Horse Poop, Easter Egg Hunts and Lent

The farm is ringed round with dark clouds in the distance telling the tale of snow coming soon. The wind makes the tops of the tall oak trees bend and sway, limbs bumping into each other as the winter front roars its way towards us. I walked down to the stables this morning leaning into the wind, enjoying the warmth that remains as the gray clouds begin to cover our skies. As I shoveled out horse poop from the stalls, I began to reflect on yesterday’s Easter Egg Hunt and Lent. Strange combination, perhaps but my mind goes bumpty bump when I am doing physical labor.
Everyday, without fail, I must rake out the old used up sawdust and poop so that fresh bedding is available for Junie B and Dixie Chick. If the dirty sawdust is left in the stalls, it turns rancid and acidic. It hurts the horses hooves and the smell will make them sick. They must be stalled at night in spring time to prevent their overeating the tender spring grass that is so high in sugar. Junie B will eat herself into oblivion if she is not kept in her stall. Too much weight and she will founder, be lame and unable to be ridden. So I shovel poop and think.
I do these same tasks...shovel poop in the stalls, rake and clean the paddock, put out hay, check the water, give the donkeys and horses feed, brush and groom them for a little while each day. If it is morning, I am in the stable tending to the horses and donkeys. In the evening I put them up and give them hay and water for the night. It is a labor of love... love for them and for who I am when I am with them. Why, I wonder, is it so hard for me to do the same for God... to walk down to the place where God lives in my heart, rake out the garbage, tend to my surroundings and feed my soul?
Lent, the liturgical equivalent of stall cleaning, gives me a push to establish (again) a pattern of paying attention to God, feeding and tending my relationship with the One who loves me just because I am, not because of what I do. And yet, what I do matters. So yesterday, the Egg Hunt day, was an opportunity to do something old in a new way. Old patterns are gone. The routine had changed and something new was hatched at Sabbath Rest Farm on this Palm Sunday.
Families came from Cara’s first grade class, children in tow. It didn’t take long for the kids to begin running the length and breadth of the green hills, tumbling like young puppies at play. I met a young father recovering from back surgery, a builder and lover of wood. He grew up on a dairy farm in upstate New York. I loved hearing his stories of farm life.
Ganadhi and Natalyia, their three children and Celeste came. Celeste was wearing her daffodil hat and Natalyia brought Moldovan food... wonderful cucumber cabbage dill slaw and stuffed grape leaves and chocolate cookies to die for. Did you know there is a Russian grocery on Patton Avenue? Ganadhi told me how to tell the difference between rooster chicks and hen chicks. Who knew hen feet flop down and rooster feet turn up? At the end of the afternoon, Ganadhi received a phone call telling him of his father’s approaching death far away. He will suffer this great loss far away from his family, unable to return to his birth country of Moldova. Four pre-teens flopped in the hammock, dragging the ground as they tried to swing. The hay ride filled with children and parents squealing and laughing. Neighbors came, some with their grandchildren. Junie B stood patiently as little children climbed on her back only to say, “It’s so high up!” Three of our grandchildren, dressed in look-a-like shirts, carrying their Easter baskets, looking for eggs, mouths smeared with chocolate, fell asleep in the car on their way home to Lewisville, tuckered out from all the excitement.
Michael estimated seventy five or eighty people came and many of them for the first time. What a gift of grace for me yesterday. How could I have not seen the possibilities for relationship with my larger community before? So many from so many different places... so much good food and so much laughter... so much celebration of new life at the end of a hard winter. I am pondering how to continue this new tradition... how to find those who would love to take a Kawasaki mule ride roller coastering up and down hills, sit in warm sun and cloud gaze, go for a creek walk and look for pretty rocks, pet the horses and laugh at the donkeys. Sabbath Rest hospitality for new friends, my hometown, my Easter gift one week early... Thanks be to God. And thanks for those kitchen friends who stayed to help clean up. It looked better after than before!