fallowing

by bam

fal·low
/ˈfalō/
adjective
(of farmland) plowed and harrowed but left unsown for a period in order to restore its fertility as part of a crop rotation or to avoid surplus production.
verb
leave (land) fallow.
”fallow the ground for a week or so after digging”

i am fallowing. i am also making up a word (a particular quirk of mine), but a word most apt for i use it here to describe the wide-open plain of time when i see no deadlines peeking from behind trees, nor wide gulleys and ditches to swallow me whole. 

after season upon season that taxed me from every which angle, i am all but stringing a wintry hammock between cedar posts in my fir lot and settling in for a long winter’s nap. 

i am fallowing. i am, per merriam webster’s instruction and strict definition, leaving my days “unsown for a period in order to restore fertility” of both soul and imagination.

i have been so thirsty for days that unfurl with little to do, for days that meander from daybreak to starshine. i am, per the law of the fallowing land, partaking of those soulful things that stoke my deepest flickering flame: i am reading deep and thick theological treatises; i am making burgundy stews, and sorting through boxes of long-ago treasures; i am reading old letters, and wiping back tears; i am simmering bones into broth and ferrying batches of soups to friends i’ve long wanted to visit. i am even reciting the occasional poem with my mother. at the moment, i am listening to rain, the fallowest thing i might know how to do.

i am not actively worrying. 

to fallow is to partake of an otherworldliness, at least when you find yourself born into an age that grows increasingly attention-deficient. when the background noise is incessant. and so little of it sustenant. 

sometimes you don’t realize how deeply you need something till it’s suddenly there in your grasp. and then you can’t let it go. or you hope you don’t have to anytime soon.

advent for me is quieting time. advent ushers in the stillness of winter. advent, i’ve written, is the season of anticipation, of awaiting, of holding our breath for spectacular coming. 

as the darkening comes minute by minute, day after day, the liturgical calendar, prescriptive in its wisdoms, unfurls the sacred instruction: make the light be from you. deep within you. seize the month. reclaim the days. do not succumb to the noisy distraction. 

make your december a blessed one, a quiet one. a stretch of kindled light against the whole cloth of darkness. 

this world is aching, is crying, is calling for even one matchstick of light. imagine if we all struck a match, put flame to wick, and allowed it to burn long through the night. my light + your light + your light would = a light that would make ours one glowing orb. 

the instructive is this, even in fallowing times: one mere droplet. one bare kilowatt of luminsence to shatter the darkness. it’s ours to kindle, to light, to enflame. day by day, droplet by droplet. might we gather our goodness and bring back a flicker of light to this world?

how and where will you strike your match?