered

heart of Chevrolet:

Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

It's coming from the sorrow in the street,

the holy places where the races meet;

from the homicidal bitchin'

that goes down in every kitchen

to determine who will serve and who will eat.

From the wells of disappointment

where the women kneel to pray

for the grace of God in the desert here

and the desert far away:

Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

Sail on, sail on

O mighty Ship of State!

To the Shores of Need

Past the Reefs of Greed

Through the Squalls of Hate

Sail on, sail on, sail on, sail on.

It's coming to America first,

the cradle of the best and of the worst.

It's here they got the range

and the machinery for change

and it's here they got the spiritual thirst.

It's here the family's broken

and it's here the lonely say

that the heart has got to open

in a fundamental way:

Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

It's coming from the women and the men.

O baby, we'll be making love again.

We'll be going down so deep

the river's going to weep,

and the mountain's going to shout Amen!

It's coming like the tidal flood

beneath the lunar sway,

imperial, mysterious,

in amorous array:

Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

Sail on, sail on ...

I'm sentimental, if you know what I mean

I love the country but I can't stand the scene.

And I'm neither left or right

I'm just staying home tonight,

getting lost in that hopeless little screen.

But I'm stubborn as those garbage bags

that Time cannot decay,

I'm junk but I'm still holding up

this little wild bouquet:

Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.