A good book came into my hands last fall from the hands of a Reedley grape grower I’ve loved and admired for over a decade, Fred Smeds. Some of you may remember him as the producer of Ruby Red organic raisins that we bought in 25 pound boxes and gave away by the bags-full as an expression of God’s earthly abundance in a time of Man’s economic drought.
The project was small in scale, but
with big impact. It helped keep that man
farming until it was time to retire, helped keep him home on his farm where he
belongs. It was the spiritual support we
offered more than the money. In exchange
we got to experience the fruit of his labor on some truly holy ground. The fragrance of those raisins when we opened
a box and peeled back the plastic liner was a waft of heaven. No one was unmoved by it.
So when Good Fred came up to me at
one of the land symposium events at the First Mennonite Church and said
“There’s a book I want to tell you about,” and came with it in his hand the
next week, I understood it as communion.
Through the holidays and the rest of winter, the book kept me company
where I write, sitting on top of the stack of books I want to read. This weekend brought the opportunity to sink
down into it and receive its blessing.
The book is Lila, by author
Marilynne Robinson (2014), who, according to notes on the back cover, has
written three other novels around this theme (Home, Gilead,
and Housekeeping.) I almost don’t want to read them because the
beauty of Lila is that it is
spare, singular somehow. I almost don’t
want to write about it, either, or even try to tell people what it’s about. Yet here I am, typing these words. . . .
The story is about a homeless girl
who starts life so disconnected from love and nurture that she doesn’t even
know her own name. She’s given her names
by those who rescue her from certain death by parental neglect, if not
violence, but they have little more to offer than food and the shelter of their
bodies, itinerant themselves. There is
no home in the sense of a physical structure or geographic place; Lila learns
to be at home in the world at large by fending for herself.
But those little scraps of love she
received from her rescuers make her hungry for more when they’re gone. Reluctantly, fearful of people and the
unknown requirements of living in one place, of living in a community, Lila
reaches for more tiny scraps, people’s leftovers. As they come into her life, she begins to
learn how to receive.
It’s a more difficult process than
you’d think, learning to receive love.
Through the author’s delicate sentences, I could identify easily this
struggle in myself, and the temptation to return to a state of solitariness as
security. But like Lila, I also know
that there is no real security in aloneness, in one-hood. We need each other. And as Lila becomes part of the community,
even though she’s still half feral herself, it’s not hard to recognize the
benefits of civilization.
To be at home in the world of
people, we have to know each other. We
have to trust each other to be what and who we are, even if we’re not who we
say we are. Learning to navigate this
world of people as an equal is what it takes to make home. Allowing ourselves to become bound in this
way is a big deal, which Lila’s struggle shows me in a way I’d never seen
before. But the benefits are real.
Does anyone else remember the
fragrance of those Ruby Reds rising from the newly-opened box? That’s heaven.
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Trudy
Wischemann is a small farm advocate who writes.
You can send her your raisin memories c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA
93247 or leave a
comment below. Many thanks to Fred for
contributing his writing to A Little
Piece of Land, due out this year.
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