Giving No Thought To The Morrow

When life is understood in purely logical terms, then empirical, individual consciousness becomes people's base line for judging what is real and what is not. There is nothing implicitly wrong with logic of course, but to not recognize the manner in which it is tied to one's ego is disastrous.

- Thomas Merton (alt.)

Yesterday we planted over three hundred hills of potatoes. Added to the one hundred that we had already planted two weeks ago means that we have over four hundred hills of potatoes in the ground. None of them are intended for ourselves. Can we say that doing so is logical? Certainly not. Four hundred hills of potatoes is far more than what we personally need. Nor is it enough to make a dent in what we need to support ourselves if we were to sell them. But it is enough to make a great deal of difference in certain other people's lives. And so that's what we do. Furthermore, we get these into the hands of those most in need anonymously; we seek no recognition. We only write about it here in order to witness to what is possible.

Four hundred is a good amount to plant and raise and harvest for two older adults with medical problems. And since no one else has offered to help, then four hundred is enough. It is also all that we have left over for seed from last year's harvest. We know that it will benefit many families.

Nor do we ask why others cannot, and do not, plant their own? It is none of our business. Many would tell us that to not ask those questions makes no sense. And of course on a purely logical level it does not. So why do it? Because Christ says that inasmuch as we feed the hungry, so we feed him. And it is out of sheer love for Christ that we would feed him. (And this love of course is not something that we ourselves are responsible for...it is the love of God planted in us that we seek to simply reflect back to God. We can only do this if we empty ourselves of our egos and which is what we were created to be and therefore, do.) And so we feed those who are hungry. In them we see Christ. And that, of course, really makes no sense. In the end we identify with the poor.

Certainly throughout the formal time in which we served the church we were poor, spending two-thirds of that time below the poverty line and the other third just above it. We do not begrudge that. Without having been treated thus we would never be in the position to do what we do today on many levels. We use our poverty as a base-line reference for the illogical-ness of what we do now. Indeed, according to scripture poverty is the only integral position for serving the poor. To give hand-outs from a position of power is cruelly disingenuous, especially as people who are called upon to rely minute-by-minute on God to meet our needs. It would be disastrous to us in every sense of the term to not live this way.

All of this is why we always plant the potatoes first, my wife reminded me yesterday. A week ago a friend said that you would have to be a fool to not think about how you would make your way in the world after retirement. Really? I guess that this is why we sow these potatoes in great quantity and first. We take care of others before we take care of ourselves with no thought of the morrow, as a disciplined reminder to our egos to not take themselves seriously in the least.