Heading to Harvest

And again, friends, this is Dick Fauth with Fauth and France Stories from the Road. Our last couple of podcasts have been series podcasts. We've been remembering 9, 11 and the events and the sadness and all of that. And then remembering the life and legacy of Queen Elizabeth, those were series podcasts. This one is too, but I'd like to start with a bit of lightness. I'm outside in the great outdoors. You can hear the sounds. I got a cup of coffee by my side. And so I'm going to start today with sort of the joy of lightness. Guess what? It's autumn. Last Thursday was a big day, and night, for that matter, was what they call the Atominal Equinox. Two times in the year, the sun rises precisely or lands precisely over the Earth's equator. Rises directly in the east, sets directly in the west. So autumn, I understand, officially began at 9 p.m. Eastern time last Thursday, September 22nd. West layman, like I am, I call it fall. And for me, it's wonderful weather and a transition from hot weather through cooler weather to the fragility of winter. But it's also transition of events and how we see life here in these United States. I mean, for baseball fans, when it comes to sports, it's the World Series, the Boys of October. And football fans, it's the pros or NCAA college football. I personally, I love college football. I mean, it's tailiating, it's hot wings, it's hot brats, it's hot citer. Sometimes it's even hot heads. You know, I think of college football, NCAA, which is a big business, huge business. And NCAA division one coaches get paid way more than the presidents of their universities because those programs bring in way more dollars than a lot of other things. And depending whether you're on the west coast with the Pac-12 and you're thinking UCLA, or USC, or Stanford, or Oregon, or Washington, whatever, or if you're in, it used to be the big 10 where you've got, I'll start with Illinois because we used to live there, but Ohio stayed in Michigan and some of those huge rivalries. You got Notre Dame sort of standing by itself over there and then you go to the east coast. And if you go to the south or the southeast, let's say from Texas over, the Oklahoma Texas over to the east, it is huge. And for perspective, I want to turn to one of my favorite writers. He's a sure fire, Scotts Irish storyteller from Alabama. Some years ago, Ruth and I were living in Virginia. We're lying in bed at night and oftentimes we'll read, you know, we have our own books. And when she says, this is good writing, whatever that book is, I always read that. Well she said that about this book. It was a book called All Over But The Shop and she had gotten it at a thrift store earlier that week. My fellow named Rick Bragg and Rick Bragg is that Scotts Irish storyteller from Alabama. He's a pupil and surprised when he got there. I think he still teaches. He might be America's now, the journalism at the University of Alabama. But when it comes to football rankings over the last few years, you have several teams that are always at the top. You've got Alabama, this year, Georgia's is on top at the moment. You've got Clemson and Auburn, some of those schools where you might have Texas or Texas and Ohio State is for sure in there. But there's something about Southern football according to Rick Bragg that's like religion. And this is just a couple of thoughts from an article in a magazine called Southern Living, some years back. And he's talking about the Crimson type, University of Alabama football and well here's a piece of their fights on right here. This is how Rick Bragg talks about what he and some of his people, if you will, believe about football. Quote, we believe that God himself favors our football teams. On Friday nights and Saturday afternoons, our coaches, some of them blasphemers and backsliders and not exactly praying men the other six days of the week, tell their players to hit an e and ask his favor at the same exact instant the other team is also asking his favor. Which I have always taken to mean that God, all thing to mean, he will favors the team with the surest holder on long field goals. Before Nick Sabin, the current Alabama coach with seven national titles the most in history, the gold standard for decades in Alabama was Bear Bryant, this is folks talking here. He had won six. He was a big man. He got his name Bear as a young man, I understand, from being willing to wrestle the bear at a carnival when he was younger for a dollar. And this legendary Alabama Crimson type coach would prowl the sidelines in a classic black and white checkered hound's tooth Fedora, a hat size seven and three eight inches. His take on whose side is God on and football was a wee bit different than some. Quote again from Rick Regg, after a rare Alabama loss, Bear's sidekick on his weekly television show told him, the Lord just wasn't with his coach. The Lord, growl Bryant, expects you to block and tackle. I love that. Well, baseball and football are clearly different sports. One comedian sometime back said this about baseball. And baseball during the game in the stands is kind of a picnic feeling. Emotions may run higher low, but there's not too much unpleasantness in football during the game in the stands. You can be sure that at least 27 times you're capable of taking the life of a fellow human being. And he goes on to talk about the objectives of the two games that he considers completely different. Because they use military language in football. Quote in football, the object is for the quarterback, also known as the field general, to be on target with his aerial assault, riddling the defense by hitting his receivers with deadly accuracy in spite of the blitz, even if he has to use the shotgun formation. With short bullet passes and long bombs, he marches his troops into enemy territory, balancing this aerial assault with a sustained ground attack that punches hold in the forward wall of the enemy's defensive line. However, in baseball, he says it's more comforting language, it's very simple. In baseball, the object is to get home and to be safe. So I got to tell you, some folks just make me laugh and there are a lot of days I need a little after a long away. But let me speak just for a moment here to the most important thing about fall for me. Harvest. I don't know that I came face to face with harvest as a city kid in Oakland, California. But after marriage in the mid-60s when Ruth and I moved back to East Central Illinois, to where the University of Illinois is in Champaign or Banna, we came face to face with harvest, big time. And one time I even went out to a farmer's place when they were planting before harvest, obviously. And he said, do you like to drive driving the tractor? I think they were just what they called spring toothing it or disking it back in the day to break up the ground that had been in deep freeze-all winter. And so I tried it and I looked back to see how straight that furrow was and it looked like it looked like the back of a sidewinder snake. So I decided not to go further in farming. But at this time of year depending on your location around the country, you harvest vegetables, you harvest turnips and beets and celery and the big one is corn and soybeans, which if you use the fancier name these days where they bake it, I think it's edamame. And then you have fruit, you have apples and Asian pears and cranberries and dates and figs and grapes. There's still some, I guess, being harvested in some areas, persimmons, pomegranates. And then there are those other fruit species that we don't know that I think of these as fruit most of the time, like tomato squash, zucchini, pumpkins, cucumbers, eggplants, bean and pea pods and wait for it, bell peppers. I'm telling you what? Yes, I read it on Google. Must be true. Anyway, there are seasons for planting and seasons for harvest, seasons for sowing and seasons for reaping. Closiesties, that old writer or that writer of that book, what we call the book of ecclesiasties back in the Jewish writings, says, for everything there is a season and a time for every matter under heaven. Here's the serious part of this podcast. The principle is this, we can only reap what we saw. If I plant apples, I'll guarantee you I won't get peaches. Or if I plant tomatoes, I don't, that's not even a gamble. I won't get onions. It's not just what you plant, but how you plant. The writer of Proverbs, the 22nd chapter, 8th verse says, whoever sows injustice, and there's enough of that around to last us a thousand years, whoever sows injustice will reap calamity, and the rod of his fury will fail. Injustice, the foe here, injustice over time will absolutely come back to bite you. Here's Paul writing to a province in Turkey years ago, in Galatians 6, 8th, that New Testament letter, for the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the spirit will from the spirit reap eternal life. Or how about this one from Jesus, Luke 6, give, and it'll be given to you. Good measure, press down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap, for with the measure you use, it will be measured back to you. That image is from someone going to market back in the day and holding out the apron, or the long skirt, and the amount would be poured into that skirt. Let me read it again, given it'll be given to you, good measure, press down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap, for with the measure you use, it'll be measured back to you, but it'll be running over, so it s plus a little when you do good things. The point is this, it says in Paul s letter to a church in southern Greece, whoever sows sparingly, this is the howl, whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. So a little, get a little, so a lot, get a ton. So I would submit that it'd be great if we could sow the good stuff, because the harvest of the good stuff in many positive ways continues for years, for decades, I would submit for generations, autumn, what a time. The air is crisp, we get to wear fleece vests or woolen shirts or whatever keeps us warm. It's interesting, it comes to me that baseball and football, these sports that sort of represent the U.S. in the fall. There are kind of harvests, aren't they? For players and for coaches, it s payoff for time and effort invested. It doesn't mean you always win, which you always learn. And for the rest of us in the stands, it s a vicarious living. We can live and die with those teams winning or losing. I love it. This time of year, the harvest of the fruit of this good earth is life for all of us. So I give thanks this day to the Lord and to every farm family who keep it moving within the sound of my voice. So here's the question for the week. How's your planting going? That's it. I'm out. Dick Foth saying thanks for subscribing and listening. And we'll be back again soon. God bless you.