Fallow season - resting season - ripening season

The deciduous trees are bare, there are hardly any flowers and fruits, snow may lie - winter time.

Nature is recovering. Trees and plants withdraw their sap, field clods are covered by snow, seeds and bulbs lie deep in the cold earth and some animals even hibernate. One could think that nature is at a standstill.

On the face of it, not much actually happens in nature. Much happens underground, inside. Nature is drawing strength, preparing for renewed growth. Even grain is already in the ground - the so-called winter grain - and it needs this rest period to grow quickly in spring. Resting time becomes ripening time.

We humans also have our fallow periods. Nothing progresses, hardly anything succeeds, something breaks away, darkness surrounds us and everything we love is far away.

I, too, know such fallow times - in life and with God. Francis of Assisi had such a time when he lived alone, sick and desperate for weeks in a miserable hut near San Damiano, wondering if his life was not messed up.

Perhaps you too might look at your fallow times? I was allowed to recognise - and here nature is again a wonderful mirror - that as painful as it is, good and important, valuable things come out of it. The Canticle of the Sun - the great praise of creation - came into being during Francis' fallow times. What a transformation!

I would like to encourage you to look for fruits that have grown out of your fallow times. What was I allowed to recognise? Have I discovered something new? Have new relationships developed? For which fallow times am I grateful?

Jesus consciously sought such times of rest - for himself alone or with his apostles.
"Come with us to a lonely place where we are alone and rest a little! Mk 6,30

So stop and rest. I would like to encourage you to discover for yourself supposed fallow times as times of rest and maturity - just as nature is showing us right now. Rest in order to mature, catch your breath, gather strength, look at how things can continue and who or what is helpful to me in this process.

Uta Fielitz
Weggemeinschaft