Kirkepiscatoid

Not exactly St. Paddy’s day fare, but here it is:

That it may please thee to give and preserve to our use the
bountiful fruits of the earth, so that in due time all may enjoy
them,
We beseech thee to hear us, good Lord.

You know, this isn’t just “agriculture.” It’s ALL the natural resources, if you get right down to it. Oil and coal are also “fruits of the earth.”

I keep finding myself “living more and more below my means.”

I’m not totally sure what this is all about.

I remember as a little kid, growing up with “not a lot.” I used to think about the people in town who got a new car every year and was absolutely sure that, if I ever made a good enough living, I was going to be one of those people.

Meanwhile...real life...I’ve yet to own a vehicle that I did not log at least 175,000 miles before trading it in or selling it.

I think I got so many mixed messages about “enjoying fruits” growing up. My dad could literally live with nothing; he could (and does) live in a shack with only a wood stove, as long as he has a few clothes and his hunting/fishing stuff. My mom spent a lot of money that she didn’t really have over the years trying to imitate suburban women and lifestyles like she saw on TV. She liked brand named clothes so she could “be just as good as those other women.” The only brand name that was important to my dad was “Charmin toilet paper.” He did like his Charmin toilet paper.

My grandparents were Depression-era people. They did not believe in owing any money, save a house mortgage. If you could not afford it, you did not buy it. Brand name items were only bought on sale, unless for some reason you gave one as a gift. You bought the “store brand” of groceries, not the “name brand,” and were told, “It’s all from the same place.” You bought things at auctions and estate sales. You saved everything--”You might need it someday.”

Surrounded by all this, somewhere along the line, I learned “not to want much.” I watched all this mish-mash of variety of money and possessions and wants and needs and desires, and somewhere in the middle of that, I became very uncomfortable with money and possessions—torn between a lack of desire for “things everyone has” to the point of almost feeling out of touch with the world on this issue, and my habit of “hoarding.” I have never been comfortable with making a “good living”, oddly enough. There is that part of me that always believes disaster is just around the corner, so I need to hoard. I need to “not have a lot” so if I lose it, I won’t miss it. I don’t enjoy the fruits of the earth OR the fruits of my labors worth a damn, in some ways.

But perhaps, in a very simple and qualitative sense, I DO enjoy them. In the middle of winter, I long for the taste of a fresh homegrown tomato. I look forward every year to that tiny window of a few weeks where the morel mushrooms pop up. I love the smell and taste of a piece of meat from the grill, cooked on a muggy summer night with the crickets chirping in the background. I realize these things are impossible to hoard. You can’t hoard a season. You can’t hoard a finite window of time.

How do I transfer this simple joy of the minute details of the fruits of the earth to a joy in learning to live more simply? How do I free myself from hoarding things of little value and cherishing the tiny things that have value beyond its possession? In fact, if you try to “possess” these things, the value leaves them.

How do I give away my own “fruits of the harvest?” This spiritual journey that I have been on, despite being very much “in the desert” at times, has already shown signs of a harvest. Then the trick becomes how to give them away and not let them just rot in the field. These are all hard questions, and I continue to work on them...because I am still not quite sure how to resolve these things.