麻豆社

Good morning. This weekend marks the end of the Great British Pea Week, a festival of the humble pea in British culture. Work, awareness, charitable events, and pea-based-puns, abound.

The Pea Harvest is enormous. Because they have to be frozen within 90 minutes of being picked, you might find five harvesting machines operating in a single field. During the pea-harvest, labourers across the UK work shifts around the clock to prepare the two-billion portions of peas for the local and international market.

There鈥檚 an Irish word 鈥� meitheal 鈥� which is used to describe something that can happen during a harvest. The word could just be translated as labourers, or work-group, but it means something much more.

Meitheal is the word used for when neighbours come to the aid of a farming family who are in distress. Perhaps there鈥檚 been a bereavement in that family, or some other misfortune that means a farmer will lose their harvest. 鈥�. A meitheal happens. 鈥�. People come, and do the work for the farmer, for free. These people have harvests of their own to do, but no matter. No money is exchanged 鈥� to do so would be to break the code. The only thing the recipient can do in return is host a meal of thanks.

The cost of receiving is hospitality; and anyway the meitheal will be done for someone else the next year. The recipient one year will have a different role the next.

The Irish language translation of Jesus鈥� phrase 鈥渢he harvest is plentiful but the labourers are few鈥� uses the word 鈥渕eitheal鈥� for labourers. This, then, gives those words of Jesus an extraordinary resonance: it鈥檚 not about the shortage of labourers, but rather about the neighbourliness of neighbours.

Even more, in Matthew鈥檚 placing of this phrase, Jesus is walking through towns and villages, seeing crowds, and seeing that they are 鈥渉arassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd鈥�, so it鈥檚 also a critique of civic leadership. Jesus organises his disciples into teams to go with a message of comfort and power to those towns. His organising principle is based on recognising the needs he sees, and practices, too, a kind of leadership that makes a difference on the ground. He organises a meitheal.

This kind of labouring is for the benefit of people. Its economy is hospitality 鈥� both the giving and the receiving of it. Its reward is human connection, the alleviation of suffering, and the challenging of a system. You鈥檒l find words for this type of co-labouring in many languages; and in languages where there isn鈥檛 a formal word for it, it still happens. People are good everywhere.

In all our harvests, in times of struggle or peace, the need is great; how will we help each other?

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