So I'm not sure if this blog will be worth reading now that I'm not traveling to all sorts of exotic places but I figured I ought to give it a shot anyways as there are a few different things that have been stirring around in my head recently.
A few days ago we started chiseling wheat ground and the first field I worked was that of an old friend, Maury Brand. Maury passed away almost two year ago in a farm accident. Although he was around 75, I count him among my good friends. He was a solid Catholic, the head of his family and a true Kansas farmer, even though he only farmed 160 acres in his retirement after working in a meat packing plant his whole life. Maury also had a little Piper Cub that he flew out of a grass runway in his wheat field. I was blessed enough to ride with him on a few beautiful summer evenings the summer before he passed away.
I'm not sure I'm going to be able to explain this to any of my non-farmer friends but I've always known that there is something very spiritual about farming. It probably has something to do with being so closely connected to God's creation for your livelihood, the trust that comes from being able to control so few of the variables that determine your success. Whatever it is, I can see it when I help my Dad deliver a new-born heifer or when I listen to my Grandpa describe his simple and yet invincible belief in God. The other day when I was chiseling up Maury's wheat ground I felt it in an especially personal way. You learn about a piece of ground when you work it (even more so when you don't have autosteer). You learn how the water drains off of it in the ditches and how it doesn't in the mud holes. You learn about the soil; where the sand, alkali, clay and black dirt are. You can tell where the high yielding spots are by the thickness of the stubble and where the low yields are by the amount of weeds left behind. As I was working the Brand ground and observing all these details God gave me the grace to realize that Maury had known all these features like the back of his hand. He had an intimate connection to the piece of ground that I was just being introduced too. In a way it felt as if he was watching on as I was working his ground. In a way I felt that we now shared a special connection.
That week I had been beginning to prepare to head back to school and was thinking a lot about the universality of the church as I would be physically distant from many of my good friends. Through the special bond I felt with Maury from working ground that day I realized in a new way that our faith and the sacraments not only connect us to the entire community of believers on this earth but also to the faithfully departed. Kind of a humbling and comforting thought. Since then when I've been at mass one of my friend's sayings, "no distance between tabernacles," has come to mind several times. Since it is the one and only body, blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus present in the hosts occupying every tabernacle in the world and consumed by all of us in the Most Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist we are connected by a bond which transcends the boundaries of time and space, and even our present mortality. Next time your at mass maybe take the time to realize the awesome mystery that you are participating in and the special closeness you have not only with your distant friends and relatives but also with all those celebrating the same feast in heaven. God bless y'all!
