Reflections on Harvest (Published in October 2006)

Last weekend was our Harvest Festival, and it brought back memories of my first ever, at my primary school in north London. The centrepiece of the wonderful pyramid of fruits and vegetables piled up around the school hall was a great loaf of bread made by the local baker. It was in the shape of a huge golden sheaf of wheat with a little harvest mouse climbing around the wheat stalk.. These were the days when this display represented the fruits of people’s labour in their gardens and allotments – foods you could touch and smell. This was a ritual of gratitude that stretched around the world and back in time to a moment when an ancient ancestor felt well fed and was grateful. As the years went on the dire curse of the tin and packet would set in and the sensuality of natural foods would be replaced by packaging

Nowadays the whole consumer experience is a blur of feeling desire, want, pleasure, satiation, nausea and gross indulgence,- followed by a longing for austerity, and detox of mind, body and spirit, all in a matter of hours

Every day can be a Harvest Festival if we just stop and stock-take our lives. The fruits of our labours are all around us if only we stop long enough to look. That is because the society we live in through the medium of advertising and marketing wants us to focus on all the things we don’t have instead.

Nothing cleanses the mental palate like gratitude. We all take things like running water for granted; we all wake up in a dry, warm room under a dry warm duvet. How often do we say ‘thank you’ though?

I believe it’s time to evaluate the harvest festival of our own lives – there’s no end to the gifts that surround us. Let’s be thankful for all that we have, and not grumble about what we haven’t. Why not make a ‘thank you’ list?

Let’s face it, - there’s nothing in our lives that wouldn’t be considered a miracle in someone else’s.

God bless,
Penny