Before Christmas, I stop doing workshops, Eugene and I take a break from our food co-op, and strip our routines down to focus on the truths of this season. The beautiful paradoxes, in the words of Richard Rohr, that “we suffer to get well, we surrender to win, we die to live, we give it away to keep it.”

And somehow, despite my best intentions, I end up busy anyway. I say to my precious kids, “I’ll sit with you soon, I just need to clean this one last thing.” As if the pre-requisite for calm is a fly-free environment. If that’s the pre-requisite, I’m in trouble.

It’s a season of intensive preserving, which means daily work. We try to keep three months of food on hand, and it was this kind of preparedness that I had considered writing to you about. But when I tried, I was left with the feeling that preparedness is never the whole point. Being good at squirrelling away food is not really a worthy goal.

It’s a means to an end. The point of preparedness, and growing, is to witness the miracle of the millions of things that have to consistently happen for you and I to stay alive.

Then, to be an active part of that miracle, not above or separate from it. And also, to see that we can only ever be part of the miracle, we can never engineer the whole miracle ourselves. We are never in control.

I can never grow enough food for indefinite health, never prepare for every emergency. If I can see this for even a moment, then my efforts growing and preparing and preserving, have served a good purpose.

This is the grace of preparedness, just to be part of of the miracle.

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