Sharing the Bounty

Harvesting season is well upon us now.  Local farmer's markets heap beans, cucumbers, tomatoes, cabbages, peppers, corn and more.  Our favorite fruit farm somehow managed to survive the early spring heat with its subsequent damaging freeze, and at their farm store quart and peck boxes of peaches line up next to baskets of summer apples.  During our child raising years, we too tilled soil for gardens in both York and Dallas, those vegetables augmenting summer meals and stocking our freezer.

Our current home nestles in a swarth of mature trees shading College Heights, the historic neighborhood sitting aside Penn State's campus.  The one sunny spot on our property sprouts a hodgepodge of perennials and herbs.  Neither fruit nor vegetable grows on our quarter acre; we harvest ours from our weekly CSA box and the farmer's market and fruit farm we frequent.

However, we are not gardenless.  This past spring and summer, we have been hanging out at this garden:

In summers past, we pedaled by this patch of land sitting next to a local church and we watched it grow.  Parishioners of this church dug up a wide expanse of their lawn and planted a garden, tending it and harvesting it to feed those in Centre County who need extra help to feed themselves.  They call themselves "food bank farmers."

A group from our church, a land-locked city congregation, joined a sizable cadre of volunteers representing a variety of local churches, workers who meet several times a week to weed, water, hoe, and harvest this garden.  It is hard, often hot, good work.  Friday night at the end of our shift, I agreed to be the delivery person, hauling the just-picked bounty to the food bank early Saturday morning.  What a privilege it was to line up the basket of green peppers and buckets of beans, squash, and tomatoes to be weighed and displayed by the staff and volunteers at the State College Food Bank. And what a good feeling it is to know that patrons of the food bank will be enjoying locally grown, nutrient-rich produce.

This past week, the news was filled with Chick Fil A and people of faith squaring off against each other and those whose life they question.  I am wearied of it. I am wearied of exclusion, wearied of the vitriol masquerading as righteousness, wearied of fellow Christians drawing lines that separate and shut out. One reason to celebrate this garden is that it draws people together, people who don't necessarily share religious practices or views, focusing energy toward a common purpose and a higher good.  We need more opportunities that like that.

This past week as well, my friend Betsy posted this photograph on Facebook. Really. After all. It is just this simple. Why must we make it so hard?