Croppies
Stories
Lectionary Tales For The Pulpit
Series IV Cycle C
My wife enjoys Mel Gibson's talent. Sort of like I enjoy Jamie Lee Curtis' talent. Let me leave it at that. But give the man his due. The actor from Down Under has appeared on the screen as the Prince of Denmark (Hamlet), a hero of the Scots (Braveheart), a Revolutionary War hero (Patriot), and as an on-the-edge, over-the-top cop (Lethal Weapon). You can catch Mad Max as an addled taxi cab driver (Conspiracy Theory), finding his long-lost love (Forever Young), getting his kid back (Ransom), or trying on pantyhouse (What Women Want). With Gibson, it's always interesting.
In the summer of 2002, he appears as a Pennsylvania farmer who discovers supernatural communication in his cornfield. The movie, Signs, revisits the mysterious phenomenon of signs or patterns that have appeared in fields of corn or wheat. These signs consist of spirals or interlocking rings, looking a lot like an agricultural mandala full of shamanic mystery. They first appeared in southern England about thirty years ago. No one knows for sure how or why they appear and what their meaning is. Yet, theories abound.
And the people most likely to provide an explanation for these crop signs are -- well, Croppies. They're known as Croppies for the same reason Star Trek aficionados are known as Trekkies.
They know that in 1991, two farmers admitted to the staging of some crop signs. This cast a blanket of skepticism over the whole phenomenon. But Croppies believe something more supernatural is at work. Appearing at the same time as Gibson's movie, Crop Circles: Quest for Truth also came out. This film takes a close look at the New Age Croppies who number in England alone over 10,000, and who every summer troop across the hills of Wiltshire looking for fresh circles, communiqués from the Great Beyond, some believe.
Some scientists, by no means Croppies, believe the designs are based on mathematics. Their study of crop circles has uncovered pentagrams, hexagons, and other geometric shapes. Some engineers claim that the Earth's magnetic field is altered where the signs appear. Since the crop circles seem to be appearing with greater frequency, some argue that some kind of progressive, systematic program is in progress, but no one can say for sure what that program is.
Seth Shostak, a senior astronomer with the SETI Institute, is no Croppie. He thinks it is all good fun and perhaps an example of "grain graffiti" but that's about it. If aliens wanted to communicate with us, he wonders, "Why would they use such a low-bandwidth method?"
Good question. Let me rephrase it. If aliens wanted to communicate with us, how would they do it?
Which brings me to the next question. Without casting God in the role of SuperAlien -- If God wanted to communicate with us, how would he do it?
We believe we know how. Through Jesus Christ. God in human form. But the prophet Joel adds a further layer of understanding. God says to him, "I will pour out my Spirit on all people." As a Christian Croppie, I am looking for evidence of God's Spirit appearing in the world around us. Sometimes, I think it's hard to find.
Then I think -- and I can't take this metaphor too far -- that I'm not only a Christian Croppie searching for signs of spiritual life, I am the Crop on whom the Spirit etches his Circle, a signal to others, that we are not alone. That God has come to us, God has communicated to us through his Spirit, and the signs are all around us.
In the summer of 2002, he appears as a Pennsylvania farmer who discovers supernatural communication in his cornfield. The movie, Signs, revisits the mysterious phenomenon of signs or patterns that have appeared in fields of corn or wheat. These signs consist of spirals or interlocking rings, looking a lot like an agricultural mandala full of shamanic mystery. They first appeared in southern England about thirty years ago. No one knows for sure how or why they appear and what their meaning is. Yet, theories abound.
And the people most likely to provide an explanation for these crop signs are -- well, Croppies. They're known as Croppies for the same reason Star Trek aficionados are known as Trekkies.
They know that in 1991, two farmers admitted to the staging of some crop signs. This cast a blanket of skepticism over the whole phenomenon. But Croppies believe something more supernatural is at work. Appearing at the same time as Gibson's movie, Crop Circles: Quest for Truth also came out. This film takes a close look at the New Age Croppies who number in England alone over 10,000, and who every summer troop across the hills of Wiltshire looking for fresh circles, communiqués from the Great Beyond, some believe.
Some scientists, by no means Croppies, believe the designs are based on mathematics. Their study of crop circles has uncovered pentagrams, hexagons, and other geometric shapes. Some engineers claim that the Earth's magnetic field is altered where the signs appear. Since the crop circles seem to be appearing with greater frequency, some argue that some kind of progressive, systematic program is in progress, but no one can say for sure what that program is.
Seth Shostak, a senior astronomer with the SETI Institute, is no Croppie. He thinks it is all good fun and perhaps an example of "grain graffiti" but that's about it. If aliens wanted to communicate with us, he wonders, "Why would they use such a low-bandwidth method?"
Good question. Let me rephrase it. If aliens wanted to communicate with us, how would they do it?
Which brings me to the next question. Without casting God in the role of SuperAlien -- If God wanted to communicate with us, how would he do it?
We believe we know how. Through Jesus Christ. God in human form. But the prophet Joel adds a further layer of understanding. God says to him, "I will pour out my Spirit on all people." As a Christian Croppie, I am looking for evidence of God's Spirit appearing in the world around us. Sometimes, I think it's hard to find.
Then I think -- and I can't take this metaphor too far -- that I'm not only a Christian Croppie searching for signs of spiritual life, I am the Crop on whom the Spirit etches his Circle, a signal to others, that we are not alone. That God has come to us, God has communicated to us through his Spirit, and the signs are all around us.
