Theology walking...

Mama and I went to the Farmer’s Market yesterday looking for tomatoes to can. A trip to our Farmer’s Market is full of color, conversation, and canning advice. Our usual pattern is to drive by all the vendors with windows down, looking and asking prices. Sometimes we will get out and inspect the fruit or vegetables more closely. After we have made the loop, we go back and buy.
Yesterday we bought Roma tomatoes, dead ripe and in need of canning that day, from a Hispanic man who was sitting with his group of friends when we drove up. Next we bought another box of regular tomatoes, also very ripe, from another vendor. Very ripe tomatoes are always cheaper because the vendors need to sell them or lose them. Mama knows how to sniff the box, turn some of them over and detect if there are too many spoiled. Daddy used to say she had the nose of a hound dog when it came to tomatoes. After buying tomatoes, we visited the woman who we always buy something from... yesterday it was sweet potatoes and apples.
Then on to the melon section to see Jim. Jim sits on his walker seat, watching the parade of cars and people flow by. When he stands, you can see how tall he once was and still is, even crumpled with age. His hands are farmer hands, brown and strong still. He hears me call mama “meemaw” and laughs, saying he hadn’t heard that since he was a child in Tennessee. We tell stories about children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren connecting in the moment as children of God. He watches us picking out melons... a Crimson Sweet because Daddy thought they were the best and a Sangria... and we ask for his advice on how to pick the best one. He offers to teach us how to pick the best one. His brown gnarled hands float over the melons as he recites, “Eeeny, meeny, miney, moe...” We laugh and time is suspended for a moment as our hearts are joined in joy. A simple trip to the Farmer’s Market becomes communion with the saints as we share stories and laughter.
We get home and mama takes the tomatoes to her house to peel. It is a simple operation... dip the tomatoes in boiling water to loosen the skin, slip the skin off and toss in a pot. After she peels them I take them up to my house to can. My gas range works quicker with the pressure canner than her electric stove. I cook the tomatoes until they release their juices and are hot all the way through. Then I pour them into hot, sterilized jars, pop the canning lids and rings on, put them in the pressure cooker to process. At the end of the day, I have twenty beautiful red quarts of tomatoes ready for winter soups and chilli and spaghetti. (Yes, I do still make spaghetti sauce from scratch. It tastes better and is not hard to do.) One more canning and I will have enough to get us through winter and to share with children.
As I am working, three guys come in. Michael McCabe, David Bair and Michael had been unloading feed. Gary, Tim and Michael had gone to Burnsville that morning to a local farmer who grinds his own mix and brought back a trailer load. The men had shoveled that trailer load of feed into the old freezers we use for storage. They made ham and tomato sandwiches, pulling out Mommy Ann pickles for the sweet tart taste that goes so well on sandwiches of all kinds. Michael’s mother, Mommy Ann, made these pickles every year and gave them to us as Christmas presents. I could eat a jar of them all by myself. We continue the tradition and have a crock, her crock, in the basement, full of pickles made from her recipe. Laughter around the table, men telling stories of the morning and stories of time yet to come... communion comes again.
Joan Chittister says “Spirituality is ... theology walking.” All day long Saturday I was in the middle of walking theology and God was very near. In the work of gathering food for us and the animals, our spirits are nourished and fed by the communion and connection with those other Children of Light who stand and sit and walk and work next to us, invisible unless we take the time to see and hear their stories. Their story becomes our story and our hearts are warmed by the strangers among us. “When he was at the table with them, he took the bread and blessed, and broke it, and gave it to them. And their eyes were opened and they recognized him; and he vanished out of their sight. They said to one another, ‘Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked with us on the road, while he opened to us the scriptures?’” Give me eyes to see and ears to hear, Lord, so that I might know you in all the different ways you come to visit. Let my heart burn so that I might feel your presence in all those saints who surround me in this world and the next. Amen.