Farm work and Lent...Risky business

We put our hay up in round bales now. Old age, general decrepitude and a lack of able bodied friends has made dealing with square bales problematic. While helping Michael load a round bale, I tripped and took a nasty tumble landing on my face and chest, spread eagled on a pallet. I cussed a little at my clumsiness…o.k., I cussed a lot. The only damage was a bone bruise on my sternum so I got off lucky. This was not my first accident on a farm. Cows and horses have stepped on my feet. I have fallen off the hay wagon several times beginning as a child. I have that particular falling technique down pat now…loosen up, roll on impact. Tripping is a specialty of mine as is getting knocked around by cows. It comes with the territory. Farming and Ash Wednesday are both a risky business.

Tonight at six we will gather around the table to begin the forty day journey into the wilderness of Lent. It is a dangerous trip, full of sacrifice, remembrance, grief, repentance, dying and death. It is not a time for the fainthearted or the lukewarm. Pastor Pat will mark our foreheads with those greasy black ashes from last year’s Palm Sunday palms, and out into the world we will go with the outward mark of our inexplicable belief that death is not the final word.

Last year at this time, we were waiting for death to pay a visit. David was doing the work of dying and we were trying to help the best we could. Diane, his wife, was the midwife for David’s death and new life. All of us, including David, were worn out, plumb worn out, from the hard work. We watched as the body we knew as David melted away, destroyed by cancer within. Flashes of the man we knew and loved surfaced occasionally. He would rouse enough to thank his nurses in Hospice for their tender care. Midwestern courtesy and self deprecating humor were the last to go under. And then, he left us. Like a snake splitting his skin, shedding the old, he moved on leaving the worn out body behind. This Lent, I will be looking for what needs to die in me…what is unlike the God I love. Jesus tells us we must be willing to die like a grain of wheat so that new life and fruit can come into being.

This Friday night, the farm family will gather for a soup supper. When darkness falls, we will walk to the sunset deck, carrying the prayer lanterns David and Diane bought last year in Thailand. We will remember ten good things about David, say and write our prayers, sending them skyward with the illuminated lanterns… a little light in the midst of a great darkness.

Lord of Darkness and Light, keep me close to you as I walk this shadowed valley of Lent. Hold me up when I trip and fall. Let me not lose sight of the little light in the darkness that leads me home to you. Amen.