A grain marketing guy about my age said this is the most volatile period for commodity markets in his career. I always say of prices, they could go up or they could go down. I have amended that to, they could go way up, or they could go way down. It’s fun to sell at high prices. But the stress of getting it wrong is amplified when soybeans can run up a dollar and fall a dollar in 24 hours.
Grain markets are just one wildly unpredictable thing I follow. The costs of farm inputs are bouncing erratically. My agronomist is already worried about getting fertilizer next year, price be damned. The auger I want to buy might be here by fall. For sure it will cost me a thousand dollars more than a year ago.
That’s my small world. Everyone has their own kind of crazy right now. All of us who pay for gas get to play along with the uncertainty at the pump. We all wonder what higher interest rates will mean to us or our children who are earlier along the path of kids and houses.
Everybody I know who builds, makes, or fixes things has had periods of not knowing about supplies or what they’ll cost tomorrow. We all remember the Great Toilet Paper Crisis two years ago. Since, we’ve become used to hearing this or that might or might not be available.
A once-in-our-lifetime pandemic gets blame for the unstable nature of things right now. But deeper, longer lasting phenomena got us to this place. Increasingly destructive weather likely tied to man-made climate change has affected and will affect everything. As we propel toward eight billion people on the planet, a population Earth has never seen before, issues will flow from that.
Set into a world that is challenging under the best of scenarios is social media which rewards obnoxious behavior with attention and likes. More and more people talk, and less and less people listen. Newt Gingrich created modern governance thirty years ago when he said, “Where we agree we will cooperate. Where we don’t, we will not compromise.” I know that wouldn’t work in a marriage; how would it in Congress?
Into this cauldron, throw the invasion of a small democracy by its large nuclear-armed autocratic neighbor, and you’ve got a stew that is boiling over.
We have a war being live streamed by unwilling participants. What a difference from wars of the past where we had to wait for the 6:00 news to know what’s going on. Not surprisingly, this close-up of war is discomforting. War is a wretched enough experience for young men who never chose to be there. Taking it to civilians is another level of heinous. A photo of a Ukrainian soldier carrying a baby through wreckage wrought by Russian bombs is moving to most of us.
Not to a certain man in Moscow. Vladimir Putin has bombed and killed thousands of civilians in Chechnya, Georgia, and Syria, so what’s going on now is sadly predictable. It has been heartening to see much of the globe rally to the side of Ukraine. It is less so that Putin has so many admirers in our own country.
Pat Buchanan wrote, “In the culture war for the future of mankind, Putin is planting Russia’s flag firmly on the side of traditional Christianity.” Buchanan can be excused for writing that before Ukraine, but not those other countries.
Perhaps this will subside. Maybe our lives will settle again after pandemic, war, and wild price swings fade away. Maybe not.
All this was knocking around in my head like a misfiring engine. Then I heard these words. “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”
As ashes were rubbed onto my forehead, thus began Lent. Every year, Ash Wednesday comes just in time. Winter has grown long, coinciding with certain qualities in me. Ash Wednesday means brighter, warmer days are ahead. It also means that I can make another run at sculpting a better me. It is especially so that Ash Wednesday comes just in time, here in our winter of discontent and craziness.
This doesn’t coincide with any official church calendar, but Ash Wednesday always seems the beginning of the faith year to me. We begin the six weeks that will lead to Jerusalem, Calgary, and finally an empty tomb. Lent is the cleaning up of our lives and airing out of our souls, as we try to be our best selves on Easter morning. Lent is a second chance. Or a third chance. Or a 66th chance for some of us.
“Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” It might be easy to look at that line and find it depressing. You can see it as shrinking and reducing us, as we are nothing more than dirt. But for reasons I don’t completely understand, I am encouraged by it.
Maybe it’s knowing that the dust from whence I came was formed by the Creator. It is the hands of God using the materials of the Earth to make us. It is holy dirt created on the third day in the Book of Genesis. I am glad to be of it.
There was a poster around in the Sixties that showed a little boy who it appeared was being disciplined. In a bold statement of self-worth, he is saying, “I know I’m somebody, cause God don’t make no junk!” I’ll take that as a type of benediction.
Maybe I like the reminder that I shall return to dirt. I only have so much time here. It is limited to whatever number of days God grants. Those days will be a lifetime to me, but they are a blink in eternity. While we are here, we are directed to love; our instructions are clear. We are to do more good than harm. But it’s not an endless task. We have those days, and then our work is done.
The world is a messy place right now. It always is. Beautifully and perfectly created by a God of love, then made messy by flawed and imperfect beings. Messy, like a smudge of ashes rubbed on a forehead.