Taking the Time to Make a Difference

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I’m Paul Leingang And this week I want to express my appreciation for a storehouse of inspiration, and to see where those thoughts will take us. At our house today, we have some potatoes and some onions in a cabinet in the kitchen. In the home where I grew up, we had a basement area to store potatoes from our field and canned goods and other items. I started to think about these ordinary things while I was reading a prayer published by the National Catholic Rural Life Conference. The website of the rural life conference, www.ncrlc.com, has become a kind of storage area for me in many ways. It is one of the places I go when my table is bare and I have been asked to provide a meal.

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On a recent day of personal emptiness, I found this item in the storeroom of the rural life conference, “A Prayer in Winter.” Dear Lord, the summer is over and gone, and the harvest is once more past. All the wealth and warmth of the summer sun is marvelously packaged now, in seed and fruit and vegetable, and stored away in bins and cribs and basements. Thank You, dear, generous God, for all your goodness and for all Your gifts. All summer long you are working for us, storing heat and health and nourishment in the fields and woods. Now, when the air is cold, and there is no fruitfulness in the earth, we can live on what the summer and the harvest have stored up for us. Thank you for Your unnumbered kindnesses to us, dear God. Help us to make good use of the riches of the earth. Help us to be generous, even as you are, and al ways avoid selfishness and greed. Help us, too, to store up spiritual wealth in the summer of this life, while we can yet work. Otherwise life's autumn will come, death will call us, a spiritual winter will set in and we shall be found poor and unsheltered not for one season only, but for the winters of eternity. Lord, we trust in you, that, cooperating with Your many graces, we may make good use now of our rich opportunities. And may we then reap a rich spiritual harvest which we will enjoy with you and your saints in the eternal spring and summer of heaven. Amen.

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Potatoes and onions contain more than vitamins and minerals and starch and fiber and whatever else can be discovered by observation. What is not readily observed is that they contain the wealth and warmth of the summer sun. It is no stretch at all to move into the ordinary things to be found in a life of faith. There are days and seasons of winter, and there are times when even well-stocked cabinets and basements are empty. Where do you go for nourishment? On a day cold and dark, where do you find the wealth and warmth of the summer sun?

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I hope this small and simple reflection can lead to a little bit of illumination, revealing both points of the comparison. The physical reality of a sack of potatoes might lead us to a spiritual reflection; and the spiritual reality of our need for nourishment can lead us towards a greater appreciation for the things we eat. The National Catholic Rural Life Conference makes this statement: “Our tables need to include those who have been excluded. Our food choices need to consider all those who farm, their families, our rural landscape, farm communities everywhere – all in relation to our religious and moral values. “We are what we eat. By our choices we shape the agrarian world, our world. By our diets and food conversations, we influence others. Let us remember the challenge we have to shape a world of justice and peace.” Please take the time to bring some of the wealth and warmth you have received to the common table, so all may have a fair share.

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