People around the world are getting ready to celebrate Holy Week. A week before that, Passover starts. All the weeks of this month are holy weeks, if you think about all the ways that April bursts into bloom. And you are not too particular about what “holy” means. “Holy” is generally related to God or divinity, and April can be a whole month of divine experiences, just by walking around and looking up.
Last Friday at Shabbat services, the cantor led us through a
brief meditation, asking us to remember each of the days of the week leading up
to this Shabbat, and to breathe out and let go of the things we wanted to move
on from, and to breathe in and hold onto the memories that we wanted to
keep. Amazingly, I could remember each
day. And just as amazingly, I couldn’t think of anything that I wanted to
forget or move away from. Each day had good memories. We were supposed to be looking for the
sacred, in amongst the mundane.
The thing about farming, or probably most work, there is a large
amount of mundane every day and, if you turn it over and look at it from a
different direction, there is a steady supply of sacred. It can be a sacred
event, watching a tiny carrot stem emerge from under the soil, pushing and
cracking the surface days before it appears. The joy of smushing a solid root ball of
lettuce down into soft, wet soil, then flicking the soil over the roots and
just knowing that plant will grow – that feels sacred.
Cherry blossoms are breathy, airy glory – as are all the flowering
trees that suddenly cascade into being, one after the other, faster and faster
as the years pass. It used to be a more orderly succession: first bright yellow
forsythia, then pink cherries, purple redbud, pink and puffy crabapples, elegant white dogwood,
many colors of azaleas. Today on my walk I saw all of these at once, in various
stages of arrival and departure. I even saw peonies, about two feet tall already. The mundane part of this is that it is worrisome
to be living through climate change. The sacred part is that trees bloom.
Period.
We live for eleven months of the year without all of this. It’s okay. It would be mundane to have cherry blossoms every
day. But from a different perspective -- in farming, we wallow in mundane dirt,
day after day, and somehow that becomes a sacred experience. There is so much beauty. Maybe
not everyone would see it like this, but a green and lush field of rye, blowing
in a stiff spring breeze, is just about the most gorgeous sight. And when the
yellow flowers of overwintered kale pop through, or the thumb-shaped blooms of
crimson clover appear in the mix, that is like a heavenly bouquet. Cover crop as an expression of holiness.
I have been part of this cycle (walking on this hamster
wheel, no that’s not right at all) for so long that it would be reasonable to
have lost interest in the repetition of everything. But it is precisely the
repetition that makes it interesting. You wait to see how it will all turn out.
When will the soil be dry enough to spade, when will it be warm enough to
germinate a seed, when will a field be wet enough to turn it again so the cover
crop will get digested. When will it be time to plant a plant that can’t manage
cold? It is never the same. There is more
to learn each time.
Also, it is normal, sacred work that fills the soul. What else is normal these days? So little. Most people do not have the luxury of planting broccoli into perfect soil on a clear, sunny day despite the cruelty and chaos that is crashing all around us. We farmers escape the politically profane and mundane. We keep planting, knowing that vegetables are normal and there is nothing that can change that. We all need to eat vegetables.
If you ever need a deep breath of sacred air, come into the
greenhouse in early April. Since God created the first greenhouse, this has
been the holiest place of all at this season.
This is still my favorite prayer, appropriate every day, abbreviated a bit: Blessed are You, Adonai, for giving us life, sustaining us and enabling us to reach this season. (again)
