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The field accosts me as I jog by. Empty and still, it spreads a pallor over the once-fertile hills. In summer, its harvest waved high: Plush green leaves surrounded sturdy, wheat-topped stalks. The golden smell of sun-ripening grain filled our valley.
Now only this blank canvas remains, the silent foundation upon which a riot of productivity once waved. I exhale as I pass by: I'm awed by this empty expanse. The vastness. The potential. The change. It seems at once sacred and terrible, monumental and mundane.
But it's the furrows that stop me cold. Some machine has mapped them, touching every inch of this field with precision. Like the texture of paper or finely-sewn cloth, the furrows march in perfectly-spaced rows across the land's open face. The soil waits exposed, these silent rows a testimony to utility, to purpose, to plan.
The soil waits.
A catch in my throat surprises me. I start to jog once again. It's beautiful, this empty sameness. Beautiful like a promise. Like the squares of a ready-to-be-filled calendar. Like the rhythm of season and sun, hunger and sleep. Like the simple beat of a song.
"It's hard to remember anything about this year," my teenage daughter recently observed as we concluded a quiet dinner at the end of another quiet week. "Nothing makes one month different from any other." She spoke this with sorrow, and I agreed: This year has brimmed full with mourning.
But it's brimmed full with wonder, as well. Days still dawn. Birthdays still come. People still marry. Babies still arrive, beautiful and wrinkled and wailing with surprise. We lay down our furrows, or God does, or both. I gaze at my silent field, drinking it in with reverent eyes. I'm passing it now, headed toward home.
This season will pass, too, I am sure, replaced with havoc and hurry and all things pertaining to growth. Beneath it all, the furrows will stay, ready for their next emergence someday. And when that day comes, I hope I will welcome them more fully, as friends. They hold my place. They shape my days. They help me be patient.
Together, in these beautiful, God-given furrows, let us wait.
Photos of our year, mainly mundane:
