Stewards of the Season

I grew up around farmers. I do not claim to have been one myself. Getting up at 5 in the morning to milk, bailing hay and membership in the Future Farmers of America does not a real farmer make. As Wendell Berry said in his book Bringing it to the Table: Writings on Farming and Food, "A farmer... is a dispenser of the mysteries of God." I dispensed nothing. I only did what I was told to do (albeit reluctantly) by men who were real farmers.

One of the things I loved about those men was their knowledge of the seasons. Forget the weatherman or woman on your local television station. Old farmers just know. Just sit a bit with them and listen - sooner or later you will get the real weather report and a detailed analysis of this year's seasons.

Moving to Latin America has played tricks with my ability to understand the seasons. In La Paz, Bolivia, the two basic divisions in the year are chilly and cold. What Paceños refer to as summer is also the rainy season, which always seems colder to me than winter, which is accompanied by bright sunlight. Here in Costa Rica, even though we live north of the equator, our summer - which in this case is our dry season - stretches from the end of December until mid-April. Our green season, or winter, starts about two weeks after our local municipality runs out of water.

As you can see, I am still working all of this out.

Right now we find ourselves in "pesky wasps and tiny ants season." I don't seem to remember this time of the year growing up in the States. Here it is characterized by thousands of small paper wasps trying to build a hive on the ceiling of our guest bathroom. You really do not want to know how much non-EPA approved poison I have sprayed in there this past week. However, if you come for a visit and faint while you are in the bathroom we promise to do our best to get you out... maybe in dry season.

It seems to me our hearts have seasons. I am not referring to the natural stages of life related to our chronological age. Instead, I am talking about the seasons that creep into our souls and define us as we go through life. A teenager can have a grim, arctic soul - believe me, I see it with some of the young people we work with. An older person - technically defined here as someone older than me - can have a heart that is as breezy and fragrant as the best spring in your memory.
 
Sometimes we have no power over the season in our heart. It just seems to come on us. Maybe the scientific explanation is brain chemistry or a change in life's circumstances. No matter, somehow we abruptly find ourselves in a seasonal transition in our soul. Sometimes we do have a say in the season in our heart. Our beliefs, attitudes and responses can either warm up the soul temperature or cool it down. In one sense it doesn't matter - just like the farmer we are called to be good stewards of each of the seasons we inhabit.

Jesus understood seasons and our temptation to ignore them. That is one reason He gave us the parable of the fig tree in Matthew 24:32-35. He knew we needed to pay attention to the signs and prepare ourselves for the change in season that was sure to come.

The farmers I knew - at least the ones who stayed alive - did what they were supposed to do in each season. I hope I learned a bit more from them than I realize and some of their hard-earned experience rubbed off on me. More than anything, I trust I will be a "dispenser of the mysteries of God" as I live in the many seasons of my own soul.