Cornflaked

 

Cornfield, July 25, 2025

Why did the cornflakes cross the road? It’s not a joke…well, maybe it is hinting toward one, inviting the kind of humor that copes with such mind&heart-numbing craziness that’s swirling off the world: political lies and flagrant abuse of law/morality/justice, religious hypocrisy, the obscenity of wealth concentration coupled with neglect of the poor, the threatened, the environment … 

Anyway, closer to home and concerning the usually-more-manageable woodlands and gardens here, the west wind’s been delivering mail: “cornflakes.” The no-longer green field across the road, now littered with debris from the harvested field corn, 

Cornfield, Nov 22, 2025

sends over each day (or minute) the thrashed remains. Here’s our front garden featuring the west wind’s recent unwelcome delivery contrasted with its appearance before getting cornflaked:

Nov 17, 2025

May 8, 2025

Perhaps the cornflakes could just be left to rot, but internet info says their decomposition takes over a year. Assuming that only in a few months, spring will come again, what’s the chance that the poppies and iris will break through layers of heavy leaf stubble in order to bloom and bring their blessed end of winter?

Iris Garden, May 19, 2025

The “joke” is that sometimes it takes an overwhelm to enable a breakthrough. Perhaps such a mess is necessary to push past normal sense-making in order to make way for a crucial insight or inner development, particularly vital for the spiritual pathway. St. John of the Cross says certain transformations cannot come by any human effort. No prayer, no contemplation, not even the ascetic acts of the hyper-religious mystic can do it. Only the power and gift from God.

Yet God always acts in this way—as the soul is able to see—moving, governing, bestowing being, power, graces, and gifts on all creatures, bearing them all in Himself by His power, presence, and substance. And the soul sees what God is in Himself and what He is in his creatures in only one view, just as one who in opening the door of a palace beholds in one act the eminence of the person who dwells inside together with what that sovereign is doing. Therefore what I understand about how God effects this awakening and view given to the soul (which is in Him substantially as is every creature) is that He removes some of the many veils and curtains hanging in front of it so that it might get a glimmer of Him as He is. And then that countenance of His, full of graces, becomes partially and vaguely discernible, for not all the veils are removed. Because all things are moving by His power, what He is doing is evident as well, so He seems to move in them and they in Him with continual movement. Hence it seems to the soul that, in being itself moved and awakened, it was God who moved and awakened. [“The Living Flame of Love” kindle version, p. 117; print version: Collected Works of St. John of the Cross, p. 645  Trans/Ed Kieran Kavanaugh & Otilio Rodriguez]

“Cornflakes” that can never be managed by human effort are obviously not just about the physical debris left after the harvest of field corn. And acknowledging the inadequacy of human effort is not to deny the necessity of it. In other words, to “let go—let God” does not mean a dismissal of the need for prayer-without-ceasing and other acts of devotion.

In addition to being overwhelmed by the literal cornflakes brought by the west wind, an inner message that has been struggling to get through for over twenty years may have gained extra current. It seems the body’s complaint (stooping, raking, hand picking, hauling, grrr…) was needed to conduct the message. This aching body was almost to the point of generating curses that might spark out at the causes of this undeserved heavy burden. 

And perhaps the charge came in that presumption of judgment and vengeance (cf Matt 7:1, “Judge not” and Deut 32:35, “vengeance is mine, saith the Lord” also Matt 5:38, Rom 12:19, Heb 10:30…) that the better angel was roused and prompted to whisper “now, now” or an admonition more harsh, along the lines of “do you think you’ve got it so bad…what about all the hungry children…” Thanks, Mom, I needed that. Seriously though, if suffering is required, cornflakes are a piece of cake. And I found myself substituting gratitude for this light burden, easy yoke, which could have justifiably been more severe.

But, let not escape the elephant: Is suffering required? For there’s the real deal within the cornflake kerfuffle. How does a person deal with the Job issue? Why does an All-Powerful, All-Loving Creator make and allow so much pain and suffering as witnessed in each morning’s news? 

A pretty good sized library is needed to contain the writing on this issue, 

sometimes called “theodicy.”

Studies of the book of Job and other volumes on this topic might approve the summary expression given by David Burrell’s Deconstructing Theodicy in his subtitle: Why Job Has Nothing to Say to the Puzzle of Suffering. Perhaps the best and/or only reaction to this unsolveable problem is found in Silence (with awe). 

Tired enough by raking out and hauling off cornflakes, it became easier to yield to this: “You have to suffer and you aren’t able to know why!” And that surrender may have allowed a next step. Previous attempts to “get” St. John of the Cross hadn’t been very successful, but now the guidance from his works began coming through. St. John says:

It cost God a great deal to bring these souls to this stage [of solitude and tranquility], and He highly values His work of having introduced them into this solitude and emptiness regarding their faculties and activity so that He might speak to their hearts, which is what He always desires. Since it is He who now reigns in the soul with an abundance of peace and calm, He takes the initiative himself by making the natural acts of the faculties fail, by which the soul laboring the whole night accomplished nothing [Lk. 5:5]; and He feeds the spirit without the activity of the senses because neither the sense nor its function is capable of spirit. 

The extent to which God values this tranquility and sleep, or annihilation of sense, is clear in the entreaty, so notable and efficacious, that He made in the Song of Songs: I adjure you, daughters of Jerusalem, by the roes and the harts of the fields, that you stir not up nor awaken my beloved until she please [Sg. 3:5]. He hereby indicates how much He loves solitary sleep and forgetfulness, for He compares it to these animals that are so retiring and withdrawn. p. 95 kindle; p. 631, para 54 in Kavanaugh & Rodriguez

Amen. Yes, there is a blessing for humility and a season for stillness, for a maturing, a seasoning, a special kind of purification particularly to take out toxicity of arrogance, entitlement, egotism, and suchlike.

And then, perhaps another season follows. Having gained through humble surrender a sensitivity in accepting that the human mind is not sufficient, a purpose takes form in relation to moving further into an increased sense and/or feeling of the divine presence. How is God being revealed each moment? In this particular case, when tending gardens where the Beauty of Nature usually comes, why might our labor be frustrated, even destroyed, by cornflakes? Could this relate to a preparation to receive a special gift, that involving a God-given transformation in the capacity to hold the overwhelming problem of suffering: 

Stanza 2 of The Living Flame of Love

O sweet cautery,

O delightful wound!

O gentle hand! O delicate touch

That tastes of eternal life

And pays every debt!

In killing You changed death to life.

St. John seems to be saying that pain is the price of the path. That’s an overly simplistic reduction of his teaching, but it suggests the inarticulate grasping that hours and days of dealing with cornflake extraction might approximate a gentle and loving application of the cautery requirement. St. John comments on these lines: 

The reason these trials are necessary in order to reach this state is that this highest union cannot be wrought in a soul that is not fortified by trials and temptations, and purified by tribulations, darknesses, and distress, just as a superior quality liqueur is poured only into a sturdy flask that is prepared and purified. By these trials the sensory part of the soul is purified and strengthened, and the spiritual part is refined, purged, and disposed. Since unpurified souls must undergo the sufferings of fire in the next life to attain union with God in glory, so in this life they must undergo the fire of these sufferings to reach the union of perfection. This fire acts on some more vigorously than on others, and on some for a longer time than on others, according to the degree of union to which God wishes to raise them, and according to what they must be purged in them.

 Through these trials in which God places the spirit and the senses, the soul in bitterness acquires virtues, strength, and perfection, for virtue is made perfect in weakness [2 Cor. 12:9] and refined through the endurance of suffering. Iron cannot serve for the artificer's plan, or be adapted to it without fire and the hammer; as Jeremiah says of the fire that gave him knowledge: You have sent fire into my bones and have instructed me [Lam. 1:13]. And Jeremiah also says of the hammer: You have chastised me, Lord, and I was instructed [Jer. 31:18]. Hence Ecclesiasticus says: What can anyone know who is not tried? And the one that has no experience knows little [Ecclus. 34:9-10]. 

And here it ought to be pointed out why so few reach this high state of perfect union with God. It should be known that the reason is not that God wishes only a few of these spirits to be so elevated; he would rather want all to be perfect, but he finds few vessels that will endure so lofty and sublime a work.

p.51 kindle; p. 604 in Kavanaugh & Rodriguez

Shifting a worldview may be like moving a sand dune, grain by grain. Like decomposing “entitlement” or “power-over” or “THE truth” so that the God-given may take form. 

This experience with cornflakes should obviously be taken as highly individual and not preached as literally or metaphorically applied to anyone else. St. John has strong words to say for anyone who presumes to impose prescriptions:

Thus the whole concern of directors should not be to accommodate souls to their own method and condition, but they should observe the road along which God is leading one; if they do not recognize it, they should leave the soul alone and not bother it. And in harmony with the path and spirit along which God leads a soul, the spiritual director should strive to conduct it into greater solitude, tranquility, and freedom of spirit. He should give it latitude so that when God introduces it into this solitude it does not bind its corporeal or spiritual faculties to some particular object, interior or exterior, and does not become anxious or afflicted with the thought that nothing is being done. Even though the soul is not then doing anything, God is doing something in it. Kindle p. 88 ; p 627; para 46 Kavanaugh & Rodriguez

Homeward, Nov 19, 2025