Words of Light and Hope from Tony Foottit

Words of Light and Hope from Tony Foottit.

Oats – Lammas – 1st August.                                                                                                                                                                                         Lammas on 1 August is an old celebration of the first fruits of the harvest. The first corn was milled and a loaf made from the flour for Mass, hence the name Loaf Mass or Lammas. Oats, like most cereals, are a species of grass. Without the grass family with its 9000 species, we would perish. Grasses provide our daily bread, fodder, thatch, bedding, glue, plastics and oil. Some species have been cultivated for 10,000 years. Rogueing is an old country occupation. Someone who goes rogueing isn’t sowing wild oats but is pulling them up. Set-aside, sustainability, and diversification are on the agricultural agenda but should be on our spiritual agenda too. Setting aside means taking land out of production pro tem. This benefits wildlife on the farms and should be practised in our gardens and churchyards. We need to do some setting aside in our own lives – e.g. making time for God. We need to cultivate deliberate neglect, as Archbishop John Habgood once said.

Sustainability means an economy that maintains rather than diminishes the resources of the earth. The scientific name for Wild Oats is Avena fatua, i.e. foolish oats. It is possible to become infatuated to the point of foolishness, not just with someone of the opposite sex but with machines and chemicals and of course money. In the Christian tradition such infatuation is called idol worship. Sustainability is also needed in our relationships. We’ve so much to give thanks for, including farmers and workers who often suffer stress, danger and isolation in the production of our food. The best antidote to the poison of envy is generous co-operation and justice for all. That means fair wages, fair prices and reasonable profits. We bear witness to this whenever we break bread together.               From A Calendar of Wild Flowers (part)

 

Be gentle when you touch bread. Let it not lie, uncared for, unwanted. So often bread is taken for granted. There is such beauty in bread – beauty of sun and soil, beauty of patient toil. Wind and rain have caressed it, Christ often blessed it. Be gentle when you touch it