green grace...

Come thou fount of every blessing, tune my heart to sing thy grace… Living on a farm is hard work at many levels. The physical labor can be taxing but the spiritual discipline kicks my butt.

Mucking the stalls is a piece of cake compared to making a decision whether an old cow, crippled and barely able to move, should live or die. Fanny is 23 years old. She and her twin, Annie, have borne many calves for Daddy and for us. She is the only cow we have I can milk and in spite of her horns, she is a gentle, sensible cow. She doesn’t appear to be living with pain so we are keeping her in retirement, much as we did the old bull, Ferdinand. Every day I feed Fannie something special. Sometimes I give her sweet feed or bread or corn cobs and shucks. Squash is a favorite. She hobbles to me and chews contentedly while I scratch her ears. Winter is coming, though, and a hard decision is coming along with it.

We have another much needed hay cutting coming in September if the weather co-operates. The first cutting did not yield enough to get us through the winter. Every time we cut hay, small animals like field mice get caught in the mower and are killed. Buzzards come in and clean up the fields before we bale usually.

 A young blue heron has taken up residence occasionally at our little pond. Fish are plentiful and he and the snapping turtle co-exist amiably, apparently. The algae have exploded because of the dry heat with no rain. Frogs, dragonflies, mosquitoes and snakes call this pond home, too. Every day the deer family visits… a buck, two does and two fawns… along with turkeys and their broods.  Their life is as fragile as ours. Hunting season, coyotes, bobcats, and disease are realities in their life, and mine.

How can I find green grace in the midst of life and death on the farm and in my soul? I sing a lot… no surprise to my Sistah Catherine. Old hymns are favorites, along with the new songs I have learned in my predominantly African American church. Whistling along with singing is a guaranteed grace experience for me. My Bible reading has been distilled to the Psalms and the gospels. I find less and less meaning in using the Bible to reinforce my beliefs and more to say grace over in the sustaining love in the Psalms and Jesus’ life. Watching young fawns and young calves jump and play in lush green fields keeps my heart leaping in joy along with them.  The passage of time with seasons giving their individual gifts, the evidence of life in the presence of death, the sounds of joy with children laughing and donkeys braying, tune my heart to sing God’s grace. I am blessed and I am grateful.

Life abundant and free...

The cleomes are a frowsy, stalky jungle in late summer and early fall. Their blooms begin at the bottom and climb to the top leaving a heaping helping of seeds behind. They really should be cut back but I haven’t the heart to do it yet. Every morning when I walk down the back steps to the stable, the remaining blooms are covered with honey bees and bumble bees, and their buzzing song is my morning doxology. 

The women from College Park Baptist Church in Greensboro were at the farm this weekend for a retreat. They are a mixed bag as most church groups are...young and  old, single and married, various colors... and a wonderfully motley crew. At night, Michael and I would lie in bed and listen to the humming and buzzing coming from the living room. Laughter was frequent and food and wine were in abundant supply. 

This morning I listened to a sad and disturbing report about the state of our world...global warming, the death of some species of birds because of the changing climate...and my heart wept for this grand old Mother Earth who is struggling to maintain our home in spite of our carelessness. We have been given so much...bee songs, bird songs, the rain songs on tin roofs, the crickets singing, bullfrog croak songs, donkey heehaws and rooster crowing, windsong in the trees and grasses...life abundant and free surrounds us and we do not seem to see or care to protect this most precious gift. 

It is overwhelming to consider the vastness of the problem and I feel helpless. I am not. I can leave the cleomes until there are no more blooms. I can recycle. I can limit my trips to town. I can hang clothes out to dry. I can turn out lights. I can use cloth napkins. I can open my home and our farm to those who live in cities so they can hear and taste and feel this wonderful creation in a new way. I must remember I am not in charge of the whole earth, just my small part of it. And like pennies in a piggy bank, small acts multiplied can fill the earth with saving graces.

The life of honey and laughter, faith and doubt, joy and sorrow is abundant and free but it will cost a fortune requiring your undivided living in the present. Pay attention. God is right in front of us and we often pass by with our heads tilted downward looking at machines and listening to faraway voices. 

Dear One, thank you for this most amazing gift of life. It is a short span of time but wonderful and terrifying in its abundance. Help me not to take it for granted. Keep me walking in your light so I may see clearly your presence in all that surrounds me. I give thanks for death for it is in endings that new beginnings come. And as winter approaches and life goes underground, keep my memory of abundant life fresh so I may have hope for the new life yet to come. Amen.

Eternal life... Love that will not let you go

The gene pool is a lovely swimming hole for a grandparent. You are a child again in many ways... fun with limited responsibility. This week I have been given glimpses into the eternal life that is passed on from generation to generation. Our oldest daughter and her husband had an oops baby, a girl after three boys, named Maddie. At nearly two, her pictures are eerily reminiscent of her mother’s pictures at that age. She has begun feeling the tags in her clothes, holding onto them as she moves through her day. Her mom felt the tags in her pajamas as she went to sleep at night. Alison, our middle daughter, has my grandmother’s mouth. When you look at a picture of Grandma as a young woman, you can see the likeness. Now Aidan, her oldest son, bears the mark of a great-great-grandmother he never knew. Adam, our son, has two sons and his youngest son seems to have his father’s temperament. When Clancy’s eyes light up and he smiles at me, years fall away and it is Adam smiling at me through the mists of memory.These glimpses of the past paid forward into the future have been a joy and a wonder. 

In spite of all we know about the science of life, there is so much more we do not know. It seems to me we are a many layered creation, designed to surprise God perhaps, much as we are surprised by our children and grandchildren. When one takes the long view, the ever changing nature of humankind is a delight and a worry at the same time. My grandparent’s generation faced challenges and changes that shifted the balance of the world as they knew it. And, they changed in response to world wars, industrialization, horses to cars, telephones and televisions. Yet the basics, the essentials of self, are still being transmitted, passed on down to new creations in children they could only imagine.Along with behavior patterns and look a like characteristics, I wonder what else is passed down through the generations. 

Traditions help keep the past a part of our present in our family...saying grace at meals, lining upon the stairs to come down for Christmas gifts, going to church, farm time, story telling time, birthday celebrations. Each unit in our family has their own interpretation of traditions, a new creation based on their shared past experiences. One thing I hope never changes... the love that calls us together as family, that binds us together in good times and hard times, the love that is connected to the underground river of love that flows through all creation.

Cynthia Bourgeault describes this love beautifully in “The Wisdom Jesus”. “Even with death waiting in the wings, Jesus will allow no separation between God and humans, no separation between humans and humans, because the sap flowing through everything is love itself. In image after image he tries to impart to the disciples his assurance that they can never be cut off from this love, because their very beings are rooted in it.” The Psalmist sings, “For the Lord is good, his steadfast love endures forever, and his faithfulness to all generations.” 

I have been wading hip deep in love all my life, Lord, even when I didn’t know it. Thank you for my gift of life that came through the years of others loving. Thank you for the years of loving yet to come in our family. Most of all, thank you for the Love that does not let me go, the Love that endures through all generations. Amen.

Old woman, old donkey, new tricks

I thought I was losing what little mind I had left. Three mornings this week I walked down to the stable to find Shirley standing in the door of the donkey stall. Usually I put her up at night in the stall and leave Kate outside. If I put them both in together, they spend much of the night kicking each other and walking in circles. With Shirley in the stall, Kate stays close by and the problem of all night binge eating is solved… until this week.

 Routine is both savior and hobgoblin for my mind. If I do the same thing the same way every time, I begin to forget whether I have actually done it or not. So I blamed Shirley’s freedom on my absentmindedness until it happened three days in a row. Yesterday, a Eureka moment, I realized Kate had learned a new trick… how to lift the door latch and set Shirley free!  Old donkeys and old women can still learn and what a surprise that is!

Like Kate, I have been learning some new lessons this season. Cleaning out my closet for summer has become a metaphor for my life as I age. Bag after bag of clothing, loved in its time, culled from shelves and hangers, is on its way to a thrift shop. Some of the clothes I kept are old and have meaning beyond covering my body… old overalls, dresses worn to childrens’ weddings, my favorite jeans, a sweater my great-aunt Polly knitted for me… and some just no longer look good on me or I have tired of them. My closet is still full and there is no shortage of choices, but choosing is less complicated when I can see what my choices are.

One of the great gifts of aging for those who choose to welcome the gift, is the exploration of wisdom that comes as we begin to clean out the closets of our lives. We make choices about what has meaning, what suits us, what is no longer necessary, what to keep and what to let go of. I am making choices based on the reality of my limits, not the endless possibilities of youth, and it is exhilarating. Much like Kate learning to set her mother Shirley free, I am learning to set myself free from old patterns and once valuable restraints.

My reading this week has been a book, Wisdom Jesus, written by Cynthia Bourgeault.  One paragraph highlighted a closet keeper of mine, tears. “At any rate, I have often suspected that the most profound product of this world is tears…I mean that tears express that vulnerability in which we can endure having our heart broken and go right on loving. In the tears flows a sweetness not of our own making, which has been known in our tradition as the Divine Mercy. Our jagged and hard-edged earth plane is the realm in which this mercy is the most deeply, excruciatingly, and beautifully released. That’s our business down here. That’s what we’re here for.” One does justice, an action. Mercy, the gift I experience most fully in my relationship with God, is undeserved love and compassion accompanied frequently by tears in the midst of jagged and hard-edged times.

Have mercy on me, God whom I love, as I clean out the clutter that keeps me from seeing you more clearly, loving you more dearly. I am a creature of habit and sometimes my habits keep me in the stall where it is safe and comfortable. Set me free, Lord, to be mercy for myself and mercy for others, your faithful daughter in loving kindness. And if I cry, Lord, at odd times, help me see my tears as your sweetness bubbling up and over. Thank you for all the ways you are present in my life, seen and unseen.