Lugnasa Harvest Moon
Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog (1818)
Fellow traveler. Back when America was great, like the 1950’s or sometime, fellow traveler was an epithet that indicated a person with sympathies for the communists. To be a fellow traveler meant shared understandings if not complete agreement. The aim of communism, an egalitarian society with the basic needs of all met, is still my dream. But, how to achieve it is as muddy to me now as it has been all my political life. True: I voted for Gus Hall for President in several elections.
There is, though, another sense to this term. A fellow traveler can also be one who is with, but not of, a particular group or thought-world. It occurred to me this morning that being a fellow traveler is an important part of my life.
This may be a deep flaw, but it is and has been an ancientrail on which I have walked often in my life. Let me explain. The most salient example right now is my involvement with Congregation Beth Evergreen, or CBE as they often shorten it. Being a fellow traveler with Jews and Judaism has been a consistent thread in my life since early college. That is, I admire Judaism as a culture and have found many friends among observant and non-observant Jews-not to mention a wife. Jews tend to approach the world as curious, skeptical, engaged people, people embedded in history and tradition. That worldview has appealed to me since my first anthropology assignment took to me a synagogue in Muncie, Indiana.
Jacob Wrestling with the Angel
Kate’s a converted Jew and feels herself part of this ancient tribe. I do not. But Judaism continues to speak to me in its ethics, its ability to withstand constant suffering and abuse, its tribalism and in its ritual and spiritual practices. I am gradually becoming in, but not of, Beth Evergreen.
Even in seminary, I felt more like a fellow traveler with Christianity. Though I did immerse myself in the Christian tradition and its beliefs, its intellectual and cultural practices, its political message was more important to me than its metaphysics. Let justice roll down like an everflowing stream. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Suffer the children to come unto me. What you do to the least of these, you do to me.
I tried to merge my political passion with a religious sensibility, but in the end it became clear that I had got the stick wrong end round. Political purpose preceded religious conviction. Within any religious way that’s backwards. As a result, over time I became more of a fellow traveler with my colleagues and friends in the Presbyterian Church than a true believer. Throughout my ministry after ordination in 1976 I felt in, but not of, the church. Eventually, the tension between my purpose and the church’s purpose became too strained and the link between the two broke.
Politically I feel and have felt in, but not of, mainstream American politics. That is, political action has been another key ancientrail in my life, but I’ve had to engage it from a stance left of even the further edges of liberalism.
There are other examples, but you see the point. It is my habit to be with groups, but not of them. This is the deep flaw I referred to above. That same curious, skeptical, engaged, embedded in history (but not tradition) fellow feeling I have with Judaism keeps me just to the side of certainty, a seeker with little probability of arriving at his goal. By this point in my life I find this outsider role familiar and, for the most part, comfortable. But I wonder what it would be like to enter the world of the convinced, the believer? Am I missing out on an important element of life? I don’t know.
Palisade, Colorado has had a bumper peach harvest. There is a small area on the Western Slope that has an ideal peach growing microclimate. They have other crops, too: lavender, apples, sweet corn, strawberries and vegetables. The newspapers have carried photo spreads of workers in the orchards with peach baskets gently picking and placing the delicate fruit into baskets. Back in Andover, this time of year, the honey harvest would be in, the raspberries just beginning. I would be out planting garlic and pulling the last plantings of carrots, beets, leeks and onions. This is the peak harvest season, when the land and its workers combine to feed millions, even billions of people.
Being so far removed from farms and large truck gardens feels strange to this former Midwestern lifer. No more so than in this long harvest season. Corn pickers and combines have begun to roll through fields. The state fairs have swept up 4-H’er raised cattle, pigs, sheep, chickens. The vegetable harvest has peaked. Self pick apple orchards have hayrides and cider stations set out. Not there, though.
Labor Day does mark the winding down of one season long harvest up here: tourist dollars from Denver folks. July and August are the heaviest tourist months for our favorite mountain town, Evergreen. We’re not a winter tourist destination, at least not like the ski resorts, so the roads will have less traffic and fewer visitors in Evergreen’s restaurants.
