Fallow

Now there’s a word I do not use very often. I had to even look up what it meant. It means “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.” In this book I’m reading to help me create a retreat, there are six sections for lectio divina which is a way to study the Scripture, or as a way to “romance the Word” as the author Macrina Wiederkehr describes it in her retreat book titled “The Song of the Seed: A Monastic Way of Tending the Soul.”

The first step of studying God’s word in this way is to have a fallow time where the soul is quieted. She says: “In this age of speed, how tempting it is to read in a driven manner. All too often getting finished with the reading, rather than being transformed by the word, becomes our goal.” I must confess to being guilty of this at times especially as I prepare my sermons each week.

Therefore, I’m going to practice this fallow time before I go on with the 5 other steps she lays out. Sitting quietly. Idle moments. Quieting the soil and my soul. She recommends starting with 5 minutes and building from there. Not many people like to sit idle. They feel it is wasting time. What is “wasting” 5 minutes though in the grand scheme of minutes. I suspect that we will find it is not wasting but rather a time of preparation for what is to come just as a field waits for the future plantings that are to come after sitting unsown.

Give it a try with me over the next week. Let me know how it goes for you as we prepare our hearts and souls for the word of Life letting them sit open and vacant for a time each day.