Fallow, not Shallow

I am 59 today! Yes, I don't believe it either. But one's birthday is a good day, I'm telling myself, to pause, to reflect, to look back and see where one has been, and to gather oneself for the going forward again of tomorrow.

I can hear God laughing! I can hear God laughing because I can't escape the conclusion that my life has literally been all over the map. My children can say, "a wondering Aramean was my father," for I have been led from East to Midwest to West, from city to country and back to city again. Joni Mitchell used to ask in song, "doesn't anyone stay in one place any more?" Maybe some people do, but that has not been God's plan for me. In the manner of Joan Rivers, I could tell you stories, but the plots would all be similar: every time I make an effort to settle down, I am uprooted.

And so it may be again... We will see...

But my awareness of today is: In my sojourns, I did have my share of time in rural communities, and I have been as grateful for those years as I have for the years I spent in New York, Chicago, and recently, this strange hybrid we call "the beach cities!" Living in a farming community in Southeast Michigan, I learned a lot about crop rotation: corn, soy beans, and the importance of leaving a field fallow for a time.

I was always fascinated by the fallow fields. They were the wild ones, the ones where any and every thing grew. Some were planted with soil rejuvenating plants. Others seemed to be just left to be... In the fallow fields grew "volunteers:" corn and soy beans from previous plantings, and whatever else wanted to come up. Whenever my congregants would remind me that a church is a "volunteer" organization, I would understand that they were telling me what a fallow field a church really was! Those who grew there wanted to grow there.

Now I'm sure that not all churches are fallow fields full of volunteers' growing. I'm certain that some churches and organizations function like vineyards, where there is order in the planting and reasonable expectations of growth and harvest. But I never served those sorts of churches, and the bereavement program that has been my most recent planting worked much more like a volunteer organization-- small, but with great variety, and not much order!

I have come to realize that God has led me again to a fallow time. Fallow is that time "between" plantings. Fallow is that time, in fact, when nothing in particular is to be planted, in order that some rejuvenation be allowed to take place. Fallow is not a "shallow" time, for depth of meaning is seldom well measured by level of activity. Rather, fallow is a time, as bereavement folks are wont to say, "between normals."

I have to say, if, as Kermit the Frog would say, "it is not easy being green," in the same way, it is not easy for me being fallow. I keep wrestling with myself, fighting the urge to "do" when, really, at least for a little while here, there is nothing to be done. I have difficulty letting this time just "be." I want to "work" it, "worry" it, and thus wear it down, wear a grove in it, make a mark. How difficult it is for me, this "letting be!"

Being fallow takes a different kind of breathing: easier, yes, but then I realize how difficult it sometimes is for me truly to relax! Being fallow takes a different kind of appreciation of the day: "this is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it" was easier to say when the day involved activity, and a sense of usefulness, and a quality of being of service to others. Now, I am merely being... And still I am to rejoice? Yes... Yes...

The thing is, I understand from my rural days that there is a price to be paid if there are not fallow periods in one's life-- either chosen, or chosen for, as this one is for me. The price for continual planting, for working one's fields always, is depletion. And while in modern farming we have the means for constantly augmenting the soil with chemicals; and while by the same token we have the means for constantly augmenting our personal energy, again often with chemicals: in neither case does this bring about a true replenishment. (I like that word, "replenishment:" to be filled again, literally.)

I know that when I was working I probably asked a lot of God to "replenish" me, to keep me full enough to be having enough spiritual energy to, as Garrison Keilor would say, "get up and do what needed to be done!" But in this fallow time, I am disengaged, stopped, or at least slowed enough, that God can replenish me.

The promise of this fallow time is gratitude: "My cup runneth over! Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me ALL the days of my life! I shall dwell in God's house forever!" Amen!

On this, my natal day, I celebrate Life! My own-- and the lives in which I have been intertwined, interlaced, and implicated! HA! We are blessings to each other...