Barrenness
Well. The winds came to the farm.
They are gone now. But they left in their wake, Cold. Bitter cold. So now
everything is bitter cold and brown. It seems this year, that after the fall
colors, it has turned particularly brown. The limbs of the deciduous trees,
having lost their lustrous foliage have a grayish look, but the fields lay in
great brown folds. This landscape leaves one with a great sense of barrenness. A
complete lack of life. There is even a large section of acreage that was applied
with an herbicide that looks particularly brown and ugly. This herbicide kills
not only weeds but every living plant on the soil. An intentional barrenness.
It reminds me of the cold and frozen
barren wastelands of the north, where far and in between a sprig of some kind
of life can find a fertile spot to grow.
This got me thinking about a couple
of books I have on my shelf. One is an old book from my father on Animal
Husbandry. I know there are ones on
Plant Husbandry.
Animal and plant
husbandry. Husbandry. We don’t hear
this word that often any more. But what a word. It’s so full of life. The
ability to manage the affairs of an estate so that it thrives. Thriving is
about living well and the man who tends to the breeding and care of livestock,
as the man who tends to crops and gardening, are both trying to create fertile
ground in which to sow seeds.
This fertility involves the state
of the ground itself, or the health of the animal. It requires the proper
nutrients that must be fed both plants and animals, and proper fencing and
shelter to either protect the plants and livestock from predators or from the
ravages of weather and disease.
If he is to have a thriving estate
he must love what he does, he must have a passion for it that orders all his activities
to the purpose of bringing forth life. Everything coming into his community is judged
as to whether it would hinder or augment the flourishing of the fruits of his
labor.
What an invigorating concept. I am a
husband. What a privilege to be the cultivator of life. Inviting into my home
that what is nourishing and defending against that which might render it
barren.
Mightn’t it be that the word
husbandry is disappearing from our social landscape because husbands are?
Sowing seeds that never reach the ground or sowing upon intentionally barren
soil. How inimical to the very concept of husbandry!
Perish the
thought or life perishes.
A little more serious reflection for Advent until the Author of Life is Born. Christmas! I am like my little children. I can't wait.
Have a great day!
David Cools
