"... and what came after that was fallowness - a season to rest and reset, to be replenished and renourished ... to hold space and emptiness and be still in the quiet of not being rushed."

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Growing up in Iowa, I know that summer is the growing season. I see it all around me.

So it might seem weird to tell you that most summers I try as hard as I can to let my mind and soul lie fallow.

Fallow - like a piece of farmland plowed and dug up but left unsown for a period in order to restore its ability to grow an abundant crop.

I have to lie fallow.

I use my words the remaining months of the year: Reading, writing, thinking, drafting, editing, speaking, talking.

By the time June rolls around I feel like a wrung-out washcloth. Not one drop left in me.

And so I stop speaking.

At least I stop speaking for a living.

I write less in my journal and simply read.

I try not to teach classes, do weddings, take speaking engagements.

And - I have come to learn - I stop blogging.

I tried to write some blog posts this summer and just could not do it.

It's hard to explain. It just feels as if all my words are gone.

And so I have learned that if I let the "words" part of me lie fallow most summers, come fall a crop of words appear to grow as if by magic and off I can go again on my jolly way - teaching, preaching, writing, leading, talking - letting words tumble out of me with abandon.

A crop of words grown in the rich farmland of my life left to lie fallow for a season.