Audrey passed away in October 1998, and Wally in April 2013. Both are buried a short distance from the farm they worked from the time they married well into their elder years, in a small cemetery next to the little evangelical country church they faithfully attended and served for most of their lives. They were what we might be tempted to call “ordinary folk.” But that would be a misnomer, an oxymoron of colossal proportions.
To the left of my desk is an original oil painting by an award-winning artist named Audrey Strandquist. Unless you live about an hour west of Minneapolis and are above the age of fifty, I doubt you’ve seen her work. Audrey was my wife’s maternal grandmother, and her awards were conferred mainly at regional fairs. She typically painted landscapes, but in the painting next to me, titled “Threshing” and dated August 8, 1940, she beautifully captured a portrait of her tall, strong 24-year-old soon-to-be farmer husband, Wally, standing next to a bin of freshly threshed grain. In the background is a field of mature corn. Audrey was 23 when she applied the oils to this old canvas.
Audrey passed away in October 1998, and Wally in April 2013. Both are buried a short distance from the farm they worked from the time they married well into their elder years, in a small cemetery next to the little evangelical country church they faithfully attended and served for most of their lives. They were what we might be tempted to call “ordinary folk.” But that would be a misnomer, an oxymoron of colossal proportions.
There actually exists no such thing: an ordinary human life. To think a life ordinary is to believe a delusion. It reveals the shameful fact that we can barely bear true beauty — we who tire quickly of sunsets, often curse the rain, find wind an inconvenience, and define boring as watching the grass grow. How strange that we find violent virtual deaths in our films more captivating than the gentle life that miraculously awakens when buried, pushes up through the dark soil, catches the sunlight for food, and grows into a brilliantly green brushstroke of beauty in the very real landscape art we view every day.
“As for man, his days are like grass” (Psalm 103:15). Perhaps that is why we find the lives of men boring and ordinary. Watching a man is like watching the grass grow.
Lives Like Grass
Wally and Audrey were like grass. But being farmers, they found the adventure of grass less boring than most of us. Year after year, in a choreographed dance of collaborative labors, they tilled the dark soil, buried the seeds, and watched the epic of nourishing life slowly unfold. They endured the suspense and sometimes the tragedies of storms, droughts, and pestilence. They knew that the flower of the field was both fiercely resilient and fearfully fragile.
Like the grass they so carefully tended, their lives were a portrait of unassuming beauty. In the landscape of reality, you likely wouldn’t notice them unless you took the time to look. Wally was strong yet gentle, and his voice was calm and soothing. Audrey was kind and encouraging, and the bounty of her dinner table was unsurpassed.