the tune for dancing is in its place...

I had a hard time settling to sleep last night. I got to gnawing on the bone of a painful decision and couldn’t put it down. Somewhere in the gnawing time, I remember wondering how other people make difficult decisions. Eventually I was able to let go of this particular bone and slip off to sleep.
In the Bible, folks cast lots to make decisions. That seems random and left to chance to us in this day and age. From their perspective, God controlled the decision so I imagine there was a relief in letting go of the responsibility to decide. Heads, I win... tails, I lose. Eeeny meeny miny moe...
Friends of mine formed a clearness committee when faced with a thorny decision that seemed to have no way through the tangle of what ifs. With the help of a few trusted people, they came to a moment of clarity and a way opened up through what had seemed to be an impenetrable impossible impassive problem.
Michael is fond of pro-con lists. In the process of writing down the opposites, often he finds the decision being made as the concrete words pile up. The pro list measured against the con list helps him consider all the facets of the decision. Every now and then, though, a problem presents itself as a choice between two goods or two evils and then the list isn’t much help.
And then there is my decision making process... Some might call it decision by default but I choose to call it waiting on the Lord. When there is no clear easy answer to a question, I go to the wilderness and wait. The wilderness used to be a scary place for me but it has become a familiar resting place for my soul as I sit with the silence and wait.
When I read the stories of Moses going up on the mountain to wait for God’s revelation I am reminded that I need to remove myself from the daily grinding and chewing on the decision. Like Jesus I can choose to enter the wilderness, be still, trust that guidance will come and it will. The wilderness is a state of mind I can visit as many times as I need to in the course of my daily living. While I muck stalls, I can let my heart and mind rest in the wilderness. As I wash clothes and mop floors, I can climb the mountain and listen for the voice of the Lord. When I am teaching, my soul can feel the First Creator all around me helping me create a new place to be.
It is a dance in my life moving from engagement to withdrawal. In both places I find traces of God’s presence. The difficulty lies in knowing when to grab hold and when to let go. In the waltz, one of my favorite dances, the process seems deceptively simple. The graceful bending sweeping circling turning holding close letting go dance is how I want live with God. Like Iris DeMent’s song, I find it difficult to “make the melody sweet but when I lay down the hours, leaving not a trace, the tune for the dancing is in its place. Sweet is the melody and so hard to come by, its so hard to make each note sound just right, but the tune for dancing is in its place”... The dance floor awaits... All I have to do is listen to the music and step out on the dance floor.

an Iris DeMent frame of mind....

I am in an Iris DeMent frame of mind. Bleached blue hot dried out sky... brown dying pasture that provides a soundtrack when you walk over it... no rain to speak of in a month and the earth is baked as hard as a potter’s bowl... no more hay to be cut this season because the drought is sucking the life from our wells, rivers, streams and farms. So I put on a cd, turn the music up loud and sing along, weep along, laugh along with Iris DeMent as she sings what my soul is feeling.
The cd is titled “My Life” and was a favorite of our friend Gary as he faced his death and lived well in spite of it. “No Time to Cry, Troublesome Waters, Easy’s Getting Harder Everyday, I’m Gonna Dance the Shores of Jordan, My Life” ... The words and melodies remind me, prick my heart, send me reeling down the highways and dirt roads of my past until I find my prayers trickling down my cheeks.
This music would have been wasted on me in my twenties and thirties. I had not lived long enough to know the truths of life. No tear is wasted. People die fairly and unfairly. Life is never easy. I can choose to dance on the shores of Jordan until the angels come to carry me or I can sit in sackcloth and ashes, wailing and moaning. My life is just a part of a much larger reality but I did give my mother and father joy, make my lover smile, see new life come into being and catch a glimpse of life beyond this life. I have loved and been loved. I am grateful for all I have been given. The pain and the joy in my life are but a two sided mirror reflecting the fullness of a creation that holds drought and rain, noisy wind and peaceful silence, light and dark.
I, like God’s earth, am never just one or the other but am always suspended between opposites. Living in this creative suspension can be hard for me when I am faced with a decision I need to make, a choice, some life changing options that are not marked with a blazing pillar that leads me to the “right” way. I want answers, clear guides. Waiting, watching, praying, and listening is not easy when I feel like shaking God until I get some response Easy does get harder every day.
For all those who were in worship Sunday morning at the Unitarian church in Knoxville, confronted with sudden harsh senseless for no good reason death and dying in the midst of life and laughter, troublesome waters are swirling around their heads. For those of us who saw the scenes on screens... wild haired assailant who hates liberals... weeping women and men... bewildered children... teenaged girl holding flower bouquet... we swim in the same swirling waters.
Our choice as Christians is a simple one. “So we know and believe the love God has for us. God is love and he who abides in love, abides in God... There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and those who fear are not perfected in love. We love because God first loved us.” 1John 4:16-19
This day I can choose to live embraced by that Perfect Love and cast my fears aside. Drought and rain, life and death, joy and sorrow are all laid to rest in the loving arms that hold me close. It is more than enough.

Creamed Corn... a religious ritual

Putting up creamed corn is a religious ritual in my family. We would pull the corn early in the morning. It had to be at just the right stage of growth, not too tender (boiling ear stage) but not too starchy. The quicker you process the corn after pulling, the sweeter the end product. Then we would sit under the pear trees to shuck and silk. Silking corn involves brushing the tiny strands of silk from between the rows of kernels. Good shuckers can strip almost all the silks away making this process much easier. After shucking and silking, the ears went to the sink to be washed. Then we draped sheets over the sink wall and window, covering the surfaces most likely to be spattered with wet gooey corn starch.
There are two ways to prepare creamed corn. One school, the old timers, use a knife to cut the kernels off and then scrape the starch off with the edge of the knife blade. This way produces distinct corn kernels. It also takes a LONG time. My grandmother preferred this way. Our way used a tool, a scraper, with a curved saw tooth blade to rip the kernels open, and a curved straight blade to scrape the cob. Two passes over these blades would leave the cob clean. Both methods leave the workers and the kitchen covered in sweet corn starch splatters.
After the corn is scraped into a dish, it must be cooked for a period of time to kill the bacteria that would cause it to spoil. The old way involved standing over pots on the stove, stirring continuously to keep the starch from sticking and burning. It was hot, sweaty work. The new method of cooking uses the microwave for blanching and is much less troublesome. You cook in smaller batches but you do not have to stand over it. You only stir once or twice as it cooks. Then the corn is cooled rapidly in ice water before it is boxed up for the freezer.
As teenagers, my sister and I spent long hours shucking, silking and scraping the beautiful ears of Silver Queen corn that daddy grew for us. Then as young mothers, we would come home every summer to can and freeze the produce from daddy’s large garden. Mama would leave for work and we would go to work in the garden and the kitchen. Our young children played as we worked and the process we had learned as children now provided food for our families. Creamed corn was always the messiest, most time consuming process when compared to canning tomatoes or beans. But creamed corn was liquid gold, and a treasure in the freezer for the table.
You cannot buy creamed corn anywhere that comes close to the real thing. Unlike other canned or frozen products, corn requires the particular attention that large scale processing cannot provide. The taste of commercially prepared creamed corn, whether it is that canned concoction or the frozen starchy kind, does not come near the delightfully sweet creamy taste of pure corn, no sugar added or starch, just plain corn with a little butter. It is gustatory heaven for me. So when you come to my house and I serve you creamed corn, you know I love you. I don’t feed my creamed corn to just anybody. It is too much hard work to be wasted.
Early Saturday morning, mama, Michael and I went to the farmer’s market. We bought three bushel bags of sweet corn from our favorite farmer. Then we came home and the ritual began again. With David and Dianne’s help, we put up thirty eight boxes of corn. It was a sweet heavenly hard working day.
It occurs to me that my life has been lived like the creamed corn process. Every now and then, something happens that rips the top off my soul and all that is in me spills out. Sometimes it is illness or death. Other times it is just monumental screw-ups of my own devising. I am torn asunder. If I can just pay attention, not run away from the pain, transformation and transcendence can make me a new creature. Like the corn on the cob that passes over the knife blade, I can become a new creation that is richer, sweeter than I was before. Like the creamed corn, it has taken and will continue to take, repeated passes over the blade, so that I might grow and change, becoming more completely who I was created to be. Nothing is lost. All is transformed. Jesus said we would gain our lives if we were willing to lose them. Making creamed corn and living for sixty one years has taught me that is true. Thanks be to God.

Water, water everywhere... but here

We have had rain three days straight now, short intense showers and long slow showers. With our rain deficit in the two digit range, we have been watching our pastures turn crunchy brown. Cows have been searching for grass amongst the weeds that seem unaffected by the lack of rain. If we could understand how thistles manage to prosper with or without rain maybe we could transfer that property to grass.
Our water pressure is not strong enough to run a sprinkler and we are beginning to worry about the affect of the drought on our well. I keep a plastic tub under the faucets and catch water used for rinsing glasses, washing hands and other small cleaning tasks. This water is keeping my outdoor plants alive. As I stood on the porch pouring water on my hydrangeas, I remembered my Grandma’s house.
At Cloverly, we drew water from the well in a bucket and brought it to the kitchen where two buckets sat side by side on a table. An aluminum dipper hung on the side of one bucket. We drank from the dipper and no one worried much about drinking after somebody else. The little enclosed back porch had a shelf for wash basins, soap, a mirror and our toothbrushes. We would take our basins and a glass to the bucket, fill them and return to the porch. There we would wash ourselves, soaping and rinsing, face first and feet last, until we were clean. Opening the squeaky screen door, we would throw water on the flower bed. We would dip our toothbrush in the glass of water, add toothpaste and brush. Going out on the back steps, we would rinse and spit on the ground throwing the glass of water where we spit.
On Saturday nights, we would bring in several buckets of water and dump them in the big washtub placed in the middle of the kitchen floor. Pans on the stove would hold steaming hot water that Grandma would add to the water in the tub until the temperature was warm. Then we would bathe, one after another, in the same water. Water was precious and plentiful... precious because it took work to acquire and plentiful because the well always was full.
Water that is hand drawn from a well is treated differently than water on tap. We lived in a conscious state of awareness connected to water. When we walked through the kitchen, we checked the buckets to see if more water was needed. When you have to go outside and pull a heavy bucket of water hand over hand to the top, you don’t waste it.
This is the second or third year of our extreme drought. Images of the Dust Bowl from the thirties seem more real to me now when I drive up our road surrounded by disturbed dirt in the air. Daily mountain showers are a distant memory, no longer the usual pattern in the summertime. Once again I am living with a heightened awareness of water, its abundance and its scarcity. Unbuffered and unprotected by a city water system, we in the country who depend on wells see and feel the affects of the drought every day.
Our ground is baked hard, so hard you have to use a pick axe to dig a hole, so hard that mama’s cats can’t dig holes and have to come inside for the litter box. The water hole in the Sound of Music Hill is barely a mudhole. The rain can’t penetrate the hard surface easily so it runs off carrying the top layers of dirt with it. Some days praying for rain seems downright sensible and the only thing to do.
Michael says to pray for rain is to hold God accountable for the weather, like holding God accountable for floods and tornadoes. But when my body and soul, the fields and streams are parched and dry because there has been no rain, what else can I do but pray? Like Zechariah I will “Ask for rain from the Lord in the season of the spring rain, from the Lord who makes the storm clouds, who gives us showers of rain...” I will pray for Ezekiel’s vision...”And I will make them and the places round about my hill a blessing; and I will send down the showers in their season; they shall be showers of blessing.” I will pray for rain and showers, not just for me and my hill, but for all who are parched and dry in body and spirit. I will ask for showers of blessing to fall upon the turkey hens trying to find grazing for their broods... rain that will grow the grass by the high barn where the deer graze... water for the streams and water holes where cows and racoons and rabbits drink... damp, cool dirt for the frogs and turtles... Send us showers, Lord, that will soften our ground and our hearts that we may bend towards you refreshed and renewed.