Fallow. This is a word that floated into my mind yesterday. I have no idea where it came from but knew it was significant. Most often the word is used to describe farmland……. land that is ‘plowed and harrowed but left unsown for a period in order to restore its fertility.’ It has been some time since I sat down to add to these pages or taken up any of the creative work that fills me up. The spring has been coming to our days but I have found myself in a place of distance from it. It has been unclear what that is about and so I have been sitting with it, trying to make sense of what it might be that has caused me to remove myself from some of the very things that bring life. Certainly putting words together on a page is one of those life-giving activities and yet I have found myself pushing away, choosing instead to do other things, anything, that would occupy my time and my thoughts. Has this ever happened to you? But as the word ‘fallow’ floated to the surface of my psyche, I realized it was what I had allowed for in the creativity that often marks my days.

Usually when these experiences come, the tendency is to think that something is ‘wrong’, that something must be ‘fixed’ in order to get the wheels rolling again. As the word ‘fallow’ was offered to me yesterday, I realized I did not need do a thing. It seemed such a relief that I actually quickly wrote the word down so I would have its memory, its companionship. I carried it with me throughout the day and allowed its presence to expand within me. I said it over and over….fallow, fallow, fallow.

We live in a world that demands constant production. We are pushed by many outer forces to be doing something at all times. Each day can be filled with so many tasks to be accomplished that we can find ourselves in a perpetual state of disappointment. That outer push creates a home even in our inner lives making it difficult for us to simply sit and be, to take the time to ‘do nothing’, to allow for our mind and spirits to be unsown for a time, making room for creativity to germinate. Fallow time. 

In the scriptures, we read the commands to allow fields to go fallow in the seventh year. From these fields will spring new life and the poor will be fed says the writer of Exodus. And the Sufi poet Rumi writes:

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing………..and rightdoing there is a field……..I’ll meet you there…….When the soul lies down in that grass………..the world is too full to talk about.

Have you had the experience where the ‘world is too full to talk about.’? Perhaps some fallow time is in order. Perhaps a respite from all that pulls at your time is the prescription. Perhaps allowing the soul to lie down in the grass beyond any idea of what is right or what is wrong with the world, your life, your day, your desires, your hopes is what is called for.

I am imagining what happens to the soil of a field allowed to go fallow for a year. As the plowed, unsown soil soaks up the warmth of the Sun and embraces the rain as it flows down into its deepest places, nutrients begin to restore. The gentle winds of a year and the storms that rearrange the smallest of particles create a new chemistry for what will come in the year ahead. I can imagine the soil breathing in, resting in the elements that nourish, renewing for growth that is yet unimagined.

And so it is with us. When the soil of our souls is allowed a fallow time, new life will begin to find form, form we could not have had the energy or imagination for without the time of rest. 

So be it.

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