Bounty and Balance September 22, 2013 (Part 1) Rev. Reynolds

Today is the autumnal equinox. The time when the night’s darkness and the light of day are equal. Not equal in illumination but equal in duration.

It is time of Balance between night and day, between light and dark.

Here in the northern hemisphere it is the time of balance between the summer and the winter to come.

In the southern hemisphere, it is spring Equinox, where the light is also equal, yet the seasons are moving from the dark of winter towards their summer light.

The patterns of our life are shaped by these celestial realities.

We humans have long sought to push back the darkness, first with the flames of a wood fire and the small flickering light of a candle and the reflected light of a lantern.

With electricity, came the incandescent glow of electrified neon gas or a glowing filament in a vacuum bulb, the latter perhaps enhanced by a halogen gas within the bulb to make the light brighter still. More recently, we have added Light Emitting Diodes LEDs to the tools we use to try to keep the dark at bay.

Oh, how we seek to push back the darkness. Those who lived their lives closer to the cycles of the natural world and all of us at our core know that our lives are shaped by the changing light that, in turn, shapes the changing seasons. That light also changes and shapes us.

The sunlight filled days of summer are times of great activity, while the growing darkness beckons toward introspection and contemplation.

Now, in the autumn time, though there is much work to be done and the time to ponder most deeply has not yet arrived. We are balanced between light and dark, action and contemplation.

We honor each season in the cycle, the circle of life. In this time may we seek harmony and balance?

In that seeking for balance, it is important to remember that balance is

1 seldom achieved by standing still. A tight ropewalker knows that well. They do not stop and stand still in the middle of the high wire. To do so is nearly impossible.

Have you ever tried to balance a bike that is not moving forward?

Instead whether on bike or high wire one moves steadily forward, leaning first to one side and then to the other. True balance is not a single place of static stillness, but it is rather a process of shifting and accommodating and balancing and rebalancing and moving forward. Tight ropewalkers use a weighted pole that they tip from side to side to help them be in balance. It is good to have something to hold on to.

Seeking balance and being in balance is a process, a process of gently responding to and attending to the shifting of weigh and the shifts of attention that make balance obtainable and sustainable. Sometimes such shifts are subtle and within our power to control, while at other times they are not.

The writers and Wiccan Priestesses Janice Brock and Veronica MacLer, in their book Seasonal Dances remind us that the autumn season can be a time of almost violent rebalancing, when the autumn storms come to restore the earth after the harvest and wash away the gathered dust of the dry days of summer.

We had a wondrous example of such fury in this past week’s dramatic thunderstorm. Wow, more about that storm later.

The equinox is a time to restore balance, to pay debts, to rebalance, to set things right again. In Jewish tradition, the autumnal moon marks the Yom Kippur the Day of Atonement, the holiest day of the year, a time of purification and renewal. This year the day was Sept 13

This is also the time of the harvest moon, which shown brightest last Thursday night.

This moon was a special boon to ancient farmers and gatherers who, in the millennia of human’s existence before the electric light, used its illumination to extend their harvest time into the hours after sunset.

The harvest moon is a low lying moon and its position closer to the horizon, especially in the hours of dusk, makes it appear larger, as its

2 illumination is increased by the reflective quality of atmospheric gases. It is sometimes tinted too by particles of dust and smoke and can take on a bit of an orangish tone.

This additional light helps people to harvest all the bounty that comes in this season.

Fall is the season of bounty. Just check out the tables at any of the various farmers’ markets. Whether yours is in Coupeville or Oak Harbor or Bay view or at Tilth or Langley or Clinton, you encounter tables heaped with produce; carrots too many cucumbers and zucchini, plump tomatoes in rich reds and magentas and golden hues, carrots both red and purple, fresh beans are also there in varying colors, beets and greens of many kinds.

Though the blueberries are gone, I am glad there are some in my freezer, some stone fruits, peaches and plums et al are still with us. And the squashes and pumpkins will keep coming for weeks For some, who have land and will enough, the bounty is just a few steps from your back door in the gardens and orchard you have nurtured

The apples and pears are just coming on, sometimes the weight of the fruit overpowering the tree that gave it birth.

I was over at our as not yet sold place in Port Townsend and I had to pick a few of the not yet ready pears that were bending low the branches of the still young sapling.

That amazing thunderstorm that swept over the island caused the last large branch of the old nearly hollow cored apple tree outside my back door. , A branch nearly the size of a small child’s waist, to snap in two and come crashing down.

We did not notice it until morning, what with the thunder and lightening and all When we awoke, the sidewalk to the neighboring unit was covered with branches and the lawn was strewn with apples. The huge branch was snapped into exposing it dark and rotted core.

There are more apples on hat broken tree than we can use or store. We have no freezer except the small one in the refrigerator so the amount of applesauce we can fit in there is limited.

3 Sometimes the bounty of the season truly seems a bit out of balance, we have more to harvest, more tasks to complete than the time of our shrinking daylight can accommodate.

This is autumn, season of harvest, and the season of bounty that come each year.

This time in the cycle of the year, this autumnal spoke on the turning wheel of the seasons, the circle of life, is the time, not only of enough, but sometimes too much.

Part way through that amazing loud and bright lightning storm last Sunday night that brought down that aging overloaded old tree, the skies opened up and the waters fell in huge droplets so fast that they soon overwhelmed the downspouts and were overflowing the gutters and spilling down the side of the building.

Down below our deck the water came rushing into the rain catchment swale like a swift stream. It appeared in an instant gushing out of the pipe that drains our parking area. It swept around the newly graded drainage ditch and quickly began to fill it.

It lapped at the sides of the overflow drain as the rains fell like a wall of water.

Then it slowed and in time stopped. The rushing water soon slowed and in time the standing water began to sink into the long dry parched thirsty soil.

By dawn what had been like a dream was just a curving arch of brown mud.

The morning air was filled with a special sweetness. Life seemed fresh and new again.

That morning we were greeted too by the news of the horrific flash floods in Colorado.

There a river that changed its course carved a new channel through what had once been people’s homes. I witnessed a video interview of a flood refugee bemoaning the significant rebuilding and rebalancing that awaited he and his family when they returned. He spoke though not merely of his tragedy, he also spoke of his gratitude;

4 gratitude for his loved ones safe exodus from their community Gratitude for the kindly caring friends who offered them shelter, of the neighborly support from those nearby and far away who offered help when it was needed.

He offered gratitude for the people and the powers that would, in time, restore balance to his life.

Let us all offer deep gratitude for the restorations that are so often needed to rebalance the times when “too much” comes into our lives.

Those restorations and renewals too are part of the sweet bounty we celebrate in this season and on this day.

At this time the Congregation was invited to participate in a Harvest Ritual, in which each attendee participated in a “fresh grape communion.”

Homily 2 Seeds Of Change

When I went to Haiti in May of 2011, it was at the tail end of the rainy season and it was the beginning of mango season.

Mangos are the dominant fruit of that region. The Movement of the Peasants of Papaye (MPP), the workers cooperative organization that is the Unitarian Universalist Service committee partner organization, has amongst its many small businesses a mango drying facility that prepares organic dried mangos for export.

When were there, though, we ate them fresh, just picked of the tree. I know many of you know how much juicer and sweeter and luscious a vine- ripened tomato is when compared to their store bought cousin.

Well, let me tell you mangos off the tree are well, wow!

They peasants we worked with picked a mess of them and we would have a couple each at lunch. The first day, they taught us how to eat them Haitian style. You’d cut the top off a mango and then you’d peel down the sides like a banana and then “have at it” letting its juices flow down your hands and drip down your chin. It was sticky and delicious. Those mangos were amazing.

5 The very non-local one I splurged and bought on sale at Payless this past week was very yummy, but it was a pale imitation of the ones we ate in Haiti.

The cooperative farmers of MPP have, especially by Haitian standards, incredible bounty. They grow almost all their own food and raise their own livestock. Under the guidance of Chavannes Jean Baptiste, the movements founding director and a University educated agronomist, they have learned to do so in a sustainable manner. Their worm compost bins and composting toilets and careful stewardship of the land have made their soils richer and more productive each year. Amongst the small enterprises we visited there were in addition to the mango processing kitchen, a credit union, a clinic, a carpentry and furniture making shop, and a small sheet metal fabricating shop. The primary product of this latter facility was to make small metal silos. They were round with a peaked metal roof, about 2 meters high and about a meter in circumference. Chavannes proudly told us they were to store grain especially the seed corn and seed beans and vegetable seeds for the next growing seasons plantings. These prosperous farmers put aside about 10 percent of their seed each year to provide for next years planting.

All that careful planning went array in January of 2010. You see in the months that followed the terrible earthquake that destroyed much of the capital city of Port au Prince and other lowland communities the people of the central highland welcomed hundreds of refugees into their homes and communities. It seemed as though every family had adult children or cousins or former neighbors who had moved to the city and in the wake of the earthquake sought refuge at homes in the highlands. They were welcomed back. The grounds of the MPP training center still had in place, in May of the next year, tents that had provided temporary housing. Many of the peasant’s humble and already crowded homes made space for friends and relatives. They housed them and they fed them and because they had barely enough to feed their families, they were forced out hospitable necessity to eat the seeds set aside for next years planting. It was one more reverberation of that horrific natural disaster. They did not know what they would do.

An American concern offered free seed for the next years planting. There were however strings attached .You see the seed was GMO, genetically modified, seed and the “generous donor” was the Monsanto Corporation, who would offer this first round of “special seed” for free.

6 Try it you’ll like it and this time it’s free. Since the seeds were patented though, saving some for next year would not be a legal option and you’d of course have to pay the going rate The approach reminds me of some of other product marketing where, at first the product is free, at least until you’re hooked.

Before I went to Haiti, I was exploring on-line, trying to know more about MPP, the organization we would be working with on UUSC’s first trip to the Haitian highlands. My Google search found you tube narrated in Creole that showed hundreds of Haitian peasants marching in the street. They all wore straw hats emblazoned with the name Monsanto and some other words in Creole. I wondered what this was all about. Had Monsanto in addition to offering free seeds given free hats? I found out later that hats were provided by MPP and the march was part of a series of mass demonstrations organized by MPP and attended by some 30,000 peasants, where-in the Haitian farmers rejected, in no uncertain terms, this dubious gift.

It seems the Creole words on those straw hats suggested to Monsanto just where they could put their free seed.

All was not lost though, for soon new friends came to the farmers’ aid. It seems Chavannes Jean Baptiste had just returned from a trip to the US, to Boston and he had forged a new partnership with the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee. When UUSC asked him what we might do that would truly help address the situation in his homeland, he asked for seeds.

Without hesitation we said yes and new organic seed was found, purchased, and shipped to our friends and neighbors in Haiti.

We Unitarian Universalists gave them new clean seed that would allow them to begin to put their lives back into balance.

Wow, the words of the hymn in our hymnal “Gather the Spirit” come to mind “Seeds for the sewing are laid in store. Nurtured in love and conscience refined…

I think too of Janie Alfords poetry “I am grateful, because my meager loaf I may divide; My meager loaf I might divide”

7 For that my busy hands may move to meet another's need.”

We have bounty enough to share and with gratitude for our capacity to do so; we give some of it away, with no strings attached.

We gave them seed.

Later, some of us had the opportunity to go to Haiti to offer our busy hand to help. There in the Haitian highlands we earned from those amazing peasants what a supportive community and true generosity really looks. While we were there, working side by side with the people of the Movement of the Peasants of Papaye, working to build homes for some of those refugees from Port au Prince. They gave to us sweet juicy mangos.

I am pleased to report that many more trips to Haiti have followed. UUSC has established a program called the college of Social justice where by many more Unitarian Universalist have traveled to Haiti to work with MPP, to learn from them to be with them and depending on the season to harvest and eat fresh mangos with them.

When we have seeds for the sewing laid in store we can take steps towards putting the great economic inequities of the world back into balance.

We thus become participants in a bounteous harvest; a harvest of grains and potatoes and carrots and squash and pumpkins and apples and grapes and, yes, mangos.

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