Before the Harvest
I have the gift of stinginess.
The other week I made Taylor put his last piece of broccoli in a tupperware because he was going to throw it away. He ate that piece of broccoli the next day and saved us probably a whole cent. Made me happy, I tell you.
But I really shouldn't call it stinginess. I just don't like to waste things. If there's perfectly good toothpaste in the bottom of the tube, why open a new one? I like to think even if I had a million dollars I would still use that last bit of toothpaste, because, you know, landfills and fossil fuels.
But it's also very exhausting to save all the leftover things of the world.
I have no earthly idea why, but there is this sprawling garden near our apartment in somebody's sideyard that they don't tend at all. It's so large to my urban eyes, the plots of overgrown vegetable plants and wild things all twisted up together. I run by this place nearly every day, and never a soul is there. All summer I was imagining a stealth gardener in the middle of the night planting all of these squashes and cucumbers and watermelons and gourds under the moonlight, in a field too wild to bother tilling. I thought maybe some plants were just sprouting back up from last year, but then I remembered watermelons don't do that. I thought maybe it was an edible landscape, like my neighbors decided to throw seeds and see what sticks, and then pick whatever grows as they walk by. In the end I decided the person living in that house probably just has this large garden and I somehow never see them gardening but they're still there, maybe in the early mornings when I'm never yet upright.
But I didn't notice just how absent this gardener was until November, when all of the green things started to shrivel and the wild plants and weeds all keeled over. Do you know what has been on the ground of this vegetable forest the past month? The biggest, most colorful, most edible-looking watermelons and squashes you've ever seen in your life, just sitting there till they burst, or rot, or get eaten by critters small enough to fit through the fence. And my broccoli-saving heart just goes out to them.
I thought about, but have never actually stolen ANY of these melons or squashes. To this day I run down that street and think, gosh, maybe they WANT me to help them eat these? Maybe it's too much for one household? Maybe the neighbors forgot about the seeds they threw over this fence?
I react with all these feelings of control, fixing, saving. Not wanting the food to go to waste, even though the earth was sprouting edible things for lots of creatures long before I came along to harvest them. On my better days I think, "The earth is alive and nothing is wasted." "The soil can use the vitamins. It's food for the soil and birds and squirrels, nothing is wasted." And it reminds me daily of the difference between wasting and lying fallow.
When soil isn't allowed to lie fallow it becomes inhospitable to life. Nothing can grow anymore because it is depleted; all of its nutrients and motherly qualities have been used up on its crops and it has nothing left to give. Fallowing is a purposeful refrain from usefulness. It's a deliberate refusal to commodify your soil for gain, for a whole growing season, in order to restore the minerals and life to the ground. My neighborhood vegetable forest may not be lying fallow, but it was left unharvested, allowing the ecosystem to absorb the nutrients through all its various pores.
Do farmers say a fallow season is a waste?
If we didn't know any better, we might think squeezing every ounce of productivity out of our days is the way to avoid waste. If we didn't know any better, we might think giving, saving, or doing more is the way to fulfillment. We might start to believe the Western lie that increase in production and decrease in cost is the way to success.
If we didn't know any better, we might think the only way to be fruitful is to harvest.
But we do know better.
The paradox we know from Advent is that God came to us as an infant in the ultimate reversal of power. God didn't come in with guns blazing, he came to earth needing breastmilk and warm skin. This says to us, "Hey, wait a minute! Did you ever think maybe the way to inaugurate the Kingdom of God is to start small and needy and wait for the harvest time to come?" The impracticality of this waiting is striking. God's not afraid to take his time. God is not afraid to let the nutrients replenish the soil, both in the long run and in Jesus' life. And the harvest, in its time, is plenty.
I think this is the way of the world, this reversal of the obvious, meaning even things that look like a waste will turn out to be one of the necessary steps in the story.
I also believe this is true for me, that my times of fallow and unharvesting don't mean waste, but a recycling of nutrients. What doesn't come to fruition today will remain seeded in me for later. Maybe I have less control than I want over when my life blooms; maybe not forcing it is the way to invite a harvest.
The other week I made Taylor put his last piece of broccoli in a tupperware because he was going to throw it away. He ate that piece of broccoli the next day and saved us probably a whole cent. Made me happy, I tell you.
But I really shouldn't call it stinginess. I just don't like to waste things. If there's perfectly good toothpaste in the bottom of the tube, why open a new one? I like to think even if I had a million dollars I would still use that last bit of toothpaste, because, you know, landfills and fossil fuels.
But it's also very exhausting to save all the leftover things of the world.
I have no earthly idea why, but there is this sprawling garden near our apartment in somebody's sideyard that they don't tend at all. It's so large to my urban eyes, the plots of overgrown vegetable plants and wild things all twisted up together. I run by this place nearly every day, and never a soul is there. All summer I was imagining a stealth gardener in the middle of the night planting all of these squashes and cucumbers and watermelons and gourds under the moonlight, in a field too wild to bother tilling. I thought maybe some plants were just sprouting back up from last year, but then I remembered watermelons don't do that. I thought maybe it was an edible landscape, like my neighbors decided to throw seeds and see what sticks, and then pick whatever grows as they walk by. In the end I decided the person living in that house probably just has this large garden and I somehow never see them gardening but they're still there, maybe in the early mornings when I'm never yet upright.
But I didn't notice just how absent this gardener was until November, when all of the green things started to shrivel and the wild plants and weeds all keeled over. Do you know what has been on the ground of this vegetable forest the past month? The biggest, most colorful, most edible-looking watermelons and squashes you've ever seen in your life, just sitting there till they burst, or rot, or get eaten by critters small enough to fit through the fence. And my broccoli-saving heart just goes out to them.
I thought about, but have never actually stolen ANY of these melons or squashes. To this day I run down that street and think, gosh, maybe they WANT me to help them eat these? Maybe it's too much for one household? Maybe the neighbors forgot about the seeds they threw over this fence?
I react with all these feelings of control, fixing, saving. Not wanting the food to go to waste, even though the earth was sprouting edible things for lots of creatures long before I came along to harvest them. On my better days I think, "The earth is alive and nothing is wasted." "The soil can use the vitamins. It's food for the soil and birds and squirrels, nothing is wasted." And it reminds me daily of the difference between wasting and lying fallow.
When soil isn't allowed to lie fallow it becomes inhospitable to life. Nothing can grow anymore because it is depleted; all of its nutrients and motherly qualities have been used up on its crops and it has nothing left to give. Fallowing is a purposeful refrain from usefulness. It's a deliberate refusal to commodify your soil for gain, for a whole growing season, in order to restore the minerals and life to the ground. My neighborhood vegetable forest may not be lying fallow, but it was left unharvested, allowing the ecosystem to absorb the nutrients through all its various pores.
Do farmers say a fallow season is a waste?
If we didn't know any better, we might think squeezing every ounce of productivity out of our days is the way to avoid waste. If we didn't know any better, we might think giving, saving, or doing more is the way to fulfillment. We might start to believe the Western lie that increase in production and decrease in cost is the way to success.
If we didn't know any better, we might think the only way to be fruitful is to harvest.
But we do know better.
The paradox we know from Advent is that God came to us as an infant in the ultimate reversal of power. God didn't come in with guns blazing, he came to earth needing breastmilk and warm skin. This says to us, "Hey, wait a minute! Did you ever think maybe the way to inaugurate the Kingdom of God is to start small and needy and wait for the harvest time to come?" The impracticality of this waiting is striking. God's not afraid to take his time. God is not afraid to let the nutrients replenish the soil, both in the long run and in Jesus' life. And the harvest, in its time, is plenty.
I think this is the way of the world, this reversal of the obvious, meaning even things that look like a waste will turn out to be one of the necessary steps in the story.
I also believe this is true for me, that my times of fallow and unharvesting don't mean waste, but a recycling of nutrients. What doesn't come to fruition today will remain seeded in me for later. Maybe I have less control than I want over when my life blooms; maybe not forcing it is the way to invite a harvest.
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