Perhaps I had brewed the coffee too strong this morning, but when I had the opportunity to pick string beans with Dimitrius and Chance, I was particularly chatty. I like to spend mornings on the farm, especially crisp ones like this one, to myself, quiet. I enjoy up the hum of the morning, city sounds around me, but there is a stillness on the farm before the busyness of the daily tasks sets in. It’s a therapy for me, really, to hold a plant in the morning, pull back leaves, find the vegetables, and marvel at the abundance of how many beans or tomatoes or peas can come from one plant. To dig my hands into the ground of an uprooted potato plant to find the golden nuggets or shake free from the earth the fragrant garlic bulbs. Perhaps the cutting of the flowers, a more sacred task at the farm, is most soothing and spiritual to me. There are hundreds of beautiful bright spots all over the field, colors similar enough to make coordinated bouquets for the shareholders, but different enough to remind me of just how lovingly creative the Creator is.
I was feeling chipper and not as contemplative and alone as I normally am on farm mornings. Dimitrius and Chance are two boys from the neighborhood who wanted to come help, if they could. We had three rows of string beans to pick for harvest day--each a different color. "Which colors do you think they are?" I asked. "Black. Red. Blue." Chance was confident in his guesses, but I told him that no, we were going to pick green, purple, and yellow string beans. He chose yellow, Dimitrius chose green, and I got to find the long purple ones.
"What’s your favorite vegetable?" I asked, after learning more about them, where they go to school, if they’re from the neighborhood, etc.
“Green beans,” Chance volunteered again. “I like to eat them with salt.”
“I bet we’ll have enough here that you can take some home after we’re done picking for harvest,” I said.
He paused. “These are green beans?”
I looked up at him with fists full of purple beans, “Yeah,”
“I thought green beans came from cans,” he said, looking confused.
“They come from the earth first,” I said slowly, not knowing where to begin.
He nodded and, after about five minutes, claimed he had finished his entire row. "No, my friend, you have to lift up the leaves. There’s a lot of goodness underneath the leaves left to be picked. We don’t want to waste any of these perfectly delicious beans now do we?"
Dimitrius and Chance lasted for about another five minutes before they disappeared and I was left with the three rows of beans to pick and a whole head of thoughts to process.
There are moments in most of my days that lift the veil a little, when things become a little clearer, a little more grave, a little more a reflection of reality. Today, Chance helped me see, once again, just how far removed and disconnected we have become--from God, from ourselves, from each other, from the earth. We gladly take cans of beans over the real thing, for so many things in our lives. We choose to do the things that are easy and convenient, instead of looking a little harder and digging a little deeper, missing out on the best beans on the plant or potatoes in the ground. Somehow, it points to a deeper sickness in us as a society-- our love for the quick fixes and the easy ways out, our dependence on a system that doesn’t care for us, our independence from true community, our uncritical acceptance of all things we don’t understand, our complacency, our ignorance, our greed and love for profit, our addictions to efficiency and technology. I can’t say what all of these things have in common or how they necessarily manifest in all areas of life, but there is something dying in us, around us, too. I won’t be able to put my finger on the thread of consistency in these deaths that compels me to even try writing about this, but there is something undeniably sad and overwhelming about the loss revealed by an eighth grader who doesn’t know that beans don’t come from cans.
The three rows of beans took me a good two and a half hours to pick. I took extra care to look at each plant carefully, from several different angles, to make sure I didn’t miss any beans. I don’t want the easy things, I don’t want to be blinded by my complacency or attraction to convenience and new technology, I don’t want to wallow in my ignorance or be an enabler to others wallowing in theirs. All I want is to grow something green, appreciate crisp mornings on the farm, practice resurrection, live simply, love deeply, and let my sadnesses inspire something good and life-giving. And all I really want is to give Chance a bag of the best tasting beans he’s ever had. Maybe next week.
