Lughnasa Harvest Moon
Yesterday in the midst of wet raspberry canes, plucking fruit from thorny yet fragile 
branches, the spirituality of the moment grasped me. The canes stuck to my sweatshirt sleeve; the water soaked into my jeans. This was the real in all its obstinate presence.
Last February Kate and I did some winter pruning and I cut last year’s canes down to the ground. We were late getting this done, but the timing was alright. Now, eight months later, those same plants had burst up, some over my head and drooping with golden and red-purple berries.
The garden, the orchard, the bees each reward us: tomatoes, carrots, onions, apples, cherries, pears, honey. A virtuous circle, we care for the soil and the plants and the trees and the hives, they in turn offer something we can eat. Eat. Think of that. This is the true and definitive instance of transubstantiation. Eat this cherry and remember me. Eat this 
carrot; it becomes me. It becomes me to eat this carrot. The soil and the plants here give of themselves that I may not perish.
Thus, to be among them, feeling them pluck at me, rain water dripping off them onto me is a coarse prayer, a baptism by holy water made clean and pure in the clouds then delivered unto us by the morning rain.
Amen.