winterlight

The winter sun, a pale white circle, hung in the dove grey sky. The deep snow shone more brightly than the sun as i went to feed the cows. Two days of unexpected snow had added drama and beauty to the Christmas family gathering. Once again the weather forecasters were wildly inaccurate in their prognostications. The mountains rarely co-operate with those who would try to predict the passage of weather fronts through them.
And now, I sit in front of the fire, watching the clock and bracing up for the afternoon feeding of horses, donkeys and cows. Several of our cows are great with calf and one was born this week just before Christmas. As I drove from the barn to the field this morning, Noel, our newest baby, scampered in front of me. She ran through the belly deep snow, her tail held straight up, playing with Barney.
At night the lopsided moon, nearly full, blots out the starshine and is is brighter than the morning sun. Walking in the snow by moonlight is beautifully quiet and luminescent. There are no chores to do, no busyness, just the lovely light on the quiet snow. The sounds of the day fade as all of the farm animals, wild and domesticated alike, seek shelter and warmth in the midst of the storm. Dark, quiet, snowlight…
I have a friend who became a Quaker recently. Still angry with our faith birth mother who cast us out as unwanted children, he declared he refused to die a Baptist. The silence after the Baptist clamor, the search for inner light not the proclamation of a particular truth, is a Balm in Gilead for his wounded soul.
I was a child who desperately wanted to please and was terrified of failure. My feelings were easily wounded and as a new Christian at the age of twelve, I searched the Bible for a verse that could be my very own. That was the beginning of my love affair with the Psalms. And in that book of songs I found my verse… The Lord is my Light and my salvation: whom then shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?
Light…salvation…stronghold… It begins with the light, light that can only come with darkness. Fear, loss, illness, failure, death… these are the beginnings of light. Our culture does not value darkness of any kind. Eeyores are not allowed. Eternal Light is God, not we who are a pale winter sun reflection of our creator. Until we make our peace with our inner darkness, there will be no inner light.
Salvation is a dirty word in some religious circles these days. It smacks of sin and worms such as I for some Christians. It is a word that holds great promise for me, however. To be saved from my own darkness, to become my own true self as God created me to be, to live and die in Light of Love that never lets me go but leads me home, this is salvation.
Stronghold, a safe place that strengthens me, sends me back out into the scary world ready to love and lose again, to be a part of all creation as a Christian who is trying to reflect the Christ light from the inside out. I need a stronghold that reminds me to whom I belong, where I am going and how to get there. Not only a resting place, my stronghold is also a place where I "gird up my loins" . I always wondered how that was done. I figured it was akin to putting on pantyhose for Sunday church. I can go out putting my best self forward because I have been made ready, stronger, healed and forgiven in my safe place.
So in this wonderful season of light, Epiphany, I remember the source of my light and give thanks for a little baby boy born to be the Son of Light in a world of darkness. I remember the Lord who is my light, my salvation and my stronghold and am grateful for the gift of life with all its darkness and light. And for this season I will let my light shine. I will send my light. I will be light for those who walk in darkness. And when I walk in darkness again, as I shall, I will find my stronghold to rekindle the Light within and without. Peace and Light to all this Season of Starlight.

Christmas Cheer

I hover on the edge of Christmas Joy with the house cleaned and made ready. The new heifer Biscuit lies next to Ferd the old bull waiting for breakfast hay. The sun shines on the far mountain tops this morning and I begin my Christmas Litany of joy and thanksgiving.
I am grateful for children and grandchildren who come home to the farm all year long, not just at Christmas. My mother’s presence at the farm has given my grandchildren the opportunity to know their great-grandmother, to hear her stories, to know her name and her person and I give thanks for family tradition embodied.
Other families have come to the farm and we will gather for Christmas Eve service in the new old high barn that Michael has been working so hard on. The Moravian Star hangs at the barn’s eve and the Christmas tree, decorated with Gary’s old multi-colored lights, shines in the distance like a stained glass window. Built in 1950, the old barn nearly collapsed but with the help of our talented friend Jim who loves old barns, it stands tall and proud once again, ready for a new life. The sight of the barn at the top of our hill is one of our picture postcard sights on the farm. I celebrate and give thanks for all who have worked long and hard to make it ready for Christmas.
My heart sings and my soul rejoices when I remember worship at Calvary Presbyterian last Sunday. After being snowed out the Sunday before, our community took twice as long to pass the peace. Miss Louise hugged me every time we passed each other as we circled the sanctuary. I love the old ladies in our church. They ground us and keep our backbones starched and in place. Ashley, a middle schooler, danced as LaJuana sang “Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming” from the balcony. The ladies choir sang even though we had only had two practices. We sounded good.
But the topper, the Magnificat for the morning was Alexis’ solo. Alexis and Diamond, cousins, caught me during the passing of the peace and asked if they could sing a song for me. During the sermon we went downstairs and I listened to this beautiful little African American girl sing a song she had written... Thank you Lord for standing by me. Her voice was clear and she sang beautifully. I took them upstairs and Alexis sang for the offertory with her cousin Diamond sitting on the step beside her. She sang it twice, small of voice but poised and happy. Next time she sings I will see to it that we have a mike for her. My heart bubbled over with joy.
I will continue to sing praises and give thanks this week as I dance my way to the manger. There is much to celebrate and even more to say grace over. Christmas Cheer to you all and may your hearts be made light with laughter. May our souls sing grace and thanksgiving to the One who came as one of us so that we might know God In Us. Great is thy faithfulness, oh God our father (and mother, Mary Lynn) the old hymn says. It is so...joy from sorrow, peace from discord, silence from clamor, healing from hurt and hope for bright tomorrows. Thanks be to God.

Biscuits and Gravy

There is a new girl on the farm...Biscuits and Gravy. She looks like Grandma’s biscuits smothered in sausage gravy, white with brown and black spots. Her eyes are rimmed with black eyeliner. She is a beauty and knows it.
The first time Gary brought her over to our cows, she found an open space in the fencing and nearly beat him back home. This time we locked her down in Dixie’s stall for three days to give her time to separate from her mama and her herd. Every day I fed and watered her, gave her treats and worked to gentle her. When she gets aggravated, she shakes her head like a bull and claims her space. I got too close for her comfort one morning and she rushed me only to meet my boot on her nose. We have come to a mutual understanding.
Last night I let her out of the stall. She came out full steam ahead and began eating the hay I had laid out. The pecking order began with Junie B moving to Biscuit’s pile of hay to claim it. Biscuit moved but not for long. I watched the wheels turn in her bovine mind and she came rushing back to her pile, swinging her head, pushing Junie B who is twice her size, away.
Dixie, the alpha horse, tried next and received the same treatment. Whatever Biscuit wants, Biscuit gets. There is a new leader of the pack and she is the smallest one of all. After filling her belly she ran the fence line while I walked behind watching. She kept looking for a break, a place to go through and when she didn’t find one, began to run and buck.
She will spend a week or so in the horse pasture learning the ropes and settling in. Then we will move her down to be with the other cows and watch the games begin there. I can’t wait to see how Tilly Crowned with Horns handles this little upstart.
Personhood in cows and people is a wondrous gift. We each come wrapped as a Christmas gift to the world full of our own unique selves. Some of us are spitfires like Biscuit and others of us are more like Ferdinand the Gentle Bull. The mystery of our presence in the world is echoed in the paradox of our uniqueness and our sameness. We are all alike and we are all different.
My birth and your birth were incarnations of a loving God who takes delight in our being. Jesus was a more complete reflection of this Love but we too can be God’s children on earth. It has taken me a lifetime to begin to know and love myself, to appreciate the gifts I have been given and to forgive myself for my failures. During this mysterious holy time of new beginnings, I pray for a Biscuit spirit to rise up in me so that I might follow where I am led by Love. There is too little time left to dilly dally. Today I will sing the old spiritual “Rise Up Children and Follow” then get my head swinging as I move on down the road towards Bethlehem.

Advent...Tracks in the Snow

It was the coldest morning of the winter...two degrees... and the snow had a frozen crust that changed the bright sunlight into a field of diamonds. After breaking the ice with a hatchet so the cows could drink, I stood at the cistern and listened to the silence that surrounded me. Deer tracks crisscrossed the white hill behind me, some coming to the cistern and others to the hay manger. Their small hooves left deep holes in the snow.
At the chicken barn Old Man Possum left his distinctive track marks as he came to clean up the left over cat food. There were a few cat paw prints but not many. Cats have enough sense to stay inside the barn during bad weather. And with mama delivering Meals on Wheels twice a day, they have no need to hunt.
The ducks were piled on top of each other under the willow tree glazed in ice and snow. With their heads tucked under their wings for warmth, they made a living sculpture. Duck tracks on the snowy iced over pond led back and forth as they walked on the water they usually swim in.
These tracks are a part of life every day at the farm but without the snow, I do not see them. They blend into the background of dirt and grass. Grey fox, birds, coyote, rabbits, snakes, bears young and old...all pass by silently (most of the time) and leave only their tracks behind marking their passage.
Advent is the soul snow before Christmas. I can see where I am going in the darkness before the Great Light by following the tracks in the snow. Years of lighting the candles on Advent wreaths, Advent worship, dearly loved music, Advent devotional books from Lake Shore Baptist... all have left tracks in the snow for me to follow. I sit in the winter still morning darkness remembering where I come from and where I am going. Thanks be to God for times of preparation and remembrance, Advent tracks in the snow.

Ready or not, Christmas is coming.

I slept last night with to do lists, not visions of sugar plums, running through my head. Christmas is coming, the gooses is getting fat and everywhere I look I see holiday work to be done... beds to be made, floors to vacuum, kitchen to clean, food to buy, presents to buy and wrap, decorations to finish. I listen to religious pundits call for simpler Christmas celebrations... remember the reason for the season spiritualists... and I wonder how do you do simple for eight adults and five grandsons? And if I knew how, would I want to?
Our Christmas holiday is full of coming and going. Because of work schedules and other family commitments, some of our crew can only stay for one day and night. Yet they still come. The gathering, the noise of four boys and one baby boy, the teasing and jostling, the flare ups and soothing, the bedtime baths, the shared meals using tableware and silver from generations who have gone before, Christmas Eve worship, the lining up on the stairs for the grand procession down to the tree and Christmas presents... all of this is a part of family in process. And family is the reason for the season.
I suspect the season of Jesus’ birth was not all that simple. Traveling when great with child certainly was not easy for Mary. The prospect of giving birth to her first child away from her mothers, aunts, sisters and friends must have been frightening. But, she had no choice. Travel she must as decreed by law. Joseph bore the responsibility for food, lodging and care for his young pregnant wife in a time when there were no Holiday Inns at the exits on the Interstates with Cracker Barrel restaurants next door. And when they arrived in Bethlehem, it was crowded with outlanders, tourists on the same mission as they, obeying a law laid down by those in power. No room at the inn just like Asheville in the leaf season. Simple? I think not. And then there were those angels and shepherds singing and rejoicing in the middle of all the confusion and pain, loneliness and darkness, God the Father’s version of a covered dish meal for Mary and Joseph. Family...
So I sing “Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come to us, O Israel” and “Joy to the world, the Lord is come!” as I become a Christmas Martha preparing for a full house. It is not easy or simple but it is rich in love and meaning. Family surrounds us when we are born, holds us in their loving care as we grow and live, cradles us as we age and die. And if our family here on earth lacks a little in the loving and caring department, the Family of God is able to supply our every need. No angels this year, Lord, please, but I wouldn’t turn a cleaning helper away.

Morning and Evening Star

I lie in bed watching the morning star shine in the dawn darkness...

A gift from Michael’s grandmother, the quilt has hung on a wall in every home of ours. It is over one hundred years old, faded and with some holes made by hungry mice, a reminder of lives and loves long ago. The pattern is two four pointed star shapes, one long star and one short star, with stripes and a bow tie in the center of the shorter star. The long stars are a dark fabric that dominates the overall pattern with the short stars pieced in strips of varying fabrics and hues. Girl friends gathered, pieced and quilted this coverlet, signed their names to it and gave it to Michael’s grandfather as a friendship quilt when he married his grandmother. Her name is among the names at the bottom edge of the quilt. I read those names and wonder about the lives of those women. Were they friends forever? Were their lives full of love and good work and family? What were their sorrows and joys?
I wanted to paint a quilt for our newly restored high barn and chose this friendship pattern for the project. Michael and I stayed up late one Sunday night drawing the pattern to scale. That week I handed out copies to some of the farm family and invited them to help with the color selection. I was amazed by the responses. Jim, our gifted carpenter friend who is helping save the barn, saw circles around crosses in the pattern. Candace saw blue, green and white or lavender, yellow and blue arranged in different patterns. Leisa used dove gray, blue and orange. Michael saw dark blue for the larger stars. The variation in visions reminded me that all of us see the world through our own eyes and none of us see the same things the same way all the time. My challenge now is to incorporate the different ways of seeing into this quilt so that it, like the inspiration friendship quilt, reflects the friends who were a part of its creation.
Those women long ago had it right. They used bits and pieces for the small stars sewn together in small strips, reflections of the bits and pieces of our days. Most of our days pass by with the work of daily living, tasks that seem useful perhaps but not inspired. The holy days, the days that make a difference, loom large in our memories like the dark stars in the pattern and give our lives structure and meaning. One cannot exist without the other. A quilt made of only dark stars, holy days, would have no meaning without the pattern of the small stars of our daily life.
The morning star shining brightly in the dawn darkness disappears, blotted out by a dark cloud. I watch and wait. The star shine appears again as the cloud passes. I rest in the sure and certain knowledge that morning and evening starlight are Advent benedictions for darkness that gives way to light again and again. Even when I cannot see the Light, it is there waiting for me and I will rejoice in its coming. Thanks be to God for friendship quilt lives and for the Light that lights my path always. Amen.

Advent Labyrinth Life

The light of the winter dawn creeps slowly across the dark sky like a cat stretched out long and lean as it crawls towards its prey. I lie in bed waiting impatiently for morning to come with my list already rattling around in my head. Slipping quietly out of bed I move through the morning darkness to the computer and sit and wait on God to show up.
Sitting by the keyboard is a small program for a Labyrinth Prayer Path at First Baptist. Inside are directions for drawing your own labyrinth, some questions to guide you in your journey and four steps for the experience. First step...focus, center and acknowledge the Presence. Second step...experience, observe and be attentive to the process. Third step...exit with a closing ritual while facing the center of the labyrinth. Fourth...reflect perhaps with writing or drawing to remember your experience.
My labyrinth life in Advent darkness needs these reminders of the part I play in the dawning of new light. Unlike the sun which rises on the just and the unjust alike, inner light comes only to those who seek and search for God’s presence within and without. I light the candle, I sit in silence, I read and reflect, I write waiting for God to come to me in words.
A thin band of red lights the far horizon and then scatters a red cloud patchwork quilt across the dove grey skies. Slowly, ever so slowly light comes and I lift my eyes up to the hills from whence my help comes, the Maker of heaven and earth. Thanks be to God for Advent dawns in the midst of cold darkness, light for our labyrinth lives and warmth for our bodies and souls. I am grateful for all the dawns in my life, those past and those yet to come. And when my days on this earth end, I know there is more dawn light in the life that conquers death. All is well.

Rejoicing my way through Advent...sort of

Rejoicing my way through Advent is proving to be hard work but every now and then it sneaks up on me...


It has been a cold snowy week at the farm, in the twenties and teens most mornings with a biting wind that blows the snow sideways. Feeding the livestock becomes an adventure in survival. How do they do it in North Dakota for months? I layer up clothing, add a hat and gloves, shove my feet down into my warm muck boots and I’m off.
Yesterday was like any other day. I fed Ferdinand his feed and hay, let the horses and donkeys out, fed them, fed Bud the Barn Cat, mucked the stalls and hauled water down to the stable. The extreme cold has frozen the hose system at the barn so I haul water to the tank in the morning. Ferd and the donkeys and horses drink a LOT of water every day. This takes about an hour and a half. The next chore is to feed the cows.
When I got to the leaning barn (so named because it leans and is propped up with concrete block stacks), mama was there to feed barn cats. As we stood there talking, I heard some discombobulation in the barn. I turned to look expecting to see Barney in the barn. The barn floor sits up about four feet and has a small step below the door that lets us climb up into the barn with relative ease. Barney has been known to use that step to dine on cat food when no one is looking. Not so! I saw the big black rear end of Bully, our young Black Angus bull, as he munched his way through hay of his own choosing. It wasn’t a bull in the china shop but a bull in the barn!
Mama and I stood there dumbfounded at the sight of the bull in the hay barn four feet off the ground. I was laughing and cussing at the same time, a form of rejoicing I suppose. These things always happen when no men are home on the farm. Bully swivelled his head around, mouth overflowing with hay, and considered me the fool that I was as he returned to his breakfast. I left him to it as I drove on to the pasture to feed the others.
I worried he would break a leg when he descended from the barn and we would be forced to put him down. He is a big animal and it was a long way down. As I drove back to the leaning barn, frantically running ramp possibilities through my mind, I thought about calling our friend and neighbor Gary. I stood in front of the barn watching Bully with my phone in my hand. Bully saw the feed bucket on the ground, came to the door, delicately placed one front hoof on the now badly damaged step and descended with as much grace as a bull can have to the ground. He trotted down the lane to join the herd as I closed the gate behind him. Then I found the gap in the fence he had used for his exit and closed it off with a wooden pallet.
Some Advent days I feel like Bully in the barn, out of place and suspended in midair, unable to touch the anticipation of coming joy and light. I have more than I need and most of what I want yet somehow I lose sight of the river of joy that runs through my days... until I see the unexpected, hear the cry of the red tailed hawk, watch deer run up the ridge, wait on wild turkeys to cross the road marveling at their colors or laugh and cuss a bull who climbs steps to get to the best hay when he is hungry. Life is both joy and tribulation and I live dancing on the point suspended between rejoicing and remembering, my mouth full of the sweetest hay. Thanks be to God!

I remember... I believe

It is the season of waking in the darkness here at Sabbath Rest Farm. Morning light continues to come but it does not call me from sleep. Evening darkness begins falling early and the animals are ready for the shelter of stall and barn by 4:30. The memory of summer light and the length of its days fades as I bundle up in Cuddle Duds, overalls, socks, muck boots, gloves, toboggan and Carrhart jacket to feed horses, donkeys and cows. Dressing for this excursion takes almost as much time as the work itself.
The cold, crisp air bites my nose as I breathe in the winter air. Walking down the hill to the stable I hear the donkeys call for breakfast and see the mist rising from the valleys across the way. The temperature has risen from twenty to twenty five and a high of forty is predicted for today. Sunshine is a gift after days of rain. The rooster is calling the hens out to play in the chicken yard and I hear Barney barking on the walk with Michael.
A poem written by Christina Rossetti is one of my favorites during this season of the year...
In the Bleak Midwinter Christina Rossetti (1872)"
In the bleak mid-winter
Frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron,
Water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow,
Snow on snow,
In the bleak mid-winter
Long ago.

Our God, Heaven cannot hold Him
Nor earth sustain;
Heaven and earth shall flee away
When He comes to reign:
In the bleak mid-winter
A stable-place sufficed
The Lord God Almighty,
Jesus Christ.

Enough for Him, whom cherubim
Worship night and day,
A breastful of milk
And a mangerful of hay;
Enough for Him, whom angels
Fall down before,
The ox and ass and camel
Which adore.

Angels and archangels
May have gathered there,
Cherubim and seraphim
Thronged the air,
But only His mother
In her maiden bliss,
Worshipped the Beloved
With a kiss.
What can I give Him,
Poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd
I would bring a lamb,
If I were a wise man
I would do my part,
Yet what I can I give Him,
Give my heart.

In this season of darkness, iron earth and moaning winds, I remember light and warmth and length of days. I remember and rejoice in the seasons of light and darkness, warmth and cold, presence and absence. I pray for all the babies born into this world and all those who are leaving this world... from darkness to light to darkness and light again. Faith in the Creator who gave us the gifts of the seasons and the memory of the Face of God in Jesus Christ will light my path through winter darkness until spring blooms once again. Thanks be to God.

Dear Diary...

November 30th


Dear Diary,
It is rainy this morning. A pale imitation of the sun peeks out now and then in between showers. I head out around 8:45 to let the chickens out and throw them some scraps. Then down to the horse barn to feed and scoop poop. Since Ferd began living in the horse pasture there is more poop to scoop under the run in where he walks to the water trough. The farrier is coming today so I try to tidy up the stable area so he can work comfortably.
As I walk up the hill to the house, Gary drives up in the Kubota with baby Grayson. They are out riding around since it is raining and Gary can’t do much outdoor work today. We chat a little while about fencing and other farm folderol while the baby boy drifts in and out of sleep.
After he leaves, I head down to the leaning barn and throw five bales of hay in the back of the mule then put the four wheel drive in gear to navigate the muddy fields. The cows are waiting for me. I dip out some feed and while they eat feed I stuff the manger with three bales of hay. I can’t lift the bales over my head to clear the top bar so I cut them and put them in. Two bales go out on the ground.
When I get back to the house it is 10:45 and time to start making my calls for the day while I wash clothes. No hanging clothes out on the line today but all this rain will fill Tim and Jeannie’s cisterns. We are not satisfied with our farm insurance package and I am calling around gathering information.
Called various insurance agents and am going to take copies of our current insurance coverage to two agencies tomorrow as well as talk to our current agency. I called a farm on top of Doggett Mountain, talked to the owners and had a lovely conversation about their operation. They rent three cabins, have 240 acres, Belted Galloway cattle, sheep, goats, chickens, guineas and are open year round. They were recently featured in Southern Living as a vacation destination.
Natalie came to work the horses and take a little ride. I am still washing clothes. 12:45- time for lunch break.
After lunch I paid bills, made calls about bills and checked on mama’s home insurance. Natalie came in afer her ride and we visited a little. Junie B was slipping and sliding on the wet clay so she walked her back home from the low pasture. The farrier showed up and I spent time down at the stable with him as he trimmed hooves on the donkeys and horses. Junie B looks like a mud puppy. Dixie is always much neater. Still washing clothes.
After the farrier leaves I will go to Weaverville to get a birthday card for Alison so we can get it in the mail tomorrow. Hard to believe all my small children now have children of their own. 5:30... The farrier left around four so I zipped into Weaverville. Came home to feed and bed down cows and horses and donkeys for the night before I cook supper. Cows were waiting for me at the gate. They had finished all the hay I put out in the morning so I replenished the manger. Cold wet weather ups their need for hay since we have no grass in the pastures. Still washing clothes.
I ate supper with mama while Michael made a run to Lowe’s. I will be starting to paint the quilt panel that will hang on the end of the barn and it needs to be framed in. Made a plate for Michael, came home and watched my favorite tv show, folded clothes and went to bed. Thus endeth this day.
Bully took treats from my hand. Dora let me pet her. Dixie loved on me. Junie B sang her throaty little song to me. Ferd smiled when I gave him grain. Barney ran to the fields with me. I ate lunch with a purring cat in my lap. I loved on a baby boy. This was the day the Lord made and I rejoiced and was glad in it.

Rest and Rejoice!

Each morning this Advent I am reading a Bible passage on rejoicing. Today I began with a passage in Leviticus 23 that describes the establishment of the Harvest Festival for the Jewish people of God. This festival, Sukkot, follows the time of atonement, Yom Kippur, solemn high holy days. Each of these holy times carries an admonition to rest and a time set aside for rest. First worship, then rest, confess and make amends, rest, harvest, rest, rejoice. Each of these holy days carries with it specific instructions for rest. Wisdom knew our passion for being and doing, Energizer Bunnies that we humans are. And in that Knowledge, provided a resting place for our souls if we would listen and follow.
So first, worship. I will read Advent devotionals, the Bible and sing first thing each morning offering a small worship as a beginning to my Advent days. And in that time I will take a break, a rest from the busyness of my days, the unending to do list. I will rest in the Lord while I wait for the crocuses to bloom in the desert.
Second I will remember the year past, the mistakes, the sins, the blessings and the good work I have done. I will take inventory and lift it up to God as my part in atonement. Where there is a need to own my brokeness with others, I will speak and seek healing. I will affirm the goodness, the image and actions of God in me this past year as I do the same for others.
Third, I will harvest the past year of life reaping the joys and sorrows, the gains and losses with thanksgiving for it all. Without darkness we could not see the light and without suffering, we could not know joy. Gratitude for all that has come my way in life and gratitude for all that is yet to come will be my Advent prayer song.
Then I will rejoice like Snoopy dancing on top of his dog house, balanced between this world and the next, purely delighted to be here. Life is gift. Life is good. Thanks be to God for rest and rejoicing!

For unto us a child is born... again

It was a lovely Thanksgiving. We had beautiful weather when rain had been predicted. The table was set with family silver, china and crystal, reminders of loved ones no longer with us. And gathered around our table on Thursday... mama, Natalie(a young friend in town for a month), our son Adam and his wife Michelle, and the centerpiece for our thanksgiving this holiday, their baby son Rowan (long o please, like the Archbishop of Canterbury). Rowan is a bundle of joy wrapped in diapers and onesies.
Adam and Michelle are tender parents, holding Rowan with loving arms and hands. All babies are a journey into a land of wonder and delight, fatigue and frustration, fear and trembling, an affirmation of life as gift. This baby with his father’s nose and his mother’s eyes holds the promise of God with us once again. I hold Rowan, he looks into my eyes, smiles at me with the corners of his mouth turned up, delighted to be in my presence and like Mary, my heart sings a Magnificat.
Last night Michael and I watched a movie... Eat, Pray, Love... that is taken from the story of one woman’s journey towards wholeness. The main character travels to Italy, India and Bali. The lesson she learns at a Hindu ashram is to forgive and love herself. She speaks of God in each of us, honoring and loving God in each of us... Incarnation in India, a land where images of God in us are overwhelming in numbers and need.
It is easy to see and delight in God Incarnate in sweet babies. Their smiles ignite joy sparklers in our hearts. The more difficult vision is to see God in us, the tired, mistake making grown ups who are weathered and worn by life. Our image of God is often buried under years of worry, struggle and pain with joy an infrequent visitor.
This Advent I will hold in my heart the joy that comes when I see God in others, babies and grouchy old men, worried women and fractious children, those who live with grief and those who have yet to experience the sting of death. Now that I am closer to my end than my beginning, I will not take joy for granted. I will search for the Christ Child born again and again in each of us, celebrating the presence of the Source of Life in each life gift. Thanks be to God for being born again and again and again. For unto us a child is born. Unto us, a gift is given...

Goin' home.. I'm still goin' home

I sat in daddy’s chair at the kitchen table where everything is still the same and utterly different. The counted cross stitch framed in an embroidery hoop, a Christmas present from Aunt Peg, hangs on the wall over the table as it has for years. The stove, thirty years old and still working, is the same one my sister and I used to can tomatoes on summer visits to put up vegetables from daddy’s garden. Most of the little gold flecks are worn off the formica counter tops, polished off by years of cleaning. The empty space is full and overflowing with people and memories invisible to everyone else but clear as day to mama and me.
The truck is loaded with boxes filled with canned food, clothes, household goods, flowers to transplant, a visible symbol that mama will no longer be able to stay by herself in her home. As we walk out the door to leave for North Carolina she says, “If I ever get back, I want to bring the white rose, the first one I planted when we moved here.” If I ever get back...
We stop in Atlanta to visit our friend Pitts Hughes, now ninety four and one half by her reckoning. A year has passed since she made the move to an assisted living home and we had not seen her new place. Pitts moves around in a wheelchair now but the movement of her mind and spirit is unhampered as always. Mother God is still trying to order the universe and most of the time, it co-operates. I watch as we move through the halls, Pitts calling each helper by name and introducing us to them. They touch her, pat her shoulder and share a laugh as we make our grand procession to the parlor. Mama and Pitts talk about the process of leaving home and the adjustments required. Pitts moved often during her professional years so her home has always been with people not places.
I wake in the night and lie quietly pondering, wondering how I will do when my time comes to leave home. Mama and Pitts, forced by age and health to leave their homes, are my teachers. Pitts is surrounded by friends and is still in the same neighborhood where she lived. Mama has moved to another state to be with family. Each has lost and gained in their moves... lost independence and gained a new home. Home is in their hearts, their memories.
All our lives we go home from one house to another, farm, apartment, suburbs, city. And some day, some still, quiet day, we will all go home, home to our Beginning and our End, a Home that waits where love never ends and our moving days are over. Dear One, give me traveling mercies, I pray for the trip home and keep us all in the hollow of your hand. Amen.

Going home, going home
I’m jus' going home
Quiet like, some still day
I’m jus' going home

Nothing lost, all is gain
No more fret nor pain
No more stumbling on the way
No more longing for the day
Going to roam no more

Morning star lights the way
Restless dream all done
Shadows gone, break of day
Real life yes begun

Gratitude... the electric light parade

It had been a difficult day. Friends had received a devastating diagnosis after a year filled with recurring illness and death, a forced march of coping and caring. I went to see them not only for their sake but for mine also. When someone I love is hurting, it helps me to touch them, see them, and for a little while, the demons are held at bay by love and laughter. As we sat around the table drinking hot tea and cider, my friend said she was rich in friendship, her life full of people who love and care for her. Tangible symbols of love... a bonsai tree on her front porch when they returned from the hospital, phone calls and visits, family who are friends... abound in her life and she is grateful.
Michael came home and opened the mail... a birth announcement and a thank you note. The birth of a new baby boy, life in the midst of trials and tribulations, his sweet face cuddled in a blanket makes me smile. The thank you note, handwritten and genuine, was from one of the nineteen teenagers who spent a weekend at Sabbath Rest Farm in our home.
Our daughter Alison and her Associate Pastor brought their youth group for a retreat and work day at the farm. They gathered hay bales (nearly 200 of them), fed cows, “picked eggs”, had a hay ride, saw more stars than they had ever seen before, rode Junie B, worshiped in the chapel, played games, and laughed a lot. Bless their hearts... their leaders had them vacuum the house and clean the bathrooms before they left. And now this gift of a thank you note. Suddenly the mountain of bed sheets and towels waiting to be washed are a sweet reminder of time well spent and memory makers for those not quite adults, these children of the church.
As I lay in bed this morning, the sky over the near ridge turned a dull khaki gold, followed by a narrow red strip. The red strip grew larger, the khaki gold turned bright gold and lavender appeared at the top of the sky. With amazing speed, the colors morphed into neon pink orange red gold and then the sun appeared for a brief moment before the clouds set in blotting out the electric light parade. But it is still there under the clouds and I will see it again, maybe tomorrow morning.
Gratitude is the electric light parade of the soul when life is painful and the path is rough. When I am lost in the valley of the shadows, each act of thanksgiving reminds me of past gifts of grace, helps me see God’s presence in my present, and gives me hope for a future filled with the Love that will not let me go. The clouds and darkness come for a season but they are illuminated by streaks of neon light that are the visible reminders of life, love and laughter yet to come. Thanks be to God for darkness and light, clouds and clear skies, friends and family, laughter and tears, health and illness, children and old ones, stars in the night that turn darkness into our friend. Keep us in your light, God, and we will walk in your paths. Amen.

Dream a little dream of me...

I wake in the middle of the night, startled into consciousness by the ending of a dream. The sound of winter wind whipping through the trees and around the house are an acoustic accompaniment to my dream process. Barney howls and I wonder if dreams wakened him, too. Dreams that I remember come seldom to me. I ponder them for days, hold them fast as I try to find meaning in their hidden codes. Dreams are a creative wonder, dark paths illuminated by night time journeys deep into our souls.
There are many different kinds of dreams. Often I will dream a calligraphy quote or a solution to a design problem. These practical solutions to a creative problem float to the surface and I wake up feeling energized and ready to work. Sometimes those I have loved and lost to death appear in dreams and it is a comfort. But the winter wind dreams, the dreams that waken me into startled loneliness, leave me feeling like joining Barney in howling. Dreams can be dangerous, reminders of our limitations and frailties.
As a child, I dreamed dreams of the future. As an aging woman, I dream dreams of past, present and future. Years of living, loss, loving and leaving have marked the trail that leads to the source of my dreams. This dream path, this way to wisdom, is both gift and curse. Wisdom comes with a price and sometimes the price is painful. Wisdom, the way of knowing that honors past, present and future, is one of the creative possibilities in aging. Dreams are lamps that light up the hidden, the not yet known, the forgotten parts of our individual wisdom and we are lead to a different way of becoming the ones we were created to be.
Blue streaks of sky are slicing through the grey clouds as I walk Rufus outside. I watch a solitary oak leaf, far from its mother tree, circle lazily as it gently floats to the earth. I have been away from myself for awhile, floating like the oak leaf, caught up and swirling. Internal and external forces kept me apart from God and from myself. The grey sky with blue streaks reminds me that I cannot see all of the sky, only the little part that is in my world at Sabbath Rest Farm. My blue sky dreams are waiting underneath the grey winter clouds, waiting as I dream a little dream of me.
Thanks be to the One who dreamed me into being, whose dreams of love and light sustain me in seasons of darkness. For the grace that brought me thus far and will lead me home, I am grateful. For those who wander in the wilderness searching for wisdom, dreaming of peace and joy, I pray dreams will come true. And for us all, companions in life and death and life again, I pray for traveling mercies as we journey home. Amen.

Giggling Grace...

Giggling Grace...

My friend Cara Pollard sent me an Advent meditation she wrote for her church devotional book. Cara writes beautifully about our need for grace. As I read, my mind went spinning back through time and I remembered Cara and our daughters Megan and Alison as children. The sound track for this memory video is giggles. Giggles and more giggles... They giggled at ghost stories, at who did what to whom and when, at and with each other, at adults who tickled their funny bones. They giggled for no reason at all sometimes except for the sheer joy of being together. The sound of grace for me is embodied in the laughter and giggles of children.
Somewhere along the way as we “grow up”, most of us lose our giggle. Not all of us do, though. Our friend Grady Nutt lives in my heart as a giggle. Out of the mouth of this tall, dapper Texan, a professional humorist who was a Baptist Will Rogers, would bubble up this giggle that would rope you in and you would giggle, too. I miss his giggle and I miss the laughing heart that was the home for his humor.
Children, and the occasional adult, visiting the farm always giggle. They giggle when the donkeys soft noses tickle their fingers as they feed them treats. They giggle as they swing high under the oak tree out front. Running down the hill or around the deck, they giggle and laugh. When a cow slobbers on them as they feed them cow jelly beans (alfalfa cubes), they giggle and go yuk! The sight of Rufus the basset hound brings on giggles.
Sarah, Abraham’s wife, laughed (or giggled) when the angels told them she would bear a son as an old woman. She tried to keep her laughter to herself but the angels caught her laughing and called her out. Later she worried that her name would be a joke all over the neighborhood when folks found out that she was having a baby. She would be the cause of giggles and a giggles first cousin, snorts. Sarah took herself much too seriously as do most grownups. It is impossible to giggle and remain dignified.
Grace is neither dignified nor deserved. It, like giggles, comes unbidden and to all whether you want it or not, whether you believe it or not. Somewhere deep in the heart of God, grace bubbles up and overflows covering us all with the loving assurance of our worth. We can let go of our illusions of control, our need to be seen as responsible adults, our fears of foolishness. We can giggle at the sheer absurdity of grace, marvelous grace, grace that is greater than all our sin. And when we do, perhaps God giggles along with us just as the girls did years ago. After all, giggles were made to be shared.

A new song...

Miz Vivian was sitting in her car, the early bird as usual, waiting for the rest of us to get to Wednesday night supper. She opened her door and called me over to sit and wait with her. “Just listen”, she said. A black gospel choir began to sing “Soon and Very Soon” with gusto. “My favorite song”, said Miz Vivian. As we sat and waited for the rest to show up, she played one song after another, all her favorites.
Ashley, a cute sixth grader and an accomplished dancer, sat with me in the sanctuary listening to possible music for her dance on Women’s Day at our church. Diane and I had chosen a variety of sacred music... folk, reggae, hymns, sacred harp and one song I happened to pick up on my way to church “I Believe I Can Fly” sung by an African American woman gospel singer. When she heard that song, Ashley’s face lit up and we were soon watching her leap and pirouette around the sanctuary, believing and flying.
We have two hymnals in our church... the traditional blue Presbyterian hymnal and a gospel hymnal with African American gospel and spirituals. We sing from both every Sunday and that is one of the reasons I love this gathering of Christians. There is a balance between proper “Presbyterianism” which is the history of this 109 year old congregation, and the cut loose and let it fly gospel spirit which is also a part of the church’s story.
Miss Winnie, our eighty seven year old pianist, fell recently and as so often happens, began a gentle descent towards death. The first Sunday she was absent, Pastor Pat asked me to accompany the congregation on the piano. Our community is small and we all have to pitch in whatever our gifts may be. I was the only in house option. It is the first time I have played the piano regularly for worship since college. Not only are my fingers slower than they used to be but I am having to learn new rhythms, new songs, new ways of singing old standards. Each congregation has its own musical history, its own tempo and its own versions of songs.
My southern religious musical upbringing has much in common with black gospel but there are some major differences. The first Sunday I played “Soon and Very Soon” I got lost in the repeats and codas. Afterward, one older man said “We sang more of ‘Soon and Very Soon’ than we have ever sung before!” We laughed, hugged and I resolved to practice more. Maybe that is why Miz Vivian wanted me to hear her favorite song sung right.
Rejoice in the Lord, O you righteous!...Sing to him a new song, play skillfully on the strings with loud shouts. The Psalmist reminds me that I am a part of a musical tradition that stretches back thousands of years. My search for connection to the One who gave me a song to sing has led me through many different ways of singing and playing new music. I am equally at home with Just a Little Talk With Jesus, The Messiah, Soon and Very Soon, Just As I Am, A Mighty Fortress Is Our God and Amazing Grace. I love it all and do not worry overmuch about the theological implications of when we meet our King.
We do the best we can to put words to our beliefs but even the most learned among us can only present a partial and flawed word picture of God. Music with words transforms the imperfect word pictures and creates a place where the Spirit can sing with us a new song that praises and prays, perfect harmony. Our past, our present and our future as Christians can be found in our music.
On Women’s Sunday our girl’s and women’s chorus sang a hymn arrangement new to the congregation, The Hymn of Promise, one of my favorites, written in 1985 by Natalie Sleeth. It was dedicated to her husband Ronald who died after she wrote it. The second verse is my prayer for today. “ There’s a song in every silence, seeking word and melody; there’s a dawn for every darkness, bringing hope to you and me. From the past will come a future; what it holds a mystery, unrevealed until its season, something God alone can see.”

I will be missing you...

I will be missing you, Nana...

It had been a busy day with Matthew, Mason and Mead. Their mother was away at a training program and I was support staff during her absence. School, tutoring for Mason, homework, meals, and now it was bedtime. Bedtime with three boys is not tidy nor neat but it is full of laughter and love. Baths and shampoos are followed by pajamas and bedtime books. Matthew stays up a little later than the two youngest since his ADHD meds make it more difficult for him to wind down. Mason climbed into bed and “read” while I tucked Mead in.
I would be leaving to go home in the morning after I helped with school transportation. Mason, who has a form of autism that is focused on sensory processing issues, had been trying to deal with my leaving all day. His sad face looked up at me on the ride home from school as he said, “ You go to the farm tomorrow, Nana?” This question was repeated several times through the evening as he struggled to incorporate the information and deal with his sad feelings. As I bent down to snuggle and kiss him good night, his cheek, wet with tear tracks, undid me. He looked up at me and through eyes filled with sad love, he said, “I will be missing you, Nana.”
There are many things Mason cannot do as well as typically developing children but he has one gift that is beyond compare. He knows how to love and be loved. He lives in a world where he expects others to love him and offers his love freely to others. “They will be missing me,” he tells his mother when he is late for his school program. His self affirmations are “Barney loves me, Nana... Pop loves me, Nana... My brothers love me, Nana. Love is the center of Mason’s soul. And in a world that often does not see beneath the surface, Mason’s loving heart draws other children and adults to him.
When I lie awake at night worrying about Mason, praying for those teachers who work with him, praying for his parents who struggle to do their best for him, I remember “I will be missing you, Nana”. The Heart of God, Love Incarnate, lives in Mason’s heart. And I hear the echo of God’s voice saying “I will be missing you, Peggy” while I feel far away from Heart of God.
A new hymn written by Hal Hopson puts words to my longing. “Though I may speak with bravest fire, and have the gift to all inspire, and have not love, my words are vain as sounding brass and hopeless gain. Though I may give all I possess, and striving so my love profess, but not be given by love within, the profit soon turns strangely thin. Come, Spirit, come, our hearts control. Our spirits long to be made whole. Let inward love guide every deed. By this we worship and are freed.” Oh Dear One, make my spirit whole and grant me a loving heart. Help me see the world as Mason sees it, full of loving souls yearning to be loved and loving in return. I will be loving you, Lord even as you are loving me.

Faith darkness...

Morning light has been replaced by morning darkness at Sabbath Rest Farm. I wake and turn to check the time unsure if it is morning. The rooster’s crow cannot be trusted. His crowing schedule is dependent upon some internal clock that has nothing to do with me.
Morning darkness is more difficult than early evening darkness. I am not tied to a commute to work every day so being at home makes the early nightfall manageable. Evening darkness brings candle and firelight, warmth and light, time to settle in, knit or read, catch my soul breath as the winter cold begins to creep up the mountain sides. But darkness at the break of day leaves me in limbo until I see the sunrise. Now I know in my head that the sun will rise but seeing the sun rise as I rise lifts my spirit. So these dark mornings I rise in faith... faith that the sun will come creeping over the mountain tops and make its way to our little hill beginning my day with light and warmth.
On the wall over my kitchen sink are these words... Faith is the strength by which a shattered world shall emerge into the light. I hold these words in my heart as I enter this season of morning darkness. Advent leads to Christmas, winter darkness will give way to spring light and my soul, on walkabout through barren desert, will find new life and light in this season. Faith... faith in the order of creation and the Creator will hold a light that shows me a pathway towards a light I cannot yet see. Faith keeps my feet moving and a small song in my heart. And now abides faith, hope and love...Rejoicing will come with morning light and faith leads me home.

I wanna be rejoicing everyday...

Our home church in Waco, Texas has set the theme for Advent this year in a single word... Rejoice! Every year we look forward to participating in Advent through the devotional book that is written and produced by the members of Lake Shore Baptist Church. They are a creatively ornery bunch of Baptists who take their calling to be Christians seriously. They do not take themselves too seriously, though and have modeled for us through the years Christian community in its Raggedy Anne glory. So I have been thinking on rejoicing...
Wednesday night after church soup supper, the girls and women gathered in the sanctuary for choir practice. I sat at the piano looking at the faces that have become so dear to me in these past few months, listened to the teasing and laughter and wondered how in the world did I get here? I am an accompanist not a choir director. Little Angel tugged on my shirt sleeve and said,”I am singing in our choir, Miss Peggy!” There was my answer. Our inter-generational women’s choir will be singing Natalie Sleeth’s new hymn “A Hymn of Promise” in worship Sunday morning. Altos, sopranos, a descant, occasional harmony of voices but beyond the sound of the music is a bubbling up joy in the new life that is coming to be at Calvary Presbyterian. Our family ties are growing stronger as we open our arms to new folks who visit and feel the difference. I am scared to death and plumb happy at the same time.
Rejoicing comes easy when all is well with your life and your soul. It gets harder to rejoice when things go wrong. When I forget to put the parking brake on the new four wheeler and it rolls down the little hill to crash into the clothesline, rejoicing is not what come to mind. When we leave the beach vacation early because mama has been taken to the emergency room with what turned out to be vertigo, it was hard to rejoice on the long ride across North Carolina. When I feel overwhelmed with all that has to be done, when I look at that dreaded to do list and see all that has not been done, when I get stuck in my circular thinking racetrack that has no beginning and no end, rejoicing does not come naturally.
First Thessalonians 5:16-20 tells me the secrets of whole hearted rejoicing. Rejoice always... pray constantly...give thanks... Do not quench the Spirit! Rejoicing does not stand alone. It comes as a package deal with prayer, thanksgiving and allowing the Holy Spirit to flow through you to the world beyond. So here is my focus for Advent this year. Dear Lord God, keep me on track this Advent as I try to live rejoicing everyday. Keep me on my knees praying. Help me remember all I have been given so that I might have a thank you list as well as a to do list. And above all, Lord, let your Spirit not be quenched in me by fear or frustration. I do so want to be a living witness for you. May it be so, please, God?

The light of the eyes...

The light of the eyes rejoices the heart, and good news refreshes the bones. Proverbs 15:30


The summer season of extroversion is coming to an end. Last Sunday we hosted the 119th Birthday Celebration Dinner for our church at Sabbath Rest Farm. It felt like a family reunion. Children were everywhere. The toddler twins, Darrence and Tarrence, went from pillar to post entertaining everyone. There was horseback riding, hay rides, plentiful wonderful food (who knew sauerkraut could be a salad?), storytelling and laughter. Alexis, terrified of riding Junie B, was given the consolation prize of driving the four wheeler with Michael by her side. Lawrence and Clare had the deck audience mesmerized with their foolishness. For the children and some of the adults it was their first experience with cows, ducks, chickens, donkeys and horses. As it always does, the wide open spaces on the farm let our souls expand and our spiritual backbones relax.
We live at the top of a hill not a mountain. Flatlanders often react as if it were a mountain but it is just a hill. Trees shade our home on one side but our long distance views are beautiful. From our back deck we can see ripple after ripple of mountains and watch the sun rise from our bedroom windows. The sunset deck is a setting place to see not only sunsets but moon rise also. The views in that direction include neighbor homes and farms.
I remember Jeannie calling me that day long ago telling me I had to come now and see this place she had found. We two couples had been looking for twenty acres or so for several years planning to buy and divide it. As we drove up the old rutted road Jeannie was saying “This is the spot I think you would like and I love the spot across the valley with the view of the old barn”. She was right. I did love the spot she named as ours and I love it still. Instead of twenty acres, we ended up with fifty four acres and formed a farm partnership.
Ten years have passed and I carry in my heart the memory of the light of my eyes when first I saw this beautiful place, Sabbath Rest Farm. And every morning when I wake to the feeding of the five thousand, the light burns brightly as I make my way across the horse pasture. The hills and valleys are wreathed in mist and the sun shines a golden light over the far away mountains. I have seen more rainbows here in the past ten years than I have ever seen anywhere else. They dance across the mountaintops against the dark cloud backdrops of rain yet to come.
I live in a place on this earth that calls to my bones. I carry the knowledge of these ancient mountains not only in my bones but in my soul. From my earliest memories, these old rounded mountains have called my name, calling me home.
As I prepare for the season of Advent darkness, the light of my eyes and the good news of this farm, my place on God’s earth, will refresh my bones and I will rejoice in Light from the past and Light yet to come. Darkness cannot quench the Light that sustains and surprises me through seasons of suffering and the grinding sameness of daily living. The Psalmist said “This is the day the Lord has made. I will rejoice and be glad in it”. And so I shall.

I love church historians...

I love church historians. They have the long view. I am re-reading an autobiography now... The Living of These Days... by Harry Emerson Fosdick that is a long view of the fundamentalist/liberal clash in church. He preached a sermon in 1922 titled “Shall the Fundamentalists Win?” that ultimately cost him his pulpit at First Presbyterian in New York City. Fosdick, a Baptist with views on denominations and the Christian faith that did not meet the norms of his day, built a team of Presbyterian ministers who minded the church, tended the denominational home fires while he was the preaching/pastoral care part of the team. He, by his own admission, was not a good organizer or administrator but he was a top notch preacher. Fosdick defined his sermons as pastoral care for a group unlike the expository style of preaching prevalent in his day. He tried to “reach out and touch” those in the congregation who needed to be lifted up, encouraged, given hope.
I went online and read that 1922 sermon. It could have been preached any time during the latest Baptist wars and been on the mark. And it could be preached to any of our mainline denominations today who are up in arms over issues such as women, LGBT folks, the need for orthodoxy and regulation of the sheep and the shepherds. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
In an earlier church life I had a hissy fit when the words to Fosdick’s great hymn were changed to meet the current norms of liberal theology. It seemed to me then, as it does now, that even though our interpretations of the language may change, we “dis” our faith fathers and mothers, their experience as Christian men and women, when we rewrite their history, their words to suit our needs. We know and are known, our time in history is marked by the language we use and the faith we share transcends our incomplete understanding. I digress...
The tumult and hysteria centered on Fosdick as a liberal faded somewhat when he left First Presbyterian. Fosdick was always careful to distinguish between fundamentalists (mean spirited and on a power trip) and conservatives (fundamental views but honorable). He had friends on both sides of the controversy and valued the differences even as he proclaimed his own truth.
And, wouldn’t you know it, God took that religious war and new life came from it. Riverside Church, built in what was then the God forsaken end of Manhattan Island, away from the posh and circumstance of Park Avenue, became a living testament to Fosdick’s vision of church. The church had ten kitchens... ten... because the buildings were full all week with children’s schools, groups meeting, neighborhood activities and the regular meeting of the church community. Neighbors of Union Theological Seminary and Columbia, Riverside Church ministered to students as well.
Fosdick was known not only for his sermons but also for the prayers he used to open worship. Here is one of my favorites.

Eternal God, the Light that does not fail, we worship you. We seek you not because by our seeking we can find you, but because long since, you have sought us. We do not seek the sun but open ourselves to its light and warmth when it arises. We do not seek the fresh air of heaven, but open our windows, and lo, it blows through. So may our hearts be responsive to your coming and receptive to your presence. Amen.

The long view... God is present even in the midst of our time’s tribulations. God was present for Fosdick and will be present for our children’s children. It is enough for me.

Fall on the farm...

The morning air is juicy crisp and tangy tart like a Stayman apple. Autumn has come to the farm and preparations are underway for winter.
The old high barn, once leaning into the ground like a ship run aground, now stands upright with new beams and sills. Soon the old wood siding will be back in place and holes in the roof patched with old tin. It will be ready for winter this year after nearly sinking into the ground under the weight of our twenty inch snow last Christmas.
Old Ferdinand the Bull, now retired from bulling, is being moved to the horse pasture. His arthritis makes it difficult for him to go up and down the steep hills. He needs extra feeding now that his teeth are so worn down that he cannot graze enough grass to fill his belly. It will be easier for us to tend him when he is in our back yard. My dad would be amused by my inability to act as a proper farmer who would have sent Ferdinand to market years ago, but I couldn’t. That sweet old English shorthorn bull will die here and then Michael and Gary will have to dig the biggest grave of all in the cow cemetery.
Jay Roberts is helping me prepare my flower borders for winter and the big fall church picnic next weekend. Brightly painted mums are beautiful complements to the leaves just tinged with color around the farm. While we were cleaning out one of the beds, clipping back bloomed out seed pods that had been stripped by birds, I saw two bright yellow large spiders, riding spiders, I think, building their zipper webs in the yarrow and black eyed susan stalks. We left them for Aidan and his friend Isaac to see when they came Friday. When I took the boys out to see the two spiders...ooops! In the center of the web, one spider was on top of the other spider who was now dead and being encased as a to go meal along with a grasshopper. Stocking the pantry for the next crop of spiders was an unexpected lesson in the realities of living with Mother Nature.
Autumn... bittersweet memories of summer’s fullness and life’s unending cycles of birth and death... my favorite season of the year. Fall contains new beginnings as well as endings and my memory safety deposit box contains the smell of new crayons and the feel of clean notebooks, the crisp starchy crunch of new dresses for school being worn for the first time, the feelings of a do over, a chance to begin again and an opportunity to do better this year. After the loosey goosey summer, order returns and schedules provide a safety net for me, deadlines and expectations.
Miss Winnie, our eighty seven year old pianist has been ill and I have been accompanying worship on the piano. My skills are a little rusty. Keeping up with what is sung where keeps you on your toes. We sang the final “Amen” a capella Sunday because I was getting ready for the postlude and forgot the “Amen”. Oh, well. Pastor Pat likes to sing a capella once in awhile anyway.
Years spent sitting on the piano and organ benches of various Baptist and Presbyterian churches have left their mark on me and those body memories are flooding back as I struggle to get my fingers in shape. One of my gifts as an accompanist is the ability to play with feeling. I am finding God again not by singing but in interpreting what I hear and feel in the notes and words on the pages of our hymnals. I am grateful for the chance to reclaim this part of my soul work.
Like the spider, I am drawing into the center of my web, making preparation for the season to come, dark night and winter cold. It is time to pull together what I will need for this next season of the soul...deep breaths of autumn air that set my teeth on edge remind me to be grateful for my body, this life and my age... no longer young but full of both memory and possibility. Darkness drawing near with the promise of more light yet to come...
My friend Deryl Fleming wrote these words that are my Autumn Prayer... We do not any of us get what we deserve in life. We live not by just deserts but by sheer grace. And here and there, now and then, we know it. When we do, we who have been graced become gracious grateful creatures of the Giver. Which is why we are here, to render our lives as compositions of gratitude.
And so I shall this winter work to render my life a composition of gratitude. I will write in my new autumn composition book songs of thanksgiving and praise that will warm me in the depths of darkest coldest nights, a reminder of light and warmth yet to come. Thanks be to God for the seasons of the natural order and for the seasons of the soul. Amen.

Clotheslines...

Mama always had a clothesline wherever we lived. So did everyone else we knew. As soon as my arms could reach the line, hanging out the clothes became one of my chores. I didn’t mind it. The wet clothes smelled good and it was fun to make a tunnel by stretching the sheets over two lines. After all the other clothes were hung out, I could run through the sheet tunnel. Hanging clothes out in the winter could be tricky but usually, even on our coldest days, there was enough sun to dry them.
I did hate the pants stretcher, though. Someone invented a contraption that fit down in wet jeans and other pants to stretch them as they dried. Theoretically, this made them easier to iron. Practically, it took longer to get the stretcher in the jeans than it would have taken to iron them wrinkles and all.
There was an order to hanging out clothes. Every family had their own method and children learned to follow the patterns laid down by their mothers. No more than two socks to a clothespin. Underwear hangs from the waist. Link the clothes together with a shared clothespin. Pants hang from the waist as do skirts. Don’t pin red things to white things in case they fade. Hang colored things inside out so the sun won’t fade them. Don’t let anything touch the ground. Sometimes clotheslines would sag and a pole prop would be needed to follow this rule.
Bringing the clothes in was never as much fun for me as hanging them out partly because I hated to fold them. The clothes pins went back in the little bag that hung on the line. The sheets and towels, a little stiff, smelled of the sun. My children insisted that clothes dried at Grandma’s house also had a faint whiff of cow manure but I think they were prejudiced. City kids, they grew up with a dryer and wanted soft sheets and towels not stiff ones.
And now I have a clothes line again. Two metal poles built by my father long ago stand guard at the back of the house. Placement was crucial. The lines needed to be far enough away from the horse fence so curious equines couldn’t reach and nibble on clothes. Clotheslines are in again, a green alternative to power hungry dryers and I am a part of the avant guard. All things old are made new again sooner or later. Mini skirts and clotheslines...
It is hard to be uppity when all the kids on the school bus see your underwear hanging out on the line... humility is an under rated virtue. And, all the neighbors clothes flapping in the breeze gave us kids a chance to see everybody’s laundry (and underwear). Somehow clotheslines brought us together as a community. Driving by Miz Barnes house as she was hanging out clothes, we waved and listened to the adult conversation about her boys and their farm. Washing days varied from family to family but the sight of wash hanging out seemed to start conversations about relationships and families.
I need a clothesline for my soul, a place in the sun to hang out all the stuff I am working on. Hanging out on the line, others can see what is going on with me. This blog is my spiritual clothesline in many ways. I don’t always hang things out neatly but they flap in the breezes of your responses. Good church is another place where I can hang out some of my laundry to dry. I look around and see other clotheslines full of soul work. We could all use some clothesline time... hanging up and out, bringing in the laundry, seeing what is going on with our neighbors and friends, standing in the outdoors away from appliances that need repairmen.
Wouldn’t you know it? The first day with my new clothesline and it is cloudy and rainy. I will have to wait until tomorrow to hang out my laundry. Oh, well. Patience is another virtue I need to learn.

With one voice...

I woke up suddenly to the sound of Barney’s song in the wee hours of the morning. He began his solo under our bedroom window and progressed around the house. I got up, went out on the porch and called him to me. The night was beautiful with clear skies and starlight so I sat awhile in silence with Barney beside me as we listened to the canine chorus singing. I could hear Leisa’s dogs, dogs from the next road over, dogs from the hills and valleys all around the farm, each singing their part in the Night Time Song of Dog. After awhile I went in and lay in bed slipstream thinking about voices and song.
Three grandsons were with us this weekend while their mother attended a high school reunion. Their voices began at 6:30 in the morning and stopped at bedtime. Sometimes they spoke separately but often, like Barney, they sang along with the chorus. A statement by one of them would lead to an accompanying riff from the other two. The ripple effect could be soothing if the decibel level was low or startling if there was disagreement or excitement in the choir.
Sunday morning I was called up to play the piano for worship. Miss Winnie, our 87 year old pianist, is ill and unable to play. The first hymn was “Soon and Very Soon” by Andrae Crouch, a hymn I love to sing but had never played before. It became apparent that what was written in the hymnal was not the way the congregation was used to singing it. We made it through somehow and I threw up my arms in relief to the laughter of the congregation. Thank God for the voices that knew the way it was supposed to be sung, who carried me along even when I played the wrong notes.
Morning time is quieter now as the birds are leaving for warmer winter homes. We wake to quiet stillness broken by the hum of crickets, not birdsong. There is a change in the choir loft as the season of autumn approaches. Different voices have begun to sing as another great cycle of change comes to Sabbath Rest Farm.
I reflect on the different voices I have had during my life... the voice of a daughter, a wife, a mother’s voice, a grandmother’s voice, the descant of a teacher, singing the song of a farmer or a deacon. Whatever the shape of the notes or the words, my prayer is that my voice will honor the One who gave me songs to sing. And if I stumble through an unfamiliar rhythm or my voice cracks on the high notes, I want to be fully present to the moment and belting it out.
Today I will sing the song of the farmer as I spray the cows for flies and feed them hay. When mama and I go to visit Margaret in the hospital, I will be singing as a friend and neighbor. As I pick up the truck from the repair shop, I will sing the song of the helper. In my heart I am singing a lullaby for Rowan and his parents, a lullaby of joy and thanksgiving as well as a prayer for sleep for them all. None of these songs are solos. Like Barney, I sing along with a choir. And I am grateful for all the voices and songs that lift me up. Thanks be to God.

In the beginning...

As it was in the beginning...

The call came Thursday morning. “Mom? Michelle’s water broke and we are on the way to the doctor’s office.” Mama and I were in Weaverville running errands, getting ready for three of our grandsons who were spending Labor Day weekend with us. As we drove home after visiting with Margaret, a friend of ours who is under the weather, another call came. “Mom? We are on our way to the hospital.” And so this beginning began.
I called Michael and left word. I called the girls and gave them the news that another baby boy was on the way into the world to join our family. Many calls later, a plan was in place and that afternoon I drove to Charlotte to be with Adam and Michelle. Michael came after work and we laughed and labored with Michelle as she did the body work necessary for birth. As transition approached, we all left the labor room so Adam and Michelle could finish the task at hand. At 2:01 Adam called us caught between tears and laughter to tell us Rowan Reilly Hester had arrived. With Michelle’s cheeks and Adam’s nose, dark hair and rosebud mouth, another doxology of creation was sung in Presbyterian Hospital early Friday morning.
No matter how many times I see a newborn baby, I am always swept away by the sheer magnitude of the miracles that are required for the creation of new life. Even in this age of scientific understanding, there is such a joyous happenstance in the bodies of new babies. How did Rowan get Adam’s nose... the Hester nose... and his mother’s cheeks, the Reilly cheeks? Where did that mouth come from and how did the child of two blonde parents end up with such dark hair? In that tiny little bundle resting in his mother’s arms is a whole person who will unfold and grow with his parent’s help. As I look at pictures of our son holding his baby son, my eyes and heart shed tears of joy for his happiness, for the family he and Michelle have created.
I watch the family trio and see echoes of a long ago family, a new child born in a barn with loving parents and a future neither of them could fully imagine. As it was for Mary and Joseph, so it is for Adam and Michelle. All we can do is love our children, give them the best of what was given to us and hand them over to the safekeeping of the God who gave them to us. As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end, amen, amen.

Masterpieces large and small...

The past four days have been a study in contrasts for me. Thursday night we flew to New York City for a wedding in Central Park. We had never visited New York City so we stayed a few days extra and took in some sights. I have always wanted to visit The Cloisters, a museum of medieval art. Remnants of medieval cloisters and chapels reconstructed in lovely gardens on the far northern end of Manhattan island was an experience of the sacred in the midst of the secular.
I couldn’t help but contrast my two museum experiences in my reflections this morning.
Visitors to The Cloisters spoke in hushed tones. Quiet and decorum, perhaps influenced by the sanctity of the stones that surrounded us, were a welcome break from the noise and perpetual rush of the city. All around me were the art and faith survivors from the middle ages. The illuminated manuscripts were beautiful and I studied them carefully, recognizing the skill it took to produce work that could last through the ages. And who knew that communion wine used to be sipped through a straw? For those long ago believers, the wine truly became Christ’s blood and they did not want to spill it.
As so often happens, there was one work of art that spoke to my soul. I went back to it several times, standing in quiet meditation, time traveling and remembering. The two pieces were painted on wood in a gothic arch shape. One was of Jesus on the cross with Mary and others gathered around. The second companion piece was of Jesus, down from the cross stretched out, with Mary lying down beside him. The faces pulled me in... called to me... rendered with great feeling and detail, so lifelike and filled with grief and confusion. The prone figures of mother and son, the awful grief and loss, the gathering of loved ones around the mother and son, echoed in my heart and reminded me we never are truly alone even in our darkest hours.
Our second museum was the Museum of Modern Art in downtown Manhattan. It was just a few blocks from our hotel so we walked to it and entered an open soaring space filled with people and noise. Languages from around the world, children, lines, bubbling activity wherever you looked... We began with the Matisse exhibit on the sixth floor exploring and learning about the artist and his methods.
It was crowded and we were caught up in the museum fever... see as much as you can because time is flying by... when we saw her. A little girl, maybe four or five, sitting cross legged on the floor in front of a painting with her drawing pad. She would look a little and draw a little, look and draw. Her composition was taking shape and she was not only seeing but drawing what she saw. Around her was a little still island of space as the busy noisy adults gave her the room she needed.
I will remember the beautiful paintings I saw on Monday. There were so many I have only seen in pictures or prints and they came to life for me in the midst of that crowded busy museum. But most of all I will carry in my heart the image of a little girl taking time to look, see and draw what was in front of her. She was a masterpiece in her own right. She will help me to remember to live in the present, mindful of what is right in front of me. She calls me to draw what I see and in the drawing to make a new creation that reflects the Old Master who created me.
Thanks be to God for the work of our hands that brings beauty and order to our world. I want my life to be a work of art, Lord, that is a still point of creation and connection. Give me eyes to see and a heart that is open to both noise and quiet, chaos and order so that I might find you in New York City and Alexander, North Carolina. Amen.

My whippoorwill song... with grasshopper grace notes and butterfly benediction

In the twilight, I miss the sound of the whippoorwill’s song as the faint taste of loss and leaving lingers in my soul. This season, the crossing over from summer into fall, always brings a melancholy that is echoed in that shy bird’s song. As a child we would sit on the porch listening to whippoorwills sing from the woods that edged the pasture. Plaintive, sweet, floating over the heavy summer evening air, he called us home as darkness settled over the land. Gone now from the fields around us, I hope the whippoorwill has found refuge from the mad rush of development in the hills and hollows farther up the mountains. A world without the whippoorwill’s song would be sadly lacking. I sit on my soul’s porch listening to the whippoorwill song in my heart remembering my seasons of good by saying.
School’s beginning was always bittersweet for me as our children crossed another hurdle in the race to grow up. Kindergarten, first grade, first bus ride, middle school, high school, first car, driving off to college, first child to leave home, last child to leave home (the middle child gets a free pass)... all in the fall when the tangy smell of approaching autumn floated through the early morning air. I celebrated their coming of age, their growing into accountability, the sight of their individual personhood, the faint outlines of the grownups they would become emerging from their childhood. And as I celebrated, I mourned the loss of my babies... makes no sense does it?
In the luminous light of summer not yet autumn, I see the ones I have loved who have left this world, loved ones who no longer can come when I call. As I cut grass today on the farm, their faces rested in my heart’s memory and I called them by name. Grandparents, father, sister, husband, friends... their presence in my life was a gift and I honor them by remembering. The day is crisp and clear like my memories and I rest between laughter and tears.
I look down and see my shirt covered with grasshoppers of all sizes and colors, refugees from the mower who have found safety on me. Brown long legged ones, small bright green ones, brown and orange ones... crunchy legs climbing up my shirt towards my face, jumping away when I lift my hand to touch them. As a child I caught and raised grasshoppers in gallon jar terrariums, feeding them until their skins split like a snake as they outgrew their body covering. They fascinated me, and in them I caught my first glimpse of the transformation that comes with growth.
A cloud of butterflies suddenly surround me on the mower up by the high barn. I turn the mower off and sit, soul singing at this beautiful symbol of resurrection. Black and blue butterflies, sitting on the mower, lighting on my arms, resting in the clover... I think God just reached down and tapped my soul on the shoulder. Words come to mind and heart... “Remember to whom you belong. Remember there is more to life than death. Rest in the beauty that surrounds you and give thanks for all that has been and all that is yet to be.”
Tonight Michael and I drove the tractor and the mower down to the barn under the light of a full moon. The last few stragglers of fireflies glowed here and there as I meandered down the hill. Light enough for the journey...beautiful light... beginnings and endings illuminated, glowing with memories and possibilities. It is more than enough. Thanks be to God.

Oh to grace how great a debtor...

All of my life I have prayed the Lord’s Prayer using different words as times have changed... Our Father and Mother instead of just Our Father... but one phrase has remained the same in meaning. Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive others their trespasses against us... The interpretation of this phrase has remained constant. The quality of forgiveness for ourselves depends upon the forgiveness we extend to others. The gospel story of the man imprisoned for failure to pay his debts who is forgiven by the ruler only to imprison those who owe him is the foundational text for this reading of the prayer.
I am coming to a new hearing of these old words in this most important prayer. Sitting in a new congregation so different from all those I have known before, the Presbyterian version of this prayer startles me every Sunday with the words “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” I almost always stumble through the first part of this phrase catching up on “our debtors”. One Sunday a retired minister stood and said this particular phrase had meaning for Presbyterians because they were in their history shopkeepers and owners who often were called to forgive the debts owed them by those who could not or would not pay.
I sit sometimes in worship after the Prayer contemplating my debts, what I owe, what promissory notes I have signed in my life. I owe my parents for their loving care even when I was unlovely. I owe my children who taught me the dance steps for the circle of life. I owe my grandchildren for the pure unbridled joy they bring to my life. I owe my pastors who have each given me words every Sunday that often caught my God imagination and pushed me closer to my Creator. I owe my husband Michael who has worked to support us financially and keeps me from floating off into the ether of introversion. I owe my friends who continue to gather round for fun and frolic and come when I holler for help. I owe my God for life and sustaining love that will not let me go even when the way is shrouded in darkness.
“Oh to Grace how great a debtor daily I’m constrained to be. Let thy goodness like a fetter bind my wandering heart to thee. Prone to wander, Lord I feel it, prone to leave the God I love. Here’s my heart, oh take and seal it, seal it for thy courts above.” Please Lord, bind me and remind me of my debts. Seal me in your heart so that my wanderings will always lead back to you. Amen.

Salty dogs...

We moved to Asheville in 1980 with three small children and a dream. Since no bank in its right mind would loan mortgage money to someone with just a dream, it took all the money from the sale of our Columbia house to purchase the old house we bought on Vineyard Place. The three hundred dollars we had left over bought groceries and the speaking engagement at Fort Jackson paid enough to keep us afloat for a month. Michael launched his dream of being a pastoral counselor in the mountains we loved working first in an office at a church, then at our home in a remodeled basement office.
Upstairs I stripped wallpaper and woodwork, patched plaster and sewed Roman shades, answered the phone and took messages for Michael, ran car pools and was a full time mother and remodeling laborer. Michael’s practice was full in two months and we never looked back. Our children grew. We carved out a place in church and our community at large. The dream became flesh, the call was answered, the gifts were given and life was very good.
Then Southern Seminary called wanting Michael to come help establish a department in Family Ministry. Southern Seminary was Michael’s alma mater, the place where professors had nurtured and challenged him academically and taught him how to do and be a pastoral counselor. It was an agonizing decision but we left for a six year period of time to live in Louisville, Kentucky where he led the Gheens Center for Family Ministry and was a professor giving back some of what had been given to him.
In 1990 after the Baptists went to hell in a handbasket as a denomination, we moved back home to Asheville and Michael resumed his practice as a pastoral counselor. Professors don’t make a whole lot of money so our nest egg was the money we made on our home in Kentucky. Once again no bank wanted to make us a mortgage loan without a regular paycheck so with a hefty down payment, we found an owner willing to finance us for a year until we could get a loan. Our oldest daughter headed off to college after one week in town.
So here we were again... a rented office, a daughter in college with tuition payments, two other children at home, a mortgage payment and nothing but a dream and a call. Twenty years later, the dream has become flesh. Michael is now the counselor for the second and third generations of families he has known since the early eighties. Countless weddings and funerals, preaching and teaching in churches all across our county, tending pastors who need a pastor, his call to be a pastor, first heard as a small boy, has been realized in ways he never dreamed. Now working only three days a week in the office, Michael’s dreams are taking a new shape as he moves into partial retirement... old and new gifts, old and new dreams.
In the gospel of Mark I read... “For everyone will be salted with fire. Salt is good; but if the salt has lost its saltiness, how will you season it? Have salt in yourselves and be at peace with one another.” Our lives and Michael’s responses to his calling have salted us with fire at times. It can be scary to launch out into the unknown with little money and many responsibilities. But the fiery salt has brought us new gifts, new ways to be children of God, new ways to be faithful to the One who called us into being. And if the translation in my annotated Bible is correct, having salt in ourselves refers to being true to our gifts and exercising them peacefully. Salty dog Christians... full of flavor that transforms all it touches...
Some days, Lord, I feel like Krazy Jane’s Mixed Up Salt. Help me remember where all my gifts came from. Lead me to the places where my gifts can be given. And when fiery salt rains down on my head, keep me true to you and to myself so that I might live peacefully. Amen.

Horseback riding and soulwork...preparation and possibility

Junie B and I took a little ride yesterday. I am trying to ride her at least three times a week or more for both our sakes. We each need the exercise. Our time together begins with a workout in the ring. We practice “Whoa Stand”, run in circles and backing up. Running the lunge strap up and down her front legs helps her stand still if she should get her legs entangled in something. Good behavior earns pats and hugs. It is sweaty, hot work for us and patience is a virtue that is rewarded. Junie B, like me, does not respond well to yelling but stubborn persistence on my part will eventually get her focused. I wonder if horses have ADD?
And then we leave the pasture for a trip around the farm. Every ride is an adventure... sometimes a sudden spook at a horsefly bite or a trip through the trees with low lying branches. Yesterday we rode through the Sound of Music Hill, the high pasture, the low pasture, the glen and up the hill home. Diane was walking with me and opened gates as we went. Getting up on a horse is not as easy as it looked in those old western movies. My body is a little older than it used to be and I need a mounting aid of some sort. So having a helper for the gates was wonderful.
In every ride there is at least one moment of pure joy...connection between Junie B and me, my body and Junie B’s body...and I remember why I do this. Yesterday I was posting in rhythm with Junie B’s trot on top of the Sound of Music Hill, the far away view of the mountains was crystal clear and the breezes were blowing. My soul laughed out loud with joy. Junie B wanted to trot, I could feel it through the reins, and we went back and forth between Diane and the far edge of the pasture. All the sweaty preliminaries forgotten, I reveled in the pleasure of the moment and let myself feel and be present to the joy.
Junie B got distracted by her companion Dixie’s whinnying from the barn in the high pasture and lost her focus. It is impossible to be out of earshot of her cries when we ride. Soon and very soon she will be coming with us and the two girls can enjoy the pleasure of each others company. Anxious to get home, Junie B stepped up the pace and slowed down only when she had to climb the hill to get to the house. Drenched in sweat, I slid down and stood by Junie B. She leaned her head around and nuzzled me. We stood in silent sweet communion for just a moment before I opened the gate. A bath and a hoof cleaning for Junie B, evening feed for everyone and then it was time for my bath.
My soulwork is akin to my horseback riding. It is composed of hard ring work, the basics... reading my holy book the Bible, other books that stir my thoughts and cause me to spend time sitting and thinking, and stretching my boundaries of belief. Then I begin to move out. I write, I teach, I keep the nursery at church. I meet an inmate and a chaplain from the women’s prison and commit to helping. I live with Michael, my mama and the farm family. And in those practices, sneaky little moments of joy pop up. In the nursery, Darrence and Tarrence grin at me with their identical twin faces. Mama giggles and sounds like the young girl she once was. Michael rings the prayer bowl calling us to grace. I sing a hymn in worship to Miss Winnie’s accompaniment and looking out the window, I see the mountains. Grace notes in a song of thanksgiving and joy... not possible without the preparation so that I might be focused and have eyes to see and ears to hear. It is more than enough for me today and I am grateful. Thanks be to God for preparation and possibility.

On the cusp...

There is a magic time in the morning... the night song of the crickets is punctuated by the rooster’s voice as the bagpipe drone of the crow’s song hums along... light creeps ever so slowly over the distant mountains out my bedroom window and I lie here listening and watching as a new day dawns. The quality of the morning light changes in late summer. Drier, dustier in the late summer heat, morning light has lost some of its sparkle and lays heavy on the land as it slides up our hill.
Mama bear and her three cubs are ever present searching for food as autumn draws near. Bird feeders, trash, compost piles, and duck feed draw her to us and she makes the rounds of all the farm family to feed her three babies. I spotted the white turkey last week walking on the Sound of Music Hill in the middle of the flock. It was the first time I had seen her in months. The turkey chicks are nearly grown now, their numbers decimated by predators. The bluebirds and indigo buntings have raised their families and are not as visible as they were in the spring and early summer. We are on the cusp of autumn... the pointed end of summer not quite yet fall... an in-between time... a magic space where you don’t know what will come next.
Transitions in seasons, like our life transitions, can be a time to catch our breath, consider our possibilities, look ahead while we look back, get ready for the future while we give thanks for the past.
It has been a busy summer for us here at Sabbath Rest Farm full of family, gatherings, hay baling, restoration work on the old high barn, vacation at the beach, deaths of ones dear to us, new lives entering our world, house maintenance and fence building, the changing of the guard with a new young black Angus bull coming to live with the herd. Nothing is ever really settled forever. There is always something to be done or someone to set a spell with.
I read the 73rd Psalm this morning and there I found words for my time of transition. The writer is so honest and funny and particular in his confessions and judgements. “Truly God is good to the upright, to those who are pure in heart. But as for me, my feet had almost stumbled, my steps had well nigh slipped. For I was envious of the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.” The writer then describes in great detail the prosperous wicked ones and they sound a lot like the same ones I envy. He then complains about being faithful in vain and says it is a wearisome task to try to understand how others flourish when the righteous suffer. And then comes the passage that I will carry in my heart this day as my life continues its shift into the cusp of old age.
“When my soul was embittered, when I was pricked in heart, I was stupid and ignorant. I was like a beast toward thee. Nevertheless, I am continually with thee, thou dost hold my right hand. Thou dost guide me with thy counsel, and afterward will receive me in glory. Whom have I in heaven but thee? And there is nothing upon earth that I desire besides thee. My flesh and my heart may fail but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.”
As Michael begins his semi-retirement and the rhythm of our daily lives finds a new beat, as we contemplate the limits of our money and bodies and lives, as I get lost in the longing for more than I have, these words will call me back to myself when my steps slip and I stumble. I will remember that God is the strength of my heart and I will give thanks.
Looking back while I look forward, I see the many ways you have kept me all the days of my life, Lord, and I want to say thank you. As you have cared for me in the past, I trust you will continue to make my way plain as I live into the future that remains for me here on earth. Keep me gracious and if I act like a beast sometimes, forgive me for the fear and loss of trust that separates me from you. You are my portion, my destiny forever, God and I am grateful.

These are my people...

True Confessions (anybody else remember that magazine version of the Maury Povich show?)... I am a country music fan. If there is war talk on NPR, I switch to the local country music station and it never fails me. A song will come on that starts me to thinking. This morning on the way to get paint for mama I heard, “These are my people. It ain’t always purty but it’s real.” This is a wonderful description of my love affair with churches and church people.
I’ve belonged to all sizes of churches. Some had forty people in worship on a good Sunday and others routinely had over a thousand. The larger churches offered multiple programs for us and our children... choirs, youth groups, mission trips, many choices for adult programs, libraries. You could always find a small group within the large group. Worship that fed my soul with beautiful music and thoughtful proclamation was on the menu at these larger churches and our family flourished in these communities. The smaller churches, while not a cafeteria of options for the practice of my faith, provided a different way to live in community.
The smallest church I have belonged to was Pauline Baptist Church. The small, austere white frame no nonsense sanctuary with pine floors and pews that would break your back was crisscrossed with a framework on which curtains could be drawn to create Sunday School classrooms. The preacher, who belonged to the suck and blow school of proclamation, was a long lanky old man who still wore a black frock coat and string tie on Sunday.
We joined that church when I was a teenager who was sick at heart leaving the church and friends of my childhood. Only one other teen girl attended Pauline and I felt lost. Sunday mornings, once full of anticipation, now lay heavy on my heart. Slowly, a place was made for me in that small kinfolk congregation. I began to play the piano in worship, sing in a girl’s trio (another girl was imported for this group), listen to the stories told by Miss Flossie and Mr. Jess, visited the Rizer family and others who were our neighbors, and began to become a part of that church family. My first wedding was there and I was surrounded by those who had loved me through to young adulthood. I no longer saw what wasn’t there but celebrated what was there... kinship, community, a family of Christians who knew how to stick around for the long haul, unimpressed by fancy trappings(a good thing since we had none), straight talking plain Baptists.
The largest church I ever belonged to was in a growth spurt when we came. A charismatic preacher was pulling them in on Sunday mornings and the church was full of energy and excitement. Morning worship would have over a thousand souls sitting in the beautiful sanctuary. When we first joined, I would take our children on Wednesday nights for the evening meal and activities. Michael was often working and could seldom attend. Many nights in the beginning, I sat alone and left to go to the church library to read until prayer meeting began. I began teaching one of the children’s groups as a way to be useful.
Gradually we began to find community. We helped found a Sunday School class that used literature along with the Bible to hear the voice of God speaking. Sitting in the same place for worship every Sunday, we began to meet those who sat around us. I took organ lessons from the church organist and reclaimed a talent that had been neglected since college. I joined an exercise class that met in the church gym and brought my youngest with me to the childcare that was provided. There I met other young mothers who became part of my church family. A small church within a larger church...
Regardless of the size or theology or worship style, each community was chock full of people who were real, pretty or not. And, that included me. That is the gift and the curse of organized local churches... a place where folks are real like the Velveteen Rabbit, rough and worn out and angry and sad and happy and smart and dumb as a post. In other institutions where our livelihood or our public character needs protection, we play nicely. The church, however, is one place where most of us let it all hang out on the community clothesline to dry. To my mind, that is one very good reason for being a part of a faith community. Like home, most churches will take you whatever shape you are in. Alcoholic? Come on down. Nag? We have a seat saved for you. Single parent hanging on by your toenails? Sit by me. Upper middle class white male? Junior League soccer mom? Illiterate young adult? We have a spot for you. Come rub shoulders with the rest of us works in progress and lets be real together. Not purty, but real.
As I embark on a new church journey, I give thanks for all the real people who have been my faith family through the years. I am looking forward to being initiated into this new family of mixed up folks who are my travel companions on this trip. We are red and yellow, black and white, precious in the sight of the One who holds us together with the love that transforms the rough places into pearls of great price. Traveling mercies for us all, Lord, as we make our way home to you.