The Harvest Table.
Where I live in rural Nebraska, most folks than not have a garden in the summer time. Some are small with just tomatoes and basil while others are HUGE. Throughout the growing season, we have neighbors making sure we’ve got what we need.
You need asparagus? You need lettuce? How are you for zucchini? Are you ready for more sweet corn? We’ve more tomatoes than we’ll ever eat or can, can we bring you some?
It’s pretty great. On Sunday mornings at church, people bring their garden bounty to a kind of “Harvest Table” (but really it’s just the benches outside the church’s front door) and anyone can take whatever they like. Depending on the Sunday there will be onions, squash, tomatoes, peppers, green beans, and on and on.
The Harvest Table is for those things we’ve got plenty of, the things that grew easily for us, the things we love sharing with others. But the idea of the harvest table doesn’t stop at produce.
Imagine you set up your own table outside the house with your bounty. What would be on your Harvest Table with a homemade sign reading, “Help yourself?” I would suggest closing your eyes or even writing down what you imagine is your bounty that overflows that you’ve got plenty to share.
What I love about that idea is that it starts from a place of abundance and ease. What feels easy? What feels abundant? Is is hospitality? Is it artistry or craft? Healing? Creativity? Listening or planning? Is it learning or problem solving? An eye for beauty or a deep love of connection? Is it clear that I’ve recently taken the Gallup Strengths Finder Survey?
Work and vocation sometimes intersect, but sometimes they don’t. What’s important is that what you were built for in abundance has a way of flowing through you whether it be in your work or in your off hours. What’s interesting is hearing stories of people who decided to put out their “harvest table of abundance” in whatever way they could find and the natural shifting and discovery that it revealed. Movement of abundance from you out into the world be it squash or friendship.
Elite Athletes. There was a time when I was baffled by extreme athletic dedication forsaking all other things. My brief tenure in swimming in Southern California gave me a view of the kind of sacrifices it took to focus on getting better, getting faster, prepping for the trials. It took a lot. It takes a lot. More than most of us are willing to do. Those elite athletes might say their harvest tables are piled high with drive, vision, and perseverance.
Now I love watching shows about elite athletes. The mental mastery it takes to stay focused when things don’t go right, to stay dialed in after a bad swim or a surprise upset, shake it off and get back to practice is the kind of mental and emotional mastery available to all of us. It’s just that the athletes have been doing it since they were three and the rest of us need to play catch up.
Athletes have worked on their relationship with the stats and the data, they measure results and learn from the wins and the losses without their identity crumbling. They recover and they keep going.
And how did they learn that? Well, they may have been given an extra portion of determination and physical talent than the rest of us, but also, to hear them talk, they learned that thanks to their moms.
Yes, that’s right: Moms. Moms were their first drivers and trainers, their first alarm clocks, their first cheerleaders and “I’m going to tell it to you straight” tough talkers. Moms who held the vision for their kid on the day when the kid couldn’t see it and got them out of bed and drove them to practice.
They had a mom who saw their tears and self-doubt and instead of siding with the fear and self-doubt, loved their kiddo through the bump in the road by always seeing them as their strongest most awesome selves even when they were feeling weak. Moms. We wield the hammer and the hug. Both. In balance in a way that communicates love and love with a vision for learning and growth and maturity.
It’s a good reminder that the myth of the lone wolf is exactly that. A myth.
Moms embody the harvest table idea and the mental and emotional toughness of elite athleticism. Moms pour out what they have to their children and practice mental and emotional toughness raising little humans. They pour out and then let go, pour out and let go. Ease and focus, ease and focus.
(also dads do this too, but I’m not a dad so I’m not taking liberties talking ‘bout dads)
Ease and focus. Ease and focus. Harvest tables and moms and the athletes they raise. Something to think about.