The past few weeks have been painfully sad for the farm family. We have gathered round Vince and Tina in the last days of his life on earth, standing in for blood kin, monitoring medicines, meeting with nurses and social workers, changing wet beds, shaving Vince, listening to Tina, doing what needs to be done to see that Vince dies with dignity and grace.
Most of us will not have this experience until our parents die. It didn’t used to be this way. As a child, I remember watching my great-aunt Nina come to live with my grandparents as she died with cancer. A special bed was set up in the front room for her next to my grandma. Grandma brought her meals to her as she slowly slipped away from us that summer. We weren’t sheltered or set apart from what was happening. Grandma gave it to us straight... “Aunt Nina is sick and will die. She is here so I can help her. She would like to see you now and then but I need for you not to make too much noise in the front hall.” It seemed natural, right and good that this should be happening at home.
As an adult who has seen death several times over now, I know now how hard that summer was for my grandma and her sister. Walking through the dark valley of death is not easy physically or emotionally. Watching someone you love hurt, lose their connections to you and this world, change into a person in-between this life and the next, can be overwhelming. And it can be the sweetest time of life, taking your breath away with little glimpses of glory.
I sat by Vince, my feet up on the bed, talking about our grandchildren who love him and whom he loves. I told him about Matthew’s remembrance of him in that morning’s phone call. Matthew wondered if they went fishing together again, would Vince feel better. We talked about building our house together, all the times he growled at me or someone else because we weren’t doing it “right”, the lunches shared sitting under the shade trees while we watched our house come alive. We laughed a lot and when the drugs took him off to the pain free Land of Nod, I sat awhile longer giving thanks for this unlikely friend.
Vince has moved to Solace, our hospice home for those who are actively dying. The pain of bone cancer requires medical skills we do not have. We go and sit, hold his hand, talk and laugh, tell stories and wait... wait for this last job of Vince’s to be completed. And in the waiting, God sits with us all, holding us in the love that does not let us go even in the shadow of death. Life, life and death, life in death... Thanks be to God for the mercies and grace that flow like the rivers of life when we die. In all things, life and death, I am content.
Saturday, August 29, 2009
Monday, August 17, 2009
Life is grace...
“Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery it is. In the boredom and the pain of it no less than in the excitement and gladness, touch, taste, smell your way to the heavenly and hidden heart of it because, in the last analysis, all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace.” Frederick Buechner
His leg began hurting while we were still becoming friends. He put off going to the doctor because he wanted to finish building our house for us. The verdict was Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma and the treatment was successful. The cancer went into remission. His life’s work was the building trade begun at twelve. His parents died and his brothers and sisters, all thirteen of them, were farmed out to relatives. For awhile he lived from pillar to post, not really settled anywhere. An uncle took him in and taught him how to plaster walls. His life as a child and his schooling were ended. As he says, with tears leaking from the corner of his eyes, “I raised myself.” Life as a young adult was rocky and difficult... military service, a failed marriage, distant children, alcoholism, anger. He met his match in his second wife who gave as good as she got. By the time we met them, some of the fire and brimstone had been dampened down and as neighbors, we cautiously began to get to know each other.
They were suspicious of “doctors”, didn’t know the difference between Michael’s Ph.D. and Tim’s M.D., both were doctors and equally guilty. As the wives of “doctors”, Jeannie and I were cut some slack but not much. Visits, Christmas presents, shared grandchildren, side by side work building the deck for Alison and David’s wedding, building our house together, listening to the underneath of the outside talking, slowly we began to see him for the child of God he is and loved him as he loved us. Using his carpenter’s pencil, whittled down to a nub, he drew off plans for the horse stable and then helped us build it. By the time Michael was building his chicken house, the pain had returned. He drew the plan up but to his grief, was not able to build it. The cancer was back and this time did not respond to treatment.
Last night his wife called us to come. He had fallen several times and is getting weaker. She wanted Michael to get him to go to the hospital. Mama and I sat with her while Michael sat with him, speaking of life and death, friendship and love, Hospice and help, hospitals and home. He wants to stay home so the farm family is gearing up to help that happen. Tim and Jeannie are dealing with Hospice and other medical issues. She is too weak from dialysis to drive so Diane is doing grocery shopping for them. Mama, Leisa and I are the food and sitter team(while she is in dialysis, he cannot be left alone) with Jeannie and Diane’s help. Michael, Tim and Gary have gathered round their friend and he will have them by his side for this last project.
Like the divining of God’s will by letting the Bible fall open and putting a finger blindly on a verse, Buechner’s writing popped up as the quote for my devotional reading this morning. As I begin letting go of Vince as friend in this life, Buechner reminds me that all of life is grace and all moments are key moments. Building the deck with Vince was as important as standing by him while he dies. Standing around talking about the horses and a future stable were as important as holding his hand while he weeps. Listening to him grump and fuss, laughing at the antics of my grandsons, asking about his grandson Zack who worked with us on the farm, watching him draw and figure out how to build a hall rack bench for the mudroom, sharing meals and special occasions, all were moments of grace and I give thanks for this irascible troublesome endearing man who has been our friend. Now he returns to the Love that has never let him go, the One who waits for his return, this child who has been trying to find his way home since he was twelve will soon be gathered into the arms of the Father, home at last. Thanks be to God for sending him our way, for all the life we have shared and for all that is yet to come. We have both been graced in the hidden heavenly here at Sabbath Rest Farm and the Mystery draws near. So be it. Amen.
His leg began hurting while we were still becoming friends. He put off going to the doctor because he wanted to finish building our house for us. The verdict was Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma and the treatment was successful. The cancer went into remission. His life’s work was the building trade begun at twelve. His parents died and his brothers and sisters, all thirteen of them, were farmed out to relatives. For awhile he lived from pillar to post, not really settled anywhere. An uncle took him in and taught him how to plaster walls. His life as a child and his schooling were ended. As he says, with tears leaking from the corner of his eyes, “I raised myself.” Life as a young adult was rocky and difficult... military service, a failed marriage, distant children, alcoholism, anger. He met his match in his second wife who gave as good as she got. By the time we met them, some of the fire and brimstone had been dampened down and as neighbors, we cautiously began to get to know each other.
They were suspicious of “doctors”, didn’t know the difference between Michael’s Ph.D. and Tim’s M.D., both were doctors and equally guilty. As the wives of “doctors”, Jeannie and I were cut some slack but not much. Visits, Christmas presents, shared grandchildren, side by side work building the deck for Alison and David’s wedding, building our house together, listening to the underneath of the outside talking, slowly we began to see him for the child of God he is and loved him as he loved us. Using his carpenter’s pencil, whittled down to a nub, he drew off plans for the horse stable and then helped us build it. By the time Michael was building his chicken house, the pain had returned. He drew the plan up but to his grief, was not able to build it. The cancer was back and this time did not respond to treatment.
Last night his wife called us to come. He had fallen several times and is getting weaker. She wanted Michael to get him to go to the hospital. Mama and I sat with her while Michael sat with him, speaking of life and death, friendship and love, Hospice and help, hospitals and home. He wants to stay home so the farm family is gearing up to help that happen. Tim and Jeannie are dealing with Hospice and other medical issues. She is too weak from dialysis to drive so Diane is doing grocery shopping for them. Mama, Leisa and I are the food and sitter team(while she is in dialysis, he cannot be left alone) with Jeannie and Diane’s help. Michael, Tim and Gary have gathered round their friend and he will have them by his side for this last project.
Like the divining of God’s will by letting the Bible fall open and putting a finger blindly on a verse, Buechner’s writing popped up as the quote for my devotional reading this morning. As I begin letting go of Vince as friend in this life, Buechner reminds me that all of life is grace and all moments are key moments. Building the deck with Vince was as important as standing by him while he dies. Standing around talking about the horses and a future stable were as important as holding his hand while he weeps. Listening to him grump and fuss, laughing at the antics of my grandsons, asking about his grandson Zack who worked with us on the farm, watching him draw and figure out how to build a hall rack bench for the mudroom, sharing meals and special occasions, all were moments of grace and I give thanks for this irascible troublesome endearing man who has been our friend. Now he returns to the Love that has never let him go, the One who waits for his return, this child who has been trying to find his way home since he was twelve will soon be gathered into the arms of the Father, home at last. Thanks be to God for sending him our way, for all the life we have shared and for all that is yet to come. We have both been graced in the hidden heavenly here at Sabbath Rest Farm and the Mystery draws near. So be it. Amen.
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Starter eggs...
The cute baby chicks have grown up. Out of fourteen peeping fluff balls, nine roosters emerged. Michael says sexing chickens is an acquired skill. Obviously we haven’t acquired it. Foghorn, Checkers, Marshmallow, Buff and the other roosters have been relocated and replaced with pullets leaving one lone rooster, a beautiful multi-colored Brown Leghorn to crow the morning sun up. Some of the new girls in the henhouse are mutts, mixtures of breeds. Four of the new pullets are younger and are keeping to themselves. They were used to being free range chickens so the henhouse community is foreign to them.
Only two are laying right now. Chickens begin to lay at different times depending upon their breed. Speedy, the Rhode Island Red, and the new California Grey girl are laying an egg a day. Speedy’s eggs are brown and she always lays them in the same place on the floor of the henhouse. Grey girl lays her white eggs out in the yard. Michael has to hunt to find them.
When chickens begin to lay, their eggs are small, mini eggs. These little starter eggs will slowly increase in size as the pullets grow into being hens, a process that takes about a year from chick to hen. With the right food (laying mash and crushed oyster shell) and time, the eggs will grow along with the pullets. Spring chickens become fall layers. Some will lay an egg every day, some every other day. Some eggs will be brown, others white, blue, green or cream. Every morning I can hear Speedy’s triumphant song as she lays that egg, the pullet version of the rooster crow.
Between watching the chickens and reading An Altar in the World, I’ve been thinking about the starter eggs of my faith. Barbara Brown Taylor identifies the practices that lead her to God in this world...vision, reverence, incarnation, etc.... and I am finding myself in the stories she tells. I am reading the second chapter for the second time. As a fast reader I find I often fly over words missing nuance and connection. Reading the second time helps me hear and see words and ideas I missed the first time through. This flying low through life is one of the characteristics of my ADD’ness. Often I will be leap frogging ahead of others, impatient to get on with it, frustrated by the slowness of my companions. So my first starter egg of faith is to slow down, take time, savor the moment, don’t hurry up through the days of my life. God has all the time in the world and is not on a schedule or working with a PDA.
The second chapter is titled “The Practice of Paying Attention... Reverence”, a logical follow up for my slowing down. I had always thought of reverence as an attitude you put on when you entered a sanctuary or traveled to a holy place. Taylor is helping me reshape myself into a reverent human being. “Some of the most reverent people I know decline to call themselves religious...The longer they stand before the holy of holies, the less adequate their formulations of faith seem to them. Angels reach down and shut their mouths.”
Albert Schweitzer advocated living with a reverence for life, all lives, and as a committed Christian, lived this reverence out in Africa, far from home. I am not Schweitzer living in Africa but I can live reverently here, at home on Sabbath Rest Farm. So today I will be paying attention to shutting my mouth about what I believe about God. I will live reverently, paying attention to God surrounding me in this world in the check out girl at Ingle’s, in Barney my big dog, in the rain that keeps on falling, in the old wild red tomcat dying in the hay barn, in the work of my hands, and all the brothers and sisters who cross my path today. In the world reverence, not out of the world...
Only two are laying right now. Chickens begin to lay at different times depending upon their breed. Speedy, the Rhode Island Red, and the new California Grey girl are laying an egg a day. Speedy’s eggs are brown and she always lays them in the same place on the floor of the henhouse. Grey girl lays her white eggs out in the yard. Michael has to hunt to find them.
When chickens begin to lay, their eggs are small, mini eggs. These little starter eggs will slowly increase in size as the pullets grow into being hens, a process that takes about a year from chick to hen. With the right food (laying mash and crushed oyster shell) and time, the eggs will grow along with the pullets. Spring chickens become fall layers. Some will lay an egg every day, some every other day. Some eggs will be brown, others white, blue, green or cream. Every morning I can hear Speedy’s triumphant song as she lays that egg, the pullet version of the rooster crow.
Between watching the chickens and reading An Altar in the World, I’ve been thinking about the starter eggs of my faith. Barbara Brown Taylor identifies the practices that lead her to God in this world...vision, reverence, incarnation, etc.... and I am finding myself in the stories she tells. I am reading the second chapter for the second time. As a fast reader I find I often fly over words missing nuance and connection. Reading the second time helps me hear and see words and ideas I missed the first time through. This flying low through life is one of the characteristics of my ADD’ness. Often I will be leap frogging ahead of others, impatient to get on with it, frustrated by the slowness of my companions. So my first starter egg of faith is to slow down, take time, savor the moment, don’t hurry up through the days of my life. God has all the time in the world and is not on a schedule or working with a PDA.
The second chapter is titled “The Practice of Paying Attention... Reverence”, a logical follow up for my slowing down. I had always thought of reverence as an attitude you put on when you entered a sanctuary or traveled to a holy place. Taylor is helping me reshape myself into a reverent human being. “Some of the most reverent people I know decline to call themselves religious...The longer they stand before the holy of holies, the less adequate their formulations of faith seem to them. Angels reach down and shut their mouths.”
Albert Schweitzer advocated living with a reverence for life, all lives, and as a committed Christian, lived this reverence out in Africa, far from home. I am not Schweitzer living in Africa but I can live reverently here, at home on Sabbath Rest Farm. So today I will be paying attention to shutting my mouth about what I believe about God. I will live reverently, paying attention to God surrounding me in this world in the check out girl at Ingle’s, in Barney my big dog, in the rain that keeps on falling, in the old wild red tomcat dying in the hay barn, in the work of my hands, and all the brothers and sisters who cross my path today. In the world reverence, not out of the world...
Monday, August 10, 2009
Two books... altars and machines as paths to God
“The day of my spiritual awakening I saw– and knew I saw– all things in God and God in all things.” Mechtild of Magdeburg
I love to read. I have loved reading since daddy taught me my first words from the newspaper. Reading National Geographic has been my window to worlds I will never visit and biographies have been introduction to people I will never meet. Devotional books of all kinds stretch my heart and mind towards God while murder mysteries are pure entertainment for me. My two current books are connected in a strange sort of way.
The first book, An Altar in the World by Barbara Brown Taylor, is subtitled a Geography of Faith. Like Brother Lawrence, she holds up the simple practices of daily living as opportunities to create altars, concrete discoveries of the sacred surrounding us in the mundane. This is one of those books I want to read slowly not at my usual breakneck speed. This book takes time to sink in and I want to practice each chapter before I move to the next one. I’m still on chapter one...The Practice of Waking Up to God... The Vision. The quote at the beginning of the chapter, the one at the beginning of this writing, hooked me and an unexpected sweet tender memory surfaced.
At nine years old, I had sat through two revivals a year for at least four years. I was wise in the way of preachers caught up in the fervor of soul saving as a calling. It was a form of entertainment and an opportunity to sit with friends, drawing and passing notes. As long as we were quiet, adults let us be and we observed the goings on with a detached amusement. These were the days before television, computer games and cell phones so we were reduced to finding fun everywhere we went, anyway we could. Multiple verses of “Just As I Am”, all eyes closed (not really because some of us peeked), we hummed along when we ran out of verses to sing, fervent prayers for those who raised their hands, and our prayers for somebody to walk the aisle so we could go outside and play, somebody please take Jesus as your personal Savior or at least re-dedicate your life so we can get on with our lives...
And then one day, as a little nine year old girl in a concrete block church in South Georgia, like Mechtild, I saw and knew I saw all things in God and God in all things. My world shape shifted and I didn’t have words to tell what had happened. The only way I knew to honor this change was the way I had been taught, to claim Jesus as my way to God, and to join the church, being baptized by immersion.
Baptists in my time wanted children to be at the age of accountability and reason when they made that decision. Being people of the Book, they read the story of Jesus in the temple and chose the age of twelve as the appropriate time for children to begin their faith journey. Some exceptions were made, but they were exceptions not the norm in my church. My daddy held to that tenet and refused my plea to be allowed to join the church. So I waited and watched for three years, joining the church on the first Sunday after my twelfth birthday. The public affirmation of a private revelation honored my earlier awakening to God.
My current murder mystery, Blasphemy, by Douglas Preston, presents a wonderful puzzle and is a thriller about science and religion of all things. Philosophy, science, religion, politics, love story... what a mixture of opposites that are a piece of the whole. In this book, one man’s life history connects with another man’s quest to shake the world up. A fundamentalist television preacher, politicos, the President, various and sundry all too human scientists, Navajos, southwest desert, atheists and true believers, computers, quantum physics and God... This book challenges my usual mystical experiences of God with a scientific world view that is foreign to me, uncharted territory on the road map to God. Rationality, proofs and bottom lines, scientific process are the structure that lead to another mystical experience of sorts.
Fifty four years later I am still seeing God in my world in new ways. The immanence, the permanent pervasiveness of God in this world, still takes my breath away when I take time to see the vision, feel the presence. I know the awakening that began so long ago is still dawning in my soul as I live now at the end of my life, not its beginning. My earliest truth about God, the one I knew at age nine still holds fast for me today at sixty three. Whatever the means, however one gets there, God is still in all things and all things are in God. So I rest in the sure and certain knowledge that I am in God and God is in me. Thanks be to God for my life and God’s living in me.
I love to read. I have loved reading since daddy taught me my first words from the newspaper. Reading National Geographic has been my window to worlds I will never visit and biographies have been introduction to people I will never meet. Devotional books of all kinds stretch my heart and mind towards God while murder mysteries are pure entertainment for me. My two current books are connected in a strange sort of way.
The first book, An Altar in the World by Barbara Brown Taylor, is subtitled a Geography of Faith. Like Brother Lawrence, she holds up the simple practices of daily living as opportunities to create altars, concrete discoveries of the sacred surrounding us in the mundane. This is one of those books I want to read slowly not at my usual breakneck speed. This book takes time to sink in and I want to practice each chapter before I move to the next one. I’m still on chapter one...The Practice of Waking Up to God... The Vision. The quote at the beginning of the chapter, the one at the beginning of this writing, hooked me and an unexpected sweet tender memory surfaced.
At nine years old, I had sat through two revivals a year for at least four years. I was wise in the way of preachers caught up in the fervor of soul saving as a calling. It was a form of entertainment and an opportunity to sit with friends, drawing and passing notes. As long as we were quiet, adults let us be and we observed the goings on with a detached amusement. These were the days before television, computer games and cell phones so we were reduced to finding fun everywhere we went, anyway we could. Multiple verses of “Just As I Am”, all eyes closed (not really because some of us peeked), we hummed along when we ran out of verses to sing, fervent prayers for those who raised their hands, and our prayers for somebody to walk the aisle so we could go outside and play, somebody please take Jesus as your personal Savior or at least re-dedicate your life so we can get on with our lives...
And then one day, as a little nine year old girl in a concrete block church in South Georgia, like Mechtild, I saw and knew I saw all things in God and God in all things. My world shape shifted and I didn’t have words to tell what had happened. The only way I knew to honor this change was the way I had been taught, to claim Jesus as my way to God, and to join the church, being baptized by immersion.
Baptists in my time wanted children to be at the age of accountability and reason when they made that decision. Being people of the Book, they read the story of Jesus in the temple and chose the age of twelve as the appropriate time for children to begin their faith journey. Some exceptions were made, but they were exceptions not the norm in my church. My daddy held to that tenet and refused my plea to be allowed to join the church. So I waited and watched for three years, joining the church on the first Sunday after my twelfth birthday. The public affirmation of a private revelation honored my earlier awakening to God.
My current murder mystery, Blasphemy, by Douglas Preston, presents a wonderful puzzle and is a thriller about science and religion of all things. Philosophy, science, religion, politics, love story... what a mixture of opposites that are a piece of the whole. In this book, one man’s life history connects with another man’s quest to shake the world up. A fundamentalist television preacher, politicos, the President, various and sundry all too human scientists, Navajos, southwest desert, atheists and true believers, computers, quantum physics and God... This book challenges my usual mystical experiences of God with a scientific world view that is foreign to me, uncharted territory on the road map to God. Rationality, proofs and bottom lines, scientific process are the structure that lead to another mystical experience of sorts.
Fifty four years later I am still seeing God in my world in new ways. The immanence, the permanent pervasiveness of God in this world, still takes my breath away when I take time to see the vision, feel the presence. I know the awakening that began so long ago is still dawning in my soul as I live now at the end of my life, not its beginning. My earliest truth about God, the one I knew at age nine still holds fast for me today at sixty three. Whatever the means, however one gets there, God is still in all things and all things are in God. So I rest in the sure and certain knowledge that I am in God and God is in me. Thanks be to God for my life and God’s living in me.
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