Everything Will Be Okay
Some fragmented thoughts on the discipline of hope, garden therapy, berry crisp, an essay for these violent times, and the achievement of non-aggression
Wednesday, July 17
Grand Rapids, Mich.
At the farmers’ market last week, I stopped by John Crans’s stand to say hello. He’s one of my favorite farmers at the Fulton Street Market. A retired schoolteacher, he’s as sweet, optimistic, and extroverted as I am grumpy, Eeyoreish, and introverted.
We got to talking about the state of the country, the presidential election, and the ongoing debate about whether Joe Biden should stay in the race. Our differing opinions aren’t particularly germane here. “I really do think,” John said, “that everything will be okay. I have to believe it.”
In the moment, I disagreed with John’s assessment. It seemed Pollyanna-ish and absurdly sunny. But my energy for partisan conversations is low, so I held my tongue. Another shopper who had overheard our conversation, though, rushed to fill the silence with her opinions.
Later, as I considered what John said, I realized that I was coming around to agreement with him—in a way. Not in the short term, about which I am not feeling sanguine at all. But in the long, I also have to believe that everything will be okay. And knowing a bit about John, I can understand why he would see things the way he does. His story isn’t mine to share, except to say that he has seen his share of hardship, adversity, and the unpleasant surprises that life can bring. Still, even in his early 80s, he pushes on, always smiling, returning to field and market season after season, growing what he can grow.
Everything will be okay. I have to believe it.
John has been stewarding land west of Grand Rapids for some forty years. Ever so slowly, he has been nursing that plot, enriching its soil and boosting its fertility. I’ve done much the same with my community-garden plot, but only for the past four years—rotating, planting some cover crop, amending, trying to banish the bindweed.
Before we turned to politics, John and I had talked about potatoes. Both his potato plants and mine have grown surprisingly tall this year. Neither of us is sure why. My plants feel more lush, more full with greenery than I remember from past seasons. They’re now slowly coming into flower. I’ve already harvested some new potatoes—some to cook for brunch when friends visited a couple of weekends ago, some to send to Texas with Tristan to share with his family. Already I can tell that this harvest will be the best I’ve ever had.
None of it is quick or easy work. All of it demands attention, care, and patience. Every single time I go to the garden, I’m reminded of what I can control and what I can’t. Every single time I go to the garden, I remember that I need help too—from the sun and the rain, from the bees and the butterflies, from the worms and the microbes.
I worry that our glut of information and the constant onslaught of news, the never-ending pings of notifications and alerts, has trained our eyes and our hearts on immediacy. We flail. Our lens narrows. The sky is falling.
Everything will be okay. I have to believe it.
This is essentially what I preached on last Sunday. Our text for the day came from Job 19, a famous passage in which he lifts a torrent of protest against all that he has suffered, including the loss of nearly everything that matters to him as well as the torment of his body, which, as the story goes, Satan has festooned with sores. Toward the end of his lament, Job says, “For I know that my Redeemer lives, and that at the last, he will stand upon the earth, and after my skin has been thus destroyed, then in my flesh I shall see God.”
I wish we could hear how Job had said these words. Were they fiery with righteous indignation? Were they whispered, like the last plea of a desperate man? Were they calm and convicted—an unlikely confession of faith from a man of otherworldly holiness? Were they issued with fury—a dare to the divine to show up?
I don’t know. Maybe there’s a hospitality in that, though. We get to try out all different tones.
Our task, though, is not to put ourselves in Job’s place, not to center ourselves in a narrative that isn’t ours. It might be similar to yours or mine, but it is not yours or mine. His story is instead a helping hand extended from across the ages—an acknowledgment of suffering, a voice that leads us into our own lament, an admission of all that’s beyond our own strength, a nudge to recalibrate.
Everything will be okay. I have to believe it.
To say that one has to believe that everything will be okay is not mere blithe optimism. It’s a discipline of remaining open to possibility.
“What can I do?” people ask, waving their hands frantically at the world or swiping endlessly at their phones. Well, you—and I—can make good choices. We can give, pray, cook, feed, lament, converse, listen, protest, pay attention, learn, rest, and encourage. We can consider carefully, too, what is ours to do—what is useful and life-giving rather than merely performative and self-absolving—and what is not.
We can also choose to build our energy for whatever else is to come, including doing our small but not insignificant part to help make everything okay, not just for ourselves but also for our neighbors and for this whole world. For me, that means trying to spend at least an hour a day in the garden, not just for the sake of the plants that are in my care but also for my own soul. It’s not escape; it’s grounding. It’s not turning my back on the world; it’s digging my hands into the good earth itself, so that I can remember the interconnectedness of all things.
I went back to the garden yesterday morning. I greeted the sunflowers, which grew up all on their own this year. I noticed the blossoming of the first gladiolus, another plant in my plot that I never put there myself. I squished a couple of bean beetles and thought back to the times when I mistook them for pale ladybugs; I have learned.
I gathered some vegetables for dinner. Some of the leaves of tatsoi are as big as my face. The bok choy I planted, in a row where something else (I can’t remember what) didn’t grow, are pleasantly baby-sized and should be perfectly bittersweet when stir-fried with ginger and garlic.
I did just a little bit of weeding too. And with every turn of the trowel, I composted my fear, I saw all these intersecting timelines, and I grounded myself. Yes, there are immediate concerns and present worries. But there are also persistent encouragements and enduring invitations.
Perhaps the most significant crop that John and I cultivate, in our own ways and in our separate places, isn’t potatoes or tomatoes, zucchini or greens. All those annuals produce for a short season before dying. The one I think we care most about is a perennial: It’s hope.
What I’m Cooking: A couple of years ago, I noticed a thorny vine beginning to grow in the green patch on the north side of our house. I thought I recognized it, and it wasn’t in a spot where I’d planted anything else, so I left it. Last year, it produced three black raspberries. This year, we’ve have dozens and dozens—each a morsel of pure gift, each a glimpse of grace. It’s blueberry season here in West Michigan, so I bought a quart at the farmers market as well as a quart of strawberries from one of the few farmers who is still offering them. “Ours are everbearing,” she told me when I asked. “I hope we’ll have them until well into September.”
Few things taste more like summer to me than berry crisp. We had friends over for dinner yesterday evening. So I went outside, harvested the last handful of raspberries, mixed them with the blueberries and the strawberries, and marinated them all in balsamic vinegar, black pepper, and some brown sugar for about an hour. Then I divided them among individual pots (portion control) and topped each pot with streusel—oats; a bit of flour, if none of our guests are gluten-free; some walnuts, if nobody is allergic; plenty of melted butter; more brown sugar; a little sea salt. With about 40 minutes in the oven and a crown of whipped cream, it was the perfect, not-too-sweet end to a July meal.
What I’m Reading: A couple of months ago, a friend pointed me to Yumna Kassab’s piece “Guernica,” which was published in April in the Australian literary journal Meanjin. I say “piece” because I’m not sure how else to describe it. It could be called an essay, at least in the barest definition of the word, which is rooted in the French for “to try.” But really, “Guernica” is a collection of fragments—some lines of poetry, some epigrams, some thoughts and reflections.
On my first reading of “Guernica,” I felt at once bewildered and moved. Where could I find my footing in this text? And also: Line after line, I found myself saying, “Yes!” She describes, for instance, how those who clamor for power put on “the dress of moral finery. For every faithful, there are ten zealots, lusting for power, high horsing in their insecurity.”
On my second reading, and then my third, the fragmentary nature of “Guernica” began to feel ever so right to me. In these chaotic and violent times, sometimes all a writer can—maybe should—offer is a bit of wisdom, a bite of insight, a sliver of feeling. In the blank spaces, there is so much needed room, because I find myself requiring an extra deep breath, another moment to orient myself. And maybe, to say more, to have something more whole, would be untrue to the circumstances.
Kassab, an Australian novelist with Lebanese roots, is also a high-school teacher. In an interview a couple of years ago, she said that the one piece of advice she gives her students is one that she also offers herself: “Try to stay interested in things and to not lose hope.”
You can feel Kassab trying to hold onto hope throughout her writing. The line from “Guernica” that has stuck with me most: “Sometimes the achievement of a day is not adding one more aggression to the world.”
Again, I keep going back to the garden.
My apologies for the spottiness of my correspondence to you. It’s been more than a month since we said goodbye to the Fozz. I am still sad. But slowly, we are finding new rhythms—and slowly, I am returning to myself. Grief is a weird organism, isn’t it?
Tell me about you. What are you doing to cultivate hope? And what tastes like summer to you?
Thanks, as always, for spending time with my ramblings. I’m grateful for your presence, and I’m grateful for you.
All my best,
Jeff
Thank you, Jeff. I really needed this today. As I sit on my porch having coffee on this early Midwest morning, I feel my tension slowly unwinding. I am still afraid, but you have reminded me that the way forward is just that...forward. And there is much beauty and grace to carry our hope. I know you miss Fozzie. I recognize that loss and grief. Prayers..
Dear Jeff,
As a family who deeply loves our four-legged family members (sometimes more than the two-legged ones if I am perfectly honest), my deepest sympathies to you in the loss of Fozzie. We wept with you when you shared the news and sit with you now. Three months after losing one of my dogs, I was again crying while talking to my dad who was not usually the most empathetic man. Apologizing and about to hang up to call back later telling him I felt ridiculous for still crying about a dog, he surprisingly but gently asked me to keep talking and said, "The measure of the pain in the loss is a measure of the love in the life." I never met little Fozz but so enjoyed your pictures and descriptions of his interactions with you, your garden, and the world. Which is the start of the answer to your question of how your readers are cultivating hope... right now clinging to the words and hope of others like you, Nadia and Sarah. Like my dad's one sentence that day on the phone, you all show up in my inbox and enable me to, in the words of Nadia "inhale the good s##t, exhale the bad s##t." and breathe again. Thank you for sharing your lives and gift of words and the places you cultivate hope and find wisdom. Thank you for being the beautiful reminder that there is still goodness in the world. Thank you for being your lovely Eeyore self. You are deeply loved and appreciated. Oh and also the first person I have not secretly wanted to punch when they said everything is going to be OK. I might actually believe it now.