The Harvest

I've spent my Wednesday mornings this summer working at Pine Island Church's Hope Garden at our Q Avenue property in Texas Township.  Gardening requires a constant vigilance as bugs, critters, fungus, weeds all want a piece of our real estate were cultivating.  I missed most of the planting.  But I've done my share of weeding.  Nickie, our first garden intern and I put a lot of sweat equity into weeding the corn patch back in July.  When I returned from vacation to learn that in spite of our deer fence, the raccoons had found, ate or destroyed all the corn, I was disheartened, but not devastated.  This reminds me of Travis in the story of Old Yeller, who slept in the corn patch at night to keep watch for the coons when the ears of corn were maturing and evidently must appealing to coons.  His frontier family depended on that corn crop for their survival.  I'll be just fine, but today as our work crew finished cutting up and composting the trampled corn stocks, the comment was made that we put a lot of work into that corn for nothing.  Maybe not.  We now have a huge compost pile which will break down and provide useful compost matter our garden needs to enrich the soil.  And well, we are a part of a larger community which includes these animals and insects.  So we lose some of our crop to potato beetles, and string beans to the rabbits and ground squirrels and yes, corn to the raccoons.  We just don't want to lose all of it to them.  Today, dag nab it, we installed wooden thresholds under the fence gates in our battle with those blasted varmets!

Much of our effort back in July was weeding.  We had the garden looking immaculate.  I leave for two weeks and my how the weeds grew.  They are relentless. But now that the garden plants are established and producing, our attention is focused on the harvest!  Today was the garden's biggest production day.  We harvested, cleaned, packed and delivered over 265 lbs. of tomatoes, cucumbers, egg plant, zucchini squash, and potatoes to the Food Bank at Ministry with Community and we've delivered nearly 3000 lbs. of produce for this harvest season so far.  So the critters did not get it all, nor did the weeds win.

 When teaching about the kingdom of heaven, Jesus said,  "Let both the weeds and the wheat grow together until the harvest, and at harvest time collect the weeds and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barns"  (Matthew 13:30).  It's about the harvest.  The fruits God seeks to harvest and the virtues which David Osborne, author of "Love for the Future," has identified as necessary for facing the challenges of the 21st Century are:

1.       Wonder/Awe

2.       Humility

3.          Simplicity

4.          Compassion

5.          Faith/Love

6.          Justice

7.           Repentance

8.          Courage

9.          Hope

10.     Wisdom/Broad Thinking

These are the fruits I've sought to nurture in the congregations and communities where I have lived and served.  And the harvest of these looks like heaven on earth, like the beloved community where all are blessed, where all gifts are recognized and appreciated, where those gifts intermingle to serve the common good of the larger whole.  Like the importance of the bees to pollinate plants and spread essential ingredients from plant to plant.  Our sunflowers have attracted the bees this year.  And they are quietly doing their work.

A new Hope Garden goal this year is providing a couple of
garden interns work experience and gardening knowledge and skill.  These internships will provide an employment track record, which will open an brighter future.  I invite you to pray for Nickie and Chris as they take what they have learned by their work experience with our garden work crew, and dream about their future.  May these weeks working with us this summer launch, rather harvest a bright future of blessing.