Threaded Wisdom: Harvest

Welcome to Wyoming Interfaith Network's Spiritual Life Team's monthly email, Threaded Wisdom.

Threaded Wisdom is an opportunity to foster our interfaith relationships through a sharing of prayers, meditations, and practices from diverse faith traditions—a threading together of wisdom that allows for a greater depth of appreciation and understanding of others’ faith traditions.

Each month, we welcome community members to share words and practices that are related to a particular theme. Submissions can be a prayer, an excerpt from a text, a meditation, or an embodied practice.

Note that submissions don't necessarily have to be from a particular religious figure or tradition. We welcome shares from texts or individuals outside of a spiritual context who have offered inspiration and insight, which could be a philosopher or even a neuroscientist.

Thank you for joining us as we honor each other and ourselves through this threading together of wisdom.

With gratitude,

Wyoming Interfaith Network Spiritual Life Team

P.S. You'll find next month's theme toward the end of the email.

Katrina, a member of the Baha'i tradition, shared the following:

Men who suffer not, attain no perfection. The plant most pruned by the gardeners is that one which, when the summer comes, will have the most beautiful blossoms and the most abundant fruit.

The laborer cuts up the earth with his plow, and from that earth comes the rich and plentiful harvest. The more a man is chastened, the greater is the harvest of spiritual virtues shown forth by him.

Abdu'l-Baha, Paris Talks

Pamela offered this excerpt on the theme of Harvest:

You shall observe the festival of the harvest, of the first fruits of your labor, of what you sow in the field. You shall observe the festival of ingathering at the end of the year, when you gather in from the field the fruit of your labor.

Tanakh, Biblical book of Exodus

Mohamed, a member of the Islamic tradition, contributed the following commentary and quote on this month's theme:

The term harvest is mentioned in many verses in the Quran relating to grains and fruits that Allah bestows on all humans to sustain life. But it is also used metaphorically to refer to sowing good deeds and getting back, a plentiful harvest of good blessings, with Allah’s help, in this life and the hereafter.

Conversely those who seek the pleasures of this life alone will have no harvest or share in the hereafter. The Quran says, "Whoever seeks the harvest of the Hereafter, We shall increase for him his harvest, and whoever seeks the harvest of this world, We shall give him thereof; but he will have no share in the Hereafter?"

Elizabeth, a member of the Unitarian Universalist tradition, shared this excerpt from Marge Piercy's Connections:

Connections are made slowly, sometimes they grow underground.

You cannot always tell by looking at what is happening

More than half a tree is spread out in the soil under your feet.

...Weave real connections, create real nodes, build real houses.

Live a life you can endure: make life that is loving.

Keep tangling and interweaving and taking more in...

This is how we are going to live for a long time: not always.

For every gardener knows that after the digging, after the planting, after the long season of tending and growth, the harvest comes.

And we'll conclude this month's email with Ron's simple, yet important contribution:

As you sow, so shall you reap.

Next month's theme—Giving Thanks!

We want to hear from you!

Submissions are due by the 15th of each month. Please use this form to send us your contributions!

[email protected]

Wyoming Interfaith Network. PO Box 371

Beulah, WY 82712