Fallow Souls Yearn For Spring
Posted: February 1, 2013
Rural Pen
Gone are the fields waving with golden grasses and pastures stretched with sheets of green. Much of the landscape is stubble left from summer corn or other cover crops.
Some fields, however, have been plowed and seemingly abandoned.
Fallow land is that which has been plowed but not seeded for one or more growing seasons; it is left idle in order to kill weeds and make the soil richer.
As Jan Krist sings in “Fallow Ground”:
Some fields are ripe for harvest
Fruit heavy on the vine
Some fields are already gathered
Fruit crushed into wine
And some fields are just plowed under
Left there as fallow ground
Fields that are worn and weary
Fields that are broken down
Ever feel like your heart is fallow ground? I do.
During this fallow time in my life, I have been doing the things that get put off when you report to work every day. Cleaning out closets and bookcases, vacuuming behind furniture and getting rid of obsolete things. I’ve been taking long walks, getting re-acquainted with my neighborhood. I crochet, bake bread, write letters (yes, real letters) and talk on the phone with friends. I’ve also been studying and writing. And always, of course, looking for work.
As for the fallow ground of my heart, at first I thought I’d lost my faith. Many of my friends have turned from theirs. At present, I have no regular faith community. Being outdoors no longer inspires worship.
But I have not denounced God nor my faith in Christ. Question? Yes. Doubt? Yes. When author Madeleine L’Engle was asked, “Do you believe in God without any doubts?” she replied, “I believe in God with all my doubts.”
So, I conclude that my faith is not dead, but in a fallow state. If so, are there weeds that must die? Is the soil of my heart being invisibly enriched?
To give up on God — or on life — would be to presume that I know everything there is to know about God. As Wendell Berry writes in “Life is a Miracle,” we “can give up on life … by presuming to ‘understand’ it — that is, by reducing it to the terms of our understanding and by treating it as predictable or mechanical.”
Biblical Job thought he knew all there was to know about God. When he lost his children, his health and his business, he wanted to die. He was religious, but served God more out of fear than faith. He did everything right, everything a good Christian should do.
In Job 1:5, he gives God a daily burnt offering because, “Perhaps my children have sinned and cursed God in their hearts.” Then, in Job 3:25, he says, “What I feared has come upon me, what I dreaded has happened to me.”
Job wants to know why he is suffering, but God does not satisfy him with an answer. Instead, as Robert Cording points out in his essay, “Mystery,” God shows Job the beautiful and terrible things in creation.
Job realizes there’s more to God than his own ideas of good and evil. Everything Job thought he knew about God and religion is now in question. Job has nothing else to say.
Open the fallow ground
Turn your world upside down
Rest the whole season long
Rest till you’re good and strong
Deep in the dark and hollow
Welcome the pouring rain
This is the quiet season, before we start again.
Simone Weil says we should “give up our imaginary position as the center … renounce it, not only intellectually, but in the imaginative part of our soul” so we may “awaken to what is real and eternal … see the true light and hear the true silence.”
To every thing there is a season
To every season, a reason why
I don’t know why this fallow season,
But I might rest here for a while ...
Some fields, however, have been plowed and seemingly abandoned.
Fallow land is that which has been plowed but not seeded for one or more growing seasons; it is left idle in order to kill weeds and make the soil richer.
As Jan Krist sings in “Fallow Ground”:
Some fields are ripe for harvest
Fruit heavy on the vine
Some fields are already gathered
Fruit crushed into wine
And some fields are just plowed under
Left there as fallow ground
Fields that are worn and weary
Fields that are broken down
Ever feel like your heart is fallow ground? I do.
During this fallow time in my life, I have been doing the things that get put off when you report to work every day. Cleaning out closets and bookcases, vacuuming behind furniture and getting rid of obsolete things. I’ve been taking long walks, getting re-acquainted with my neighborhood. I crochet, bake bread, write letters (yes, real letters) and talk on the phone with friends. I’ve also been studying and writing. And always, of course, looking for work.
As for the fallow ground of my heart, at first I thought I’d lost my faith. Many of my friends have turned from theirs. At present, I have no regular faith community. Being outdoors no longer inspires worship.
But I have not denounced God nor my faith in Christ. Question? Yes. Doubt? Yes. When author Madeleine L’Engle was asked, “Do you believe in God without any doubts?” she replied, “I believe in God with all my doubts.”
So, I conclude that my faith is not dead, but in a fallow state. If so, are there weeds that must die? Is the soil of my heart being invisibly enriched?
To give up on God — or on life — would be to presume that I know everything there is to know about God. As Wendell Berry writes in “Life is a Miracle,” we “can give up on life … by presuming to ‘understand’ it — that is, by reducing it to the terms of our understanding and by treating it as predictable or mechanical.”
Biblical Job thought he knew all there was to know about God. When he lost his children, his health and his business, he wanted to die. He was religious, but served God more out of fear than faith. He did everything right, everything a good Christian should do.
In Job 1:5, he gives God a daily burnt offering because, “Perhaps my children have sinned and cursed God in their hearts.” Then, in Job 3:25, he says, “What I feared has come upon me, what I dreaded has happened to me.”
Job wants to know why he is suffering, but God does not satisfy him with an answer. Instead, as Robert Cording points out in his essay, “Mystery,” God shows Job the beautiful and terrible things in creation.
Job realizes there’s more to God than his own ideas of good and evil. Everything Job thought he knew about God and religion is now in question. Job has nothing else to say.
Open the fallow ground
Turn your world upside down
Rest the whole season long
Rest till you’re good and strong
Deep in the dark and hollow
Welcome the pouring rain
This is the quiet season, before we start again.
Simone Weil says we should “give up our imaginary position as the center … renounce it, not only intellectually, but in the imaginative part of our soul” so we may “awaken to what is real and eternal … see the true light and hear the true silence.”
To every thing there is a season
To every season, a reason why
I don’t know why this fallow season,
But I might rest here for a while ...
Luanne Austin lives in Mount Sidney. Contact her at RuralPen@aol.com, facebook.com/rural pen or care of the DN-R.