And all this trouble in our fields
If this rain can fall, these wounds can heal
It’s been very dry here. The land looks wasted and exhausted from heat. Our river is naked, each crack of rock and slice of earth exposed in nakedness. Daily its waters waste away—desperately carted by bucket to the horses, the last of it pumped from the well with apology. The sun has been merciless, leaving us looking to the skies as if questioning why this gentle lover of early morning light turns angry by midday, scorching and screaming its way across the heavens.
Local farmers fear for their crops, corn turned in upon itself, hayfields yielding no second crop, cattle wailing forlornly. The weather, something regularly discussed in Canadian coffee shops and bank lobbies, leaves us all unsettled.
Rain had fnot come to our lands for a long, long time, and then last week, we had a brilliant day wherein it rained all day and night. It was a relief, it was much-needed and we, I think, collectively as a region and individually as people, thirst for more.
Yesterday, and again this morning, I read a blog post by a woman I love and admire very much, in which she spoke of the drought we’ve had, not only, but the way that the refreshing of rain mirrored the refreshing needed in our souls, sometimes, in those places where we . It touched my heart deeply, and I am so glad that she shared her heart.
She writes,”….I find myself at times as though I am living in a drought, actually more like choosing to live in a drought or not quite knowing one’s way out of it. “
There’s a song I’ve been humming and singing in the early mornings out on the farm, “Trouble In the Fields”. I first heard it years ago when my friend Cybèle was trying to teach me to play the guitar, and later came to love even more when I found it on Sarah Harmer’s “Songs For Clem” album.
Baby I know that we’ve got trouble in the fields,
The bankers swarm like locust out there, turning away our yield
The trains roll by our silos, silver in the rain
They leave our pockets full of nothing
But our dreams and the golden grain.
Have you seen the folks in line downtown at the station?
They’re all buying their ticket out and talking the Great Depression.
Our parents had their hard times fifty years ago
When they stood out in these empty fields in dust as deep as snow.
And all this trouble in our fields
If this rain can fall, these wounds can heal
They’ll never take our native soil
But if we sell that new John Deere
And then we’ll work these crops with sweat and tears
You’ll be the mule I’ll be the plow
Come harvest time we’ll work it out
There’s still a lotta love, here in these troubled fields
There’s a book up on the shelf about the dust bowl days
And there’s a little bit of you and a little bit of me
In the photos on every page.
Now our children live in the city and they rest upon our shoulders
They never want the rain to fall or the weather to get colder
You’ll be the mule I’ll be the plow
Come harvest time we’ll work it out
There’s still a lotta love
Here in these troubled fields
The truth is, I’m not out there toiling crops and worrying about their yield. I’m out there tending horses and gardens and mending fences while feeling badly for the river as it shrinks into nothingness. I worry about what we’ll feed the horses and the cost of that. I worry about things like carting water in and all that.
And I worry about me. Because truthfully, I feel a bit of a drought inside of myself. I feel tired and cracked and caked and weary. I feel like a child’s craft—stuck in the oven to bake before it’s ready, I worry that I will come out misshapen and, well ugly.
I feel very unpretty and withered.
Vacation is coming, and I think that is a good thing. It’s been a rough, stressful couple of years at my job. Being a Professional Christian isn’t always easy.
I am not always gentle with myself. I don’t always know what to do with myself in places where trust has been seared. So I coil up inside, like corn in the neighbouring fields, curled up and protective, but sad and weary and… lost.
And I hope for rain.
As I said to the Man I Love the other day, I can get to feeling like everyone else is fresh and bright and cheerful and I’m hot and sweaty and gross.
Tina, in her post, writes, “I think sometimes the dryness of the drought is easier to handle then the awkwardness, pain and discomfort of learning how to live an abundant life. If drought is all you’re used to, it takes work to change and live differently. To be vulnerable when all you’ve ever done is hidden your vulnerability would be huge.”
I love her honesty. I love her heart and am amazed at her beauty.
As I read her blog, and then so much more clearly identified the places in my heart that are cracked and dry, I thought too about the places in my heart that are not that way at all. I am lush with life and creativity. I am green and overgrown in places, the limbs of the tree of Juliet heavy with the fruit of happiness and joy, of love and tenderness. I am excited and poised for growth.
Drought has not touched those lands.
Reflecting on the things she wrote about, I realized that just as in life, just as it is on our farm where the plants which grow where the river still has the ability to nourish and just 100 feet up, there is dust, there is no magical way to move life into what’s dying.
There is no way that I can make things grow in the barren places.
I need rain.
I need refreshing and vacation and gentleness and I need help.
It didn’t rain for a long time. And during that time, the well was dangerously low. The land couldn’t bring forth water. The animals couldn’t go down to the river.
So I helped. I carried buckets of water up the hill and across the driveway and helped them.
In life, I need help when drought comes.
I need reminders like that of my friend Tina, that drought isn’t about fault or curse or failure.
I need those who carry hope to me on dusty days when my throat is cracked and dry with tears I cannot name or shed.
I need love to soothe the injuries I cause myself.
I need someone with eyes that see beyond the heatwave, and can point me to the coming rain. The Man I Love is good at reminding me that easier, cooler days are coming. Days when the sun will be happy and warm again. Where my heart’s muscles won’t ache with questions about self and others that are best left covered in days of harsh, unyielding light.
I need rain in laughter of teenaged guys, the gentle teasing of family, the protection of arms around me when sandstorms rage, of friends who remember what lushness we once lived in. I need rain.
As I read Tina’s blog again this morning, I left a comment which reads, in part—
I read this post yesterday, coiled up inside and feeling so many of the things you describe. It’s such a frustrated, lonely feeling, isn’t it, knowing you want to be seen and reached, but knowing that what keeps you hidden IS you. And I love your statement of grace. I think sometimes that I treat myself worse than anyone else ever could—all over wanting to give myself space to be gentle!
But as you say, I believe that God also knows that I am “in” there, stuck. And if the rain all came too fast, it’d just wash away.
During this drought, I’ve often stood, watering my flowers with buckets from the river, and had to do it twice—the first time, the soil is too cracked and barren, and the water runs right out of the basket. So I water slowly, with another bucket underneath, catching the spillage.
And then I water again and again until the basket holds what the plant needs.
My hope, my belief, is that God will do the same for me in the dry places—water slowly, patiently, until I have what I need.
((I also told her that I’m writing all this during church and that also, I was going to come here and write down my thoughts)).
What I know is this—there is rain coming. Maybe not until next weekend, according to the forecast. And honestly, I’ve sat outside watching lightning promise rain and hearing thunder announce its presence and come up dry too many times to believe forecasts anymore. But I know this—what is thirsty in me, what is cracked and lonesome and barren still has hope.
It has lived. It has been lush with the splendor of Spring and golden with harvest and has lived with abundance. And it will, again. And again, and again.
The trick, for me, is to not go digging then—it hurts too much, it’s useless and damages my heart. To not expect what I cannot give. To not give up hope and to be gentle with myself.
To be patient.
And when my friends and those who love me come with buckets of water, with hands held out, cupping so I can drink—to dare to trust that I can let them in.
“You’ll be the mule I’ll be the plow
Come harvest time we’ll work it out
There’s still a lotta love
Here in these troubled fields.”
© Juliet deWal/The Word Laboratory™
