Another Kind of Salvation Another year of share-cropping has begun. And already the first crisis has been averted: frost. Last night the predictions for a mild freeze were on. So my farmer husband rounded up every trashcan, box, wheelbarrow, five-gallon…
Read MoreEaster XII
Take and Eat For a second year we are gardening on a grand scale. Well, to be honest, my husband is gardening on a grand scale and I’m supportive and help when I can. He and my daughter and a…
Read MoreOrdinary Time XXIII
Going to Seed . . . We made what will likely turn out to be the last big harvest of the season at the garden today. My husband and daughter dug two tubs of peanuts and 10 crates of sweet potatoes. (One sweet potato was as large as my daughter’s head! Most were just average size.) I picked a bag full of okra, reaching over my head to pull plants down and clip the pods.
Read MoreEaster IX
Tomorrow Pentecost begins. The birthday of the church! At my church we’ll wear red and celebrate the coming of the Spirit with wind and fire and bells. But right now it is the last day of Eastertide. On Good Friday, April 2, our family and some friends spent a good portion of the day putting in a quarter acre garden. The Great Flood of Nashville hit a month later May 1-3. We suffered very little damage to personal property. With the exception of the garden. It was under eight-to-ten feet of water for most of two days. And it was pretty well destroyed.
Read MoreEaster V
Almanac: Tonight a half moon is shining (or more technically, the first quarter). We’ve had no rain to speak of in the last week. Less than three weeks since we planted the farm . . . On Good Friday we put in beans, yellow squash, onions, corn, turnips, cucumbers, zucchini, butternut squash, watermelon, potatoes, garlic, and more squash.
Read MoreLent VI
Standing in the den two nights ago my husband rubbed his hands through his hair, looked at me and said, โHave I come undone?โ I said, โWell, Iโm sure you have. Listen to this. . . .โ I opened a book and read something Iโd found earlier that very day. Stumbled across it really. โLetโs face it. We’re undone by each other. And if we’re not, we’re missing something. If this seems so clearly the case with grief, it is only because it was already the case with desire. One does not always stay intact. It may be that one wants to, or does, but it may also be that despite oneโs best efforts, one is undone, in the face of the otherโ (Judith Butler, Undoing Gender, 2004, 19).
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