Last Sunday we read from Galatians 6 where Paul tells his readers that you reap what you sow. You might call it the law of karma or what goes around comes around. Anyway, I totally agree with him (for once!) that what you put in your mind is just as important as what you put in your body. You can't plant junk and expect it to come out anything other than junk. Heck, even professional chefs will tell you that you cannot throw together inferior ingredients and expect a top-notch meal. Quality counts!
While Pastor was talking I thought about an experience I had back in the late 1970's. I needed a job so I went down to the unemployment office. They told me about a program called CETA (Comprehensive Education and Training Act). CETA was designed to stimulate employment by giving grants to different businesses and nonprofit organizations to hire and train people. In reality many of the CETA jobs were simply make-work which is probably why the program didn't last. They told me there was an opening at the local nature center as a "prairie assistant". I didn't know what a prairie assistant was but I needed a job so I said I would take it.
When I got out there I found that basically i would be working in what most people would probably dismiss as a weed field, replacing one kind of weeds (non-native) with another (native). I could have walked off right then and there and said that this job was beneath my dignity. Instead, I stayed. While it didn't teach me much in immediate practical job skills it did form the basis for a life-long appreciation of a vanishing ecosystem. What they were trying to do out in that field was to restore a Michigan tall-grass prairie.
Now I had grown up next to a horse farm and thought I knew quite a lot about fields and pastures. It turned out I had a lot to learn. All the grasses and plants that were familiar to me were non-native. I had thought the field next door to be a thing of beauty but that was only because I had never seen a tall-grass prairie in full bloom. It is like seeing a rainbow come down to earth. Ordinary meadows just aren't that colorful. I guess I am biased but I know now what kind of field I want to sow in my life. It's not that the meadow I grew up with was bad; it's just that this is so much better. Maybe that's not what Paul was talking about but it works for me.
Prairie restoration was very much in its infancy when I worked on the prairie and nobody even knew if it would be successful. They were afraid that the quicker-growing Eurasian species would overwhelm the slower-growing native species so I spent a lot of my time pulling weeds. I guess the spiritual life could be described in much the same way regardless of what religious tradition you come from or even none. There's a lot of weed-pulling involved and sometimes it's hard to tell if something is a weed or not. Pastor talked about good motives and bad motives and how it's often hard to know what you are planting. I guess it's like the margins on the edge of the prairie where there is a mixture of species and you don't know which is going to win out. You just have to do the best you can. But be mindful as the Buddhists say. Because it is very true that you do reap what you sow.
While Pastor was talking I thought about an experience I had back in the late 1970's. I needed a job so I went down to the unemployment office. They told me about a program called CETA (Comprehensive Education and Training Act). CETA was designed to stimulate employment by giving grants to different businesses and nonprofit organizations to hire and train people. In reality many of the CETA jobs were simply make-work which is probably why the program didn't last. They told me there was an opening at the local nature center as a "prairie assistant". I didn't know what a prairie assistant was but I needed a job so I said I would take it.
When I got out there I found that basically i would be working in what most people would probably dismiss as a weed field, replacing one kind of weeds (non-native) with another (native). I could have walked off right then and there and said that this job was beneath my dignity. Instead, I stayed. While it didn't teach me much in immediate practical job skills it did form the basis for a life-long appreciation of a vanishing ecosystem. What they were trying to do out in that field was to restore a Michigan tall-grass prairie.
Now I had grown up next to a horse farm and thought I knew quite a lot about fields and pastures. It turned out I had a lot to learn. All the grasses and plants that were familiar to me were non-native. I had thought the field next door to be a thing of beauty but that was only because I had never seen a tall-grass prairie in full bloom. It is like seeing a rainbow come down to earth. Ordinary meadows just aren't that colorful. I guess I am biased but I know now what kind of field I want to sow in my life. It's not that the meadow I grew up with was bad; it's just that this is so much better. Maybe that's not what Paul was talking about but it works for me.
Prairie restoration was very much in its infancy when I worked on the prairie and nobody even knew if it would be successful. They were afraid that the quicker-growing Eurasian species would overwhelm the slower-growing native species so I spent a lot of my time pulling weeds. I guess the spiritual life could be described in much the same way regardless of what religious tradition you come from or even none. There's a lot of weed-pulling involved and sometimes it's hard to tell if something is a weed or not. Pastor talked about good motives and bad motives and how it's often hard to know what you are planting. I guess it's like the margins on the edge of the prairie where there is a mixture of species and you don't know which is going to win out. You just have to do the best you can. But be mindful as the Buddhists say. Because it is very true that you do reap what you sow.
