My grandparents were farmers. Corn and soybeans. A few cows, a few pigs, some chickens, lots of cats, one dog named Scotty and an impressive vegetable garden. All on a farm in Central Illinois. Now, Illinois is flat. It is forever and forever flat. Outside of the cities, as far as the eye can see are rows and rows of corn and soybeans, interrupted only by an occasional farmhouse, an oak tree, perhaps a grove of trees, a barn a road. Much of the year, Illinois is brown. Brown dirt, brown trees, dead grass. Not a place to discover beauty of the majestic sort.

The beauty is in the details. The beauty of the Illinois farmland is in the cycles of life. Every year, the same cycle: First a green blade pushes its way out of the rich soil. Knee high by the Fourth of July, my grandfather used to say. The ears of corn begin to form, and the tassels on top. Now taller than even grandpa. Just as the weather begins to cool, the stalks of corn start to take on the golden color of the harvest. The waiting for growth, counting the ears on each stalk, waiting for rain, then the mad rush to harvest the core before the first snow, then the wait, wait, wait through the brown and snowy winter for the spring thaw when the planting begins again.

Life there centers around the crops. Planting, growing, harvesting, planting. Birth, life, death, rebirth. Dependent entirely on the goodwill of the universe. Grandma leans over the sink to gaze with worried face at the blue sky. "Sure wish it would rain, John." "It'll rain," says grandpa. "It always rains just before it's too late."

Farmers gather while they wait at the coffee shop in town. "Think we're gonna get that rain the weatherman promised, John?" "It'll rain," says grandpa. "It always rains just before it's too late."

"Can't afford to lose that crop this year. We didn't have the money even to take out insurance. Sure wish it would rain." "It always rains just before it's too late."

Of course, it didn't always rain in time. There have been crop failures because of drought. And sometimes it rained too much. Sometimes just enough. Even in this modem day of petrochemical fertilizers and perfected hybrid corn the topic nearest a farmer's heart is whether it will rain, how much, how soon. But the cycle of the year never changes. The corn the soybeans, the spring, the summer, the fall, the winter.

Thanksgiving at my grandparents' house was truly a sigh of relief. Farmers work sometimes around the clock to finish the harvest before the first frost. More than once grandpa and my uncles worked even harder when a neighbor died or fell ill to get their corn stored for the winter. The harvest doesn't wait for grief or fever to pass. By Thanksgiving Day it is finished. Another cycle complete, the family finances secure (depending on the core prices which are always discussed over turkey, along with stories about some lazy farmer who actually didn't get the harvest in), now there is time to feed the spirit.

And so the buffet was spread with food. Turkey of course. Sometimes if my uncles or cousins went hunting there was pheasant, too. I never liked the pheasant. Sage dressing and oyster dressing. I think Aunt Nancy was the only one who liked the oyster dressing, but it was always there. The jellied cranberry sauce out of the can---plain and with whole cranberries. A jello salad-fancy and in a mold for the holiday. Green beans cooked forever with ham to season them. Mashed potatoes and gravy, candied yams. And corn. Not the field corn safely stored or sold. But corn from that impressive vegetable garden, carefully blanched last summer in boiling milk to keep it sweet, cut from the cob and frozen in plastic bags in the big freezer on the back porch of the farmhouse. Sweet, sweet corn. A reminder of the spring that was, and of the spring that would come again.

We crowded in front of the groaning buffet, around the dining room table, 25-30 of us for the blessing. Uncle Bill who as the eldest there would say the words as we bowed our heads, "Bless us, Oh Lord, for these thy gifts we are about to receive." Sometimes we would sing as well. Then the kids ate at the kitchen table, the adults in the dining room.

I flipped through a gourmet food magazine this week which advertised recipes for a Thanksgiving dinner from the heartland. Elegant, rich recipes, but not what we ate in the Illinois heartland. It was simple food that came straight from the abundance of the earth.

You see, the universe is based on abundance. One of my colleagues has said that God is a lavish and indiscriminate host. There is too much of everything: creatures, cultures, languages, stars, galaxies. I call that abundance grace. It is provided for us freely, gratis. There is no escaping it. Our pilgrim ancestors called it the grace of god. Long before their arrival, the Navajo people called the corn sacred and expressed gratitude for the abundance of their world, the Pawnee referred to the deity of abundance and grace as Mother Corn, the Iroquois of my Illinois homeland offered thanks to the earth, the waters, the plants, the corn, the wind, the moon and stars, the sun. What people of the earth have not at some time recognized and honored the great abundance of the universe?

Oh, our systems work against the bounty of the earth. Somehow the gifts get divided unevenly among the haves and the have nots. Sometimes our very psychic state, our grief, our depression denies the existence of abundance. But when we pierce through those barriers we will find the very thing that grandpa obviously knew.

It will always rain just before it's too late.

Because there is rain. There is richness. There is abundance. Because we are part of this abundant grace-filled universe, and in the end the rain falls for every one of us.