scooping the poop

Two of my friends, Caleb and Katy, came to work at the farm last Saturday. This was their first job for pay and they were very good workers. The first job was picking up all the scrap wood around Junie B’s new fence. Then the wood boxes for three houses needed to be filled with kindling and wood. The final job was scooping the poop.
One of the ways we are reducing the amount of hay we need to feed is by letting the cows out to graze on the unfenced hay fields. Naturally they do not stay on the unfenced fields but roam at will, ending up in my side yard for their siestas. I must admit as the daughter of a farmer, it is sweet to look out my window and see Ferdinand the bull in all his humongous splendor, resting and chewing his cud. His calm friendly phlegmatic personality always gives me pleasure and reminds me of my daddy. The little bulls cuddle up next to him and they lie in a family circle, all the boys snuggled up together. They drink from the old syrup kettle in my side flower bed that was their water source on my parent’s farm. I have to watch and make sure the koi don’t get left high and dry. All this cow activity in my yard results in large deposits of cow poop, a veritable minefield of poop, that snags the unwary and unaware. So before the grandchildren come for Christmas, we needed the poop scooped.
I handed Caleb and Katy two shovels and gave them instructions... scoop the poop, put it in my flower beds, rake the left overs so they will dissolve when we get rain. Katy’s shovel was a little heavy and the piles were really big but she managed to scoop by dividing the piles in half. It didn’t take long for the yard to be cleaned up. We leaned on our shovels and surveyed the yard, proud of our work, and watched as Ferd wandered through the front yard pausing long enough to deposit another fresh pile.
On this first day of Advent, I am reminded that my life, like my yard, needs some cleaning and clearing. During the past year I have often wandered on my way and lost the hopeful expectation of love, joy and peace. Piles of frustration, grief, hopelessness, hurt and anxiety dot the landscape of my heart weighing my soul down, keeping me stepping from one little clearing to another without a sense of direction or purpose. Before I can celebrate Advent, I must stop and settle, survey my soul’s yard and begin clearing away the messes left from the year past. It will require an examination, a close look at the painful places, the messy piles, so I can honor them as silent witness to my passage through the year 2007. My darkness, my shadow self is a balance for the reflection of my shining soul.
Darkness is as necessary to our soul’s growth as it is for flowers to bloom. Poinsettias and Christmas cactuses require a certain amount of darkness or they cannot bloom. My soul cannot bloom without time spent in the night that gives time for rest and renewal and recognition of my truest self. In darkness I can see the places where I have faltered, stumbled, wandered, hurt myself and others, lost the sense of the Presence that calls me to the light.
In honoring my imperfection, I can release my failures, ask God’s forgiveness and once again search for all the hope, love, joy and peace that surround me everyday. After I have passed through the darkness of Advent, the dark night of soul cleaning, new light will come. I will see clearly again, walk without worry, wait for the coming of the Christ Child with a whole hearted soul, clear eyed vision, songs of praise and a straight path full of hope, love, joy and peace. "The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who have dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has the light shined." May it be so, Lord, this Advent. I yearn for the light to shine on me. And, I want to be your Light for those around me. Let me be light, let me walk in light, let me share the light, let me see your Light, let me find your Light in my life this Advent Season as I walk through the land of deep darkness.

Why Do You Wait?

It is one of those nights. I forgot the realities of my age for a moment and drank a cup of hot tea before bed (English Breakfast), with caffeine, and am paying the price for my comforting ritual. So, here I am at 1:45 in the morning, unable to sleep and mulling over various and sundries. One of my mulling points is how much time I have spent waiting.
When I was a child, I was waiting to grow older, not grow up, just older. I wanted to be old enough to go to school, old enough to wear lipstick, old enough to drive a car, old enough to leave my parent’s home. Then I was "grown up" and I was once again waiting... waiting to get married, waiting for Tim to come home from Viet Nam, waiting for the grief to ease, waiting for a new life to take shape, married again and waiting for babies to be born, waiting for teeth to come in and potty training to happen, waiting at soccer games and dance performances and piano recitals, a lady-in-waiting. While I was waiting, life happened and it was good and hard and wonderful and funny and sad. Everything I was waiting for, came to me.
There is an old invitational hymn, Why Do You Wait, that floated through my cloudy mind as I lay pondering my particular waiting game. "Why do you wait, dear brother, Oh why do you tarry so long? Your Savior is waiting to give you a place in his sanctified throng. Why not? Why not? Why not come to him now?" I did come and yet I waited still.
My waiting, however, has not been a passive state, lying abed like Snow White waiting for the Prince to come kiss me awake. It has been a quiet, expectant, hopeful way of living that knows there is more to come, more than I can see or touch or smell or taste or hear. All the mile posts that have whizzed by as I was living were not all I was waiting for. I was and am still, waiting for God to come.
God has come many times to me in my life. In the frozen silence of grief and loss, God’s voice whispered in my ear, "Wait for me". I waited and there God was in the arms and faces and voices of those who loved me. In the frenetic fun family times when children were young and silence was rarely available, God spoke to me in my children’s voices affirming the joy of creation and the wonder of life. And now in the quiet of my sixties, I hear and see and taste and smell and feel God all around me. My waiting is rich with possibilities and promise. Like the Psalmist of old,
"I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I hope; my soul waits for the Lord more than the watchman waits for the morning."
Advent is coming and I am waiting once again... waiting for incarnation and a baby boy to be born who will be named Jesus... waiting for hope, love, joy and peace... waiting for God to show up.

my thankful list....

I am thankful for the gift of life in this world and the world to come. The package of life is never neatly wrapped and topped with a bow but in spite of its messy exterior (or maybe because of it), the present of existence is a wonderful jack-in-the-box experience. How could I not be grateful for a life that has such joy... grandchildren, children,a loving husband, Sabbath Rest Farm with cows and a horse, sunrises through my bedroom window, the laughter of friends gathered around the Thanksgiving table, candlelight in the twilight darkness, the ability to make a fool of myself in forty eleven different ways and have fun while doing it, Grady Nutt’s phrase,"friends who are family and family who are friends", a reasonably healthy body and a somewhat sound mind, good food full of flavor, the sound of Aidan’s giggles and chuckles and belly laughs as we played his favorite game, Roar, in the store yesterday, peaceful night times in our farmhouse living room watching the fire light play, the smell of damp winter earth covered with the crop of autumn leaves, friends whose differences from me help me see the wonderful wholeness of life (Republicans and New Jersey people and conservative Baptists can make great friends), clean water from a well that is full, home sweet home in a part of the world that feeds my soul every time I look out and see the beautiful rounded outlines of the mountains that surround my place on this planet Earth.
I am thankful for the sorrows of my life. They have taught me how to be grateful for all of life. Loss and grief have rounded the sharp edges of my soul. I am a testament to the power of transformation through the purifying process of painful deaths... deaths of loved ones, deaths of dreams, deaths of self perception, the death of innocence that is ignorance disguised, death of my religious home place... little deaths and earth shaking deaths... all a part of my life and a counter balance to the "joy, joy, joy, joy, joy" mode of my American culture. If one can have courage, take heart and just wait, there is much to be gained in experiencing loss. Great sorrow often weighs one down, making movement of any kind very difficult. In the stillness of sorrow lies the gift of new life, new ways of being, new depths to be sounded, and new heights to be flown when the tears on our butterfly wings dry. How can I keep from singing when even griefs and sorrows hold the promises of life to come?
I am thankful for all the beauty in my life. I am surrounded by green mountains, rocky rivers and streams, deer and wild turkeys, hopping toads and brightly colored salamanders, Carolina blue skies and grey snow days, soaring hawks and circling buzzards, graceful evergreens and tree skeletons, emeralds of rye grass and blueberry bush rubies. The wonderful shine of polished friendships with those near and far lights my heart and soul, and keeps me warm during the dark, cold winters. The purity of Gabe’s voice singing in worship Sunday, the joy of singing a fast and furious Shaker song in choir, watching Serena draw an interpretation of star light, matting collages and pictures created in our Art Extravaganza Sunday, rejoicing in the variety of creative gifts of beauty that are a connection to the Creator... these beautiful reflections of souls find a home in my heart and I am grateful. This is a beautiful world filled with beautiful creations.
I am thankful for the abiding presence of the One Who Loves in my life. From earliest memories I have always been aware of and grateful for the gift of God’s presence in my life. The assurance of being loved when I am most unlovable, being loved "just because" has sustained me when I could not love myself. The everlasting Love, the Love that knows no end, Love that will not let me go, Love that calls forth Love from me and pushes me to share and see the Love in others... the first Bible verse I learned as a child and do truly believe... God is Love... when all else fails, this blessed assurance remains. I am loved. I am called to be a lover. "Therefore be imitators of God as beloved children. And walk in love as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us , a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God."Ephesians 5:1-2 Today I will walk surrounded by Love, bathed in Light, remembering to whom I belong and live as a beloved child, grateful beyond measure for this most amazing gift of life.

and your name shall be... wonderful?

Names were special when I was growing up. At church, adults were addressed as Brother Calhoun or Sister Calhoun until the friendship was firmly established. Then you became Sister Shirley or Brother Tommy. Children were not allowed to address adults by their first name alone. If they had a special relationship to you, you might call them Mr. Howard or Miss Jeanette but only with permission. Public boundaries for relationship were clear for children and adults alike. As a child I discounted these etiquette rules. I saw them as artificial and unnecessary. I have changed my mind.
Perhaps it is the sales calls I get on the phone where I am addressed as "Peggy" by someone who does not know me, will never know me and doesn’t want to know me even if I buy something... or it could be the doctor who calls me by my first name while I still don’t know theirs... or it could be I am just tired of feeling like I have no protection from a world of people who presume they know me and feel free to use my first name as a sign of a non-existent relationship. My, I sound grumpy, and old. Children, all children, are exempt from this rule for me, however. They can call me anything they want to and I will love it. No prefixes are needed and my first name will do just fine. Kids are all about relationship and have no special axes to grind beyond loving.
Our individual names have meaning. Some of that meaning may come because of a definition attached to the name word. Margaret means "a pearl". In my family that name is given to the oldest daughter. So my Aunt Peg (Margaret), me (Peggy), and my oldest daughter (Megan) all share a version of the same name. In some families names are handed down from generation to generation. Year after year, John David or Mary Elizabeth or Mary Samuel or Stuart Alvin is passed on to the next generation of children providing a context and a connection to the past from which they have sprung. Sometimes the past is too heavy a connection to bear. It feels oppressive or artificial, not really a reflection of the person who carries the name.
None of our names, I suspect, feel like the real "us" until we have lived with them for awhile. For those who never feel settled in their names, legal name change is an option. For some women who marry and take the name of their partner, we have another name shift to accommodate. We leave the name of our birth and add a new name to our list, creating a new name history. The visible sign of names’ importance is the custom of creating hyphenated last names that incorporate both last names. At some invisible point in our lives, we grow to fit our names or we let our names begin to fit us.
I remember trying out different names as a child. I wondered what I would look like as a "Mary Jane" or a "Taffy" or a "Margaret". What would I become if I were named Katherine or Mary Samuel (one of my cousins) ? Would I live up to that name differently than the name "Peggy"? I’ll never know who or what I might have become if I had been named Mary Catherine or Maria Irene.
It has been an adventure figuring out who "Peggy Joyce Calhoun Cole Hester" was and who she could be. Peggy is not a very dignified name and I am not a very dignified person. On any given day you might see me in overalls with hay in my hair, or kneeling down in front of the communion table in my Sunday best taping up the bright green table cloth with no thought for my posterior view presented to the congregation, or sliding down the home made slip and slide at the Fourth of July party at the farm, or falling gracefully off Junie B. Jones as the saddle slipped to one side. I am a person with a clear sense of my place in this world partly because of all the family stories my Grandma told me, but no illusions about my importance in the grand scheme of things. So the name Peggy suits me just fine, thank you. It is down to earth, non-threatening, easy to say, playful and it suits me.
The Bible pays attention to names. All those lists of "begats" and stories of name changes... Simon to Peter and Jacob to Israel... names are of great importance in the Bible. New names come with a change in purpose or a new self definition. Sometimes they come in struggle with unknown angels and sometimes they are given to us by others. But in Isaiah 62 a phrase in verse two gives me another source for a new name. "...and you shall be called by a new name which the mouth of the Lord will give..." I wonder what new name God will call me? Maybe I have already been given that name and didn’t hear God call me by my new name. What a soul loss that would be, to have been given a new name by God and missed it because I wasn’t listening. I am going to start watching for the clues to my new name, listening for the sound of God’s voice in my daily rounds calling me by name, calling me to a new name adventure, a new holy place with a name to match my calling. I do hope it isn’t something too dignified or righteous or heaven forbid, something I have to live up to.