A Little Bit of Utopia

This weekend I had one of the more profound experiences of my life: I went out with my village to help our neighbor Gil “vendage” – to harvest the grapes from his vineyard. But what I thought at first was the most profound turned out to only be an introduction to the real lesson.

At 830 in the morning about 40 of us showed up in head-high grape vines by following balloons to his vineyard. We were met by the local baker who had made us croissants and coffee, and after much kissing and bonjours we started. Before I could even ask what to do a new friend came up with a bucket and scissors and showed me precisely how to cut each grape, what grapes were good and not good (“but you have to taste it, this way you will know”), and we crawled down the row in pairs with one person on each side of the vine filling our buckets. Around us dogs zipped through spaces between leaves, butterflies dipped between our busy hands, and children came up and down emptying our buckets while getting stopped from time to time to be shown something by an adult. Some people were singing, others whistling or calling out to their dogs, and there was much laughter and chatting.

It suddenly occurred to me that I was squarely in the middle of a centuries-long life cycle: The entire village was cutting the grapes that next year they would buy as wine at the store and drink, and even after the vendage we would drink last year’s wine to celebrate our work’s end, and all the knowledge of how to do this and what it meant was being passed down from adult to child as it has for generations and generations. Cutting the grapes alongside me was the local beekeeper whose honey is for sale at the little superette, the farmer who brings in his fresh eggs in the morning, and some of the other organic growers and cheese-makers who sell at the village market. There was something incredibly complete about that, all of us helping to produce what we would enjoy later in a fully harmonious circle that looped unending and unbroken by things like stock markets, Whole Foods, and ‘what do you owe me’ – it was the village providing for itself while at the same time socializing, teaching, learning, loving.

It was a little bit of utopia.

Later, at the bar-b-que Gil made to thank all of us the friend who showed me how to cut the grapes told me about the different people there, what they do and who they are. This is when the shiny side of utopia showed tarnish. One man had run off with another woman – here were their kids; another had been divorced and then re-married with a good friend in their circle; another two had had an affair but then broke it off. And I sighed. Suddenly the gloom of small-town gossip hit me and I felt claustrophobic and wanted to run off to the anonymity of the big city as fast as I could.

But then I rubbed my eyes and took another look. Yes, this person ran off with another … but the former and new partners were all sitting together, talking, even laughing – and an hour before they were working together side by side in the vineyard. One of the children from another wife needed help with her plate and the “jilted ex” stepped right in with a smile and slid another one underneath to support it. The step kids, new kids, former kids – all were kicking around the bonfire daring each other to do things and playing together. Is this all to say that there were no tears, no pain, no arguments or disruptions? Not at all. But it is to say that they’ve learned how to shift and not get stuck. To transform past the mistakes and the heartache and the problems and come together in a moment of harmony.

Utopia it was not … but Paradise it was.

We have a saying that Paradise is when the lion and the lamb are able to walk side by side (Isaiah). Then we are in the Garden. And Paradise is now, at any moment, available to us when we are able to be next to what we thought was our enemy and find instead that we can exist together in the same space peacefully.

The village and its people are neither perfect nor flawed – for me to bounce back and forth between the two is to get stuck myself in ideals and defects, between angels and devils. Paradise is neither one thing nor the other – it is the third, a new place where the conflict of the two find a place of resolution. And because of that, it made it all that much sweeter because it was no longer the stressful pedestal that always threatens to fall over, but the very real seat that offers a place of rest to all who have learned how to sit there. It was this that was the centuries-long life cycle – the living in a small community and learning how to keep it intact and flourishing year after year, decade after decade despite, and in spite of, life’s challenges. Lion and lamb, side by side and walking together. Or cutting grapes together.

For me, I’ll take Paradise over utopia any day.