Just
so we're clear, I didn't want to preach about Thanksgiving. Like [the pastor of NGUCC], I'm mostly a lectionary preacher, and I love wrestling with
the assigned readings for each Sunday, sitting with them, praying
with them, researching the almighty heck out of them, and figuring
out how and where those stories meet up with our stories, figuring
out where the Good News might be hiding on any given day.
So,
last week, I hit the lectionary, and got hit back by a scriptural
superstorm. There were wars and rumors of wars. There was fleshly
sacrificin', earthquakes and famines, and—in the middle of it
all—there's old Hannah, praying and weeping bitterly because she
has no children, and getting cussed out by the prophet Eli 'cause he
thinks she's just a crazy old drunk (1st Samuel 1: 4-20,
if you're interested).
Well,
when it comes to scripture, I'm a bit of a storm-chaser, so all this
had me pretty excited... until I made the mistake of sharing that
excitement with a friend who's known me a little too long. “Too
easy,” said my buddy Darlene, who knew me back in seminary. “You
already know how to do the distraught woman thing. Too easy. Go
look at the alternate readings for Thanksgiving. You want a real
challenge? Go with THANKS.”
I
don't know how it is for you, but for me, giving thanks IS hard. The
worry card, the angry card, the bitter card, the why-me-Lord
card...those are the easiest to play, the most dog-eared cards in the
deck. Anxious: no problem. I know how to play that one. Fearful?
I know how to play that card, too. But thankful? I don't...
quite... know... what to do with that. It's a bit stiff,
probably from lack of use. I know I should use it, but I seem
to have misplaced the instructions. Yes, thankfulness is a challenge.
Thanksgiving
is not built in to our culture, in spite of the federally-declared
holiday. The self-mocking media stars teach us to accept nothing at
face value. Don't trust the news, don't trust the police, don't
trust the established authorities of corporations, churches, or the
state, don't trust your parents, your children or your spouse, don't
trust anyone over thirty...so, for more than a decade, I haven't been
able to trust mySELF!
Be
cynical, they tell us. Doubt everything. Assume an air of constant
frustration, irritation, and disappointment. Yet, at the same time,
crave everything. Crave authority. Covet power. Covet sweet
luxuries and a new flat-screen plasma tv. Covet the latest
entertainment and technology, even if you have to throw out all your
old gear and buy extra accessories to make the new stuff work. And
somehow, in the midst of it, crave comfort. Crave peace. Crave
nourishment. Crave safety and stability. Crave love.
It's
like the story Dahlov Ipcar tells, in her book, “Hardscrabble
Harvest.” It's the story of a New England farm year, from May
through November, and it seems to have been drawn from her own
hard-won experience. You know it from the first page, with a full
cast of vermin lined up and waiting at the edges of the
freshly-turned earth. The text reads, “The farmer plants early in
the spring. She'll be lucky if she harvests a thing.” The next
several pages show crows stealing seeds, pigs busting the garden
fence, ducks eating the strawberries, and deer daintily devouring the
cauliflower. Finally, a small, hardwon harvest is gathered in.
Pumpkins are made into pies and a turkey goes into the oven. The
tired farm family is shown setting the table, with the side door
slightly ajar and several faces peeking through: “gather 'round the
feast, hungry as a pup...here come the relatives, to eat it all up!”
It's
not a particularly nice story. There's no moral here, no
happy ending. Yet it's compelling—maybe a little too close to
home—and when I get to that last page, I can't decide whether to
laugh or cry or fling the book across the room. Some years are hard.
Sometimes it gets to the point where the sun goes behind a cloud,
the sky darkens, and you're right there with the prophet Joel,
half-expecting another plague of locusts.
This
was a hardscrabble year. I started seeds indoors, prepared to plant
them out when the soil grew warm. I didn't have high hopes—our
soil is what they call “marginal,” nutrient-poor. We suspect an
earlier tenant, facing their own hard times, sold off the topsoil for
extra cash, a common practice in the 50s and 60s. In some places the
drainage is bad, thanks to a thick band of clay a foot below the
surface. In other parts, the soil is almost pure sand, and the water
drains so fast the plants can hardly get a sip. Still, we usually do
alright, growing some food for ourselves and a little extra to sell.
There's usually one or two crops that fail, over-run by bugs or eaten
down by rogue chickens. I was resigned to another year of that...and
then, in May, we got word that, after three years of applying, we'd
qualified for a small grant to buy a high tunnel greenhouse--in May,
right when everything was supposed to be planted. So, those
seedlings sat while the tractor came and leveled the pale yellow
ground. They sat, leaves drooping, until the kit was delivered and
the volunteer crew came, weekend after weekend, to help hoist the
metal ribs, assemble the bracing, tighten all the bolts, and finally,
to get the plastic skin rolled down and secured on the hottest, most
humid day. The leaves on the seedlings turned brown as they became
rootbound, and started, selectively, to die.
Still
we scrambled, building end-walls, hauling soil, and finally—in
mid-July—we planted the wizened remnants in the seedling trays. We
watered them in, threw in a few onions, planted lettuce and swiss
chard and squash for curiousity's sake, looked at the strange new
structure, and resigned ourselves not to hope for much. A new
greenhouse? So what. The plastic would probably split in the first
windstorm.
Nothing
turned out as we expected. The lettuce was early, and we couldn't
eat it fast enough. So the pigs got lettuce. The chickens and the
cows got lettuce, and so did we. It bolted in the heat and had to be
pulled. Meanwhile, the onions apparently melted. We never did find
them. But oh, the swiss chard, with its stalks of bright ruby red,
golden yellow, snow white and shocking pink! The little four-pack of
pansies, tucked along the edge of the farthest-back bed just bloomed
and bloomed and bloomed for no apparent reason, and –even now, in
spite of the frost—they're blooming still. And the three zucchini
seeds we planted in August as a joke? They grew waist-high, their
golden blossoms sprawling, bigger than my outstretched hand! I
served up squash and picked them, tender and young, for the farmers'
market.
On
November 5th, convinced it was time to yank everything and lay the
beds to rest, I found a single, perfectly ripe cantaloupe hiding
under some leaves. I took it in and cut into the soft orange center.
It was sweet & juicy & utterly ridiculous. Fresh cantaloupe
in November in Maine, on marginal farmland, off a dusty road at the
edge of town. Who'd a thunk it?
My
hands had been clenched so long. My soul had been as pinched and
parched as that soil. My dreams had been rootbound in the tiny space
I made for them. I had forgotten. I had forgotten that God deals in
wildflowers and desert streams. I had forgotten that God deals in
sunlight and soft rains, blanketing snows and sheltering branches and
fragrant blossoms. I had forgotten that God speaks the language of
boulder-busting roots and improbable cantaloupes.
There's
a word for this in Gaelic. The word is “gu leor.” It's
the source of the English word, “galore,” as in, “this Black
Friday, our door-buster deals will give you bargains galore.” But
gu leor means something better than that. It means two things at
once: sufficiency, or having enough to meet your needs,
and...absolute abundance. An old poem attributed to Saint Bridgid
goes, “I wish that Jesus, the king of heaven, would come and visit
me. And if he should visit me, I would wish for him an entire lake
of ale.” That's gu leor: having enough, and in that
enoughness, having enough to share, so that every meal is a chance to
make room for blessed guests, and every guest is an excuse for joyful
generosity. In such hospitality and grace, we catch a glimpse of the
Kingdom of God.
“When
the LORD restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those who dream.
Then our mouth was filled with laughter, and our tongue with shouts
of joy; then it was said among the nations, "The LORD has done
great things for them." The LORD has done great things for us,
and we rejoiced....
May those who sow in tears reap with shouts of joy. Those who go out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing, shall come home with shouts of joy, carrying their sheaves.”
May those who sow in tears reap with shouts of joy. Those who go out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing, shall come home with shouts of joy, carrying their sheaves.”
Joel
and the Psalmist and Jesus are all full of this Good News today: the
Good News that, into the midst of our human scarcities, our crop
failures, our dream failures, our broken relationships, broken
bodies, and hardscrabble lives, God keeps showing up with abundant
enoughness. Yes, the cows may have chomped the tops off the turnips,
and the raccoons eaten the corn, but on the other hand—all of God's
creatures have been fed, and we still somehow have enough to bring in
the sheaves, to gather with kith and kin, to rejoice and give thanks,
to offer a prayer, and call it a feast.
Thanksgiving
is a challenge. May we unclench our hands and embrace it—and each
other—surprising ourselves with a harvest of laughter, a harvest of
joy, a harvest of grace.
(All photos copyright Mainecelt except book cover, found here.)
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