Summer Tomatoes

This was not a good summer for tomatoes. I started my seedlings in March, carefully spaced them in cages, and had a friend water them when I was on holiday, but by the end of August I had nothing but soggy soil and green fruit. I wondered what I had done wrong. But when I consulted with fellow would-be tomato farmers, there was unanimous agreement: the tomatoes were a month behind this summer. The cool weather, torrential rains, and early frosts were completely out of our control. Even into October I found myself pining for that summer four years ago when my heirlooms grew huge and early, filling my freezer with a bumper crop.

Our cultivation of the spiritual life can be much the same as my tomato-tending. Sometimes there is a summer- or, more often, a year or two- when the crop is growing a month behind. It’s cold and rainy and we long for the sunnier days when toasted tomato sandwiches were in abundance. The summers of drought in the spiritual life have long been referred to as “wilderness” places in the Christian tradition. And just as even the best tomato farmer has a bad summer sometimes, so the greatest saints have been through times of darkness, doubt, and despair.

Unlike my poor summer crops, however, times of spiritual wilderness can be periods of great learning and growth. It is sometimes said that our greatest spiritual teachers and prophets have actually gone through the deepest wilderness- and it is in those places that they have learned to find God even in drought. When God seems silent and far away, it feels like anything but “new life.” Often, we are tempted to give up all together. But just as I am confident that new tomatoes will come again next year, and some day there will be another bumper crop, so I am sure that blooms will come again to the life of spiritual wilderness.

There are ways, of course, to feed tomatoes during a bad summer. Perhaps the most important thing for nurturing life with God through the wilderness is staying in Christian community. Too often, when we feel far from God, the first thing we do is fall out of touch with community. We cease the routines that once nourished us. But this can be as damaging as if I didn’t water my tomatoes in a drought! When we continue in community together, we are carried by one another’s faith for a time. The importance of community is that others give us prayers when we have none. They give us strength and encouragement to weather the storm. They become, often, the face of Christ for us. They remind us that summer will come again in abundance.