For the past year, I have been living in Sonoma. I take a long walk daily through vineyards and I drive past vineyards every day on my way to work. I have become attuned to the cycle of the vines and of the wineries. The bare plants in late fall, the budding leaves in winter, The mustard plants glowing yellow, growing between the rows of vines, brightening the valley as winter yields to sunnier days. The workers in hooded sweatshirts, lopping and thinning the canes, directing the growth into the grapes. The emergence of little clusters of green berries in spring. The slow turning of the berries from green to purple. The bitter taste of them before their time. The light blue dust that delicately covers the skins of the grapes as they ripen. The glow of sun dancing off the shiny leaves of the vines, lines going up and down the hillsides, around the groves of oaks and stands of chaparral, a green corduroy blanket over the contours of the earth. The wisps of pale dust that rise as I walk between the rows of vines, powdering my hiking shoes in the summer. The rich aroma of oak casks being cleaned out in the warehouses. Then the harvest and the crush – a sudden burst of activity in the valley. Lots of trucks and tankers and tractors rumbling in every direction. Farmworkers streaming into town. Men in cowboy hats walking down the road with plastic bags filled with groceries, going home after work. Big white plastic crates piled up in the fields. The whining sound of the screws moving the grapes through the stainless steel crushing troughs as I walk past the wineries. Stakebed trucks rolling
through town, filled to brimming with pungent glistening must left after the crush. Then the slow turning of the leaves from green to purple and red and then to thin and crackly wafers of tan, dangling loose and blowing off the vines in the stormy winds of winter once again.
The landscape of Sonoma, with its eroded volcanic hills, its basaltic rocks spangled with grey-green lichens, its rugged oaks and sinuous madrones hovering over its green to golden hills, its gentle plain
spreading down to the marshes and the Bay – all of it is concentrated through the grace of a natural alchemy into small spongy billows of sweetness lying between the skins and the seeds of countless grapes. The grapes of only a few rows of vines will tell a slightly but perhaps very significantly different story than those of the rows of vines but a few dozen feet above or below them in a hillside vineyard, once the grapes are pressed and their juice filtered and fermented into wine. Just a bit rockier soil, just a bit more exposure to sun, just a day’s wait before the harvest could spell the difference between Two Buck Chuck and a bottle of Ravenswood Dickerson, which by the way, is my favorite so far…
I have become marinated in the mystery that is the vine, the never fully apprehended wonder that is the wine. More deeply appreciative of the central place that this mystical substance held in the imaginations of the writers of the Bible. The natural beauty of a vineyard distills itself into the taste of a grape. And in a fermentation tank, the juice of a grape, in stillness and quietude and darkness, unseen and untouched, sublimates into wine. What a marvel, what a miracle! In Sonoma, wine seems more plentiful than water – it’s tough to get a water hookup if you are building a house outside of town. Yet winemaking continues to be miraculous, commonplace though it may be. The grape juice in the vat just sits there and turns into something other than grape juice. It turns into a substance that tantalizes the tongue, dazzles the mind, lightens the heart. Amazing.
But you can do that. Yes, you, too, can just sit there and turn into something other than what you used to be. You can just sit there, in silence and stillness, even in the dark, even in your sleep – maybe especially in your sleep – and be transformed into a new being. And you don’t have to drink wine to do it, either!
In the vat, fermenting, processes are underway in the juice of the grapes that cannot be seen with the naked eye. Uncountable trillions of yeast bacteria are going through their quick life cycles, eating the sugars and excreting them as alcohol, and doing other subtle and un-measurable things to add flavor to the wine. There is so much going on in wine vats and in oak barrels that no winemaker, no enologist, can possibly give it a full scientific explanation. Someone in my church told me that the only liquid that
is more complex than wine is human blood. I don't know if that's scientifically accurate, but it sounds right! Yet another reason to appreciate Jesus’ words at his last supper, when he equated his blood with the wine in his cup.
Let awe overwhelm you, let a tingle run up your spine, as you consider this: your soul is fermenting and transforming right now. Out of your sight. Out of your conscious awareness. Stuff is going on in your soul that you know little or nothing of.
Jesus went to Cana because Mom wanted him to. He didn’t really want to go. She shamed into going to the wedding party. Oh, how guilty I am of the same thing with my daughter – sigh—conning her into going to events she wants nothing to do with – but will do just to humor me. Jesus showed up as the host was running out of wine, a huge faux pas in that time as well as ours. His mom shamed him into solving the problem. Oh, it’s a myth, it’s a fabulous tale, what happened. Impossible. Historically implausible, but spiritually as true as true can be. Jesus saw some big earthenware jars full of water. He turned them into jars full of wine. The party perked instead of pooped.
You are a jar of water. The Christ is turning you into wine as I write. You don’t know how. I don’t know how. I daresay Jesus didn’t know how either. Stuff is going on in that jar of yours that nobody can explain.
You may have been a jar full of anger. Somebody did you wrong, and you resented them, maybe resented them more than you knew. The hurt and the anger went deep. The Christ yeasted your anger and your hurt and without you even knowing it, it is being transformed, as I speak, into compassion and kindness. I don’t know how. I can’t explain how anger can turn into empathy and sympathy, but that is what happens very often. Let it happen, and it will.
You may have been a jar full of fear. Fear of being shamed or blamed, fear of failing or appearing to be a failure. Fear of losing your status or your looks or your youth. But the Christ passed over your jar of fear and without you knowing how, as we speak, it is being sublimated into courage and strength and the energy to act positively for the benefit of yourself and others. Let it happen, and it will.
You may have been a jar of selfishness. You may have strayed into the false assumption that you were put on this earth just for the purpose of satisfying your own desires and instincts. You may have come to define others as just entities whose job it is to meet your needs and cater to your preferences. You may have fallen into the seductive and currently fashionable belief system that says that greed is good for everybody. But the Christ has passed by your jar of selfishness and now, without your conscious
intervention, you are being transformed into a being who seeks the common good, who shares and sacrifices for others, who still seeks good for self but not at the cost of harming or being insensitive to the needs of others.
You are changing, and maybe all it took for you to change was to be willing for the grace of God to enter your soul and ferment within you, in ways you don’t understand and can’t explain. You are becoming something and someone other than who you used to be. You are the water in the jars at the wedding in Cana, and soon you will be the life of the party. You’ll be the best that was saved for last.
You are in these grapes, you are being pressed into the juice, poured into the vat, filled into the cask, drawn into the bottle, poured into the cup that the Christ offers to all. From being sweet and simple, you are becoming fascinating and complex, a gift of God to yourself and all those whose lives you grace with your presence.....