I have just spent several days driving across Ohio,Indiana,Illinois, Wisconsin and Minnesota. Nearly everyone I have spoken to says:"I just hate that drive! It is so boring." But I didn’t have that experience. Mile after mile, I was filled with awe, wonder…… hope. You see, I got to watch the fields be planted, got to glimpse the two inch tall corn working its way to ‘knee high by the 4th of July’.  Signature green and yellow John Deere tractors and large equipment I can’t even name moved in fields, kicking up dust, preparing the soil for planting. It seemed that at the center of each field stood a house, waiting with patience to be surrounded by the crop that will feed families, animals, provide a living for those who have placed their faith in this land.

I  wholeheartedly admit that I have and always have had a romantic notion of farm life. I know it is hard work, long hours, most of the time a very big gamble, often filled with disappointment and failure. I know that so many farmers live on the edge financially, always hanging on to "this year". I have read and seen enough reports about the decline and difficulty of the family farm to know my imagination is much rosier than the reality.

It is that understanding that made driving through those beautiful fields, watching the work, witnessing to the hope, such a rare gift.  You see, I have staked my life on words, relationships, hope, and the belief in a Presence and power larger than myself. These people have staked their lives on seed and soil, rain and sun,their relationship to all that…..and perhaps a Presence and power larger than themselves.

All along the miles I kept thinking of Wendell Berry, another favorite author of mine, who in addition to being a poet, a prophet and a novelist, is also a Kentucky farmer. He has staked his life on those same elements of the natural world and the Divine. He also writes beautifully about it all…..

The Man Born to Farming

The Grower of Trees, the gardener, the man born to farming,

whose hands reach into the ground and sprout

to him the soil is a divine drug. He enters into death

yearly, and comes back rejoicing. He has seen the light lie down

in the dung heap, and rise again in the corn.

His thought passes along the row ends like a mole.

What miraculous seed has he swallowed

That the unending sentence of his love flows out of his
mouth

Like a vine clinging in the sunlight, and like water

Descending in the dark?