Noonday Notes, Issue 9

My last Noonday Notes was written the evening of July 3rd, hours before tragedy unfolded. I wrote about heading into a restful and fallow July. What was meant to be a slower season, a time of rest and reset, unexpectedly became a time of grief for many in our community. And while the soil rested, I found myself diving into Ecclesiastes, that heady, poetic book that gives us language for both our brokenness and the good in life. Where the Preacher reminds us that life has its seasons: “a time to plant, and a time to uproot...a time to mourn, and a time to dance.” It has helped me see that as farm seasons end, so do many things in life. But those endings aren’t always something to rush past. They’re sacred too.

I’ve been holding that tension: that endings are real, all is vanity, and yet we’re still invited to live fully in the meantime. Eat the 20th BLT of the season, hula hoop to Black Sabbath, drink coffee in solitude, read a book in a day. The weeds of life will still come. The sun of self-reflection will still burn. And yet, we plant again. Because even though the season ends, the story doesn’t. Perhaps that’s what this season is really about, not just slowing down, but learning how to carry grief and beauty at the same time.

I will keep toiling: making crop plans for the fall, nourishing relationships, and grinding it out in the sacred mundane. Patience and self-control don’t come easily for me, but the garden keeps giving me chances to practice. To wait. To not force what’s not ready. The soil reminds me that life goes on beneath the surface long before anything breaks through. As July gives way to August, I’m holding space for what’s ended and what’s just beginning. And I’m trusting that smack in the middle of grief and growth, rest and return, God is still at work-inviting us to plant again.

Read the rest of Noonday Notes here.