Simple gifts...Six dogs and seventeen people

Seventeen chairs, four different kinds squeezed side by side around the table, held our Christmas family. Grandma, eighty five years old, was the oldest and the five great-grandsons were the youngest. Friends David and Dianne were a part of the mix along with six dogs. Serving the meal is an informal affair. Food is arranged along the bar and the stove with mamas serving their children first. We sit as we fill our plates then say grace when all are seated. The “talleyban” bowl is struck, the words of gratitude are spoken and the menorah is lit. It is mayhem with meaning.
The year has been the usual mix of grief and joy, struggles and accomplishments, worry and assurance. Uncle Harold died this year, the last of the Calhoun boys, and that loss weighed heavy on mama. New baby boy Colby came into the world after nine months of pregnancy related illness for his mother Alison. Michael’s transition into partial retirement and a knee replacement surgery are doing well after rehab for body and soul. All of us have had our usual share of challenges and triumphs but here we are, once again gathered as family in all its messy glory.
Watching four generations mill around, I can see bits and pieces of those who have gone before. Megan brought two banana nut breads created from her grandmother’s recipe, Michael’s mother Ann. Mason asks Grandma about Grandaddy’s picture, my daddy, that hangs in her hall. Adam and Michelle are giving Michael’s father’s desk a new home. We set the table with silver from mothers, grandmothers and great-aunts long dead. The living are surrounded by family unknown and unseen but present nonetheless.
I sit and listen to the Tower of Babel babble grateful for the mixed bag of family. There are no guarantees, no return policies, no quality assurance control for the family. The gene pool you get is not one selected from a USDA approved line. We all get a mixture of genetically predetermined possibilities with free choice as a leavening ingredient. The combinations are endless and fascinating. A world of hurt swims side by side with the goodies in the gene pool... predispositions to addictions, depression, physical conditions and other dark possibilities. We all get a generous helping of both and then begins the creative process as we go to work shaping who we become.
I watch my family and wonder what the future holds for them. I see through a glass darkly and am unable to know what life will be like for them. One thing I do know with certainty... the God who set all Creation in motion will be present for them all their lives. The Love that will not let me go will hold my children and grandchildren close when I am no longer here. And when I am gone from this Christmas gathering on earth, I will thank God for each year I have been given, for the murky gene pool from which I came, and for the laughter of children from one generation to another.

Simple Gifts... Word Wars

The word wars have begun. I get e-mails every week exhorting me to hold the godless hordes at bay by wishing everyone a “Merry Christmas” instead of “Happy Holidays”. Evidently we are under siege and our Christian nation is at risk because of the words we use to wish each other well. Some of my friends who are very conservative, dare I say it, fundamentalists, do not celebrate Christmas at all so this is a moot issue for them.
Being the cantankerous South Georgia girl that I am, I Googled the phrase and found some interesting information. Merry Christmas was first used in 1699 in a letter written by an English admiral and then again by Charles Dickens in his book “A Christmas Carol” in 1849. The most common holiday greeting then was “Happy Christmas”. The word “merry”, of course, means happy and “Christmas” refers to Christ’s Mass in Old English. Most of the folks I know who get their knickers in a twist over this issue are not Catholic so I can’t help but wonder...
The fact of the matter is these words began as a cultural tradition in a time when much of daily life revolved around the church. They are not found anywhere in our Bible nor are they a part of a theological basis for Jesus’s coming into our world as God’s Son. My daddy and I argued a lot (arguing was Daddy’s favorite entertainment) about everything. One day we were arguing about the King James Bible, the one and only true translation according to him. One of my finer moments in that tradition was when I asked him if he believed in education (knowing he valued education and learning). He said “yes”, of course. Then I asked him if education had taught us many new things since King James time.We named a few. I moved in for the kill... Why is it we can use air conditioning, watch t.v., accept antibiotics for infections, drive cars and fly in airplanes but we cannot accept that Biblical scholarship could make the same sort of progress as the rest of our world? I love the language of the King James Bible. The images, the taste of the words rolling off my tongue, the comfort of my first words of faith are found in that book. The twenty third Psalm never sounds quite right in any other translation. But it is not the final word or the final words that sum up my faith.
How I wish we could worry more about how we live as Christians the rest of the year and relax at Christmas. There is nothing inherently evil in a cultural Christmas celebration. Santa Claus is great fun and having fun is not a sin. If we Christians live as the light and salt of the earth the other 364 days of the year, we have nothing to worry about. Ooops...

Simple gifts... mud, muck, mayhem and monotony

Yesterday a friend said, “I wishI had your life just being on the farm”. Suddenly I realized that not everyone knows the reality of farm life. So gentle reader, here is the flip side of cute wildlife and pet bulls.
My days are bookended by morning work and night work (my Grandaddy’s words) as is every farmer’s day. In the morning I have to go to the stable and feed four equines and one bull, muck out two wagon loads of manure and feed the cat. After the nearly three inches of rain we had last week, the mud at the stable is impressive... suck your boots off mud. Then I have to go to the field to feed the cows. Again I walk through suck your boots off mud. Rain or shine, Florida warm or Arctic freezing, the work still must be done.
If I leave for the day or for choir practice or to eat out, the work is done before I leave or it will have to be done in the dark...day in and day out, the same work with no performance reviews or pay raises. Parenting was good preparation for this way of life.
As I drive down the hill to the cows, I see a busted fence board the cows can step over. I need to move the old hay into the leaning barn for bedding so the cows will have a clean space for the next cold snap. The bittersweet vines and the kudzu are taking over. Before spring we will need to cut as many of those pests as possible to kill them. I ponder when to fertilize the hay pasture and wish we could reseed our grazing pastures. The fence in the lane is leaning and almost down... another maintenance task. The horse trailer needs to be cleaned out after the trip home with Little Ferd. Many of these tasks Michael will try to get to on Saturdays and I help as I can. The reality of farm life is you do not get to punch out at five o’clock and go home. Your to do list is always full.
Jesus was born into this world surrounded by confusion and messiness. He, like us, lived and worked in a system that often did not make sense.The truth of the matter is most of us find hope and love and joy and peace in the midst of mud and muck and mayhem and monotony. The simple gift of life is not so simple after all. Our call is to give thanks not just for the hope-love-joy-peace parts of life but also for monotony-muck-mayhem-mud. One without the other has no meaning.

Simple Gifts...Squirrels, buzzards and a stray cat

Simple gifts... Squirrels, buzzards and stray cats

I walked down to the stables, crunchy white frost underfoot, to the sound of old Ferd’s soft moo. He was ready for breakfast. Bud the Barn Cat met me, twining around my legs as I put his food out. Junie B nickered, Dixie snorted and the donkeys whined because I wasn’t moving fast enough to suit them. After the stable tenants were tended to, I headed down to the cows in the Kubota.
A flotilla of buzzards floated overhead on their way to the landfill. Their formation flies over the farm in the morning on their way to work and in the evening on their way home to roost. An addled squirrel ran in front of the Kubota and served as my escort all the way down the hill. The cows were gathered around the feed trough waiting for me. Our new bull, Little Ferd, stood apart from the crowd. I am trying to gentle him. When I put the feed in the trough, I walk around the cows patting each of them. Little Ferd will let me pat his rump now but not his head yet. On the way back up the hill, a stranger cat, solid black, jumps in the brush with a mouse in his mouth. He has been hanging around for a week or so. We are not sure if he belongs to a neighbor or is a stray.
At the top of the hill, I look back at the mountains and valleys beyond. Clouds separate the mountains leaving them floating, disembodied peaks rising from the white mist. I turn the key off and sit in silence for a minute watching the new day come into being.
And so my day begins with a psalm of praise for addled squirrels, buzzards, stray cats and a new bull. I sing along with the neighs, moos, meows and crow caws in joyful thanksgiving for this most amazing gift of another day of life at Sabbath Rest Farm. We are all waiting on New Light to come in the midst of winter darkness.

Simple gifts...Perfect imperfection

Simple gifts…Perfect imperfection…Imperfect perfection
Every time I drove by and looked up, the mistake I made pops out and I cringed. It was such a lovely idea. We would create a barn quilt based on the design of Michael’s grandmother’s friendship quilt as the finishing touch for the restored high barn. The quilt, sewn by grandmother and her friends, was given to his grandfather when they married. I was captivated by the concept of a friendship quilt so I enlisted the help of the farm family. Jim, Jay and Michael assembled the wooden framework. Jay and Jim drew off the pattern. Leisa, Diane, Jeannie, Julie, Michael and I painted the quilt but the bulk of the painting was my responsibility.
I spent hours in the barn painting the last three days before the deadline to hang the quilt. Who knew painting stripes could be so time consuming even with the help of painter’s tape? The finished piece is eight feet square so there was a lot of striping going on. The final day came. Jim came to help hang it. As the men hung the new barn doors in the morning, I was still painting. Lunchtime came and I had to wash out my brushes and let go of the work. Ready or not, it was time.
Later that evening, I went to see the quilt panel and there it was! How could I have missed painting stripes on that star point? It is so high off the ground there is no way I can remedy the situation. All my joy in the project teetered on the edge of extinction. Old voices flew to the surface of my soul. Anything worth doing is worth doing well…What a stupid mistake…What’s wrong with you…If you hadn’t waited until the last minute…
And then, David had the word of grace for me. He reminded me of the Amish tradition of on purpose imperfection. Everything they create has some “mistake”, some flaw, some visual reminder that no one among us is perfect. I heave a sigh of relief and let go of the anger at myself. I, too, am an imperfect creation. In this holy season of Advent, I will remember to extend the grace of affirmation for the imperfection in myself and others. We are all stumbling around in the darkness awaiting the Light of Love to dawn. The gift of perfect imperfection, a simple gift not a design flaw… Thanks be to God.

Simple gifts... Joseph in blue jeans

It was a bone deep cold winter night and the dark skies were sprinkled with star confetti. We stood leaning against a brick wall wrapped in coats, scarves and hats waiting for the play to begin. Two fat wooly sheep grazed on the courthouse lawn by the front walk with their plump rear ends facing us. All the stores in downtown Marshall were still open and the warm light spilled out onto the sidewalks. Fire engines rolled by closing off the three main streets into the town and folks began to gather. Little children with their parents, older couples, mountain old timers and newcomers mingled and met as we waited together. A young man shimmied up the telephone pole to run the spotlight mounted there as robed actors began to roam the streets in front of us. The narrator was introduced, a prayer offered and the old, old story began.
Joseph, with blue jeans and work boots peeking out beneath his robes, appears in the light with Mary. Both are sitting in a small lean to on the left side of the courthouse lawn. Mary folds clothes as the narrator starts to tell the story. Roman guards stand by a table on the front sidewalk blocking the entrance to the courthouse as the townspeople walk by. The spotlight shifts to the end of the bridge street as Joseph (or Joe) leads the donkey carrying Mary towards the stable. The donkey moves in fits and starts as donkeys are wont to do, but is calm and beautiful in its donkey way. After being turned away from the Inn, Joe and Mary and the donkey make their way to the stable set up on the right side of the lawn. A baby is coming and they begin to make ready.
The spotlight shifts and there are shepherds standing around a fire, a real fire, and all of us yearn to feel the heat of those flames. The blue and white lit star on the front of the courthouse shines as little children angels stand lifted up around the roof of the stable. Their tinsel halos, white robes and sweet for the moment faces catch my heart and I smile. Three wise men bearing gifts amble up to the stable and the story comes to an end.
For forty eight years folks have gathered here to see the story at Christmas time. It is the antithesis of the current slick big stage indoor productions so favored by many churches. This story telling, a little ragged around the edges, is a moment of mystery and possibility with real life peeking out under the robes. All the churches in the community band together with their choirs and musicians providing the music. Actors are young and old and everything in between. It is a big production number in that sense but one that fosters community between different churches, not competition.
As I stood there wrapped in my own robes to keep the cold at bay, I caught a glimpse of another small town thousands of years ago making ready, not for the birth of the Christ Child, but for a census. Small towns haven’t changed much since then. Everybody knows everybody and everybody’s business. Joes, clad in jeans and work boots, make a living for their families the best way they can. Marys work at home and outside the home but they are still mamas. Little children are sweet bundles of stickiness, our angel future. I give thanks for the simple gift of this evening spent with neighbors and friends, some known but mostly unknown. And I give thanks for all the Joes and Marys who live their lives surrounded by the commonplace wrapped in mystery. Give me eyes to see, ears to hear and a heart filled with joy, Lord, during this ordinary holy time.
P.S. Thanks, Leisa, my sister of the heart, for inviting mama and me to go with you.

Fearfully and wonderfully made...

Yesterday I was Celeste for a moment. Celeste had the wonderful gift of connecting people to one another, helping strangers become friends. Two of my favorite women needed to “come to know one another” (Brother Kannon’s favorite phrase) so I set up a lunch. One has had knee replacement surgery and the other will be having the same surgery this month. I knew they would like each other because they are both educated uppity Southern women who remember where they come from. When I left the restaurant to drive to the car repair shop, they were still at the table, talking.
As I sat waiting for the car to be fixed, I closed my eyes and began to do the breathing meditation our yoga teacher had given us for homework. Bible verses were my mind graffiti as I tried to wipe the slate clean to focus on breaths. Finally I gave up counting breaths and used a phrase that kept floating to the top… breathe in…fearfully…breathe out… and wonderfully made. My breathing slowed. The frustration of the long wait eased and I relaxed into my body and soul.
At the end of the day, I soaked in a bubble bath in my old cast iron claw foot tub and read from a book given to me by a friend, The Gift of Years by Joan Chittister, subtitled “Growing Old Gracefully”. It is a thoughtful book and one I will read as she suggests, slowly with time to soak in (nice play on words, Thad, for you). The subtitle, however, is a phrase that is beginning to grate on my one remaining nerve. My friends and I decided at lunch yesterday that graceful is not how we are feeling about aging. Knees are giving out. Arthritis is distorting supple joints. Bodies that have been beautiful and useful are now needing medicine and artificial parts in order to maintain some basic abilities. We are grateful for modern medicine and its gifts but this process of bodies wearing out is anything but graceful.
So, I return to my meditation on “fearfully and wonderfully made”. For every body part we can treat and replace, there are so many parts we can neither maintain nor repair. The fearful complexity of our creation inspires awe and wonder. As this body of mine shrinks literally and becomes distorted and old, courage is required for the facing of these days. Courage is a virtue found over and over in the Bible. Remember Little David and Goliath? Noah and the Ark? Rachael and the spies? Peter who lost his courage and then found it again? The women who came to Jesus’ tomb early in the morning? Naomi leaving her adopted land to return home widowed and childless?
Today I am praying for courage to face the limitations of my aging body, courage to understand and make peace with my death, courage to celebrate the gifts of life and death in my fearfully and wonderfully made body. Thanks be to God for our bodies.

Teach me to number my days...

A good sermon whomped me upside the head Sunday and my ears are still ringing. Pastor Pat was in good form preaching from the Psalms with additional words from William Sloan Coffin and Martin Luther King, Jr. The three words that were her main point have been waltzing around the dance floor of my soul since Sunday and they are helping me find a new rhythm for my days. Teach me to number my days…
One of the points of grace for me this weekend was my sixty fifth birthday. Farm friends gathered for dessert and laughter. Alison was here with her two boys so I got to do some serious baby holding. Aidan and I had a conversation about rainbows, joy and sorrow and his Grandma Mary. One of our special friends, Perry, in town for a conference, called so we had lunch together after church. Serendipity grace all weekend long kept my feet dancing. Teach me to number my days…
Aunt Peg, my mother’s sister is due at the farm today for a visit. My cousin Eddie called last night to see if I had or could borrow a video camera. He wants to film mama and Aunt Peg as they tell stories about their lives. We are all so very aware of the dance coming to an end for these two sisters, one ninety two and one eighty five. Pastor Pat said Sunday death is not our enemy. Death is our reminder to live with grace and gratitude for we are finite creatures. This week I will be numbering my days and theirs as we remember who and where I come from…who my people are. John Ed Pearce said, “Home is a place you grow up wanting to leave, and grow old wanting to get back to.” I will be going home again this week.
The season is changing. Summer is a memory that floats to the surface on an unexpectedly warm autumn day. Crisp, cold morning air shadowed by darkness reminds me that all creation is finite. Life does not last forever. Summer green has given way to bare limbs and the last roses of summer are brown and withered. The dogs drug up a deer carcass in the yard, mostly bone, and I know a hunter or a coyote ended the life of that deer. It is the way of the world. Death lives with life. My days, like the days of the deer, are numbered so I am living with gratitude for the most amazing gift of my life, all sixty five years of it.
In his last sermon in Memphis, Martin Luther King spoke of having seen the Promised Land invoking the memory of Moses seeing the Promised Land but not being allowed to enter. Pastor Pat reminded us that none of us are allowed to enter the Promised Land of endless future. The work begun in the present, like the oak trees we plant now, will grow and continue (or not) in our children and grandchildren’s time. We can see the future, perhaps understand some of it, but it will not be our time or our land. We must live our numbered days with the awareness of our own limits, our own ending. And in this awareness, we can sing with the Psalmist, “So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.”
T.S.Eliot wrote, “We shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.” One of the gifts of aging is the discernment, the discovery of our ending and our beginning. If we are paying attention, we can learn the dance steps so our ending days are a graceful, grace filled testament to our Creator’s generosity and love. This week I am waltzing my way towards home…

T.V. Reality Show Worship

Trying to describe our church home is not easy. We are a polyglot of poor and upper middle class, black and white, educated and barely able to read, young and old, Presbyterian, Methodist, Catholic, Baptist, employed and unemployed. Our church building presents its back first. The city powers in the days gone by restructured the streets in an Urban Renewal frenzy and we lost the front door access as our main entrance. The ramp is at the back door, the NA group on Wednesdays comes through the back door, and most of our parking is at the back door. As we drove up yesterday, Miz Vivian was walking up the ramp slowly, hat firmly in place. Choir members Jackie and Ernestine were standing at the door. Mike and Judy, one of our interracial couples, were getting out of the car. A visitor was standing in the parking lot playing with her toddler son. As Michael let me out at the back door he said, “I know how to describe our church…it is like a t.v. reality show!” We have a core cast of characters who show up week after week and others who come as they can. But, you never know what is going to happen in worship even though we use a liturgy and an order of worship.
Yesterday our music director was absent. His grandfather died and he was back home with family. I grabbed our other pianist as he walked in the door and begged for help. He played songs he had never seen before as I stood in front of the choir pretending to be a director. Miss Louise told of a fire at her apartment building that morning. Our guest toddler worked his mother over during worship and ran the aisles during communion. Madge was back for the first time since her stroke. Mike has some construction work and is grateful. Mr. Eddington, the retired pastor of Calvary, came to worship for the first time since the funeral of his wife was held in our sanctuary. I held his hand and thanked him for the privilege of playing the piano at the service. He held my hand and spoke of his loneliness. I cornered L.J., one of our young men, and nagged him into saying he would play the trumpet for Thanksgiving worship.
And as always, the two most important parts of worship took as long as the sermon. We pray for each other and for our world. Time is spent voicing joys and concerns… deaths, illness, birthdays and births, new jobs, no jobs, wars and the soldiers who bear the burdens of those wars… everything is gathered into prayer and offered up to God. We pass the peace walking the aisles, hugging, shaking hands, speaking words of welcome and affirmation and concern. It is noisy and messy and wonderful. No one leaves our church untouched by human hands on Sunday morning. Pastor Pat’s sermon quiets us down as we hear the scripture and her words crafted just for us that morning.
In my life I have been without church two times. Those times were painful, lonely and meaningful. Like New York City for a country girl, they were a great place to visit but I wouldn’t want to live there. Corporate worship matters to me. As a veteran of both large and small churches with conservative, fundamental and liberal theologies, I have seen and heard enough different kinds of worship to be able to fit in almost anywhere for a short while. But, there is one value I hold dear in worship. Above good music, thoughtful sermons, carefully prepared liturgy and beautiful surroundings, I must have a place where I can be myself, the good, the bad and the ugly. I can worship God with support and love from others in the same boat, wounded believers who worship because it keeps the loose ends tied up, binds up the broken pieces and sets our souls soaring towards the infinite… not many answers but peace with the mystery.
So I show up for worship hoping I can find God there. Most Sundays I do. Every Sunday I see God’s face in the faces that sit next to me in the pews and I hear God’s voice in toddlers protesting and Miss Ida Mae’s soft words, the joyful rhythms of gospel music and stately movement of traditional hymns. It will get me through until next week and I am grateful. Thanks be to God.

Wave tracings in the sand...

Waves washing up on the white sugar sand shore leaving line drawings as a visual memory of their passage…

Our conversations were peppered with the phrase “Do you remember?” Do you remember the night we came home and found the fire engine in front of the condo… the time we spent shelling crabs we caught while we watched the Olympics… the cloud of mosquitoes we had to walk through every time we went to the beach… the thunderstorm and lightening that was so beautiful out over the ocean… the luminescence on the beach and in the water on our evening beach walk… the hurricane that chased us off the beach and then followed us inland to Williamsburg? We spent nearly twenty years of beach vacations with our children growing up as we roamed the beaches of the Gulf and the Atlantic.

We are separated now by distance, no longer next door neighbors but there is no distance between our hearts. Our children are grown with children of their own and the beach tradition no longer is one that includes both families. The logistics are overwhelming. But for this one week, the four of us were back together again bound by love and memory.

Our children would have been amused by us. One minute we are all absorbed in our portable technology… I Pads, Smart Phones, Mac Air… and then we are telling stories of summers past. Traditionally we have carried a box full of books for beach reading. This year we share not only books but Aps as well. Our mutual ignorance and partial knowledge of our children’s technological world is one of our hallmark memories this year of beach remembering.

World Communion Sunday is today, a time when Christians all over the world, share a meal based on memory. It is a simple meal, bread and wine, a meal that honors the past and calls us into the future. We remember the life of the one we call Lord, his death and new life, and we are part of a family that gathers around the table to weep and laugh together. Our church will gather in a circle, pass the bread and wine to each other, hold hands and sing, and for one brief moment, be the Family of God without barriers of color or creed. It is a memory worth holding on to, a memory that could lead us into a new world of loving connection and living sacrifice one for another. Memories… the ties that bind us and free us, that call us to new frontiers as Christians… can be past and future if we but let them lead us. May it be so, please, Lord?

Be careful what you ask for...

I had a picquant conversation yesterday at the funeral… one of those that will continue later over a cup of tea… with a woman I want to get to know better. We first met in the parking lot of Berry Temple Methodist Church a month or so ago as she waited on her piano students. Standing by her car, I saw she was reading “The Help” and we had a brief conversation about the book. Yesterday I asked her what she thought of the book and movie. She replied with some fervor that she didn’t find it entertaining at all. It pulled up memories of watching women leave her neighborhood in the morning dressed as maids and coming home in the afternoon with bags of leftover food. I want to continue this conversation now that we have begun to move towards each other. She is an articulate woman, a retired teacher, and I like her. I’m trying to talk her into playing a piano duet with me in worship one Sunday. That would be fun.
One of the gifts of my age is my DGASA (don’t give a shit attitude). If I have a question, I ask. If I don’t want to, I say “no”. Sometimes I get in trouble and sometimes I find treasures. I have learned that you shouldn’t ask unless you can take the answer. Don’t go looking for pearls if you can’t stand the disappointment of many shells that only have oysters. So my conversations with Jackie may turn out to be the beginning of a real friendship or it might be an exchange of different world views or a piano playing partnership. Any one of those would be fine. All three would be loverly but I am alright with it whatever comes. I am satisfied with my question asking and her honesty in return.
A few years ago I prayed for church family. My prayers have been answered in a way I did not expect. Baptist to Congregational UCC to African American Presbyterian… I didn’t see that one coming. With relationship comes responsibility and I am praying carefully about how to do my best as a part of Calvary Presbyterian. After all, I might get what I ask for and God only knows where I would end up. Thanks be to God for answered prayers, answers that delight, surprise, and stir us up.

Water rocks in the wilderness...

My new favorite book, recipient of two awards from teachers and the SPCA, is “The Goat Lady” written by Jane Bregoli. Beautiful watercolors are on every page with a story that does not preach at or talk down to children. It is a true story, a real story, a story like the stories Jesus told, that reaches deep into our souls and captures our best selves. It sits on my coffee table in the living room waiting for a visit from our grandchildren.
In the meantime, I have been watching people coming through my house pick it up, read it and look up with a sweet smile on their faces. At our church picnic Sunday, Pastor Pat read it as well as several others who couldn’t resist the title and the cover art. Like the “Velveteen Rabbit”, this book reminds us of truths that transcend culture and time.
The neighbors in this story, much like the folks in Jesus’ hometown, were willing to throw verbal stones, use legal means to oust the Goat Lady from her home. They did not know her and in their ignorance, chose to see her as a nuisance, an eyesore, a nothing. I’ve had to do some soul searching after reading this book, looking at my assumptions about those whom I do not know. Pastor Pat challenged us in her sermon Sunday to let go of what was holding us back… our preconceived notions about other people or ourselves… our unwillingness to move from the known into the unknown… our fears and our past. She called us to move out into the wilderness, strike a rock like Moses and wait on the water to flow. Easy to say. Hard to do.
Truth be told, I feel like the Goat Lady most days. The world seems to be moving so fast, change around every corner, strangers invading my space clamoring for their point of view, climate change that has altered the pattern of life in these ancient mountains, a farm lady who lives in the boondocks and loves it when most people live in cities with lights and noise and convenient shopping.
Some days I am overwhelmed with all the ways we keep in touch… Facebook, Twitter, E-mail, cell phones 24-7… and yet we seem to have lost touch in some very important ways. Speed of communication does not guarantee quality communication. Writing in the morning is one way I talk to God, to myself and to you. A visit from neighbors… Gary drives by in his Kubota with grandson Grayson in his car seat, Dianne comes by to check my beehive, Leisa drops by leave a plant start, Julie has some melon rinds for the chickens… brings slow talk, a hug or two, soft laughter, a new life beginning and my world turns right side up again.
Perhaps all God wants from us is some slow time talk, connection that does not depend upon the latest technological marvel, slowed down soul time that is face to face and heart to heart. Maybe all God wants us to do is to do the same for those we pass by in our days of busyness. Listen to the old man full of conversation at the checkout counter, really seeing the young Hispanic woman waiting on you at MacDonald’s, hearing your mother’s voice and seeing her as the vibrant young woman she once was, listening more and speaking less.
We sang one of Pastor Pat’s favorite hymns Sunday morning, “I Love the Lord Who Heard my Cry”. We sang it a capella and the richness of the individual voices lifted up in ragged song took my breath away. I heard Mamie and Mary and Jackie and Michael and Pat and Mark and Dave, all God’s children gathered for worship and communion singing. None of us the same and yet all of us alike. Our voices were water flowing from our rocky souls, running through the wilderness to the ears of God. This hymn has its roots in a Psalm and it will be my prayer for this day. “I love the Lord, because he has heard my voice and my supplications. Because he inclined his ear to me, therefore I will call on him as long as I live.” Slow soul talk…

Toilet cleaning and other meaningful work...

Forty two years of marriage… calculating cleaning toilets for forty of those years once a week (two years off for vacations and hired help sometimes), I have cleaned one toilet 2080 times. Some of those years we had multiple bathrooms but I am depressed enough looking at that figure without adding to it. No wonder I occasionally feel like Eeyore contemplating the meaning of my life. My friend Leisa and I were talking about jobs you don’t get to retire from and this one was at the top of the list. Cooking can be creative. Cleaning the house can leave you feeling good about the way it looks but cleaning toilets has no feel good component to it at all.
Sometimes work can be satisfying, fulfilling, well paid if nothing else. And sometimes, work is just work, necessary but not much reward. Brother Lawrence had a great deal to say about using our work, even the least satisfying work, as a vehicle for praising God. In theory, I appreciate the sentiment but in reality, I have to keep kicking myself as a reminder. All work is not created equal. Somehow most of us find a balance between the necessary evils like toilet cleaning and the work that gives meaning to our lives.
I am the pianist for our little church. On Tuesday we have choir practice for two hours. Sunday mornings, I get to church early so I can get ready for the prelude and arrange my music. This is work. No pay but the satisfaction of being involved in a church music program again. Every morning I muck out the horse and donkey stalls, feed Ferdinand the bull, feed the cats and dogs. Most days I feed the cows and regularly spray them for flies. No pay but the satisfaction of relationships with animals. I am cleaning house this week getting ready for a church picnic at our house this next Sunday. Sprucing up, changing the slipcovers, weeding the flower beds, dusting, picking up and cleaning up. No pay but the satisfaction of extending hospitality to a faith community that is dear to my heart.
An old hymn I used to sing at Pinetta Baptist Church comes to mind. “To the work! To the work! We are servants of God; Let us follow the path that our Master has trod; With the balm of his counsel our strength to renew, Let us do with our might what our hands find to do. Toiling on, toiling on, toiling on, toiling on; Let us hope (and trust) let us watch (and pray) and labor ‘til the Master comes.” Like the Jews in Nehemiah rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem, give me a mind to work, Lord, so I might show myself worthy of this gift of life. Keep me moving on, toiling on, singing on my way as I do the work I have been given to do. Thank you for a healthy body that can work. And now, Lord, excuse me, please, while I go scrub toilets.

Down and dirty...

There I stood in my light teal western cut Carrhart shirt with mother of pearl snaps, riding pants and FatBaby pink and brown cowgirl boots, all splashed with wet black muck…
It had been a perfect Saturday. There was a cool breeze all day that broke up the hot humid weather pattern. Still no rain for us so everything is dying… trees, grass, flowers… and the creeks are drying up. I pulled some weeds and finished recovering the wicker sofa’s cushions. After I mucked out the stables, I worked the horses in the riding ring for awhile. Tomato sandwiches for lunch were followed by a nap. Then I rode Dixie and Junie B for two hours, playtime for me but hard work for them.
Michael came and asked for help pumping water for the cows. The small creek that feeds the reservoirs is completely dried up so we need to pump water from the larger creek. It, too, is much smaller now and Michael had a hard time getting enough water dammed up to pump. The cows had knocked over the drain pipe so all the water had drained out of the cistern leaving the fish stranded, gasping in the black muck. I reached in and grabbed him. Holding him in one hand, I drove the Kubota with the other hand and took him to the other reservoir where there was still some water. While Michael set up the pump, I began shoveling the accumulated muck out of the bottom of the reservoir. It was wet and sloppy, splashing in unexpected places. Soon I was heavily decorated with big, black wads of mud. We left the pump running and will need to run it again today to refill the reservoir. Cows drink a lot of water so we will be doing this until we get rain. According to the weather report, none is in sight for this week.
The contrast between the flooding with hurricane Irene and the drought here is striking. To the south and east, there has been rain. But in our small community, the ground is baked hard and is cracking. As always, the paradox of plenty and not enough exist side by side in nature and in our lives. There is no grass to speak of in the pastures. We have been feeding hay for some time, now. The generous rain in the spring meant we had a wonderful first cutting of hay. The drought meant a scarce second cutting and we enter fall and winter hoping we don’t have to buy hay. We will sell our young steers to cut down on the number of mouths we have to feed and hope for a mild winter.
How do we make sense of rain that falls on our neighbor’s farm but not on ours? The age old question of “Why them and not me?” never seems to receive an adequate answer. While I stand with black muck splashed all over me, I remember that rain falls on the just and the unjust alike. I give thanks for pumps and streams and reservoirs and cows, all a part of the wonderful gifts I have been given here at Sabbath Rest Farm. I will live these breezy cool days thanking God in advance for the rain that will come our way replenishing the streams and greening the grass. Even when I am covered in smelly black muck, I am blessed and I know it. Selah.

I love Jesus but I drink a little...

Gladys from Austin, Texas, called Ellen Degeneres to let her know she needed to move one of her spiky plants. At certain angles it made Ellen look like Alfalfa, a character with hair that stood up on his crown. Ellen called her back and the eighty eight year old woman was full of herself. She tickled the audience with her conversation. One of her best lines was, “I love Jesus but I drink a little”. Most of us do, I think, love Jesus and drink a little. We mean well, we try hard and we fall short as human beings tend to do.
“The Help”, a novel and now a movie, is full of folks, black and white, who love Jesus and drink a little. The temptation is to judge the Hilly Hypocrites of that world without seeing the Hilly in ourselves. It is so very easy to decipher right from wrong on the big screen fifty years later and miss right from wrong in the here and now. Punitive immigration laws in Alabama and Arizona don’t differ all that much from Jim Crow laws in the fifties. Relationships between the help and the boss ladies in Jackson, Mississippi hinge on the ignorance, the chosen ignorance, of the truth of the help’s lives and selves. And, therein lies the sin.
I listen to people talk about illegal immigrants, about the problems that have come with the wave of Latino workers sweeping across the south and the west. I know the rhetoric is heated and feelings run high. There is a problem with our immigration laws and their enforcement. It isn’t a fair and just system. It never has been. I know most of this latest influx of folks are coming for the same reason my great-grandparents did… a chance at a better life for themselves and their children. It is so very easy to see the Latino woman working at McDonald’s but not really see her, not know her or her story. It is so very easy to generalize… they are taking jobs away from our people, they are not trustworthy, they abuse our welfare system… and indeed some of that is probably true. But there is another side to the story.
One of my chosen sisters employed a young man to help her remodel her grandmother’s house. He was a talented, hardworking young man with a wife and baby, an illegal immigrant who worked hard, paid his taxes and dreamed of life as an American. Caught up in a traffic stop, he was deported to Mexico leaving his young wife and child behind. It was only a matter of months before he was back working hard again, trying to better his life and support his family. Knowing him, knowing his story, makes it hard for me to generalize about illegal immigrants.
I don’t know the best solution to the problems with our illegal immigration. I do know that as Christians who drink a little, we are called to see the face of Christ in all the faces of those who are the least among us. Abilene, one of the maids in “The Help”, taught the little white girl she cared for words to keep in her heart. “I is kind. I is smart. I is important.” In God’s eyes, aren’t we all kind and smart and important? Help me, Lord, to see your face not only in the least of these but also in the faces of those who have more than most, those who proclaim the answers with such certainty, those who look and sound like me.

I love you like a dog...

There are two new faces on the farm…Woodrow and Marley. Blackmouth Yellow Cur brother and sister. Barney was our introduction to this breed and I fell in love with their loyal tender hearts. Often misidentified as a boxer mix or as mutts, these dogs range in size from 70 to 100 pounds, square muzzles or pointed, red, yellow or beige. Bred in the south as farm helpers, family protectors and hunting dogs, they are so tenderhearted they often will protect their family children from being disciplined. Woody and Marley were rescued from a kill shelter in Georgia and brought to us by their foster mom, Lois, on Friday. In one of those happy coincidences that so often seems to happen in the dog rescue world, Lois’s son lives in Asheville so she visited her son and us at the same time.
Forging a relationship with a rescued dog can be an interesting proposition. Their life before you is largely unknown and the influences of other people show up in strange ways. Barney was afraid of men in baseball hats and anybody with a camera. Where did the camera come from? Woody seems to be an open, friendly fellow with lots of bounce, a canine Tigger. Marley is more fearful, stays close to her brother and is protective of him. She loves to be loved. Lois did a wonderful job with them and they are beginning to settle in.
Saturday morning, Michael took all three dogs, Rufus, Woody and Marley, walkabout on the farm. He leashed Woody so Rufus wouldn’t take them on a runaway mission. After an hour they came back tired and ready for breakfast. When I went to muck stalls and feed Ferdinand, they walked down to the stable with me. The horses hung their heads over the half doors trying to figure out these new dogs while Woody and Marley approached warily. Shirley and Kate, the donkeys, have a more straightforward approach. They stretch out their necks much like an angry goose and rush the dogs. Woody and Marley take the commonsense response and get behind the fence where they are safe from donkey nips. Cats are being treated with respect since old Daisy hissed, swelled up and popped Marley on the nose when she didn’t like being barked at. And last night was the first ride in the Kubota to the pond to visit the ducks. Farm dogs here have two choices for locomotion…run by the Kubota or ride in it.
As I watch these dogs adjust to a new home, strangers, strange animals, different rules, scary experiences, I am struck by their ability to give and receive love even as they struggle to settle in. Marley comes to me, sits and snuggles her head against my knee, asking for physical reassurance of loving intentions. Woody comes and sits beside her, pushing into the magic circle of love. Soon Rufus comes and asks for his share. I am bathed in love just because I am there, I am safe, I love them back.
I wish we had the kind of world where we could share love with other people the same way these dogs do. When I was tired, or afraid I could rest my head on someone’s shoulder and feel a loving pat. If life was overwhelming me and sadness weighed me down, I could find someone to hold me up until I was able to stand on my own again. When anger caused me to lash out and bite the hands that feed me, there would be instruction on the way back into the good graces of those I had hurt. Love would flow for no other reason than the presence of the other. Perhaps this is the world the prophet Isaiah glimpsed, a new heaven and earth where the wolf and the lamb shall lie down together, where God answers us before we cry out our need, a world where love between those who are different creates peace and harmony of being. Loving like a dog might be closer to God’s way of loving than our own. Makes you wonder if the bumper sticker is true… Dog is God…

The accidental gardener...

The sere summer breezes bring stirring of the air but no relief from the heat. Rain has been an infrequent visitor and the ground is baked hard. The only pleasurable outdoor time is early morning and late evening. This morning I woke early to a quiet house and went to the front steps to sit a spell. Wiley, my faithful grey cat, came and sat by me, purring as I scratched his ears. We sat and watched the rabbits play at the edge of the front yard. One rabbit would jump straight up in the air coming down where he started while the other rabbit ran towards him, a game of some sort. Birds flew by, crows cawed and the rooster crowed. The stillness of the air and the quiet broken only by bird and cricket song were my morning prayer.
As I sat, I surveyed the flower border that edges our front walk. Colors run riotously without any apparent rhyme or reason… pink (phlox, Echinacea, achillea), yellow (black eyed Susans, yarrow, early blooming mums, daylillies), orange reds (roses, painted daisies). The kale’s leaves are pale purple and past ready for picking. The garlic’s blooms have faded and fallen over. It is a late summer Technicolor show that defies the hot dry weather. Mixed in with the flowers are weeds that I have not pulled adding to the greenery.
I am an accidental gardener. Unlike my mother who tends her flowers, weeding and mulching and fertilizing, I plant and forget. Sometimes I remember to water or fertilize but more often than not plants are on their own with me. This leads to casualties (you can kill a nandina) and surprises (if kale is left to bloom and re-seed, it pops up in wonderful places). Tall hollies and crepe myrtle can be transplanted if you use a tractor to move them. Earthworms love newspaper layered under mulch. My gardening skills are improvisational and experimental. If it works and looks good, keep it. If it doesn’t bloom or smell good, don’t plant it. Feel free to move plants around and create new vistas. Share your extras.
I sat at the supper table last week surveying the garden of our children, their spouses and our grandchildren. A torrent of sound… laughter, questions, stories, little hissy fits… and a river of love’s history… my mother holding her two youngest great-grandchildren… good food from grandma… deviled eggs, fried squash, mashed potatoes… meals prepared by grown children who love to cook… Moravian chicken pie, orzo with fruit and veggies, pork tenderloin with pineapple pepper sauce. My belly was full of thanksgiving for this wonderful accidental garden of family. Who knew we would have six grandsons each one so full of themselves? Children are married to spouses we love and they all seem to tolerate our quirks with good humor most of the time.
I take a road trip through time remembering the years of birthing and growing these grown up children. Church, piano lessons, dance recitals, soccer games, plays, sleepless nights, worry and wonder a part of my daily routine from the birth of our first child until today. I see the perfection in the imperfection of our lives together, the love that runs over and under the occasional snarkiness, the sheer joy of being as grandsons splash and play in the Leaning Tower of Pool and my heart overflows with tears for the wonderful garden of family and life I have been given. It is grace undeserved and I know it. Thanks be to God for accidental gardens of all kinds and for the gifts of love that bloom in our lives year after year, popping up in unexpected places and ways.

I was listening...

I am listening….
The full moon night light poured in through the windows of our bedroom as I lay in bed listening to Rufus the Basset Hound bay. It was his “I think I see and smell something” bark… one bark that ends on a shrill up note followed by two regular barks. I listened to the night sounds in between barks and heard nothing out of the ordinary. After a few minutes Michael got up and called Rufus in to the house. He had been sleeping on Barney’s old bed outdoors so we had left him outside last night to enjoy the moonlight.
I walk out on the back porch and see Junie B and Dixie standing at the gate. As I come down the steps, they speak to me. Junie B has a wonderful throaty nicker, a Greta Garbo voice that brings a smile to my face. I carry them a treat and rub their faces. They have been eating too much clover and are drooling like faucets. When Dixie is nervous or frightened, she snorts and huffs. Sometimes like a child, she plays at being afraid. She gives voice to those feelings and I listen, look around to see what is happening. It is a visiting dog, one she does not know, and she is giving notice.
My mother calls. Uncle Harold is very ill, his third heart attack, and she is so worried. Aunt Peg is coming for a visit. She is going to get her son to drive her to the farm and the two sisters will have another time to be together. Callie, my daddy’s cat is missing, and she is worried about what might have happened to the old girl. Mama’s cold and cough are hanging on and as I listen to her, I worry about whether or not she should see a doctor.
The red tailed hawk swings in wide circles above my head slicing the air with his sharp keening cry. I look up and listen as he searches for food from above. There are rabbits aplenty this year as so he need not look at our chickens. He is a beautiful bird flying with an economy of motion that is an aerial dance.
A Mary Oliver poem, “Days”, ends this way… (excuse the spacing)
Whatever it was I was supposed to be this morning-whatever it was I said I would be doing-
I was standing at the edge of the field- I was hurrying through my own soul, opening its dark
doors- I was leaning out; I was listening.
So much of my life has been spent listening. I sit in silence and hear the sound track of my life filled with the voices from long ago. There was so much I missed listening the first time and I hear more clearly now the love in my father’s voice, the fear in my sister’s voice, the sheer joy in my grubby young son’s voice, the pride in my daughter’s voice as she walks to school alone for the first time, the independent streak a mile wide in another daughter’s voice as she pushes my hand away from brushing her hair, my husband’s voice rumbling a bass accompaniment to our everyday living. And underneath, around and above, always there is the sound of God’s presence in my world. Sometimes the sound is silence and in the silence, if I listen, I can hear God pass by.
Today, God, I want to lean out and listen. I want to hear your voice in the voices around me and in the sounds of your creation. Give me an ear to hear, O Lord and incline your ear towards me. Please?

Forgiveness and forgetfulness...

Michael and I celebrated our forty second anniversary Monday with our good friends Cannan and James by taking a time out at the Sourwood Inn on Elk Mountain Scenic Highway. Every year when July 12 rolls around, we spend time remembering our weddings. Cannan remembers us as young seminary students at Crescent Hill Baptist Church, remembers our wedding. I was her wedding director, a superfluous assignment, trying to herd cats at the rehearsal as all the strong minded participants felt free to tell us all how it should be done. This year our laughter was seasoned with tears as we listened to James share his journey into forgetting. Communication was an essential piece of his being as a pastoral counselor and professor. Words mattered and memory informed his life. Now, he tells us, he is learning to communicate from the heart since he can no longer speak and remember freely.
Our innkeeper, Nat Burkhart, was a longtime neighbor when we lived in town. In his retirement, he and his wife, his daughter and her husband built and staff the Sourwood Inn. It sits high on Elk Mountain near the parkway and is perched among blooming sourwood trees and clouds. At breakfast, Nat engages us in theological conversation as he serves oatmeal pancakes and juice. We learn he gives all his guests “propaganda” telling them they don’t have to read it, just don’t put it in the trash because when he empties the trash cans, it will hurt his feelings to find it there. He hands us some of his “propaganda” from various books and articles that have caught his soul’s eye and I bring it home to read. One of the passages is from “The Luminous Web” by Barbara Brown Taylor,
“It is not sufficient any longer to listen at the end of a wire to the rustlings of the galaxies; it is not enough to even examine the great coil of DNA in which is coded the very alphabet of life. These are our extended perceptions. But beyond lies the great darkness of the ultimate dreamer, who dreamed the light and the galaxies. Before act was, or substance existed, imagination grew in the dark. Loren Eiseley
The physicist Neils Rohr, who was so conscious of the limits of language, liked to tell the story about a young rabbinical student who went to hear three lectures by a famous rabbi. Afterward he told his friends, ‘The first talk was brilliant, clear and simple. I understood every word. The second was even better, deep and subtle. I didn’t understand much but the rabbi understood all of it. The third was by far the finest, a great and unforgettable experience. I understood nothing and the rabbi didn’t understand much either.’
Since I have studied under Rabbi Jesus, this story makes perfect sense to me. There are things no one can talk about. If we insist on trying, as we are inclined to do, then something unforgettable may happen in the air around our words, but it will not be because we understand them in any rational sort of way.”
We all live within the limits of our minds with or without Altzheimer’s. Our imagination is sparse and bound by our experiences. Do we imagine a God who hears our prayer or is prayer a means to action for us? Do we remember our faith stories and cling to the past or are we traveling into new unexplored realities of Imaginative Being informed but not bound by our history? Have we forgotten who we are and to whom we belong? Can we forgive ourselves for not remembering?
Forgiveness and forgetfulness… part of the Great Mystery… We are finite creatures who will never be able to see through the dark glass clearly no matter how hard we try or how learned we are. Like James, I am trying to learn how to live from the heart because no words, no memory can contain the Mystery. And, I must forgive myself for my forgetfulness, my inability to keep my eye on the prize. Tina Turner’s signature song asks the question, “What’s love got to do with it?” The answer is Love has to do with everything and even when words fail to come, when my memory begins to fade, Love will sustain me as it has these many years. And it will flow from James’ heart to mine unrestrained by the limits of language. Thanks be to God for the mysteries that I cannot begin to imagine.

dragging bottom...

Getting into the inner tubes proved to be more of a challenge than we anticipated. Claudie held them for us as we plopped our bottoms down in the cold water of the Oconaluftee River that runs through the downtown park in Cherokee, N.C. As each one of us settled in, we held the rope on the other tube for the next person until our little four tube train was ready to go. Out into the current we floated and for a few minutes, it was bliss.
Watching the children scampering in the water and floating by us, it looked so easy from the banks of the river. Being IN the river was a different proposition however. First, Mary Lynn wailed she was losing air in her tube and sinking down. We began to try to head towards shore but the current speeded up and we were held captive to the flow. Mary Lynn’s bottom made a personal acquaintance with most of the rocks in the river as we struggled towards shore. As Mary Lynn and Claudie beached on the rocks, Janis and I were floating on down unable to extricate ourselves from the tubes or the current. The river was no longer friendly but scary and there were no easy places to land. Finally, we were able to make our way to the banks underneath the main downtown bridge after much anxiety and screaming.
Walking up the path back to the park, we were uncertain whether to try again or not. Janis needed some time off to regain her balance so she stayed with Andy, our work camp family historian and videographer, as the rest of us tried again to master the art of tubing. Mary Lynn’s tube was flat as a pancake so we were a three tube train this time. Getting in the tube was a little easier, the water was not quite as cold, and we watched our fellow tubers to ascertain an exit plan. This time out we found the flow, avoided most of the rocks submerged just below the surface, and made shore without too much trouble. Janis rejoined us and the bliss grew with each successful trip.
The children began to play with us, the only old tubers on the river. They watched us with interest and fascination as we careened past them laughing and screaming. One little boy became our friend and we dubbed him our lifeguard. When we floated past him, he would grab our tubes and take us to shore. One time he dove under the water and came up beside me roaring like a shark scaring the bejeezus out of us. We listened to his fish story… I almost caught a fish by hand and he was huge… and praised his minnow collection. We were river buddies.
The writer of Psalms 46 knew about dragging bottom. “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear though the earth should change, though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea; though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble with its tumult.’ Each of us in my work camp family had spent some time dragging bottom in the past year since our last reunion. Health issues, retirement or not, aging problems, financial concerns, relationship changes… those rocks in the bottom of the river of time had left marks on us. But we have gathered ourselves up and launched out into the river again and again, gathering courage and strength from those who love us and from the God of the Glad River that flows through the habitation of the Most High.
I give thanks for the laughter on the river that came after the fear on the river, the love that surprises me again every year when we gather, and for the One who first called us together in Cherokee, N.C. forty five years ago. We are children of God in the River of Life floating back to the One who is our resting place, our still water in the midst of the rocky bottoms. Thanks be to God for more than enough!

In the meantime...

All farmers worth their salt live in the meantime. The hay is ready to cut but the afternoon storms keep on coming. In the meantime you repair fences or plant winter rye. Fanny is nearly ready to calve so you lock the herd down in the meantime to keep the coyotes from harming the new calf. Most things on a farm do not happen as you might plan or expect so living in the meantime becomes an art, a necessity.
I have been living in the meantime this summer. Truth be told, most of my life has been lived in the meantime. My best laid plans always seem to skid sideways at some point as life takes an unexpected detour. Being the at home professional requires the skill of meantime living. Dixie’s stall was flooded in the last fierce storm and a lake of dirty water pooled all over the floor. So yesterday I was shoveling waterlogged wood chips, manure, sawdust and dirt out of the stall for an hour or so. It took two loads in the Daddy O to strip her stall down to mud. Then I layered lime to sweeten the ammonia before putting the corn cob pellets down to absorb the moisture. While shoveling and spreading, I prayed for those I love who are living in a meantime place filled with uncertainty and fear. Waiting on a diagnosis, living with dementia, struggling in counseling, living with the aftermath of illness…
Meantimes can be filled with anticipation and hope… a new baby is coming, a wedding is planned, a best friend is coming to visit, a special anniversary is celebrated. Paying attention to these special in between times sweetens the pleasure and deepens the joy. We share a wedding anniversary with good friends. For years when we lived in the same city, we celebrated our anniversaries together. This year we will resume the tradition and are spending a night at a mountaintop inn. Our joy is tempered by the recognition of shared griefs and losses. But we are the stronger for it, and our celebration will be rich with laughter and life.
Jesus knew how to live in the meantime whether in a boat escaping needy crowds , praying alone and deserted on a dark mountain, leading a parade or having supper with a sinner. Nothing in his life was beneath his notice and when the unexpected came to call, his responded. Lazerus died? The young daughter is at death’s door? The sick woman grabs the hem of his robe? Five thousand people to feed? Twelve disciples to prepare and teach? He could shift gears and be in the moment whether it called for joy, sorrow, anger or action. Life in the meantime…
An English alternative rock band with the unlikely name of Spacehog wrote some beautiful lyrics to a song named “In the Meantime”. Thanks to the wonders of Googeling, I found these words and I pass them on to you, my morning prayer.

And in the end we shall achieve in time The thing they call divine, When all the stars will smile for me, When all is well and well is for all, And forever after.
Maybe in the meantime wait and see We love the all of you Our lands are green and our skies are blue When all in all we’re just like you We love the all of you.
And when I cry for me I cry for you with tears of holy joy for all the days you’ve still to come…

In the meantime, I laugh and love and weep and pray for us all as we wait for the stars to smile and all to be well. Amen.

Rooster light...

As I lay in early morning darkness listening to the rooster crow, I began to count the different ways light has been a part of conversation in the past week.
The Electric Light Parade is in full swing here on the farm. Every night the darkness is punctuated with tiny dots of light. Each firefly dances to its own beat and the little lights swirl in the trees sending messages to all the other fireflies. I do not speak the language of firefly but I am a grateful observer of their beautiful communication.
Our power went out last week. An oak tree fell on the line that serves the farm family and left us temporarily in the dark. Electricity is an ephemeral necessity that goes unnoticed and unappreciated until it is interrupted by nature. The lights that shine in our homes are relatively recent inventions. My mother’s generation remembers the care and feeding of oil lamps as a daily necessity for evening light.
Standing in the aisle at Lowe’s, I ponder the choices in light bulbs. My kitchen lights need replacing so I study the choices. I will feel environmentally irresponsible if I buy an incandescent bulb so I waver between the more expensive LED and the dimmable fluorescent bulbs. I settle for the dimmable fluorescent bulbs as a compromise between my budget and the power grid.
Summer solstice, a light filled day that holds darkness at bay, was observed. We crossed the continental divide between darkness and light and now darkness has begun to nibble at the long summer days. Most of us never notice this annual ritual of light that comes twice a year, the ebb and flow of light. The Old Ones knew the power of light and darkness so this shift was ritualized and recognized in the times when light was not taken for granted.
Many of us find our emotional well being depends upon the light. Summertime brings a lifting of our spirits that is inexplicable. The circumstances of our lives remain the same but the light lifts us up and lightens our load. Light is our visual Prozac and we are able to rejoice again in the abundance that surrounds us.
Sunday morning we sang “This Little Light of Mine” in worship. A gospel song and a children’s song with motions… remember the hand covering the upright pointer finger candle? The gospel song book we use along with our regular Presbyterian hymnal, had verses I had never sung before. A new way of hearing and singing this song about light pricked my ennui and I sang with gusto.
God said “Let there be light”. The first order in creation was the separation of light and darkness…day and night. The Psalmist sang “The Lord is my light and my salvation” and reminded us that God’s word was a lamp for our feet on dark paths. Our soul’s inner light comes from God and we find our way through darkness safely when we remember the Loving Light that is leading us home. The Preacher in Ecclesiastes says “Light is sweet and it is pleasant for the eyes to behold the sun”. He knew how much the sweet summer light could mean to someone who lives with SAD. “I am come that you might have light”, Jesus said,” and have it more abundantly”. Light and life are poured out in equal measure for those who seek God even in the midst of darkness and death.
Rooster light… early morning not quite light yet light… seeing through a glass darkly light… for today, I have more than enough light. Thanks be to God.

I was a stranger...

He was my lion hearted chicken livered guardian, chewer of bumpers, chaser of cars and coyotes. Monday morning with my hand on his head and his eyes on my face, he died and my heart broke. He came to us a stranger, abused in his early life, a stray living in the high barn who circled around us in ever narrowing circles until he became family. Loyalty and love were given freely on his part but always on his terms. Children loved him and they were the only ones he allowed to approach him easily. Cameras and men in baseball hats terrified him and his deep loud bark echoed a remembered fear that we never understood. On those nights when my busy brain kept me from sleeping, Barney and I would sit side by side, leaning on each other, on the top step of the front porch listening to the night sounds. He kept fearless guard over us in the night chasing coyotes and bears away, running and barking through our farm often waking us. And now I weep as I drive into our yard and there is no big yellow dog rising to meet me. Michael has lost his morning walking companion and he and Rufus are lonely. Mama misses his daily visits to her. He came so often that a path is worn through the pasture next to her house. How did this stray dog, a bundle of contradiction and command, become so important to me? To mama? To Michael?
My friend Janet helped me yesterday by giving me an image, a Biblical connection that I had not made. For Janet, Barney was the stranger we took in, a complicated not easy to love stranger who became the symbol of Sabbath Rest Farm, a safe place to rest. Our loving Barney became a testament to our willingness to love strangers, others who show up needing something or someone. Young men and women living through in-between times who need work and some community show up to bale hay, build fences, ride horses and do farm chores. Pastors and church staff come for respite care. Families come and their children run free. Neighbors walk over bringing friends and our circle widens once again.
I was a stranger, Jesus said, and you took me in. Heartbreak, frustration, joy, laughter, steadfast love… all are gifts from the strangers who are welcome here at Sabbath Rest Farm and in my heart. You will live in my heart Barney as a reminder of God’s gracious arrival in uninvited guests. Thanks be to God for love and loss, life and death, and strangers who become family.

The earth is the Lord's... and mine too

The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof…
I’ve been reading Wendell Berry poetry again letting my soul fill up. This man reminds me of all the men and women I knew growing up for whom the land was both work and play. In my reading this morning one poem called my name.
BELOW
Above the trees and the rooftops
is the range of symbols:
banner, cross, star;
air war, the mode of those
who live by symbols, the pure
abstraction of travel by air.
Here a spire holds up
An angel with trump and wings;
He’s in his element.
Another lifts a hand
with forefinger pointing up
to admonish that all’s not here.
All’s not. But I aspire
downward. Flyers embrace
the air, and I’m a man
who needs something to hug.
All my dawns cross the horizon
and rise, from underfoot.
What I stand for
Is what I stand on.
This week I have stood on fields rowed by golden hay shining in the sun, smelling sweet and clean. Standing on top of the trailer high with hay bales, I see the hillside pasture with bull, horses and donkeys surrounded by pines and briars. Walking to the stable in the early morning dew, the morning mist lingers in the valleys as the sun rises behind a pink rimmed cloud. The spring fed red clay muck sucks my shoes off and I squish my toes in the mud, a guilty pleasure of childhood once again mine. I pull weeds from the flowerbeds gloveless and black dirt rims my fingernails. What I stand for, I do indeed stand on and I give thanks for farm, family and friends.

If I Could Save Time In A Bottle...

If I could save time in a bottle… I would save the smell of new mown hay ruffled across the hills in sunlight. The sound of an old timer’s chuckle and a baby giggle, Appalachian Spring playing and dancers dancing, and Junie B’s good morning nicker would be in my bottle. I would save the smell of babies sweet from their baths frosted with lotion and love. The taste of mama’s fried chicken and Dairy Queen Soft Serve ice cream topped with a chocolate shell, Silver Queen corn on the cob straight from daddy’s garden, the first new potatoes soft and creamy melt in your mouth deliciousness would be in my bottle, too. The feelings of freedom and jubilation that were a part of my baptism, part of my music, part of my sacred dance, part of my art and writing… the times I feel God looking over my shoulder, lifting me up in a leap, guiding and applauding and loving me… These would go in my bottle.
Obituaries are one way we try to keep time in a bottle, I think. Our newspaper no longer provides free obituaries, just a one line death notice. The rise of lengthy obituaries, small short stories, combined with newspapers downsizing community news (no more cooking sections or news from the different small communities in the county, no more pictures of small boys holding up the large mouth bass they caught in Papaw’s pond) is an interesting irony for me. If we cannot have news of our neighbors daily lives that is not murder and mayhem, we can have an obituary that tells the stories of our lives even if we have to pay for it.
The Psalmist sings,” My times are in thy hand…Let thy face shine on thy servant; save me in thy steadfast love “.God is saving the times of our lives in the bottle of being that surrounds us in grace and mercy all the days of our lives. And when the times of our lives come to an end on earth, the time of our life is just beginning…
Thanks to Jim Croce for the song “If I Could Save Time In A Bottle…

Patience, Peggy, Patience...

I graduated from the Pick Up Thy Bed and Walk School of Nursing. After two days or so, my well of compassion runs dry. When the children were small, they had to be bleeding badly or on serious drugs if they expected to stay in bed more than one day. This lack of patience I attribute to my gene pool… an impatient father and a brusque German grandmother. Lowliness, meekness and patience are not my strengths. With old age approaching, I need to develop my patient empathetic self. If Michael doesn’t need it, I will.
Daddy was diagnosed with myelofibrosis , a disease of the red blood cells, in his seventies. Initially, monthly blood transfusions restored his energy and he continued to live and work on his farm. Gradually the transfusions came more frequently and his world began to shrink until he lived primarily indoors. A daily ride in the pickup truck to the back of the farm, sitting in his chair reading the Wall Street Journal, keeping up with the Stock Market, going to church on Sunday… this was his life.
My father was not a patient man. My sister and I dreaded him “helping” us with our homework. As a driver’s ed teacher, he loomed over the hapless student (my mom, my sister and me) like a gargoyle ready to pounce on the slightest infraction. Putting out the hay for the cows had to be done just so or a bellow would rumble in your direction from the tractor. But during his last illness, I never heard him complain or whine. There was grief for life coming to an end, sorrow over unrealized dreams and patience. My mother says he grew sweeter, softer as his illness imposed limits.
I looked up “patience” in the concordance of my Bible. There was a small list of references, not as many as I expected. One phrase caught my attention from Colossians 1:12… endurance and patience with joy. Therein lies the challenge. Not only must I endure and be patient, I must do so with joy! Joy? Dear Lord… I have and can endure. I can be patient for a season. But to do so with joy seems impossible. I read on. Paul is doing his theological exposition with verve and vigor, instructing the faithful. Rejoicing while suffering seems to have been Paul’s strong suit , so he regularly exhorts his readers to join in.
So here we are… suffering saints and grumps… called to joy in the midst of struggle, patience with joy, endurance with joy. Perhaps the daily practice of joy will provide a minor miracle for me, a transformation of impatience and grumpiness to an active patient acceptance of whatever comes my way. Dear Lord, teach me the art of joy in small things… buzzing busy bees in the new bee hive, the sound of Junie B’s voice, the smell of new mown hay… so that I might have joy when life is difficult. And if you could help me learn patience in all things bright and beautiful as well as all things dark and ugly, I would be grateful.

Outward signs of an inner grace...

Growing up in the Deep South on a farm before the advent of sunscreen, I always had a sunburned nose (at least) during the summertime. My fair skin came with a dose of small freckles that increased in number and size with exposure to the sun and age. The sun was courted for the gift of an even tan, a sign of elegance and beauty for our generation. We slathered our bodies in a mixture of baby oil and iodine to deepen our tans as we laid out in our backyards, by pools, lakes, ponds and beaches. Coppertone was a tanning aid not a sunscreen.
Trips to the beach were rare for our family. We were baling hay or putting up food from the garden during prime beach time. When my college Baptist Student Union took a retreat to a nearby beach, I went and spent the whole day in the water. Somewhere along the way I must have felt my sunburn setting in because I remember borrowing a tee shirt to wear as we played in the waves. By the end of the weekend, I had an ugly case of sun poisoning. My skin swelled, blistered lobster red, and I was nauseous. As the red faded, sheets of my skin began to peel off much like the shell of a boiled egg. It was not a pretty sight.
Fifty years later, I am reaping what I unknowingly sowed… pre-cancerous spots and basal cell cancer. Looking at my face, I can see the faces of a long line of farmers in my family, worn and weathered with brown spots from a lifetime of exposure to the sun. All those hours spent working and playing outdoors are written on my face and dermatologists read it like a book. Even though I have been wearing hats outdoors for years with sunscreen applied, my early love affair with the sun left marks that have not faded. My latest visit with my friendly dermatologist left me with four frozen spots on my face. Ironically they blister.
A phrase I heard frequently at baptisms in my church life… an outward sign of an inner grace… comes to mind now for some strange reason. These blisters, the scar on my nose from surgery serve as outward reminders of the inner grace that has come in the gift of my body. My body has been my teacher, my guide from childhood until now. To be incarnated in a body is an unimaginable gift even though most of us are not altogether pleased with our packaging. We see ourselves as too fat, too skinny, too tall, too short, big thighs, round faces, imperfect when measured against other bodies we see around us. And as we age, the free flowing fluidity of youth gives way to hitches in our get along. We long for the good old days when most of our body worked easily and without struggle or pain.
What if I could see these aches and pains, these scars, the gradual fading of strength and beauty as outward signs of the inner grace of being? Being a child of God, mortal, finite and limited but grounded in grace leads me to the Immortal, the Infinite, the Unlimited Loving One who called my body into existence. As my body changes and ages, gifts of the Spirit become ever more necessary. “ Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control…against such there is no law.” Thanks be to God for my body, the miracle of being and the reminders of my mortality. I pray my soul will be made whole even as my body begins to gently fall apart.

Pest plants, pesky people and pesky prayer

The perfume of honeysuckle and rose slides through the air as I walk down to the stable in the early morning. It is so sweet you can taste it as you breathe. As a child, I loved to sip the nectar from the base of the honeysuckle blossom. The hills are punctuated with multiflora rose bushes and along the fence lines, rose and honeysuckle grow wrapped around each other forming an impenetrable barrier. It is sometimes difficult to celebrate the sweetness of these two plants because along with bittersweet, they are the worst pest plants on the farm. Left to their own devices, and with the help of birds, they spread rapidly and grow like kudzu, another pest plant.
Plants are not alone in being pests. People, young and old, can be obnoxious in their peskiness. Aidan, one of our grandsons, wanted us to visit his favorite gelato shop. As soon as we entered, his pesky streak swung into action. “Mama, can I have…Mama, can I have…Mama, can I have…” Remonstrances from his mother to calm down went unheard and unheeded. She yanked him up, went outside and had a “Come to Jesus Meeting’ with him. He re-entered the store a part of polite society once again.
Our young bull, Bully, is being a pest. He is breaking through fences and gates to go to our neighbor’s herd where another young bull resides. So far he has destroyed two gates, knocked down one section of a newly constructed woven wire fence, gone through barbed wire, and jumped flatfooted over a chain link fence like a deer. The young bulls pester each other, butting heads, mounting each other and bawling. Leisa and I suspect they may be in love since we saw Bully licking the other bull’s face. Gay bulls are not unheard of. Bully, however, may be bisexual since he has fathered a full complement of calves this winter. Or, it may just be the scent of one of the cows in Gary’s herd that is in heat. Who knows?
Jesus saw peskiness as a virtue sometimes. The Canaanite women was healed because she talked back to Jesus. Ask, knock, seek…pray without ceasing…make a pest of yourself until God listens. The answers to our prayers may not be what we expect or what we asked for. It may take awhile for the answers to come or we may not be able to see and hear the answers until time has passed. Prayers are always answered by change whether it is the change we asked for or a change we did not know we needed. It might be an inner transformation or an outward sign. Nature’s laws tell us that for every action there is an equal reaction. Prayer, its energy, its peskiness, circles back around and we get a Come to Jesus Meeting with God. Be careful what you pray for. You may get it.

A Mother's Prayer...

Mama wore a white rose to church Sunday to honor her mother. This old custom, a red rose for a living mother and a white rose for a mother who has died, is rarely observed except by our older generation. As a child, I remember going to the red rose bush in our front yard early on Mother’s Day Sunday to clip four red roses, one for each of us with Daddy included, to wear to worship. We pinned them to our Sunday finery and joined all the other folks in our little church honoring those who gave us birth. The pastor always honored the oldest mother, the same one every year, the mother with the most children, also the same each year, and the newest mother, that changed from year to year. We sang hymns from the section labeled “Mother’s Songs”… Memories of Mother, The Sweetest Story Ever Told, Tell Mother I’ll Be There, Faith of Our Mothers, Mother Knows, O Blessed Day of Motherhood, My Mother’s Prayer, My Mother’s Bible. Schmaltzy? Yes. Sentimental? Yes. Fun? Yes. True? Yes.
I know some who love theology scoff at these “secular cultural observances” in worship but I miss them. Our faith does not exist in a cultural vacuum. It never has. Christians have always appropriated the culture and transformed it. Our most sacred holy days correspond in many ways with holy days from earlier faith traditions and we sing Christmas carols to tunes not written for worship. Mother ‘s and Father’s Days seem to me to be a wonderful opportunity to teach and honor parents who lay down their lives for their children. Even those who have struggled with the pain of being childless or for those who have had children die, there is or was a mother. For those who suffered at the hands of their mothers, there is the possibility of redemption and resurrection.
God, our mother and father, the birth parent of us all, holds us close to his breast (how is that for a mixed metaphor?) and sets us free to find other mothers and fathers in our world. I am grateful for all the other mothers in my children’s lives. I couldn’t have done it without you. You took them to church and Sunday School, let them come over to your house to play, hosted the church youth group, were their friends on mission trips, listened to them gripe about me and never snitched, were their friends when life got messy, showed up for their weddings and keep up with them now that they are all grown up. Thanks for being the Mother Face of God for my children. And I need to thank all the women who have been my mothers over the years. You taught me how to cook for crowds, to wear beautiful hats, think for myself, pray without knowing exactly how prayer works, play the piano in church, patted me on the back and kicked me into action, challenged and supported me as I struggled to find my voice.
Mark reminded us in worship Sunday that Jesus’ first recorded words in the Bible are when he sassed his mother. She had the nerve to take him to task for staying behind at the temple instead of coming home. Mary’s anguished on my last nerve question…What were you thinking? Didn’t you know your father and I would be worried about you?...was answered with all the assurance a young boy could muster…You should have known where I was. I have begun my career as God’s Son. Makes you wonder if Mary yanked him up by the scruff of his neck to haul him home. Whatever she did, it worked because we read that he went back to Nazareth , lived with his parents and was obedient. And at the end of his life, his last task was to speak to his mother, giving her a son to take his place, his beloved disciple, John. His ministry at its beginning and its ending was bookmarked with words to his mother.
So for all my mothers out there, imperfect as we all are, I tip my Sunday hat to you and give thanks for your persistent love, the persons of Mother God in my world. I think I will wear a red rose this Sunday to worship in your honor and hold your names in my heart as I pray.

Burnout...a gift of grace

When we first moved to Sabbath Rest Farm, there was a lot of clearing out to do. Over the years the ground had grown up in multiflora rose, black pines, and briars. The pastures were run down and the grass blanketed with weeds. The hill in front of our house was cleared as the old road, deeply rutted, was reshaped and a new road put in. The debris was piled and burned on the side of the hill after the work was completed. The next spring, as the grass greened, a patch of grass at the site of the burn pile, was noticeably greener than all the other grass on the hillside. It continues to be greener each year.
Farmers in South Georgia routinely burn their pastures every year at winter’s end. Daddy always said it killed off some weed seeds, removed last year’s thatch from the grass and provided some natural fertilizer. Preparation was simple but necessary. You put some water in a tank on the truck and drove the fence line, wetting down the edges of the field and the fence posts. The water also meant you could drench wayward embers. Grass burns quickly and cleanly so the farmer always stayed with the fire, walking the perimeter, making sure the burn did not escape. You kept an eye on the fence posts because you did not want them to burn and when the little fire had raced across the field, you drove the field again, putting out hot spots. By protecting your fence line, you were also protecting your neighbor’s land and the surrounding woodland. When spring came, the green grass grew cleanly, evenly across the fields because all the trash had been burned away.
These past few months, the pasture of my soul has been burned in preparation for new life to come. These burns have come before and will come again. I hope I have been a good farmer, tending the burn line, checking the hot spots, being present to the process. I have used the Water of Life to contain the burn and now wait for the greening time to come. The thatch of complacency and the weed seeds of “I can do it myself” have been burned away. Once again I have been given a gift, the reminder that we all stand in need and as we ask for help, receive help and in return become helpers, we are the Family of God. Thank you, my loved ones for building fence lines, feeding animals, calling and kicking my rear end, calling and not kicking my rear end, bringing food, porch sitting, listening and loving me through this grass burn. When you need me, give a holler and I will return the favor. Grace was given to each of us, Saint Paul says, according to the measure of Christ’s gift. My tank is full, overflowing with grace and I am grateful.

Spring has sprung...

It is cool and quiet in the almost light morning. More rain is on the way. It is always surprising how quickly the earth hardens from mud to a baked surface. The hay is standing tall in the fields and if it warms up, we will be cutting hay sooner rather than later. Mother’s Day has traditionally been the dividing line for garden planting in the mountains. Gary and Leisa planted corn and beans in our garden space. The beans will climb the corn stalks and with a little luck, the human beings may get some corn before the raccoons get it all. Spraying the horses and cows for flies is now a weekly job, another sure sign the warm weather is here.
Baby rabbits sit by the road, frozen and hoping to become invisible. Bluebird parents fly back and forth, endlessly feeding the brood inside the birdhouses. A black snake slithers down the bank as I mow the walking path. In the old berry patch, a box turtle sits soaking up the sun and raises his head as I pass by. The black bear that shares our farm visited mama last night, spending time beneath her bedroom window and leaving his tracks through her garden. She wants to fire her rifle to scare him off. Animal lover that she is, she would never intentionally hurt an animal. But, she would scare the bejezus out of the bear to protect her cats. We haven’t seen the wild white turkey recently. Turkey hunting season culls the flock and he may have been killed. Gary has a beautiful picture of him with his tail spread.Once again all creation is obeying God’s admonition to go forth and multiply.
The turning point, the still point, the time when time holds still as one season ends and another begins, is sacred ground. For those who have ears to hear bird song and eyes to see invisible baby rabbits, God’s tracks in our world are everywhere. I listen to the soft turkey gobbles in the woods below our house as I walk to the stable in the morning and hear “all is well, all is well”. The rooster crows and crows, pushing the world to get up and get moving, doing the work he was given in creation. The horses’ coats are slick and shiny. They have shed all the extra coats of winter and lightened up for spring and summer. I need to let go of some of my extra coats that have grown this winter and prepare for new life yet to come.
God said in Genesis, “Let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens to separate day from night; and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years…” So it has been since time began and so it is now. The lights in the firmament of heaven mark the seasons and are a sign of God’s presence in our natural world. The ground we walk on is God’s ground. When we breathe in soft spring air, we breathe in God’s breath. When we sit in silence, we hear God passing by in the rush of wings or the rumble of thunder. Sunlight, moonlight, and starlight mark the passage of time, time with God in a world that renews and recreates itself year after year. Spring has sprung here at Sabbath Rest Farm and spring will spring in me. Thanks be to God for new seasons of rest and renewal. Selah.

I need a little pentecost...

I have begun three different times to write this morning and have run dry all three times. Two paragraphs in, I sit and look at what I have written and wonder where I am going with this. Select all, cut, start over… It has been a whirlwind spring without much time for silence and reflection. The riverbed of my soul is as dry as red clay baked hard in summer sun. When these fallow times come, it is difficult to let them be, to rest in the “not doing”. My old tapes play… get busy, you are being lazy, there is so much to do, get a move on. And there is so much I would love to do… finish painting the quilt panel for the high barn, do some calligraphy, ride Junie B, read, sew, have a party with all my women friends. But I can’t seem to find the energy needed to do much beyond what is absolutely necessary.
Some of this is physical, a response to the demands on my sixty four year old body, and some is psychological, the spring blues. My spiritual malaise however, echoes the church calendar and our history as Christians. After the long walk through Lent, the death darkness of Good Friday and the blinding light of Easter Resurrection, I am worn out. I suspect the disciples were, too. High drama, life and death and life again, fear and joy… the pendulum swings from one extreme to another had no resting place for body or soul.
And then, Pentecost came with such blinding speed out of the blue, knocking the socks off all who were present. Marvelous mayhem, words spoken and understood regardless of language, fiery crowns of spirit were an outward sign of an inward transformation. I do not seek to explain the miracle of Pentecost. I hunger for a Pentecost of my own as I pray and wait for my fiery crown. Perhaps my Pentecost will be quieter, doves not fire, or perhaps I will wake filled with the Spirit and singing (sorry, Catherine) in the early morning. However Pentecost comes, it will come and I will be ready.
Until then, I will do what I always do in times of drought. I will give thanks. I will pray gratitude and speak a litany of thanksgiving for all that has been and all that is yet to come. I will remember where I came from, to whom I belong, and be grateful for the journey with all of its joys and sorrows. And when Pentecost comes and my dry bones are covered with living flesh, I pray I will remember to sing the Lord’s song when the drought comes again. Thanks be to God for all the Pentecosts of my life, the Spirit that sings a new song in my soul year after year and the God who never leaves me nor forsakes me.

Secondhand resurrection...

We came home from Texas to a rodeo of sorts on the farm. The cows chose the week before Michael’s knee replacement surgery to break out, to run free through the grass that was greener on the other side. Every day until the fences were repaired, I was singing “Get Along, Little Doggie” while I shooed the cows from neighbor’s yards, our yards, or separated our bull, Bully, from Gary’s bull in the middle of “Mine is bigger than your’s” contests. After two weeks of this, the fun was gone and my voice grew shrill. Thanks to friends and some young hired help, the fences were reconstructed and the daily routine no longer includes a cattle drive.
Being one farmer down has meant I have had to care for the chickens, not one of my favorite animals. Daddy had Rhode Island Reds and they were my after school chore… feed, water, gather eggs. Perhaps it was the context of the beginning of our relationship, one that was decided for me not one of choice, that set the tone but I never felt much affection for the chickens. Michael and our grandsons love them. They are named, picked up and cuddled, chased and caught, celebrated with laughter and story. I am glad for them and the chickens but feel no guilt (well, maybe not much) about my lack of feeling connected to the chickens. After all, you can love animals (and people) without liking them much, right Mary Lynn?
All the activity of the past six weeks has left my soul gasping for breath. So much to do, not enough time to do it all, and spring, like the cows, busting out all over. Easter came and I was wrung dry. My dry bones were crying out for resurrection. I came to Easter worship scattered and brain dead.
The first hymn, Christ the Lord Has Risen Today, should be pitched and sung joyfully. Due to a major oversight on my part, the trombone accompaniment was in the key of C which was too low for everybody but Pastor Pat and other basses to sing. My soul staggered along as we sang, passed the peace, shared celebrations and concerns, prayed, read scripture, listened to the sermon and I waited for Easter to come. Finally it did during the offering.
Marquasia, a young African American girl, stood in front of the church, dressed in her best Easter finery, to sing our special music. She looked at me. I smiled and began the introduction. Swing low, Sweet chariot, coming for to carry me home… a song I have known and loved since childhood… Her voice barely made it to the back row but her joy and pride in singing were loud and clear. The congregation joined in softly and suddenly, in the harmony of the moment, Easter came rushing in. There we were…young and old, black and white, all of us dressed in the best we had to offer… gathered together waiting on a resurrection we aren’t sure will come.
Reading the four very different accounts of the resurrection in the gospels, I feel the scattered lostness of the disciples. Their world has come crashing down and nothing is left to show for the years they have invested in Jesus and his mission. Huddled together for comfort, they sit and wait, not sure what will come next. And when it comes, they don’t recognize it, don’t believe it. The women insist Jesus is alive, they have seen him but until he appears to them, the men can’t take their word for it. Secondhand resurrection stories are difficult to swallow. I am those disciples. I go through the motions, sit and wait, hear the words and can’t quite believe resurrection will ever come for me. Then I hear and see Marquasia sing and resurrection flows right over me, fills up the crannies in my soul and waters my parched spirit. Thanks be to God for the deserts and dry places, times of death and dark nights of the soul. Without them, how could we see and feel the power of new life, the return of light after darkness and the blooming buds of a soul coming into full flower again? It is no longer a secondhand resurrection story but my story, my resurrection that teaches me there is more life to come than I can imagine. Thank you, Jesus…

The Eyes of Texas...

We went home to Texas hill country this weekend to visit Michael’s brother and his family. Texas hill country is nothing like our green mountain home but it does have a beauty that I love. Like most of Texas, the wide open earth and sky views are breath taking especially at sunrise and sunset. At night one can see an upside down bowl view of our universe sprinkled with star light confetti. Hill country, so named because of the changes in elevation that provide long range views, has groves of majestic live oak trees with green ribbons of streams and rivers winding through its valleys.
If you have never been to Texas, it is hard to imagine the size of the state. There are six distinct mini-states within the one state...east Texas, west Texas, central Texas, south Texas, north Texas and the pan handle. Each part of Texas has its own personality and style and within each region there are variations also. A young couple sat in front of us as we rode the water taxi at the River Walk in San Antonio. Clearly they were from west Texas. The signs? He wore his cowboy hat (not unusual anywhere in Texas) over curly hair along with a big rodeo style belt buckle and worn cowboy boots. She also wore her cowboy boots and jeans. When they spoke, it was pure west Texas, friendly and inquisitive, curious about us and finding a connection with my sister-in-law, a shared acquaintance. Fewer people live in west Texas so it is not difficult to discover people in common. This couple had driven nine hours inside Texas just to get to San Antonio.
I wonder sometimes how the geography of where we live colors our souls. Here in these old, worn mother mountains, green and lush, I feel God holding me in the timeless cupped hand valleys surrounded by steep slopes soaring towards skies enclosed by other mountains. Some feel smothered by the mountains, unable to catch their breath. What is comfort for me is agony for them. They are west Texas people in need of distant open horizons, room to spread out, able to see what is coming at the same time seeing where they have been. All of us, I suspect, have places on earth that call us to them, where our souls rest in a way that is different from any other place. Some of us live in these homes for our souls and call ourselves blessed.
Wherever we live, wherever our soul calls home, it is good to stretch our horizons and see new places, other ways of living. Too often we see our place as the best, our way the only way and forget God is a God of the whole world and loves us all equally. Hearing different accents, new voices, and experiencing worship that is not the same as mine keeps my soul on its toes. The eyes of Texas (and of God) are on me as I stretch to not judge those who are different (not as good as) me. I’d like to blame this judgmental streak of mine on my daddy but I am afraid it belongs purely to me... and to you. None of us are immune to judgement first, mercy second if at all. Thanks be to God for reversing that order when dealing with us or we would all be armadillo roadkill!
Today I will be giving thanks for the many colors of life in Texas and in North Carolina, the life songs sung in Texas twang and North Carolina drawl, and for the God who made us all, male and female, an image of our multi-colored, many faceted creator. We are loved just where we are for just who we are and it is good. Ya’ll out in west Texas come... You’uns in Western North Carolina will be glad to welcome you in the name of the One who made us so different and alike. Mercy, mercy, mercy, Lord have mercy!