Silk Grace

It’s a scant harvest of sweet corn this year.

The rains deluging in spring, then giving up its obsession with us come about mid-June.

From my post at the stove, out the window to the south, there the Farmer bends and bows over the cornstalks like an offering, the only way a life can reap a harvest.

The Farmer brings in cobs and the kids husk it back to kernels, to the nuggets of gold.

This takes time.

“Dad, can you tell Levi to stop going so fast?”

Joshua is cutting corn at the table under the spruce trees. Shalom is carrying the pans of corn to Hope and me at the stove. Malakai hauls and Caleb cuts too, on the far side of the table, with his own mountain of gold.

“Look — Levi’s husking the cobs alright, but there are way too many hairs still left on these cobs.” Joshua runs his hand over a cob, testifying.

“See all the corn silks he’s left behind?” He holds his palm right open to all these hairs, blonde threads, summer’s tassels.

“Levi …” The Farmer sets a stack of sun-warm cobs on the table and turns. “Just slow down — take your time on each cob. Do it well.” He runs his fingers slowly across all the kernels of gold. “Just go slow — so you can get it all.”

“Josh?” The Farmer leans over the table. “Watch how many kernels you’re losing here.” He smiles, winks. “We could all do that — slow down.”

There was that sign in the yard of the Mennonites to the north: “Slow: Children at Play.”

I could put a sign like that over the sink.

I blanch the next batch and there are the kernels of moments I’ve lost. How if I’d just gone slow, I could have multiplied all that He’s given.

It’s strange how the mind works.

The mind would rather fret about the future or pine over the past — so the mind can cling to its own illusion of control. But the current moment? It cannot be controlled. And what a mind can’t control, it tends to discount. Brush past … over.

It’s the battle plan of the enemy of the soul — to keep us blind to this current moment, the one we can’t control, to keep us blind to Him, the One who controls everything.

There is that: What if instead of discounting the current moment, the uncontrollable, the simply given — what if I counted it — and on the God who controls it all?

What if all our running around is only our trying to run away from God—the great I am, present in the present moment?

What if I woke to now and refused to hurry because I didn’t want to refuse God?

What if I didn’t discount this moment but counted it for what it is — God here?

It is only the present moment alone that holds the possibility of coming into the presence of God. Look around, breathe deep, enter into this one moment.

Now could be an altar. This time could be a tabernacle.

In God, there is no time, only eternity — or more simply, only now. His name is I am. Here — wherever my feet are — is where I can love Him.

All these multiplying moments …

The steam curls up out of the pot like a prayer ascending and the windows fog and I can only see what is here, now.

Levi carries one cob to me, his witness, and all I can see is his smile.

The way he has slowed.

The way his hands now fill with this harvest of silk …

Lord God, forgive all running around that is merely a running away from You. Today, cause me to refuse to hurry because I don’t want to refuse You. Instead of discounting the current moment, the uncontrollable, cause me to count it — and on the God who controls it all. This present moment holds the possibility of coming into Your presence — and I am slowing for the silk of now.