Faith of the Harvest

25 October 2007

As the days grow shorter and darker, and with the last week's long-needed gray rain, I find my thoughts turning inward, and my mood growing more interior and intensive. This follows a conscious decision I made several years ago to go with the seasons rather than fighting against them. I am certain that early Friends lived more in this way, by virtue of the fact they did not have all of the amenities we do today.

For a number of years I have grown organic vegetables; several of those years I grew for market. This process has made me ever so much more aware of the turning of the seasons and especially of the harvest. The necessity of getting the food in when it is ready to harvest, picking for market freshness, taking care of the soil in winter and spring so that it will be ready for late spring planting; these have become my focus.

I don't have to imagine then what it was like to have life focus more on the necessities of life. I can envision the prayers that would be said and the reliance on a power so much greater than ones' self to insure the harvest and therefore the survival through the winter. I can feel the dependence on the flow of life and God's hand in the meting out of things. I can sense the pensiveness with which Friends sat in silence. The immense trust in Truth to carry them through.

I want my faith to be as simple and as sure as the growing of my crops. At times I glimpse this, maybe even flow with it for a period of time. But how often my focus on necessary goals leads me to abandon that steadfast pure faith in favor of dogmatically moving toward what I think is right. In times like that, it is only the silence that can lead me home again.