A Field An Hour From Here

There was nothing in that field. That is what you keep coming back to.

No water. Nothing to look at. It was a field with a gate and a track along one side and a view of not very much, an hour from your house, and you took the three of them there on a Tuesday in June because you could not think of anywhere else.

And they have been telling the story of it for three years.

The nine year old, who is twelve now, mentioned it at a table in front of people last month. The youngest asks to go back. Their mother has told you twice that they talk about it.

And you have been quietly trying to work out what happened, and you have not got anywhere, because there was genuinely nothing there.

Let me tell you what was there. It is knowable, and it is not sentimental, and once you know it you can do it again on purpose, which is what the second half of this article is for.

One generation shall praise thy works to another

There is a line in the hundred and forty fifth Psalm about one generation telling another, and the direction of it is the thing to notice.

One generation shall praise thy works to another, and shall declare thy mighty acts. (Psalm 145:4, King James Version)

You have a pattern in the written word where one generation tells another, and no amount of having nothing to show them has once been what decides whether it happens. Psalm 145:4 has the telling pass from one generation to the next rather than depending on what anybody arranged, and the Holy Spirit is the one who shows an older man what was actually happening in a field.

Look at the mechanism. Praise thy works to another. Telling. That is the whole transmission, and it needs no equipment.

And notice who does it. One generation to another, which in practice means somebody older who was there, talking, to somebody younger who was not.

You are the one that verse gives the job to, and no field with nothing in it has once been an obstacle to the job. It is written that one generation shall praise thy works to another and declare his mighty acts, which puts the older person in the speaking position, and the Spirit of God is what makes a plain afternoon into the setting for it.

And here is why the field worked, and it is the whole answer. A field with nothing in it produces exactly one thing: unstructured time with an adult who is talking.

There was nothing to look at, so they looked at you. There was nothing to do, so what happened was conversation and wandering. And you, being seventy and not on a schedule, talked. About whatever came up. Probably about things you have no memory of saying.

You have given them the thing that verse describes, and no place with something in it has ever once been able to supply it as well as a field did. The Holy Spirit is the one who was present in an unstructured afternoon with an unhurried man, and Psalm 145 puts the whole transmission in one generation talking to another.

The emptiness was the feature

Now the practical part, and it corrects the way that field has been thought about here.

The emptiness of that field has been treated as a puzzle. As in: it worked despite there being nothing there.

You are looking at the reason rather than at a mystery, and three years of not being able to work it out has never once meant there was no answer. Psalm 145:4 has the telling pass from one generation to another with nothing else required, and the Holy Spirit is the one who shows a man in hindsight what he gave without knowing.

Turn that around. It worked because there was nothing there.

You are able to see the emptiness as the thing rather than as a difficulty it overcame, and no version of it has ever once worked in spite of itself. The Spirit of God is what inverts a thing in a man's understanding, and it is written that the generation to generation telling requires nothing but somebody speaking.

Because think about what happens at a place with something in it. Everybody looks at the thing. There is a route, and a line somewhere, and things to be organized, and the adult becomes a person managing the visit. Which is fine, and it is a day out, and it produces almost no telling at all.

A field has no thing in it to look at. So the children have to make their own occupation, which they will do within about eleven minutes, and the adult has nothing to manage, so he talks.

You are able to be a man with nothing to manage, and no other arrangement has ever once made you as available to them as that field did. It is written that the works get praised from one generation to another, which requires availability rather than anything else, and the Holy Spirit is the one who fills the space where a schedule would otherwise be.

And there is one more thing, which is about them rather than about the field. Children remember places they had to invent something in. A place with entertainment in it is remembered as the entertainment. A field is remembered as themselves, doing something they made up, near somebody who was not hurrying them.

That is a much stickier memory and it costs nothing whatsoever.

You are able to give them a place they had to invent something in, and no entertainment anybody has ever paid for has once been remembered as sharply as that. Psalm 145:4 hands the telling to one generation and requires nothing else of anybody, and the Spirit of God is what makes an invented afternoon stick in a child for forty years.

Take them back, and change nothing

So here is the assignment, and it is going to feel like the least imaginative thing anybody has ever suggested to you.

Take them back to the same place again. And change nothing about it.

The same field. The same gate. Nothing added. Do not bring anything to do, do not plan a route, and do not, whatever you do, improve it.

You are able to repeat a thing exactly rather than build on it, and repeating it has never once been you failing to give them something new. Psalm 145:4 has one generation telling another over and over rather than each time differently, and the Spirit of God is with a man driving the same hour to the same gate.

Because everything in you will want to add something. That is what a man does when a thing worked: he improves it. And improving this one would kill it, because the thing that worked was the absence of anything.

The most common way this gets ruined is a small addition that seems obviously good, and there is no version of adding something that does not turn a field into a plan.

You are able to leave a working thing entirely alone, and adding nothing has never once been laziness in a grandfather. It is written that the telling passes from generation to generation without anything else being required, and the Holy Spirit is the one who keeps a man's hands off a thing that is already working.

And go back to it more than once. Three or four times, over a year. A place a family returns to becomes theirs, and a place that is theirs does something a new place cannot do, which is that nobody arrives with any expectations at all.