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.