WELCOMING A PRECARIOUS EXISTENCE

 

WELCOMING A PRECARIOUS EXISTENCE

I visited a farmer who employs upwards from 60 to 450 workers depending on the seasons. He is not the owner but a manager employed by another manager of several farms who works for the owner, a war veteran of the Zimbabwe war of Liberation. The farmer, who once owned his own farm before Robert Mugabe’s Land Reform, has accepted his new situation, not grudgingly but with all his heart. He is back in his own country doing a job he loves with people he knows. His wife helps in countless ways, not least in being manager, that is funds supplier, of the farm football team.

What struck me was the lack of bitterness, the absence of talk of ‘the old days’. The farmer and his wife had no security – just a short contract - but this did not prevent them building a house, installing infrastructure on the farm and rejuvenating the fields and taking good care of their employees. It did not mean they were ignoring the precariousness of their situation, they just wanted to ‘get on with life’. And it is a tough life. I was there on the coldest day of the year and I noticed the farmer rose before dawn to begin his day.

I thought it was a wonderful example of someone grasping an opportunity – even if it was hard and without a secure tomorrow – and just becoming engaged. The story of the Sower in the gospels tells us of a man whose project first fell by the wayside and others picked up the pieces. When he tried again, he didn’t have the resources to keep it going. When he was able to provide these, the whole thing got entangled in bureaucracy. Finally things started to come right for him and he had good crops – some a hundredfold, some sixty and some thirty.

There are many people living by the wisdom of the Gospel even if they would not put it in those words. They are actually living the ‘poverty of spirit’ described by Jesus as the essence of the kingdom of God here and now. That kingdom is not some fairytale in the skies but the breaking forth of authentic values in our world; values which have the power to change our world permanently for the better.

I describe here something on a local level but it is also true on the global level. In reflecting on the war in Ukraine, Grigory Sverdlin, a Russian who loves his country says, ‘The war is not popular in Russia and Putin’s days are numbered. After he goes, there will be dark days in Russia for ten years.’ Then, be believes, Russia will revive into something new and beautiful. ‘That’, he says, ‘is my optimistic view.’

16 July 2023         Sunday 15 A         Is 55:10-11  Rom 8:18-23      Mt 13:1-9