What’s the point of celebrating the harvest?

We reap what we sow: a once young man’s guide.

George Pitcher

George is a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics and an Anglican priest.

A soot stained burnt-out harvester sits in a recently harvested field.

A burnt-out harvester, Lonesome Farm, Oxfordshire.

Nick Jones.

I plan next week to visit a small nursery school, called Young Haymakers, for their Harvest celebration where toddlers to five-year-olds will sing songs about tractor wheels going round and round, with vigorous manual actions as they shake, shake, shake the apple tree.

We’ll have a Harvest snack at tiny tables, a prayer and then they’ll give me the Harvest gifts from their families for those who may be hungry.

It is, of course, a delight, one of the happiest duties of a parish priest and I’ll miss it terribly as I hand it over to a new Rector. But, while I take nothing away from the sheer joy of thanksgiving of these children for the fruits (and vegetables) of this harvest and for those who farm them, I can’t help but wonder what Harvest, as a festival, really means for grown-ups.

The metaphor has been just too rich to avoid this season. We reap what we sow – and we witness that from Ukraine to Gaza and Lebanon, from Sudan to a United States that teeters on the brink of self-destruction as the world’s beacon of democratic values.

One might add to this sorry list the longer-term grim gathering-in from the world’s reliance on fossil fuels, a failed harvest of biblical-scale abomination as we destroy our planet’s natural capacity to host us. Truly, we have sown a wind and, in so many areas of human endeavour, we look like we reap a whirlwind (literally, in the case of weather crises such as Hurricane Milton).

There are prophetic voices that cry out in our human wilderness, from those who foresee the demise of the US at the hands of a shallow nationalism to those few on the political stage who predict an all-out war in the Middle East as the only possible conclusion to the escalation of revenge attacks between Israel and its neighbours.

The ancients saw famine and failed harvests as judgments for their sin, their divergence from the divine will. It’s unlikely that our world is going to accept such culpability any time soon. To do so would require a humility that we have lost, along with losing our religion.

We need to be careful of ascribing too much of a prophetic voice to Young. This was, after all, a fairly bombed-out singer-songwriter of the start of the Boomer generation.

Setting aside the reaping of whirlwinds from millennia ago, I’m going to invoke a popular folk song from a little over half a century ago. I do so because, in 1972, we lived in a more innocent world, before we knew how industrialisation could destroy our human species and when a western hegemony in democracy was taken for granted. Little did we know the precipice on which we were perched.

The song is by the folk-rock colossus Neil Young and is called, appropriately enough, Harvest. It is, lyrically, one of his more obscure works and to listen to it now is to struggle to get past a strangulated hippy voice that verges on self-parody.

But it repays the effort. Young’s lyrics are infused with religious reference and imagery, but no claim should be made for his affirmation of the Christian faith. Nonetheless, we’re entitled to view art through the prism of what informs us and, as such, Harvest yields its fruits. Young may well be singing about his lover, but it’s in love that all truth is explored.

Listen to it. Young’s Harvest opens with the lines “Did I see you down in a young girl’s town/ with your mother in so much pain?” Through a scriptural lens, this sounds like the pain of incarnation, the sharing of Mother Mary’s agony in visceral human experience.

It continues: “Will I see you give more than I can take”; for the confessing faithful, we’re at the foot of the cross here. “Will I only harvest some?”; we can, all of us, only harvest a little of the mystery of that event. “As the days fly past, will we lose our grasp?”; of course we will – time is finite. “Or fuse it in the sun?”; an uncanny pre-echo of climate change worthy of Nostradamus.

We need to be careful of ascribing too much of a prophetic voice to Young. This was, after all, a fairly bombed-out singer-songwriter of the start of the Boomer generation. But it’s also true that we should be careful of where we look for prophetic voices.

For Young, the Harvest is indeed a cruel and painful event, which we can only understand in part. We do indeed reap what we sow, but there may be purpose to be found in that. And the Harvest is indeed bitter, but in it we may glimpse a plan: “Dream up, dream up, let me fill your cup/ With the promise of a man”.

Or, okay, it’s just a song, harvesting a good deal of cash for its writer and singer. I’m no big fan of Young. But it might just have told me more about the Harvest than singing All Things Bright and Beautiful.

Article

Comment

General Election 24

Politics

5 June 2024

4 min read

Democracy and dairy don't mix

Let's remember the principles of political engagement.

Yaroslav Walker

Yaroslav is assistant priest at Holy Trinity, Sloane Square, London.

A woman throws a milkshake at a politician, the milk is mid-flight in a curved shape.

Political engagement?

Twitter

Nigel Farage is best known for dividing opinion. It is for a politician like Mr Farage that we adapted ‘Marmite’ from a noun to an adjective - people either love or hate him. I’d like to think of myself as an elevated individual, floating above the fray of yeast-based debate with grace and equanimity. I find Mr Farage funny, because he is. I dislike much of what he stands for, because it is unlikable. It all balances out. I neither love nor hate him. I see him as a, somewhat amusing and somewhat problematic, bit of topography on the political map. I can’t really bring myself to have any feelings towards him which are stronger than a chuckling-wincing-indifference.

Others, it would seem, have more passion. On Tuesday, Mr Farage was doused in milkshake; ‘vanilla’, intrepid journalists reported. The response was immediate. Howls of laughter from those who find Mr Farage odious. Fulmination from those who support him. Claims of a ‘false flag operation’ from some. Shouts about ‘political violence’ and a ‘slippery slope’ from others. Much like the man, the milkshake roused the commentariat into absolute histrionics. Who on earth is right?

The latter group.

Obviously!

Shock often elicits a laugh - a way of softening the tension one finds themselves inhabiting. It doesn’t mean the joke is funny. The milkshake wasn’t funny, however much some forcibly bray with laughter. It was an unkind, juvenile, contradictory act of foolishness from someone who seems to believe that true political engagement is dairy-based. It was also an attempt to set a precedent which no civilised person can accept. Those shouting about the ‘slippery slope’ are correct, for the ‘slippery slope’ is simply a phrase which is synonymous with the concept of ‘precedent’.

I do not mean that we must treat our political class with kid gloves. We must interrogate their platforms, positions, and policies with rigour.

Precedents’ are fundamentally progressive. You set a precedent for something, and soon people wish to argue for a precedent which goes further. Be under no illusion, milkshake can very quickly become a much nastier and more dangerous liquid in the minds of many. The principle that those who are standing for elected office must be treated with absolute respect is one which is either absolute or non-existent. There is no in-between.

I do not mean that we must treat our political class with kid gloves. We must interrogate their platforms, positions, and policies with rigour. If they propose an idea which we find deficient or problematic (or even odious!) then we must hold them to account and demand an explanation. This is the right (perhaps even the duty?) of all engaged in the democratic process. We can never, however, allow our passion and consternation to devolve into the physical. Language and action are inextricably linked, yet there is an obvious and distinct gulf between them which we must preserve at all costs.

The milkshake incident might elicit a laugh at first, but I hope anyone laughing ends up frowning.

On the day the election was announced, the Archbishops of Canterbury and York issued a plea: put “…good grace and a commitment to truth and integrity…” at the heart of the campaign. We ought to demand this of our political class; but we can’t expect it of those standing for election if we do not practice it ourselves.

Our elected representatives feel embattled like never before. The number of MPs standing down at this election is remarkable. The number who are calling for mandatory police protection of MPs is depressing. The number who have experienced threats and/or/of violence is unconscionable. The number who have been murdered in the last thirty years - two - is horrific and shameful.

We will never get the best out of our MPs if we do not give them OUR best!

If the Archbishops are not enough to convince you, perhaps Jesus will be. Jesus was faced with regular attack, both verbal and physical. He responded with love (‘turn the other cheek), verbal wit (render unto Ceasar that which is Ceasar’s), and, ultimately, loving sacrifice (the Cross). He also regularly reminds us that our actions inform who we are and will become: “Listen and understand: it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles.”

The milkshake incident might elicit a laugh at first, but I hope anyone laughing ends up frowning. Firstly, because it was vulgar, callous, and rude: it was everything a civilised democratic process ought to reject. Secondly, and most importantly, because it demeans and degrades us all as a culture. Every such incident which is tolerated at all sets a precedent which we cannot accept.

Our political processes, flawed and hypocritical as they might sometime be, are intended to engender the fundamental principles of respect, integrity, and love of neighbour. If we see the meeting of Mr Farage and a milkshake as anything but disgusting, we are not worthy of such principles.