Oh to grace how great a debtor...

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

Salty dogs...

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

Horseback riding and soulwork...preparation and possibility

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

On the cusp...

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