There’s a backhoe parked outside my living room window. It dug a trench out to the western field so that we can run water and electricity to two year round chicken coops west of the house. The coops won’t be ours, though. They’re being built by the Mainstreet Project, which will rent them from us and then offer them to aspiring Latino farmers that have gone through a beginning farmer class.
This is something we’ve been planning and agonizing over for many months. During the last parts of my pregnancy, I’d sometimes wake up because of contractions and in my half-awake state, I’d assume that the contractions had something to do with the proposed chicken barns instead of the baby. “What does this mean for the barns?” I mumbled to myself until I woke up enough to regain a grip on reality.
After all this anticipation, the back hoe is here now, and our western field has been terraced, and there’s a 6-foot trench dividing our yard. It seems surreal. In spite of myself, I find myself wondering how it all came to be, as though the decisions had been made by someone else.
We made the decision though, and I think it was a good one. We’re renting this land to the Mainstreet Project because they’re trying to help people realize their dreams of being independent farmers. I’m so grateful that we’ve had the opportunity to follow this dream ourselves, and we couldn’t have done it on our own. We feel excited to be part of a sustainable food movement that includes more diversity. Also, we see opportunities to possibly work together with these farmers to sell chickens so that our family’s farming can be more financially sustainable.
Like all exciting changes, it brings a sense of loss. This fall, my daughter wrote a paper for school about her favorite place, sitting in a maple, looking out over waves of corn. Starting this spring, her maple will look out on a chicken yard, and twice a day, folks will drive in to take care of those chickens. It won’t be quite as isolated, and for a girl entering middle school, it’s sometimes important to have privacy when you’re doing things like climbing trees. The same might be said for 38 year old mothers who sometimes sit in trees.
We’re moving ahead with it though, and it’s exciting. People might be raising chickens here by March!S
Monday, December 19, 2011
Saturday, December 17, 2011
Age 10
My 10-year-old daughter has become quite competent. A few weeks ago, I watched her in the kitchen, holding her little brother in one arm while fixing some food in another, and something old rose up inside me. I saw that she was capable of pulling her own weight and quite a bit more as well, and I evaluated her capabilities as rationally and eagerly as my husband evaluates tractors. This is a girl who can work, I told myself. This is a girl who can work for me. I didn’t like the way I was thinking about her, but I thought it anyway.
When I watch my girl, I often see family stories transposed upon her. I know that at age 10, my grandma’s oldest sister worked harder than I ever have. She cared for three young siblings and fixed the family’s main meals while her parents worked in the fields. I expect she did the work fairly well. At ten years old, my mother went trick or treating for the last time. Several months later, my grandma died, leaving my mother to take up the work of keeping house. Mom wouldn’t let me go trick or treating after the age of 10, because she expected that if she had done a good job as a parent, then I should be fairly grown up by that age. The first Halloween without trick or treating, I put on a leotard, painted wrinkles on my face with eyeliner and told the neighbor children who came to my door that I was dressed up as a dream deferred. I felt both jealous and superior.
My daughter and I are living out lives that our family members longed for. We have the precious education that my great aunt wanted so badly. We both have mothers who are alive and who love us like no one else can. Neither of us must work so hard that we have to leave part of ourselves behind before we’re ready. Even though I enjoy our privilege and take it for granted, I sometimes feel as though I’ve wandered out on untried ground, and I keep glancing back, trying to learn what strength we might be leaving behind.
When I watch my girl, I often see family stories transposed upon her. I know that at age 10, my grandma’s oldest sister worked harder than I ever have. She cared for three young siblings and fixed the family’s main meals while her parents worked in the fields. I expect she did the work fairly well. At ten years old, my mother went trick or treating for the last time. Several months later, my grandma died, leaving my mother to take up the work of keeping house. Mom wouldn’t let me go trick or treating after the age of 10, because she expected that if she had done a good job as a parent, then I should be fairly grown up by that age. The first Halloween without trick or treating, I put on a leotard, painted wrinkles on my face with eyeliner and told the neighbor children who came to my door that I was dressed up as a dream deferred. I felt both jealous and superior.
My daughter and I are living out lives that our family members longed for. We have the precious education that my great aunt wanted so badly. We both have mothers who are alive and who love us like no one else can. Neither of us must work so hard that we have to leave part of ourselves behind before we’re ready. Even though I enjoy our privilege and take it for granted, I sometimes feel as though I’ve wandered out on untried ground, and I keep glancing back, trying to learn what strength we might be leaving behind.
Thursday, November 10, 2011
The first 6 weeks
My baby, like his brother and sister, was born at home in the dining room. We had many people in the house on the afternoon of his birth – grandmothers, friends, midwives, etc. – but everyone spoke in hushed tones. Mom said it was like being in a library.
A few hours after the birth, my new son and I went upstairs to my bedroom where we stayed there in bed for a whole week. For the first several days, there wasn’t a clock in the room. I spent my time staring into the round face of this new person who made eye contact with me often and smiled. I watched the rectangles of sunlight moving across the floor and the bed. At night, when I was often awake, the moonlight spilled over us, and I lay staring up at the stars. I looked out at the tops of the maples that line the western edge of the property and watched them lose their leaves over the course of that week. The power of the land and the movements of light and wind were like a new womb that held and comforted both me and my son.
Each time after I have given birth, I have felt almost like a baby myself. The world is a foreign, daunting place that has to be re-explored. Written language or logical conversation doesn’t make sense to me. I live in some special kind of warm light. This was a difficult situation during my first two births because I felt I had to act competent and strong as soon as I possibly could, and so I was constantly fighting with myself. After this birth, my husband and mother in law doted on me, bringing me water and food and speaking quietly. The children visited reverently. In this quiet place, I didn’t have to pretend to be experiencing anything except what I was, and I was able to open fully to the Light.
After that first week, I ventured downstairs a little bit but mostly stayed cocooned upstairs with the baby. When I could read again, I kept the Fedco tree catalogue by my bed and spent hours re-reading several descriptions of rose bushes. Reading about those roses was one of my baby steps as I eased gently into family life again, bursting into tears when I pushed too fast.
Now almost a month and a half has passed, and I feel strong again, but I am carrying that sensation of lying in my bed with my baby with the wind and the sun moving past the windows. Remembering it fills me again with Light and stills my thoughts. I am reminded of the steadfastness of God. I try to slip into that place when I pray silently, and I try to pray often.
After staying at home for five and a half months because of a difficult pregnancy and then this birth, I am starting to go out into the world again. Someone at Meeting said last week that I must be so relieved to be done with bed rest. This small talk kind of floored me, and she repeated herself as I sat there with a blank look on my face. Finally, I answered awkwardly that it was OK. In truth, I am not relieved or disappointed to be done with this time of stillness. It's impossible to have an opinion about it because I am still living under a sense of awe. Something within me shifted during this time, but I don’t understand yet what it is.
A few hours after the birth, my new son and I went upstairs to my bedroom where we stayed there in bed for a whole week. For the first several days, there wasn’t a clock in the room. I spent my time staring into the round face of this new person who made eye contact with me often and smiled. I watched the rectangles of sunlight moving across the floor and the bed. At night, when I was often awake, the moonlight spilled over us, and I lay staring up at the stars. I looked out at the tops of the maples that line the western edge of the property and watched them lose their leaves over the course of that week. The power of the land and the movements of light and wind were like a new womb that held and comforted both me and my son.
Each time after I have given birth, I have felt almost like a baby myself. The world is a foreign, daunting place that has to be re-explored. Written language or logical conversation doesn’t make sense to me. I live in some special kind of warm light. This was a difficult situation during my first two births because I felt I had to act competent and strong as soon as I possibly could, and so I was constantly fighting with myself. After this birth, my husband and mother in law doted on me, bringing me water and food and speaking quietly. The children visited reverently. In this quiet place, I didn’t have to pretend to be experiencing anything except what I was, and I was able to open fully to the Light.
After that first week, I ventured downstairs a little bit but mostly stayed cocooned upstairs with the baby. When I could read again, I kept the Fedco tree catalogue by my bed and spent hours re-reading several descriptions of rose bushes. Reading about those roses was one of my baby steps as I eased gently into family life again, bursting into tears when I pushed too fast.
Now almost a month and a half has passed, and I feel strong again, but I am carrying that sensation of lying in my bed with my baby with the wind and the sun moving past the windows. Remembering it fills me again with Light and stills my thoughts. I am reminded of the steadfastness of God. I try to slip into that place when I pray silently, and I try to pray often.
After staying at home for five and a half months because of a difficult pregnancy and then this birth, I am starting to go out into the world again. Someone at Meeting said last week that I must be so relieved to be done with bed rest. This small talk kind of floored me, and she repeated herself as I sat there with a blank look on my face. Finally, I answered awkwardly that it was OK. In truth, I am not relieved or disappointed to be done with this time of stillness. It's impossible to have an opinion about it because I am still living under a sense of awe. Something within me shifted during this time, but I don’t understand yet what it is.
Monday, October 10, 2011
As of 9/30
Our new son was born at home on 9/30. He was a big baby (9 pounds and 10 ounces) and as of Thursday, 10/6, he weighed 10 pounds 8 ounces. He's a pretty peaceful guy. We've been enjoying him.
Monday, September 26, 2011
roots
When I lived in Minneapolis, they were cutting down many elms along the boulevard because of Dutch Elm disease. I started praying for the elm trees I passed. I put my hands on them, waited until my mind was clear, and then prayed that they should stay healthy and strong.
We passed the same two elm trees every day when I walked my daughter to her kindergarten bus stop, and so I put my hands on them every school day and prayed for them briefly. My two-year-old son, who observed this from his stroller every day, accepted this as a normal part of his day and would occasionally walk up to other trees and quietly put both hands on them. (He has since stopped doing that!)
Over time, I grew very attached to these two trees, which were almost a block from my house. I experienced very different emotions when I prayed for each of them. When my hands were on one, I felt both a gorgeous sense of lightness and a grief that sometimes made me cry. The other felt much less effusive. I felt guarded and angry when my hands were on that tree.
More elms were marked and cut down in our neighborhood every week, so I made some calls, asking if I could get "my" trees vaccinated against the disease. I found out it could cost more than $2000 to protect those trees, because we'd also need to vaccinate the elm across the street. I also found out that it would probably be a waste of money because the vaccination couldn't protect them from becoming infected under ground through their root system, especially if other elms had once been growing nearby. I was sure that another elm once grew next to these two trees, but had been cut down within the last few years.
Apparently, when trees grow close together, their roots sometimes entwine, and after many years, they grow together. In these places where the roots are joined, they share sap under ground and become like one tree.
This past summer, while I stayed at home tenaciously avoiding anything exciting (or even entertaining), I could feel my roots growing. I felt them twining silently with my husband's roots and growing together under ground like the elm trees. After being in love with this person for 20 years, I am amazed by how much there is to learn and by the unexpected ways that love changes me.
We passed the same two elm trees every day when I walked my daughter to her kindergarten bus stop, and so I put my hands on them every school day and prayed for them briefly. My two-year-old son, who observed this from his stroller every day, accepted this as a normal part of his day and would occasionally walk up to other trees and quietly put both hands on them. (He has since stopped doing that!)
Over time, I grew very attached to these two trees, which were almost a block from my house. I experienced very different emotions when I prayed for each of them. When my hands were on one, I felt both a gorgeous sense of lightness and a grief that sometimes made me cry. The other felt much less effusive. I felt guarded and angry when my hands were on that tree.
More elms were marked and cut down in our neighborhood every week, so I made some calls, asking if I could get "my" trees vaccinated against the disease. I found out it could cost more than $2000 to protect those trees, because we'd also need to vaccinate the elm across the street. I also found out that it would probably be a waste of money because the vaccination couldn't protect them from becoming infected under ground through their root system, especially if other elms had once been growing nearby. I was sure that another elm once grew next to these two trees, but had been cut down within the last few years.
Apparently, when trees grow close together, their roots sometimes entwine, and after many years, they grow together. In these places where the roots are joined, they share sap under ground and become like one tree.
This past summer, while I stayed at home tenaciously avoiding anything exciting (or even entertaining), I could feel my roots growing. I felt them twining silently with my husband's roots and growing together under ground like the elm trees. After being in love with this person for 20 years, I am amazed by how much there is to learn and by the unexpected ways that love changes me.
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
Grateful
Sometimes I am ambushed by grace.
Last night, my husband played the song "Stand by Me" on You Tube because it had been going through his head, and I suddenly found myself weeping. The end of the movie "Stand by Me," which I watched as a kid, says that one of the main characters is killed while intervening in a robbery. Fifteen years ago last month, I intervened when a man was attacking his girlfriend. She was killed, and I lived.
Last night, a familiar voice rose up in my head, saying that I should have died on the day of the attack, too, and that there is no greater love than laying your life down for someone else. Over time, that message has grown so old and brittle that it sounded more like a crackly recording instead of the booming voice of condemnation. It couldn't make me cry, but I wept when I thought about all of the blessings I've been able to experience during the last fifteen years.
Soon after the murder, I became a Quaker and married the man that I love so dearly. Later, I helped bring the world a lovely, passionate daughter and a steady, compassionate son. I was heard a leading from God to move to the country, and so I live surrounded by trees and fields, like I had always dreamed I might. Now, I am experiencing the holy and illogical fullness of late pregnancy. These are the most important things I've known.
I am so grateful that I've been able to live this life, and I am aware that the lives of so many others are cut short. They are present in the quiet corners of my existence, but their presence isn't condemning. If anything, they remind me to live with integrity and gusto, for their sake if for nothing else.
I am reminded, too, that to whom much has been given, much will be required. I have been given so much that I will never be able to give back even a portion of it, but I know that if I keep pressing into God, then I will be led to do what needs to be done. Grace has led me through so far, and grace will lead me home.
Last night, my husband played the song "Stand by Me" on You Tube because it had been going through his head, and I suddenly found myself weeping. The end of the movie "Stand by Me," which I watched as a kid, says that one of the main characters is killed while intervening in a robbery. Fifteen years ago last month, I intervened when a man was attacking his girlfriend. She was killed, and I lived.
Last night, a familiar voice rose up in my head, saying that I should have died on the day of the attack, too, and that there is no greater love than laying your life down for someone else. Over time, that message has grown so old and brittle that it sounded more like a crackly recording instead of the booming voice of condemnation. It couldn't make me cry, but I wept when I thought about all of the blessings I've been able to experience during the last fifteen years.
Soon after the murder, I became a Quaker and married the man that I love so dearly. Later, I helped bring the world a lovely, passionate daughter and a steady, compassionate son. I was heard a leading from God to move to the country, and so I live surrounded by trees and fields, like I had always dreamed I might. Now, I am experiencing the holy and illogical fullness of late pregnancy. These are the most important things I've known.
I am so grateful that I've been able to live this life, and I am aware that the lives of so many others are cut short. They are present in the quiet corners of my existence, but their presence isn't condemning. If anything, they remind me to live with integrity and gusto, for their sake if for nothing else.
I am reminded, too, that to whom much has been given, much will be required. I have been given so much that I will never be able to give back even a portion of it, but I know that if I keep pressing into God, then I will be led to do what needs to be done. Grace has led me through so far, and grace will lead me home.
Thursday, September 8, 2011
Going to the mailbox
Today, for the first time in about three months, I walked to the mailbox. My progress was slow and meditative, and I was accompanied the whole way by three attentive cats. It felt like a ceremonial journey, complete with dignified attendants. After that trip, I strolled slowly to the west edge of our shelter belt, hoping to stand beside the maples look over the slopes of soybeans. This is one of my favorite places. A pile of rocks marks what must have been the old barn, and a few big old lilacs stand in memory of some older configuration of the farm. It’s a secluded place, and unless your view is blocked by tall corn, you can look out over an enormous, dipping green landscape.
I couldn’t see the landscape though. Weeds have grown too tall along the edge of the shelterbelt. I had expected everything would look the same as it did in early June, but of course a whole summer unfolded in this special place without my seeing it, and everything green has been growing taller. So the cats and I turned our procession toward the house.
It will be surprising to visit many places again, after the birth. I am not completely looking forward to it, especially as I remember how I felt after the births of my two children. I felt like a baby learning about the world all over again, and like a baby, I was ready to shout and burst into tears when overwhelmed. Trying to drive a car, I had to constantly remind myself which information was important and which was not. A stop sign was important. A squirrel running up a tree trunk was not. It was exhausting. I had a long distance to cover before I could act like a normal grownup again.
This time around, I might have a greater distance to travel because I’ve been away from so many things for a long time. For the last three months, I haven't driven a car, gone shopping, earned money or visited anyone else’s home. I’ve gone for weeks seeing only faces that I already know. We don’t have a TV, and I have watched only one movie all summer. Seeing the wind moving in waves over the soybeans was the most notable experience of some days.
The air is colder now, though, and this summer is almost gone. Like all of the trees and plants I have been watching so carefully, I will change soon.
I couldn’t see the landscape though. Weeds have grown too tall along the edge of the shelterbelt. I had expected everything would look the same as it did in early June, but of course a whole summer unfolded in this special place without my seeing it, and everything green has been growing taller. So the cats and I turned our procession toward the house.
It will be surprising to visit many places again, after the birth. I am not completely looking forward to it, especially as I remember how I felt after the births of my two children. I felt like a baby learning about the world all over again, and like a baby, I was ready to shout and burst into tears when overwhelmed. Trying to drive a car, I had to constantly remind myself which information was important and which was not. A stop sign was important. A squirrel running up a tree trunk was not. It was exhausting. I had a long distance to cover before I could act like a normal grownup again.
This time around, I might have a greater distance to travel because I’ve been away from so many things for a long time. For the last three months, I haven't driven a car, gone shopping, earned money or visited anyone else’s home. I’ve gone for weeks seeing only faces that I already know. We don’t have a TV, and I have watched only one movie all summer. Seeing the wind moving in waves over the soybeans was the most notable experience of some days.
The air is colder now, though, and this summer is almost gone. Like all of the trees and plants I have been watching so carefully, I will change soon.
Friday, September 2, 2011
Brooms and other dreams
Someone from Cannon Valley Friends Meeting came over to help my family with some housework a couple weeks ago, and she brought her own broom, mentioning that she had a hard time with ours, which was stiff and missing half of its bristles. The next time Ian went shopping, he returned with two new soft-bristled brooms, and I called my mother to tell her the good news. (She had also been dismayed by our broom for quite some time.)
Talking about my brooms reminded my mother of a dear aunt who farmed all her life in the northwestern part of the state. For a wedding gift, my great-aunt gave her daughter-in-law a broom. I thought to myself that this did not sound like a fun wedding present at all, but Mom went on to say that that when her aunt got married, she didn’t have a broom for some time. It weighed on her, and she must have given her daughter-in-law a broom as a way to try to protect her and give her a better life.
Her warm-hearted daughter-in-law recognized the gift for what it was and shared the story with great affection at my great aunt’s funeral.
Once again, I am reminded that I am living out the dreams of relatives that I barely knew, or that I never knew. The freedom from want that I have always known is a gift that they longed to give their children, their grandchildren, and all the babies that they never lived long enough to meet. They were so successful in their efforts that I am often ignorant about the value of what I have been given and about the lives of those who wanted more for me than what they had.
Still, those relatives map the landscape of my life, pointing me in the direction of what they believed was important and right. They are always with me, and I have noticed them especially when I am pregnant. Sometimes I notice them with every breath, as if they were the scent of the summer air.
As my pregnancy enters its very last stages, I am thinking about my dreams for my children and grandchildren, and the babies I will never meet. I am deeply worried about the state of the soil and the climate, and I fear that they may know want that I have never known, brought on by a damaged environment.
Of course I dream of ease for the babies that are yet to come, but I also dream of a durable relationship with the land, perhaps more like the relationship that my relatives once had. I dream that the next generations will be able to see the face of God in the natural things around them, in a way that much of our generation apparently cannot. I dream that they can structure their lives to honor what is holy. I wish for them a love so deep that not even death can hinder it.
(P.S. – I’m 37 weeks pregnant today! No more worries about an early baby, but am still supposed to be taking it very easy. I am so happy and relieved.)
Talking about my brooms reminded my mother of a dear aunt who farmed all her life in the northwestern part of the state. For a wedding gift, my great-aunt gave her daughter-in-law a broom. I thought to myself that this did not sound like a fun wedding present at all, but Mom went on to say that that when her aunt got married, she didn’t have a broom for some time. It weighed on her, and she must have given her daughter-in-law a broom as a way to try to protect her and give her a better life.
Her warm-hearted daughter-in-law recognized the gift for what it was and shared the story with great affection at my great aunt’s funeral.
Once again, I am reminded that I am living out the dreams of relatives that I barely knew, or that I never knew. The freedom from want that I have always known is a gift that they longed to give their children, their grandchildren, and all the babies that they never lived long enough to meet. They were so successful in their efforts that I am often ignorant about the value of what I have been given and about the lives of those who wanted more for me than what they had.
Still, those relatives map the landscape of my life, pointing me in the direction of what they believed was important and right. They are always with me, and I have noticed them especially when I am pregnant. Sometimes I notice them with every breath, as if they were the scent of the summer air.
As my pregnancy enters its very last stages, I am thinking about my dreams for my children and grandchildren, and the babies I will never meet. I am deeply worried about the state of the soil and the climate, and I fear that they may know want that I have never known, brought on by a damaged environment.
Of course I dream of ease for the babies that are yet to come, but I also dream of a durable relationship with the land, perhaps more like the relationship that my relatives once had. I dream that the next generations will be able to see the face of God in the natural things around them, in a way that much of our generation apparently cannot. I dream that they can structure their lives to honor what is holy. I wish for them a love so deep that not even death can hinder it.
(P.S. – I’m 37 weeks pregnant today! No more worries about an early baby, but am still supposed to be taking it very easy. I am so happy and relieved.)
Saturday, August 6, 2011
Jello
During this quiet time, I’ve been able to carefully consider many things. I’ve read two beautiful Quaker books, spent time in worship, and watched the treetops for hours. I’ve worked on a business plan for the farm and drawn up some better organizational plans for the house. But my mind keeps circling back to the troubling state of Quaker potlucks. They lack Jello salads.
Not many people seem bothered by this. Many of them are not even from Minnesota, and so they don’t feel the pull of local tradition. Others feel relieved as they free themselves from that pull. When I disparaged the selection of potluck offerings to a new friend from the Northfield meeting, she disagreed. Other churches offer junk food, she said, but we have a really healthful spread. For example, at the last big potluck, she enjoyed a vegan seaweed lasagna.
Here we get to the real irony of the situation. I probably wouldn’t eat Jello salad at a potluck. After feeling like I had a low-level stomach flu for two years, and seeing several doctors, I finally found a diet that allowed me to feel like a regular person again. The results of the diet were dramatic, and two years later, I’m still feeling good. But I don’t eat preservatives. Or sugar. Or grain. Or mysterious ingredients. Vividly colored Jello, by its very nature, has mysterious ingredients. And often the salads are graced with Cool Whip, another mysterious ingredient.
I can’t move past the idea that I’m failing my family and community by abandoning the traditional Jello salad. It was there at family gatherings, and the funerals of the older generation. When I eat it, I feel connected to good, practical relatives and to good, practical people who might as well be relatives. They strengthen me and feed me and make me laugh. I want them to join me, at least in spirit, at Quaker potlucks.
But what kind of person would bring a potluck dish to church that she won’t eat?
My daughter and I were thumbing through a reprint of a 1950 Betty Crocker cookbook, and I think we discovered a solution. There we found the grandmothers of gelatin salads, made with plain gelatin and fruit and real whipped cream, and juices and even egg whites.
Some day, when I can cook again, I’ll make one of those recipes and bring it to potluck. I’m sure some real traditionalists would dismiss the salad as “different,” but maybe the salads would have been familiar to the real old-timers. Most importantly, I’ll feel that I am doing my very best to remedy a serious situation.
Not many people seem bothered by this. Many of them are not even from Minnesota, and so they don’t feel the pull of local tradition. Others feel relieved as they free themselves from that pull. When I disparaged the selection of potluck offerings to a new friend from the Northfield meeting, she disagreed. Other churches offer junk food, she said, but we have a really healthful spread. For example, at the last big potluck, she enjoyed a vegan seaweed lasagna.
Here we get to the real irony of the situation. I probably wouldn’t eat Jello salad at a potluck. After feeling like I had a low-level stomach flu for two years, and seeing several doctors, I finally found a diet that allowed me to feel like a regular person again. The results of the diet were dramatic, and two years later, I’m still feeling good. But I don’t eat preservatives. Or sugar. Or grain. Or mysterious ingredients. Vividly colored Jello, by its very nature, has mysterious ingredients. And often the salads are graced with Cool Whip, another mysterious ingredient.
I can’t move past the idea that I’m failing my family and community by abandoning the traditional Jello salad. It was there at family gatherings, and the funerals of the older generation. When I eat it, I feel connected to good, practical relatives and to good, practical people who might as well be relatives. They strengthen me and feed me and make me laugh. I want them to join me, at least in spirit, at Quaker potlucks.
But what kind of person would bring a potluck dish to church that she won’t eat?
My daughter and I were thumbing through a reprint of a 1950 Betty Crocker cookbook, and I think we discovered a solution. There we found the grandmothers of gelatin salads, made with plain gelatin and fruit and real whipped cream, and juices and even egg whites.
Some day, when I can cook again, I’ll make one of those recipes and bring it to potluck. I’m sure some real traditionalists would dismiss the salad as “different,” but maybe the salads would have been familiar to the real old-timers. Most importantly, I’ll feel that I am doing my very best to remedy a serious situation.
Monday, July 25, 2011
Hillside Farmers Cooperative
Last week, we hosted a meeting in our home for the budding Board of Directors of the Hillside Farmers Cooperative. Our house, while normally messy, is in a truly embarrassing state, and I spent the meeting lying down on the couch with my bare feet draped over Ian, trying not to get too enthusiastic about anything because enthusiasm gives me contractions. The meeting's organizer, Regi Haslett-Marroquin, assured me that my condition and the state of my house would not be a problem for anyone there. He said that everyone in the co-op just needs to be themselves. I took his words to heart.
Because I could not travel, four people came to our home and spent the evening laying the foundations for a Board of Directors. The Hillside Farmers Cooperative is being designed especially to address the needs of Latino families, and much of the conversation was in Spanish, which was exciting for me. Many years ago, I was proud my Spanish, but when we started talking about the structure of a corporation and the role of investors, I had to ask for a lot of translation. Ian sat there nodding agreeably and understanding everything, as though he discussed business matters in Spanish on a daily basis. I remembered again what Regi said about everyone just being themselves, and that made it easier to speak up when I was lost.
I spent the rest of the evening remembering different aspects of the meeting and smiling. In the days that have followed, though, more fear has crept into me. Up to this point, I have been afraid to talk very much about our plans with the co-op, in part because the plans have been uncertain, and in part because I have been wrestling with many other fears. I have been very afraid of financial ruin and unnecessary stress and the disapproval of family members who think we are taking on too much.
It's time to fess up, though. We are thinking very seriously about building a chicken coop within the next year that could raise up to 1500 free-range broilers at a time, or 4500 in a season. The Hillside Farmers Cooperative would buy most of the birds, although we would sell some independently as well. Eventually, we might build other barns for broilers and branch out into egg production.
I accidentally discovered that I wanted to work with the Hillside Co-Op last summer when I went over to Regi's house to pick up the scale I lent his wife. On a whim, I asked to see his chickens again, and he told me once more about how the birds were living chickenly lives, eating organic feed, and that his chicken business was going to help Latino families move out of poverty. Regi had told me this before, and we had considered working with him, but this time I found myself unexpectedly on the verge of tears. "I thought you had to choose between taking care of the land and taking care of the people," I said, remembering how frustrated I felt about the prices we have to charge for our chicken, just to break even.
"You don't have to choose," Regi said. "You can do both."
I knew, then, what I wanted to do. Rationally, Ian and I are impressed by the amount of work and skill that has been put into designing the Hillside Co-Op's production system and business model. We don't have the resources to do that kind of work. Also I like the idea of working as part of a larger group, of trying to address economic inequality, and building a system that actually challenges industrial farming. Ian and I both think it will be a joy to be working with Latino families.
Every week, Ian goes over to Regi's house to work on our business plan. I have not been able to meet with Regi often, but when I could, I felt a light between my shoulder blades. Last week, when I sat in worship, preparing for the meeting at our house and considering my role in the co-op, I felt that same light growing from between my shoulder blades, flowing down my arms and through my hands.
I believe that I am being prepared for service.
Because I could not travel, four people came to our home and spent the evening laying the foundations for a Board of Directors. The Hillside Farmers Cooperative is being designed especially to address the needs of Latino families, and much of the conversation was in Spanish, which was exciting for me. Many years ago, I was proud my Spanish, but when we started talking about the structure of a corporation and the role of investors, I had to ask for a lot of translation. Ian sat there nodding agreeably and understanding everything, as though he discussed business matters in Spanish on a daily basis. I remembered again what Regi said about everyone just being themselves, and that made it easier to speak up when I was lost.
I spent the rest of the evening remembering different aspects of the meeting and smiling. In the days that have followed, though, more fear has crept into me. Up to this point, I have been afraid to talk very much about our plans with the co-op, in part because the plans have been uncertain, and in part because I have been wrestling with many other fears. I have been very afraid of financial ruin and unnecessary stress and the disapproval of family members who think we are taking on too much.
It's time to fess up, though. We are thinking very seriously about building a chicken coop within the next year that could raise up to 1500 free-range broilers at a time, or 4500 in a season. The Hillside Farmers Cooperative would buy most of the birds, although we would sell some independently as well. Eventually, we might build other barns for broilers and branch out into egg production.
I accidentally discovered that I wanted to work with the Hillside Co-Op last summer when I went over to Regi's house to pick up the scale I lent his wife. On a whim, I asked to see his chickens again, and he told me once more about how the birds were living chickenly lives, eating organic feed, and that his chicken business was going to help Latino families move out of poverty. Regi had told me this before, and we had considered working with him, but this time I found myself unexpectedly on the verge of tears. "I thought you had to choose between taking care of the land and taking care of the people," I said, remembering how frustrated I felt about the prices we have to charge for our chicken, just to break even.
"You don't have to choose," Regi said. "You can do both."
I knew, then, what I wanted to do. Rationally, Ian and I are impressed by the amount of work and skill that has been put into designing the Hillside Co-Op's production system and business model. We don't have the resources to do that kind of work. Also I like the idea of working as part of a larger group, of trying to address economic inequality, and building a system that actually challenges industrial farming. Ian and I both think it will be a joy to be working with Latino families.
Every week, Ian goes over to Regi's house to work on our business plan. I have not been able to meet with Regi often, but when I could, I felt a light between my shoulder blades. Last week, when I sat in worship, preparing for the meeting at our house and considering my role in the co-op, I felt that same light growing from between my shoulder blades, flowing down my arms and through my hands.
I believe that I am being prepared for service.
Sunday, July 17, 2011
No talking needed
When I was 17 years old, I spent the summer working on a dairy farm. My mother's friend Kurt had invited me to help out there because his brother was away for the season. I cut the grass, threw hay bales, put away dishes, cleaned out the bulk tank every day, and dipped teats in iodine before milking. I could not have been more content.
The house where I lived with Kurt's elderly parents was a big white four-square with a red roof. Ever since I was a tiny child, I had evaluated farmhouses, deciding which one I would live in when I grew up. After long consideration, I had decided that my house would be white, and it would have a red roof. For that summer, I lived in the home I had been imagining for years, without even realizing it. The house, where Kurt had grown up with his five brothers and sisters, was old and quiet except for the midday meal, when its spacious old dining room filled with people and food. As I climbed the dark wooden stairs to go to bed each night, I felt the walls around me embrace a deep stillness as well as a wild clamor of life, and I wanted that house to teach me to carry both of those qualities within myself.
Today, I have been imagining myself in the yellow kitchen of that house, sitting at the kitchen table and looking out towards the red barn. There are cookies on the counter, and nobody ever worries about how many a person might eat. There is butter on the table, softening in the growing heat, and my eyes light on it as I search for something to say to Kurt's father, who is sitting quietly at the kitchen table with me. Kurt's father has a deep, warm presence just like the farm itself, but he also as quiet as the fields. I want so much to connect with him, and so in my rather awkward way, I tell him that the soft butter will be easy to spread on toast. He agrees with gentle good humor, and the silence reigns again as I scan the room for something else we can talk about together.
In the way of many old farmers, Kurt's father would have been happy to sit in friendly silence together. He did not need to be talking to feel a connection with the people around him. At the time, I was not proficient in that silent language of companionship, and so we limped affectionately through many short discussions of household objects.
Yesterday was the funeral for Kurt's father, and of course I could not go. The white house with a red roof sits locked and empty because Kurt's mother now lives in assisted living. I was grateful that I could sit outside for a long time this morning, listening to the wind in the Maple trees, and feeling the presence of that dear man in the quiet of the fields.
The house where I lived with Kurt's elderly parents was a big white four-square with a red roof. Ever since I was a tiny child, I had evaluated farmhouses, deciding which one I would live in when I grew up. After long consideration, I had decided that my house would be white, and it would have a red roof. For that summer, I lived in the home I had been imagining for years, without even realizing it. The house, where Kurt had grown up with his five brothers and sisters, was old and quiet except for the midday meal, when its spacious old dining room filled with people and food. As I climbed the dark wooden stairs to go to bed each night, I felt the walls around me embrace a deep stillness as well as a wild clamor of life, and I wanted that house to teach me to carry both of those qualities within myself.
Today, I have been imagining myself in the yellow kitchen of that house, sitting at the kitchen table and looking out towards the red barn. There are cookies on the counter, and nobody ever worries about how many a person might eat. There is butter on the table, softening in the growing heat, and my eyes light on it as I search for something to say to Kurt's father, who is sitting quietly at the kitchen table with me. Kurt's father has a deep, warm presence just like the farm itself, but he also as quiet as the fields. I want so much to connect with him, and so in my rather awkward way, I tell him that the soft butter will be easy to spread on toast. He agrees with gentle good humor, and the silence reigns again as I scan the room for something else we can talk about together.
In the way of many old farmers, Kurt's father would have been happy to sit in friendly silence together. He did not need to be talking to feel a connection with the people around him. At the time, I was not proficient in that silent language of companionship, and so we limped affectionately through many short discussions of household objects.
Yesterday was the funeral for Kurt's father, and of course I could not go. The white house with a red roof sits locked and empty because Kurt's mother now lives in assisted living. I was grateful that I could sit outside for a long time this morning, listening to the wind in the Maple trees, and feeling the presence of that dear man in the quiet of the fields.
Friday, July 15, 2011
A bird returns
Last weekend, our only remaining Guinea fowl started calling in the evening. At first, I thought one of our chickens was in terrible distress as I heard a two-noted squawk that was repeated so often it grew a little bit hoarse. It sounded like the bird was calling, "Go back! Go back!" At the time I noticed it, Ian was marching in the direction of our chicken house with a shovel, and I assumed that something dreadful had happened and that I would hear about it later. Nothing dreadful happened, though. It was just our poor little bird calling its mates. I could hardly stand to sit on the deck listening to this, and I planned to call up my friend Molly and ask if our Guinea fowl could join her menagerie of free range chickens and turkeys. Maybe the lonely bird would be comforted by the company of Molly’s laying hens. I could appreciate that an animal born to live in a flock would feel miserable on its own.
I had not called my friend yet when Ian reported that a second Guinea hen had joined our lonely bird. It was sitting on the top of the calf hutch. Ian let the other bird inside, and the two of them stayed in the calf hutch for several days, both of them calling "Go back! Go back!" in the evenings. I expect they were trying to call the rest of the flock, but they were unsuccessful.
Then, one day, the hutch was empty. For couple of days, we did not see the birds, but I listened to unusual squawks in the trees around our house and thought that the pair had stayed close by. Later, Ian spotted two birds with long necks peeking out of the tall grass by the edge of the soybean field. They commented loudly on his presence, and he reported that he was very happy to see them. I got to see the birds today when the same striped cat that scared most of them way in the first place flushed them out of some tall grass by our garage. They flew in separate directions and landed maybe 20 feet up in trees. I could clearly see one of the beautiful white birds up in the maple, looking like something tropical. I worried for a moment that they might have a hard time finding each other again after flying in separate directions like that, but then I put that concern to rest. They have powerful voices.
I scolded our striped cat who rubbed against me adoringly as he always does. He didn't chase the chickens or the ducks, but apparently Guinea fowl are another matter. I do not always understand the logic of felines, and I wish that the striped cat was not such a beloved friend of mine. He is though, and I am once again bewildered about how to proceed.
I had not called my friend yet when Ian reported that a second Guinea hen had joined our lonely bird. It was sitting on the top of the calf hutch. Ian let the other bird inside, and the two of them stayed in the calf hutch for several days, both of them calling "Go back! Go back!" in the evenings. I expect they were trying to call the rest of the flock, but they were unsuccessful.
Then, one day, the hutch was empty. For couple of days, we did not see the birds, but I listened to unusual squawks in the trees around our house and thought that the pair had stayed close by. Later, Ian spotted two birds with long necks peeking out of the tall grass by the edge of the soybean field. They commented loudly on his presence, and he reported that he was very happy to see them. I got to see the birds today when the same striped cat that scared most of them way in the first place flushed them out of some tall grass by our garage. They flew in separate directions and landed maybe 20 feet up in trees. I could clearly see one of the beautiful white birds up in the maple, looking like something tropical. I worried for a moment that they might have a hard time finding each other again after flying in separate directions like that, but then I put that concern to rest. They have powerful voices.
I scolded our striped cat who rubbed against me adoringly as he always does. He didn't chase the chickens or the ducks, but apparently Guinea fowl are another matter. I do not always understand the logic of felines, and I wish that the striped cat was not such a beloved friend of mine. He is though, and I am once again bewildered about how to proceed.
Wednesday, July 6, 2011
Cursing and praying
I have been lying on my side for the past several days, devising plans to make our household less chaotic. Because we have been doing so much work on our house, relying almost entirely on Ian's labor, our upstairs hallway is full of stacked hardwood flooring, and only two of our four bedrooms are usable because the other two are torn up. This week, when we randomly told our midwife that our upstairs bathroom smells like bat poop, she grew quite concerned because it apparently causes some dreaded disease for pregnant women. Ian uncovered a rich source of the nasty stuff last summer when he repaired some windows to stop rain from pouring inside. He stopped the rain, but did not have time for the unplanned project and sealed the whole thing up with plastic until he could return to the job.
In our main bathroom, we have no toilet paper holder and only one towel rack, which is supposed to hold bath towels, hand towels and wash cloths for a family of four. Most of the time we give up on the rack entirely and it sits empty, with a hand towel crumpled forlornly on the floor beneath it. This morning, I was talking with Ian about making space to hang wash cloths. It should be noted that Ian has been teaching, raising the chickens, running the household, and caring for me while getting less than six hours of sleep every night. This morning while we talked about wash cloths, he was trying to make breakfast for both of us, clean himself up, and get out the door in time for work. His responses to me were unwaveringly friendly, if a little distracted, but he did not share all of my opinions. Our talk became a conversation about the nature of washcloths, and their role in our lives both now and historically. I felt my impatience rising, but I wanted so much to keep my conversation with Ian on the cheerful side.
"Jesus H Christ!" I exclaimed in my head sounding like an echo of my late father, but unlike my father, I feel very uneasy saying those kinds of things, even silently, so I pretended I wasn't done with my sentence. "Thank you for the caring presence of my beloved husband. Thank you so much for giving me such an easy life that I have time and energy to spend worrying about where we will hang our washcloths." My prayer seemed to help a little bit, and we finished our discussion about washcloths without incident.
I still felt impatient, though. All morning, I cursed up a storm in my head. Each time, I pretended unconvincingly that I was just starting a quick prayer, and I prayed earnestly and briefly. The morning taught me again that God can be found tangled in frustration and in weird conversations about washcloths and in the infuriating gap between who we are and who we hope to be. Sometimes God’s presence does not even feel particularly gratifying, but it is there, whether we curse or pray or do both at the same time.
In our main bathroom, we have no toilet paper holder and only one towel rack, which is supposed to hold bath towels, hand towels and wash cloths for a family of four. Most of the time we give up on the rack entirely and it sits empty, with a hand towel crumpled forlornly on the floor beneath it. This morning, I was talking with Ian about making space to hang wash cloths. It should be noted that Ian has been teaching, raising the chickens, running the household, and caring for me while getting less than six hours of sleep every night. This morning while we talked about wash cloths, he was trying to make breakfast for both of us, clean himself up, and get out the door in time for work. His responses to me were unwaveringly friendly, if a little distracted, but he did not share all of my opinions. Our talk became a conversation about the nature of washcloths, and their role in our lives both now and historically. I felt my impatience rising, but I wanted so much to keep my conversation with Ian on the cheerful side.
"Jesus H Christ!" I exclaimed in my head sounding like an echo of my late father, but unlike my father, I feel very uneasy saying those kinds of things, even silently, so I pretended I wasn't done with my sentence. "Thank you for the caring presence of my beloved husband. Thank you so much for giving me such an easy life that I have time and energy to spend worrying about where we will hang our washcloths." My prayer seemed to help a little bit, and we finished our discussion about washcloths without incident.
I still felt impatient, though. All morning, I cursed up a storm in my head. Each time, I pretended unconvincingly that I was just starting a quick prayer, and I prayed earnestly and briefly. The morning taught me again that God can be found tangled in frustration and in weird conversations about washcloths and in the infuriating gap between who we are and who we hope to be. Sometimes God’s presence does not even feel particularly gratifying, but it is there, whether we curse or pray or do both at the same time.
Tuesday, July 5, 2011
Independence Day
We bought some guinea fowl about a month and a half ago, with the intention that they would keep down the sizable tick population and protect us from Lyme's disease. They are amazing little birds that could leap to stupendous heights even when they were tiny fluff balls. Because I'm not getting out much, I've mostly heard stories about them from Ian and children, and I have peeked out the window at our makeshift brooder which glows red at night because of the red heat lamp inside. It looks like a squat, round spaceship has landed toward the back of our garage.
I have spent some of my favorite times of the summer sitting in front of the white plastic calf hutch. On Memorial Day weekend, when Ian was converting the hutch, I sat there in the shade of the maples while my seven-year-old son assembled screws and nuts from Ian's toolbox into impressive fake fingers. I had every intention of being productive, trying to plan something with Ian while he worked with his hands, but he had to leave me frequently to get more supplies. My boy and I sat in the dappled shade, feeling time and the green world stretching out forever around us. I have not felt that way since I was a child myself, but I recognized the feeling immediately.
Ian and I sat in front of the hutch again yesterday, Independence Day. It was a long walk for me, but I made it. Ian opened the door to the structure so that the birds could leave it and begin to explore the world for the first time, and we made ourselves comfortable in the grass nearby so we could see what happened next. The birds were fascinating, like little dinosaurs with ancient faces that they were always moving and tilting to get a better glimpse at us. Even though their world was small in their little brooder, it seemed lively. Together, they all decided to preen themselves on their roost, and then it was time to hop down suddenly and hunt for bugs. A few of them jumped up onto their feeder and tilted their strange faces to get a better look at the sky through their open door, but none of them seemed interested in hopping out. With Ian sitting warm beside me, holding my hand, I felt like we were a new item watching a movie together instead of a long-married couple, sitting in the grass peering into a calf hutch. I was completely content.
We finally went back inside for lunch, but a couple of hours later, Ian asked me to look out the window at the little group of birds making its way tentatively across the lawn. I think that was the golden moment of guinea fowl on our property. Pretty soon, one of the cats stalked the birds and lept into their midst. About half of them fled up into the trees, and the rest ran around in a panic. The cat never caught any of them, but he apparently convinced them that they are in an unsafe place. The only one that seems to be here still is a little guy that apparently was not brave enough to follow the rest of the flock out into the world. Last I heard, he was alone in the calf hutch, honking to his friends. Maybe he will convince them to come back.
I have spent some of my favorite times of the summer sitting in front of the white plastic calf hutch. On Memorial Day weekend, when Ian was converting the hutch, I sat there in the shade of the maples while my seven-year-old son assembled screws and nuts from Ian's toolbox into impressive fake fingers. I had every intention of being productive, trying to plan something with Ian while he worked with his hands, but he had to leave me frequently to get more supplies. My boy and I sat in the dappled shade, feeling time and the green world stretching out forever around us. I have not felt that way since I was a child myself, but I recognized the feeling immediately.
Ian and I sat in front of the hutch again yesterday, Independence Day. It was a long walk for me, but I made it. Ian opened the door to the structure so that the birds could leave it and begin to explore the world for the first time, and we made ourselves comfortable in the grass nearby so we could see what happened next. The birds were fascinating, like little dinosaurs with ancient faces that they were always moving and tilting to get a better glimpse at us. Even though their world was small in their little brooder, it seemed lively. Together, they all decided to preen themselves on their roost, and then it was time to hop down suddenly and hunt for bugs. A few of them jumped up onto their feeder and tilted their strange faces to get a better look at the sky through their open door, but none of them seemed interested in hopping out. With Ian sitting warm beside me, holding my hand, I felt like we were a new item watching a movie together instead of a long-married couple, sitting in the grass peering into a calf hutch. I was completely content.
We finally went back inside for lunch, but a couple of hours later, Ian asked me to look out the window at the little group of birds making its way tentatively across the lawn. I think that was the golden moment of guinea fowl on our property. Pretty soon, one of the cats stalked the birds and lept into their midst. About half of them fled up into the trees, and the rest ran around in a panic. The cat never caught any of them, but he apparently convinced them that they are in an unsafe place. The only one that seems to be here still is a little guy that apparently was not brave enough to follow the rest of the flock out into the world. Last I heard, he was alone in the calf hutch, honking to his friends. Maybe he will convince them to come back.
Monday, June 27, 2011
Watching trees
Every day, I have been watching the trees. I have not been able to spend so much time doing this since I was a child, and I'm not sure when this kind of opportunity will come to me again, so I'm taking a job as a tree watcher very seriously. It takes time to really watch a tree. If I stay fairly still and steady in the expectation that I am going to learn something important, then I pass in and out of a special kind of awareness about the living things around me.
The maple trees whisper in the wind with a unique sweetness that is almost an ethereal version of maple syrup. A person can eat too much maple syrup, but no one can ever be drenched too deeply in the sweet peace of the maples.
The old neglected apple trees, sheltering a patch of wild strawberries, are engaged in something holy and intense with all of the other unkempt shrubs and trees around them. Lying beside them, on the edge of a wild and shady patch of our property, I feel as though I have entered somebody else's church after an unfamiliar service has already begun.
The ash trees southeast of our house are imposing in their mystery and generosity. A couple of weeks ago, when I could not sleep, I felt called to go and sit outside on our dark front step, and I was aware of a change in pressure to the southeast. Somewhat reluctantly, I heeded the call to stand under the ash trees, and after some time of waiting in the dark there, I felt as if I were standing in a shower of blessings. Again, last weekend I lay for a long time underneath those ash trees, and once more I felt something powerful and mysterious. I kept picturing that a tall, dark-haired man had given me a necklace, and each large bead was a luminous piece of sky. Even though I was having contractions, I danced slowly and briefly with that imaginary man, swinging the blanket I had been lying on as though it were a shawl. I thanked the trees, and the imaginary man, and God, and then I went inside to lie on the couch, wondering if I were being disloyal to Jesus.
Back on the couch, I worshiped and listened for Jesus, being still and steady in the expectation that I was going to learn something important. I got the message that I'm not being disloyal. I pictured Jesus smiling a smile that is the source of all light. There was so much light coming from His smile that it would be impossible to comprehend all of it, but a few tiny sparks seemed familiar to me from the time I have spent watching the trees.
The maple trees whisper in the wind with a unique sweetness that is almost an ethereal version of maple syrup. A person can eat too much maple syrup, but no one can ever be drenched too deeply in the sweet peace of the maples.
The old neglected apple trees, sheltering a patch of wild strawberries, are engaged in something holy and intense with all of the other unkempt shrubs and trees around them. Lying beside them, on the edge of a wild and shady patch of our property, I feel as though I have entered somebody else's church after an unfamiliar service has already begun.
The ash trees southeast of our house are imposing in their mystery and generosity. A couple of weeks ago, when I could not sleep, I felt called to go and sit outside on our dark front step, and I was aware of a change in pressure to the southeast. Somewhat reluctantly, I heeded the call to stand under the ash trees, and after some time of waiting in the dark there, I felt as if I were standing in a shower of blessings. Again, last weekend I lay for a long time underneath those ash trees, and once more I felt something powerful and mysterious. I kept picturing that a tall, dark-haired man had given me a necklace, and each large bead was a luminous piece of sky. Even though I was having contractions, I danced slowly and briefly with that imaginary man, swinging the blanket I had been lying on as though it were a shawl. I thanked the trees, and the imaginary man, and God, and then I went inside to lie on the couch, wondering if I were being disloyal to Jesus.
Back on the couch, I worshiped and listened for Jesus, being still and steady in the expectation that I was going to learn something important. I got the message that I'm not being disloyal. I pictured Jesus smiling a smile that is the source of all light. There was so much light coming from His smile that it would be impossible to comprehend all of it, but a few tiny sparks seemed familiar to me from the time I have spent watching the trees.
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
A tender time
I am officially having a hard time.
My midwife optimistically predicted in May that my frequent contractions might pass. They have not. They usually tighten my belly whenever I sit or stand upright. Getting out to the mailbox has become a tremendous achievement, which I am able to accomplish only on good days. My due date is more than three months away.
There is so much to be thankful for during this time. First of all, this is not causing us serious financial trouble. I keep thinking that if I were a single, working mother, I might be choosing between caring for this pregnancy and keeping my family housed. Second, we have been receiving an enormous amount of help from a large range of people, which makes me so grateful. Today I wrote 11 thank-you notes! Third, the baby is moving around, growing, and generally acting though he is not planning to come out into the world anytime soon.
Still, I feel something within myself growing fragile. On Sunday, I hovered on the verge of tears all day and ended up coaxing myself along with treats. "Wouldn't you like to read a novel?" I said with false confidence. "You haven't been able to do that in ages! You love novels." Later, with two novels completed, I had to find a new treat. "Sorbet!" I exclaimed to myself with exaggerated enthusiasm. "Mom is coming over, and I bet she could buy some sorbet on her way down!" The treats seemed to work, and aside from a few minor breakdowns, I got through the day.
During this tender time, I am very aware of the fields in the trees outside my windows. I check in with them regularly, calling to the fields, "Are you still there?" When I call them, I can feel them there, and they comfort me. Through the window, I see the leaves swaying against the sky, and I ask, "Are you still singing?" Even without smelling the scent of the outside world or feeling the gentle changes in the air, I can still hear the trees singing. I hear they are in the middle of a song that began before I gave them my attention, and that will continue long after my mind wanders from them.
I am also aware of how vital it is that we share the Light and that has been given to us. On my most difficult days, which could be so much worse, I pounce on beauty with the fervor of a big kitten practicing its hunting skills. Almost as much as I need water, I need beautiful acts and prayers and stories. We all have those within us, and we sometimes keep them to ourselves without ever realizing the power they could have if they were released.
My midwife optimistically predicted in May that my frequent contractions might pass. They have not. They usually tighten my belly whenever I sit or stand upright. Getting out to the mailbox has become a tremendous achievement, which I am able to accomplish only on good days. My due date is more than three months away.
There is so much to be thankful for during this time. First of all, this is not causing us serious financial trouble. I keep thinking that if I were a single, working mother, I might be choosing between caring for this pregnancy and keeping my family housed. Second, we have been receiving an enormous amount of help from a large range of people, which makes me so grateful. Today I wrote 11 thank-you notes! Third, the baby is moving around, growing, and generally acting though he is not planning to come out into the world anytime soon.
Still, I feel something within myself growing fragile. On Sunday, I hovered on the verge of tears all day and ended up coaxing myself along with treats. "Wouldn't you like to read a novel?" I said with false confidence. "You haven't been able to do that in ages! You love novels." Later, with two novels completed, I had to find a new treat. "Sorbet!" I exclaimed to myself with exaggerated enthusiasm. "Mom is coming over, and I bet she could buy some sorbet on her way down!" The treats seemed to work, and aside from a few minor breakdowns, I got through the day.
During this tender time, I am very aware of the fields in the trees outside my windows. I check in with them regularly, calling to the fields, "Are you still there?" When I call them, I can feel them there, and they comfort me. Through the window, I see the leaves swaying against the sky, and I ask, "Are you still singing?" Even without smelling the scent of the outside world or feeling the gentle changes in the air, I can still hear the trees singing. I hear they are in the middle of a song that began before I gave them my attention, and that will continue long after my mind wanders from them.
I am also aware of how vital it is that we share the Light and that has been given to us. On my most difficult days, which could be so much worse, I pounce on beauty with the fervor of a big kitten practicing its hunting skills. Almost as much as I need water, I need beautiful acts and prayers and stories. We all have those within us, and we sometimes keep them to ourselves without ever realizing the power they could have if they were released.
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
A sermon
For couple of days now, I have been hounded by a character from the Bible. Jesus asks his disciples to go into Jerusalem where they will find a man carrying the pitcher of water. They are to follow him into a house and tell the owner of that house that the Master wants to have Passover in the guest chamber. This is where they have the Last Supper.
The man carrying water was going against the very strict gender roles of the time because carrying water was women's work. At least one Friend, Peterson Tuscano, believes that this man was transgendered. Another writer suggests that he may have been so secure in himself that he was unconcerned about gender rules. There are many stories that we could imagine about him, but whatever the situation, he clearly gave up cultural privilege to publicly do women's work in a community that was oppressive to women. I am inspired by his courage, and I am made tender by the ridicule and exclusion that he must have faced.
Within his house, there was a vacant room prepared for a feast. There was emptiness during the time of community in celebration. Peterson said the guest chamber may have been empty because the extended family felt disgusted by the way the transgendered man was going about things and decided at the last minute to boycott the planned dinner. I like that interpretation, but whatever the surrounding story may have been, it the image of it resonates with a sense of loss and exclusion.
This empty space allowed Jesus the space to do His work. It was confusing work, though. Earlier in the story, in the book of Luke, Jesus talks to a large crowd about how they must eat his body and drink his blood, and quite understandably, the teaching does not go over well. Most of his disciples stop following him at that point, leaving a small remainder of believers. I don't think that the faithful few understood what this talk about eating a body and drinking blood was about, and I do not understand it either. However, I think that the disciples knew that they were being deeply loved when Jesus shared that bread and wine with them. Maybe that is all any of us really need to understand.
I think that within each of us there is a spark of the man who carried the water, and I think in each of us there is an empty room. It must've been the Quaker writer Thomas Kelly who encourages us to weed out busyness and distraction because the emptiness that we seek to fill might be the place where God’s love can grow within us. Kelly encourages people to sit with the emptiness, and to prayerfully let it be filled by God, and not by our own activity. This is not a comfortable thing to do, but I believe it can yield something more nourishing and glorious than the pain spent in pursuing it.
What fills the emptiness might not make sense, just as the Last Supper did not make sense at the time. Like the disciples, we will know love when we feel it. Inexplicable love will show us that we have found what we were looking for, and it will leave us changed.
The man carrying water was going against the very strict gender roles of the time because carrying water was women's work. At least one Friend, Peterson Tuscano, believes that this man was transgendered. Another writer suggests that he may have been so secure in himself that he was unconcerned about gender rules. There are many stories that we could imagine about him, but whatever the situation, he clearly gave up cultural privilege to publicly do women's work in a community that was oppressive to women. I am inspired by his courage, and I am made tender by the ridicule and exclusion that he must have faced.
Within his house, there was a vacant room prepared for a feast. There was emptiness during the time of community in celebration. Peterson said the guest chamber may have been empty because the extended family felt disgusted by the way the transgendered man was going about things and decided at the last minute to boycott the planned dinner. I like that interpretation, but whatever the surrounding story may have been, it the image of it resonates with a sense of loss and exclusion.
This empty space allowed Jesus the space to do His work. It was confusing work, though. Earlier in the story, in the book of Luke, Jesus talks to a large crowd about how they must eat his body and drink his blood, and quite understandably, the teaching does not go over well. Most of his disciples stop following him at that point, leaving a small remainder of believers. I don't think that the faithful few understood what this talk about eating a body and drinking blood was about, and I do not understand it either. However, I think that the disciples knew that they were being deeply loved when Jesus shared that bread and wine with them. Maybe that is all any of us really need to understand.
I think that within each of us there is a spark of the man who carried the water, and I think in each of us there is an empty room. It must've been the Quaker writer Thomas Kelly who encourages us to weed out busyness and distraction because the emptiness that we seek to fill might be the place where God’s love can grow within us. Kelly encourages people to sit with the emptiness, and to prayerfully let it be filled by God, and not by our own activity. This is not a comfortable thing to do, but I believe it can yield something more nourishing and glorious than the pain spent in pursuing it.
What fills the emptiness might not make sense, just as the Last Supper did not make sense at the time. Like the disciples, we will know love when we feel it. Inexplicable love will show us that we have found what we were looking for, and it will leave us changed.
Monday, June 13, 2011
Spending Sunday morning on the couch
On Sunday morning, Ian and I had planned to do some farm planning with Regi, who is starting the Hillside Farmers Cooperative. We have joined that cooperative, and we were supposed to meet at his home at 8 AM. It felt wrong to me to show up at breakfast time without bringing food, so I was up at 6:30 AM mixing up some muffins, except it was one of those rare mornings when I was having one contraction after another. Usually the contractions don't gather much steam until later in the day, but I found myself uneasily waddling around the kitchen until Ian came down and firmly convinced me to use my common sense and lie down.
At this point, I took up my post on the couch and started bossing the children around. I was guiding them through the last steps of filling the muffin cups with batter when the dog woke up and greeted me. I thought to myself that he needed to go out, but I did not want to brave the contractions I would get by standing up again, and I wanted to keep the kids focused on their muffin making. It seems that the urgency of the situation had passed because dog companionably lay down near me on a blanket beside the couch.
We were just gearing up for how the children should put the muffins inside the hot oven, which can be a daunting step for them, when I smelled something funny. I looked around, and saw a river of liquid extending from the apparently sleeping dog, across the whole room and under the bottom of the easy chair. I told the children to abandon the muffins. Ian was outside doing something with the chickens, and I asked my daughter to go get him and put the dog outside while my son was supposed to grab our box of rags and throw every single rag on top of the mess to soak it up.
My son took a very measured and thoughtful approach to this job, carefully assessing the shape of each rag and placing it on the floor, apparently with an eye towards aesthetics as well as efficiency. “Just throw them down!” I told him. “Keep the pee from running underneath the wall!” But a moderate approach to rag placement was beyond him.
During the interminable time that Ian spent finishing the chicken chores, I got the children to overturn the easy chair and throw out the soggy clutter that accumulated under it. As she sometimes does when she is disgusted, my daughter started to retch audibly and genuinely as she carried a dripping piece of paper to the trash, but thankfully nothing came up, and she returned to work. I had just talked to children through removing the lampshade from the lamp so we could turn it over on its side and wash its base when my patience finally reached its limits and I stood up to help.
At this point Ian came in, told me to lie back down, and presided over the rest of a cleanup efforts. By the time he was done, and only our easy chair remained on its side, drying, it was already 8 AM. Ian took the muffins and went off to do the farm planning without me, my daughter brought her muffins upstairs to eat in peace and regain her composure, and my son sat down at the computer to watch SpongeBob SquarePants in Spanish. I stayed on the couch, feeling stunned.
At this point, I took up my post on the couch and started bossing the children around. I was guiding them through the last steps of filling the muffin cups with batter when the dog woke up and greeted me. I thought to myself that he needed to go out, but I did not want to brave the contractions I would get by standing up again, and I wanted to keep the kids focused on their muffin making. It seems that the urgency of the situation had passed because dog companionably lay down near me on a blanket beside the couch.
We were just gearing up for how the children should put the muffins inside the hot oven, which can be a daunting step for them, when I smelled something funny. I looked around, and saw a river of liquid extending from the apparently sleeping dog, across the whole room and under the bottom of the easy chair. I told the children to abandon the muffins. Ian was outside doing something with the chickens, and I asked my daughter to go get him and put the dog outside while my son was supposed to grab our box of rags and throw every single rag on top of the mess to soak it up.
My son took a very measured and thoughtful approach to this job, carefully assessing the shape of each rag and placing it on the floor, apparently with an eye towards aesthetics as well as efficiency. “Just throw them down!” I told him. “Keep the pee from running underneath the wall!” But a moderate approach to rag placement was beyond him.
During the interminable time that Ian spent finishing the chicken chores, I got the children to overturn the easy chair and throw out the soggy clutter that accumulated under it. As she sometimes does when she is disgusted, my daughter started to retch audibly and genuinely as she carried a dripping piece of paper to the trash, but thankfully nothing came up, and she returned to work. I had just talked to children through removing the lampshade from the lamp so we could turn it over on its side and wash its base when my patience finally reached its limits and I stood up to help.
At this point Ian came in, told me to lie back down, and presided over the rest of a cleanup efforts. By the time he was done, and only our easy chair remained on its side, drying, it was already 8 AM. Ian took the muffins and went off to do the farm planning without me, my daughter brought her muffins upstairs to eat in peace and regain her composure, and my son sat down at the computer to watch SpongeBob SquarePants in Spanish. I stayed on the couch, feeling stunned.
Friday, June 3, 2011
Letter to the editor
Minnesotans are going to vote in November 2012 about whether the Constitution should be amended to define marriage as between one man and one woman. I wrote a letter to the editor opposing the constitutional amendment, and it appeared in the Saturday edition of the Northfield News. Ian and I were both worried about the letter to the editor in a way that we never would have been in Minneapolis. Some people who are acquainted with Northfield, an artsy college town, might not believe this, but we did not see a single sign advertising the Democratic candidate for governor last fall until we visited Minneapolis. And where we live, out in the country, the signs for the Republican candidate were very plentiful. The people that we depend on and care about here are, in some ways, a much less homogeneous group that they were in the cities.
People hold you accountable here in a way that I never did in the city. When I have written things for the paper before, I have heard about it all over town – literally. Whether I have been teaching the fitness class or shopping for groceries, people talk to me about it. And the same people who show up in one context generally are part of my life in other, unrelated contexts as well. A dear lady in one of my Zumba classes was the same one who bought me water when I was pregnant and nauseated during the spaghetti dinner at the children's youth group. The guy who came to fix our water softener goes to church with a farmer who rents our land. A friend whose children came over to play at our house last weekend appeared as a substitute playground aide at the kids' school.
We depend heavily on people that do not agree with us about everything. Last winter, when my first-grade son's teacher unexpectedly made him ride home on the bus instead of going with the youth group, he came home to find nobody here. The temperature was well below zero, and his fingers got so cold fumbling with the key that he had no hope of opening the door. There were two houses within a quarter of a mile walk of our house, and he found loving help at the first home. Last week, because I cannot lift things, Ian relied on that same neighbor to help put the topper on his truck so he could take the chickens and processing. If a menacing animal showed up here, and I could not handle the situation myself, I would call the neighbors. Ian has helped a neighbor in that way already because there is no animal control out here.
Pretty soon, we will be going to the township board to ask if we can build a barn for our chickens, and some of the people there have certainly heard about us from our neighbors and maybe have made the connection between my family and the letters and essays I've written for the paper. Everyone on the board undoubtedly has opinions about us based on what they have carefully observed about our house and land as they have driven past. Another farmer, who wants to build some of these barns in a different township, is apparently unable to build right now because an influential member of the board does not approve of the way he went about asking for permission. In some ways, I don't know where we stand here, and I want so much to fit in.
However, if I never give people a chance to know me, then I have no chance of fitting in. If I assume I know what people think, then I will never know them. If I fail to do what I understand to be right because I am afraid of what other people think, then my failure comes from a lack of love. I do not want to fail because of that.
This is what the letter to the editor said:
A large Quaker meeting in St. Paul, which has been performing gay marriages since 1986, has decided it will no longer offer legal marriage ceremonies to straight couples because it cannot provide legal marriage ceremonies to gay couples. It will continue to offer marriage ceremonies and spiritual support for both gay and straight couples, as well as to care for the marriages of its members. It will offer to help straight couples legalize their marriages through the court system, but will not legalize their marriages itself. My Quaker meeting in Northfield was asked to respond to the St Paul Quaker meeting’s decision, and it is still considering the request.
My first reaction to the policy was fear and anger. I believe that marriage is holy, and especially in today's culture, it can use as much support as it can possibly get. I have been blessed with a marriage that has helped me to heal, to learn, and to serve. I could not imagine how it would be helpful to withhold any kind of support or benefit from couples who are taking up the sacred job of marriage.
Then I spent a great deal of time considering the situation. I have listened very attentively to many gay and lesbian friends over the course of many years, and in their marriages (which are recognized by my religious community) I see the same struggles and gifts that I have understood to be the work of God in my own marriage. I have prayed for these friends as they help each other grow and sometimes struggle to stay together. I have admired their parenting and have been deeply touched by the focused love that I have witnessed between them. I have seen in them a solidity and commitment that can serve as the foundation of a strong community. By listening to and watching some of these friends carefully over the course of many years, I have learned how to be better partner in my own marriage.
As it is becoming clear that the citizens of Minnesota will likely vote on a state constitutional amendment that would ban gay marriage, my friends have expressed a grief and sense of loneliness that makes my heart sore. Their feelings make this issue real to me in a way that it somehow was not before, and I find myself feeling peaceful with the decision of the Quaker meeting that has suspended all legal marriages. The sadness and inequality surrounding the lack of legal recognition of gay marriage feels like a heavy weight to me. I wish it could be lifted, and I wish we could all rejoice at its lifting.
People hold you accountable here in a way that I never did in the city. When I have written things for the paper before, I have heard about it all over town – literally. Whether I have been teaching the fitness class or shopping for groceries, people talk to me about it. And the same people who show up in one context generally are part of my life in other, unrelated contexts as well. A dear lady in one of my Zumba classes was the same one who bought me water when I was pregnant and nauseated during the spaghetti dinner at the children's youth group. The guy who came to fix our water softener goes to church with a farmer who rents our land. A friend whose children came over to play at our house last weekend appeared as a substitute playground aide at the kids' school.
We depend heavily on people that do not agree with us about everything. Last winter, when my first-grade son's teacher unexpectedly made him ride home on the bus instead of going with the youth group, he came home to find nobody here. The temperature was well below zero, and his fingers got so cold fumbling with the key that he had no hope of opening the door. There were two houses within a quarter of a mile walk of our house, and he found loving help at the first home. Last week, because I cannot lift things, Ian relied on that same neighbor to help put the topper on his truck so he could take the chickens and processing. If a menacing animal showed up here, and I could not handle the situation myself, I would call the neighbors. Ian has helped a neighbor in that way already because there is no animal control out here.
Pretty soon, we will be going to the township board to ask if we can build a barn for our chickens, and some of the people there have certainly heard about us from our neighbors and maybe have made the connection between my family and the letters and essays I've written for the paper. Everyone on the board undoubtedly has opinions about us based on what they have carefully observed about our house and land as they have driven past. Another farmer, who wants to build some of these barns in a different township, is apparently unable to build right now because an influential member of the board does not approve of the way he went about asking for permission. In some ways, I don't know where we stand here, and I want so much to fit in.
However, if I never give people a chance to know me, then I have no chance of fitting in. If I assume I know what people think, then I will never know them. If I fail to do what I understand to be right because I am afraid of what other people think, then my failure comes from a lack of love. I do not want to fail because of that.
This is what the letter to the editor said:
A large Quaker meeting in St. Paul, which has been performing gay marriages since 1986, has decided it will no longer offer legal marriage ceremonies to straight couples because it cannot provide legal marriage ceremonies to gay couples. It will continue to offer marriage ceremonies and spiritual support for both gay and straight couples, as well as to care for the marriages of its members. It will offer to help straight couples legalize their marriages through the court system, but will not legalize their marriages itself. My Quaker meeting in Northfield was asked to respond to the St Paul Quaker meeting’s decision, and it is still considering the request.
My first reaction to the policy was fear and anger. I believe that marriage is holy, and especially in today's culture, it can use as much support as it can possibly get. I have been blessed with a marriage that has helped me to heal, to learn, and to serve. I could not imagine how it would be helpful to withhold any kind of support or benefit from couples who are taking up the sacred job of marriage.
Then I spent a great deal of time considering the situation. I have listened very attentively to many gay and lesbian friends over the course of many years, and in their marriages (which are recognized by my religious community) I see the same struggles and gifts that I have understood to be the work of God in my own marriage. I have prayed for these friends as they help each other grow and sometimes struggle to stay together. I have admired their parenting and have been deeply touched by the focused love that I have witnessed between them. I have seen in them a solidity and commitment that can serve as the foundation of a strong community. By listening to and watching some of these friends carefully over the course of many years, I have learned how to be better partner in my own marriage.
As it is becoming clear that the citizens of Minnesota will likely vote on a state constitutional amendment that would ban gay marriage, my friends have expressed a grief and sense of loneliness that makes my heart sore. Their feelings make this issue real to me in a way that it somehow was not before, and I find myself feeling peaceful with the decision of the Quaker meeting that has suspended all legal marriages. The sadness and inequality surrounding the lack of legal recognition of gay marriage feels like a heavy weight to me. I wish it could be lifted, and I wish we could all rejoice at its lifting.
Sunday, May 29, 2011
Memorial Day
Every Memorial Day, my family visits the Lakewood Cemetery in Minneapolis carrying bouquets of lilacs, lilies of the valley, and planters of flowers to set on the family graves. We mill around on the gentle, tree-covered slope that I have visited almost every spring. I usually scrape tree seeds and encroaching dirt off the gravestones of my grandparents and my great aunt and uncle, and I chat with my aunt and uncle and cousins. Then we leave to go eat brunch.
My mother and uncle have followed this ritual faithfully for more than 60 years, ever since their mother died suddenly when they were still children. It has been one of my favorite family traditions, and my children and husband seem to treasure it even more than I do. This year, I cannot go because of all of my contractions, and I have convinced my husband to stay home as well because he has a crushing workload. Convincing him was not easy. He said it is important to respect the dead.
“Grandpa wouldn't mind if we stayed home this year," I told Ian. "He would think that work comes first. And Mom said that Grandma would be worried about us and would want us to take good care of ourselves.” I said that instead of going to Minneapolis, we should take bouquets of flowers into our house and tell stories about family and friends who've passed on. Then we should all eat a treat. My husband reluctantly agreed to my plan before heading outside with his power tools to modify a calf hutch so that it can be used as a poultry house.
I picked up the phone right away and told my mother the news. What she said made me cry. She said that if Grandpa had been alive, he would've considered skipping the family gathering so that he could come to our place and help Ian. She said that his spirit would not be at Lakewood Cemetery as much as it would be on our farm. He would've wanted to be here, building chicken crates and maybe putting in the garden that I can't imagine that we will actually be planting this year.
He would have loved our old tractor. Mom says that when Grandpa retired from working as a welder, he visited the Smithsonian in Washington DC with his wife Char, who was the only grandma I ever knew. She lost him in that huge museum, and after many hours she found him in the basement, engrossed with display of old farm equipment. He talked about that equipment for years and could remember each piece in great detail. If he could talk to us now, he would have so many ideas for us.
I hurried outside to tell Ian this story, and I found him bending over a power saw with my son. "You're grandpa is not the only one with lots of ideas," Ian said, nodding toward our boy. As Ian slipped on his safety glasses and headed off to rip a board, my child eagerly and earnestly explained the difference between several different saw blades that lay on the deck. Grandpa would have appreciated such things.
So we will be staying home tomorrow. And I will stay home knowing that we are wrapped in a life that the old ones in my family might have appreciated. By loving the land, and by awkwardly attempting to do some of the work that many of them knew so well, I can love even those relatives that I will never know.
And so we will celebrate Memorial Day this year.
My mother and uncle have followed this ritual faithfully for more than 60 years, ever since their mother died suddenly when they were still children. It has been one of my favorite family traditions, and my children and husband seem to treasure it even more than I do. This year, I cannot go because of all of my contractions, and I have convinced my husband to stay home as well because he has a crushing workload. Convincing him was not easy. He said it is important to respect the dead.
“Grandpa wouldn't mind if we stayed home this year," I told Ian. "He would think that work comes first. And Mom said that Grandma would be worried about us and would want us to take good care of ourselves.” I said that instead of going to Minneapolis, we should take bouquets of flowers into our house and tell stories about family and friends who've passed on. Then we should all eat a treat. My husband reluctantly agreed to my plan before heading outside with his power tools to modify a calf hutch so that it can be used as a poultry house.
I picked up the phone right away and told my mother the news. What she said made me cry. She said that if Grandpa had been alive, he would've considered skipping the family gathering so that he could come to our place and help Ian. She said that his spirit would not be at Lakewood Cemetery as much as it would be on our farm. He would've wanted to be here, building chicken crates and maybe putting in the garden that I can't imagine that we will actually be planting this year.
He would have loved our old tractor. Mom says that when Grandpa retired from working as a welder, he visited the Smithsonian in Washington DC with his wife Char, who was the only grandma I ever knew. She lost him in that huge museum, and after many hours she found him in the basement, engrossed with display of old farm equipment. He talked about that equipment for years and could remember each piece in great detail. If he could talk to us now, he would have so many ideas for us.
I hurried outside to tell Ian this story, and I found him bending over a power saw with my son. "You're grandpa is not the only one with lots of ideas," Ian said, nodding toward our boy. As Ian slipped on his safety glasses and headed off to rip a board, my child eagerly and earnestly explained the difference between several different saw blades that lay on the deck. Grandpa would have appreciated such things.
So we will be staying home tomorrow. And I will stay home knowing that we are wrapped in a life that the old ones in my family might have appreciated. By loving the land, and by awkwardly attempting to do some of the work that many of them knew so well, I can love even those relatives that I will never know.
And so we will celebrate Memorial Day this year.
Friday, May 27, 2011
Too many contractions
I am five months pregnant, and I'm having contractions much of the time. Last night, they were so intense that they made me walk with a limp, and it seemed as though I were contracting for the majority of several hours with short breaks in between. I camped out on the couch, drank nettle tea, and let my husband fix dinner for the family. Then he worked in the garden, drove 5 miles to the gas station to buy gas for the tractor after it got stuck, took care of the chickens, and washed dishes. He went to bed in the wee hours of the morning and rose at five to go to work.
I am reminded of one of my favorite parts of the Bible. It is in the book of Luke, and it cracks me up every time I read it. Jesus says that if somebody sins against you seven times in the same day and says he is sorry seven times, then you have to forgive him every single time. At this point, Jesus had been teaching at great length without interruption, but that last instruction is just too much for his disciples. “Lord, increase our faith,” they say. I giggle at this because I just know that a millisecond before they said, "Increase my faith,” some of them must have thought, “You have got to be kidding me.” I can just see their faces drop in that moment before they got their act together and said the perfect thing.
I am in the “you have got to be kidding me” phase. When I think about it though, I throw in a little prayer and say, "Lord, increase my faith.”
I work long and hard every day with my children, the farm, and our home, and most of my work is totally invisible. I'm leaving a huge gap here, and I'm afraid I'm the only one who understands how huge the gap is. Folks are stepping up to help. Yesterday, Ian's father mowed most of our huge lawn. Today, one friend drove my daughter to orchestra practice, and another is bringing supper. Tomorrow, my mother is coming down to provide backup for me so my children can have play dates here while Ian goes to a farm auction. We are not without loving support, but I am still not clear how everything is goig to get done around here.
My midwife says not to worry. I have not shown signs of true preterm labor, and she has worked with many mothers who have experienced similar contractions, and then are still pregnant a week after their due date. But in the back of my mind I am trying to prepare myself for what it would be like to lose this baby. I'm also wondering what our life will be like if he is born early and with very serious disabilities, which makes me wonder if I will ever be free enough from family obligation to pursue my dream of being a farmer.
Lord increase my faith.
I am reminded of one of my favorite parts of the Bible. It is in the book of Luke, and it cracks me up every time I read it. Jesus says that if somebody sins against you seven times in the same day and says he is sorry seven times, then you have to forgive him every single time. At this point, Jesus had been teaching at great length without interruption, but that last instruction is just too much for his disciples. “Lord, increase our faith,” they say. I giggle at this because I just know that a millisecond before they said, "Increase my faith,” some of them must have thought, “You have got to be kidding me.” I can just see their faces drop in that moment before they got their act together and said the perfect thing.
I am in the “you have got to be kidding me” phase. When I think about it though, I throw in a little prayer and say, "Lord, increase my faith.”
I work long and hard every day with my children, the farm, and our home, and most of my work is totally invisible. I'm leaving a huge gap here, and I'm afraid I'm the only one who understands how huge the gap is. Folks are stepping up to help. Yesterday, Ian's father mowed most of our huge lawn. Today, one friend drove my daughter to orchestra practice, and another is bringing supper. Tomorrow, my mother is coming down to provide backup for me so my children can have play dates here while Ian goes to a farm auction. We are not without loving support, but I am still not clear how everything is goig to get done around here.
My midwife says not to worry. I have not shown signs of true preterm labor, and she has worked with many mothers who have experienced similar contractions, and then are still pregnant a week after their due date. But in the back of my mind I am trying to prepare myself for what it would be like to lose this baby. I'm also wondering what our life will be like if he is born early and with very serious disabilities, which makes me wonder if I will ever be free enough from family obligation to pursue my dream of being a farmer.
Lord increase my faith.
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Spring
It has been a cold, wet spring, but now the sun has come out, and with it has come a time of almost feverish activity. You can't drive anywhere without slowing down for tractors so enormous they look more like spaceships than the little pictures of red tractors that appear in children's books. Yesterday, many of them were carrying tillage equipment, like huge, folded wings equipped with curving metal spikes to rake through the soil. Today, before seven in the morning, I saw a tractor hurrying down the road carrying plastic boxes of seed, ready to plant.
My husband left my daughter's orchestra concert early last night to go home and work while there was still daylight. With my ascent, he let my son stay up very late so he could keep working instead of putting him to bed, and when my daughter and I got home from the orchestra concert, we heard wild cries coming from the darkening fields. We looked at each other with horror, thinking that we were hearing unusually chilling coyote howls. My daughter hurriedly shut the outside cats on the back porch to keep them safe. It was my son howling. He had bit into an apple and wrenched loose one of his baby teeth way past his bedtime, and then run outside into the field to find his father. We could not see him in the dark.
The combination of my pregnancy, the weather, and equipment failure has left us awed by the amount of work we have to do -- even though we are not planting row crops. Most of the chicken work is apparently off-limits for me because of concerns about germs during my pregnancy, and I have still not learned how to operate the tractor with confidence, so far too much of this work is falling on my husband who is working more than full-time at his teaching job.
I am taking two lessons away from this time. First, I need to be pushier and willing to make more mistakes so that I can be a more active partner in this farm. There is no reason why I should not be driving that tractor as well as my husband is by this time. Second, we have been included in this wild and beautiful rhythm of working with the land, at least partially. I'm so grateful for that.
My husband left my daughter's orchestra concert early last night to go home and work while there was still daylight. With my ascent, he let my son stay up very late so he could keep working instead of putting him to bed, and when my daughter and I got home from the orchestra concert, we heard wild cries coming from the darkening fields. We looked at each other with horror, thinking that we were hearing unusually chilling coyote howls. My daughter hurriedly shut the outside cats on the back porch to keep them safe. It was my son howling. He had bit into an apple and wrenched loose one of his baby teeth way past his bedtime, and then run outside into the field to find his father. We could not see him in the dark.
The combination of my pregnancy, the weather, and equipment failure has left us awed by the amount of work we have to do -- even though we are not planting row crops. Most of the chicken work is apparently off-limits for me because of concerns about germs during my pregnancy, and I have still not learned how to operate the tractor with confidence, so far too much of this work is falling on my husband who is working more than full-time at his teaching job.
I am taking two lessons away from this time. First, I need to be pushier and willing to make more mistakes so that I can be a more active partner in this farm. There is no reason why I should not be driving that tractor as well as my husband is by this time. Second, we have been included in this wild and beautiful rhythm of working with the land, at least partially. I'm so grateful for that.
Thursday, May 12, 2011
The ditch
We are thinking about not mowing the ditch in front of our house. Its steep sides make it frightening to mow, and my mother-in-law is concerned that the mower will tip and squash one of us. I hate mowing for both environmental and practical reasons, and I like the idea of planting wildflower seeds along that ditch, making it a haven for bees and butterflies. However, nobody along our busy street lets their ditch go wild. People put great time and energy into making sure that their ditches looks smooth and green, right up to the road. Most folks mow just in front of their yards, but some, like our two closest neighbors, keep their ditches clipped in long for swaths along the road.
As I try to understand what manicured ditches mean to people, I feel like I am trying to understand a foreign language, like attempting to decode the baffling implications of clothes and hairstyles. It seems to me that mowing is a way of presenting oneself to the community as somebody who works hard, who cares about the world, and who was generally not falling too far behind in life. If we were to stop mowing the ditch, I worry that this would be interpreted as a lack of care and organization. I'm even more afraid that people would see the wild looking ditch and think that we're hippies from the city, which certainly has a grain of truth to it. I do not want anyone to look at our house and decide that we do not belong in this community.
In Minneapolis, I would've felt fine about doing something different from the folks around me. In the country though, the house and the land around it do not feel like they are completely mine. Instead, they belong, in part, to the community. When we run into people who have lived in the area for a long time, they know our home. “Oh, the green house!” they exclaim, and then go on to describe other families they have lived there or comment on the changes that we have made. They comment on our chickens and notice some bushes that we have planted. They ask about the new cars parked in the driveway. This house has been a character in their lives for decades, and they feel friendly sense of ownership about it.
They remind me of the truth. This house is been standing here for 110 years, and many families have come and gone during that time. The community and the farmland that surround it have been here for even longer, and before that was the woods, and other communities of people. We are just an afterthought, and even if we live here until we die, the house may still be standing to receive another family. Although we own it, and I am very grateful to own it, the place will never be completely ours.
A person could look at this with an environmental point of view and come to the same conclusion about not fully owning the place. Looking from that point of view, it is our job to spend a short time on earth nurturing the natural communities that sustain us and include us. One very small way of doing that might be to stop mowing the ditch.
In reality, the ditch is only a very small part of our enormous, mowed yard. One neighbor suggested laughingly that we get some sheep, but I think he was only partially kidding. That sounds like fun, and I don't think it would evoke the same shock and disapproval as a wildflower garden in the ditch. But like so many other things, caring for sheep takes organization, money and work, and with the baby coming, I can't imagine getting around to it for at least another several years. God willing, we will still be here, and the house will still be here, and the land will still be here. God willing, the folks who have lived here the longest will still be around to comment on new sheep.
As I try to understand what manicured ditches mean to people, I feel like I am trying to understand a foreign language, like attempting to decode the baffling implications of clothes and hairstyles. It seems to me that mowing is a way of presenting oneself to the community as somebody who works hard, who cares about the world, and who was generally not falling too far behind in life. If we were to stop mowing the ditch, I worry that this would be interpreted as a lack of care and organization. I'm even more afraid that people would see the wild looking ditch and think that we're hippies from the city, which certainly has a grain of truth to it. I do not want anyone to look at our house and decide that we do not belong in this community.
In Minneapolis, I would've felt fine about doing something different from the folks around me. In the country though, the house and the land around it do not feel like they are completely mine. Instead, they belong, in part, to the community. When we run into people who have lived in the area for a long time, they know our home. “Oh, the green house!” they exclaim, and then go on to describe other families they have lived there or comment on the changes that we have made. They comment on our chickens and notice some bushes that we have planted. They ask about the new cars parked in the driveway. This house has been a character in their lives for decades, and they feel friendly sense of ownership about it.
They remind me of the truth. This house is been standing here for 110 years, and many families have come and gone during that time. The community and the farmland that surround it have been here for even longer, and before that was the woods, and other communities of people. We are just an afterthought, and even if we live here until we die, the house may still be standing to receive another family. Although we own it, and I am very grateful to own it, the place will never be completely ours.
A person could look at this with an environmental point of view and come to the same conclusion about not fully owning the place. Looking from that point of view, it is our job to spend a short time on earth nurturing the natural communities that sustain us and include us. One very small way of doing that might be to stop mowing the ditch.
In reality, the ditch is only a very small part of our enormous, mowed yard. One neighbor suggested laughingly that we get some sheep, but I think he was only partially kidding. That sounds like fun, and I don't think it would evoke the same shock and disapproval as a wildflower garden in the ditch. But like so many other things, caring for sheep takes organization, money and work, and with the baby coming, I can't imagine getting around to it for at least another several years. God willing, we will still be here, and the house will still be here, and the land will still be here. God willing, the folks who have lived here the longest will still be around to comment on new sheep.
Tuesday, May 3, 2011
Shadows
Regi Haslett-Marroquin tells a story of growing up farming near the rainforests of Guatemala. Weeds sprouted in a day, and even when Regi’s family hung the pulled weeds in the air, their roots continued to grow toward the earth. When he was about eight years old, Regi’s father decided to try some herbicide on the weeds, and it worked. The robust plants turned to mush. Regi remembers his father studying the dead vegetation a couple of days later. He decided the chemicals were too violent to use in the fields where the family grew their food. They never used those chemicals again.
I expect that the fields around us will be sprayed with herbicide within the next couple of weeks when the ground dries out enough. I am waiting for this uneasily, wishing that more people shared the views of Regi’s father.
In the meantime, the skies have been gray, and in some places water lies bright between furrows of turned earth. The wind has been raw. My children have been playing inside for the most part, and my son is engrossed by a huge collection of Star Wars action figures and space ships, saved from my husband’s childhood. Our family room is the site of constant battle.
I wish I felt easy putting an end to this game. With all this talk about guns and shooting, shadows are gathering in my heart. As a survivor of gun violence and other abuse, I know a murky land that lays itself over the rest of my life. Gray vapors hover at the edge of my sight and evaporate when I turn to look at them directly. A dank coolness pools around me and wraps me in fear now and then.
Playing with action figures is a normal part of growing up for lots of kids. My husband thinks it is part of a developmental stage. I don’t want to keep my children from what most people consider to be normal childhood fun. Already, we don’t have a television, and watching a movie is a huge deal in this house. And yet, why is it normal for so many toys to be based on games of murder? Why is it impossible for a family to watch a baseball game on television without seeing people shoot at each other during the commercials? The prevalence of violence makes it feel more awful, not less, and I feel wildly alone and a little off my rocker because I can’t accept this as normal and fine.
The same feeling envelops me as I wait for the neighboring farmers to start spraying the fields. Like Regi’s father, I believe those sprays are violent. Most people feel the sprays are helpful and necessary, and that they prevent the misery of hunger. Perhaps they are deferring some misery, but I feel in my bones that future generations will be repaying that debt with crushingly high interest. I also remember the six-legged frog I held in my hand, and I picture the nearby sign that stands at the beginning of a corn field, honoring a child who died of cancer. Every week or so, someone ties a new stuffed animal to that sign. I feel lonely and even a bit frantic as I think that the collective wisdom of the culture is not keeping us safe.
I know from experience that nothing good will come from staying in a place of fear. So I am holding on to the memory of a dream. In this dream, I am standing at the bottom of a terrible, haunted stairway, its walls covered with peeling yellow wallpaper. The stairway is the symbol of all of the destruction left behind by violence. Fear fixes me to the ground, and I grieve that I will never be able to climb those stairs. I’ve dreamed this over and over, but one night Jesus stood with me at the foot of the stairs. He looked up the stairs, not afraid or even surprised, and then his laughter echoed warm and spacious in that narrow place.
I expect that the fields around us will be sprayed with herbicide within the next couple of weeks when the ground dries out enough. I am waiting for this uneasily, wishing that more people shared the views of Regi’s father.
In the meantime, the skies have been gray, and in some places water lies bright between furrows of turned earth. The wind has been raw. My children have been playing inside for the most part, and my son is engrossed by a huge collection of Star Wars action figures and space ships, saved from my husband’s childhood. Our family room is the site of constant battle.
I wish I felt easy putting an end to this game. With all this talk about guns and shooting, shadows are gathering in my heart. As a survivor of gun violence and other abuse, I know a murky land that lays itself over the rest of my life. Gray vapors hover at the edge of my sight and evaporate when I turn to look at them directly. A dank coolness pools around me and wraps me in fear now and then.
Playing with action figures is a normal part of growing up for lots of kids. My husband thinks it is part of a developmental stage. I don’t want to keep my children from what most people consider to be normal childhood fun. Already, we don’t have a television, and watching a movie is a huge deal in this house. And yet, why is it normal for so many toys to be based on games of murder? Why is it impossible for a family to watch a baseball game on television without seeing people shoot at each other during the commercials? The prevalence of violence makes it feel more awful, not less, and I feel wildly alone and a little off my rocker because I can’t accept this as normal and fine.
The same feeling envelops me as I wait for the neighboring farmers to start spraying the fields. Like Regi’s father, I believe those sprays are violent. Most people feel the sprays are helpful and necessary, and that they prevent the misery of hunger. Perhaps they are deferring some misery, but I feel in my bones that future generations will be repaying that debt with crushingly high interest. I also remember the six-legged frog I held in my hand, and I picture the nearby sign that stands at the beginning of a corn field, honoring a child who died of cancer. Every week or so, someone ties a new stuffed animal to that sign. I feel lonely and even a bit frantic as I think that the collective wisdom of the culture is not keeping us safe.
I know from experience that nothing good will come from staying in a place of fear. So I am holding on to the memory of a dream. In this dream, I am standing at the bottom of a terrible, haunted stairway, its walls covered with peeling yellow wallpaper. The stairway is the symbol of all of the destruction left behind by violence. Fear fixes me to the ground, and I grieve that I will never be able to climb those stairs. I’ve dreamed this over and over, but one night Jesus stood with me at the foot of the stairs. He looked up the stairs, not afraid or even surprised, and then his laughter echoed warm and spacious in that narrow place.
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Our excellent watch dog
The day before Halloween, some friends of ours gave us their dog because they were moving and could not take him with them. We had debated long and hard about whether to accept this dog, which had been bleeding from a foot injury for almost all of his two years. Still, he was a friendly outdoor dog, and we wanted an outdoor dog.
We took the dog to the vet as soon as we could get an appointment, and the vet looked in amazement at his crushed, bleeding foot, which was still open to the bone two years after it had been crushed by a car. She recommended amputating two toes and said we'd need to keep the foot dry for a couple of weeks while it healed. We rigged up a small area in our front porch for his recovery area because he was, after all, an outside dog that had not been potty trained.
It is now April, and the dog's paw has finally healed. For more than five months, I changed bandages on that dog's foot, and he gradually made himself an indoor dog, barging through the barriers we had erected and making it clear that his main goal was in life to hang out within 3 feet of me. On many occasions, I have shreaked and cried as he stood with dogly dignity, peeing a couple quarts onto my floor. At one point, in a frenzy of panic and bad judgement, I tried to stop the pee up at the source while dragging the 75 pound dog outside. I will not do that again.
Ian took on more extra work after school, inspired in large part by the vet bills. This is a heavy weight for him to bear. And I'm still fiddling around with the dog's foot. I have to slip a heavy fabric bag onto it when he goes outside so he doesn't tear up the scar tissue.
We hoped for a good outside dog to help us. On some farms we've visited, dogs are great helpers, keeping the place safer from unwanted guests of all kinds. We really want that kind of help, especially because last year a possum bit me, a skunk ate several ducklings, and a coyote took my favorite cat. I also wanted to know if anyone unexpected came poking around the house, which is located smack dab in the middle of nowhere.
This dog can not help us in these ways. He flees from our cat Myrna, who hisses at him because he offends her principles. Once he silently tried to hide from the cat, wedging himself between the wall and the buffet. It took me a few moments to understand what he was doing. He is also a terrible watch dog. One evening when I was home alone, a friend who doesn't visit often came by to drop off eggs. He slipped through the back door into the dark family room, which I couldn't hear because I was washing dishes. As our friend fumbled for the light, he heard something approaching quietly. When he finally found the light, he saw the dog sitting nearby, wagging its tail and gazing up with gentle brown eyes. I finally learned that our friend was in the house because he shouted out a greeting.
So my big heart really got my family into a mess here.
Except the dog is marvelous. He's sitting beside me right now to keep me company, and I think he is probably the one of the most gentle, cheerful and patient creatures I've ever met. He could be an inspiration for saints. Besides, I like to pet his ears. The ears are satiny and a little darker than his other yellow fur, so it looks like I'm smoothing carmel over butter.
I can't decide if what I've done is ministry or foolishness. I'll probably never know.
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Staying home this year
The summer before my son was born, I stood in front of the historical Quaker meetinghouse at Iowa Yearly Meeting Conservative, watching a crop duster dive over the fields of soybeans across the street. I watched it, musing about how ironic it was that yearly meeting had been working so hard to keep people from wearing perfumes so that it would be safe for people with chemical sensitivities. I did not flee indoors or rage at the injustice of it. I just stood there, thinking, and then headed back to the activities of the yearly meeting.
Worship had ended for the morning, and few dozen Quakers had scattered about the campus of Scattergood Friends School, waiting for lunch. We had just spent the mornings in the bright, plain Quaker meetinghouse, considering business slowly and worshipfully. Even after the time of waiting worship has passed, silence stretches on in the midst of the daily business deliberations. The old meetinghouse has absorbed hundreds of years of silence which nuilt into a palpable presence. The group of people is elderly and sweet and some of them are grounded in generations of Friends' traditions. I feel that when I talk there, I can be heard, and that when I listen I can listen with all my heart. I feel the presence of God intensely in that safe and faithful setting, and I have often been called to vocal ministry.
However, I have developed a problem that makes it harder for me to attend the gatherings. A couple years after my son was born, I started to feel sick almost all the time. It was like trying to live with a low-level stomach flu that sometimes became a debilitating sickness for a day or two. Very gradually, I began to recognize that I was sickened by things like applying sunblock or using contact paper to create supplies for our religious education program. Regular life suddenly seemed full of booby-traps. One of those booby-traps is cropdusting.
When we attended Iowa Yearly Meeting Conservative a couple of years ago, and little planes started buzzing overhead, I got flulike symptoms and had to sleep for a whole day. After all that sleep, I felt somewhat better, but I lost another day to sleep and sickness as soon as I returned home. Maybe I had a virus, but I had experienced very same symptoms over and over again during the previous months. I blamed the cropdusting for that little bout of illness.
The regular doctor said I was getting ill because I'm a survivor of violence and my body overreacts to things that it perceives as dangerous. He said get counseling and do not avoid the things that make me sick. His advice did not sound compelling. An osteopath suggested an outrageously strict diet, but I tried it, and within a week, I started to feel better. I stayed on that diet, and last year, when they started cropdusting at Iowa Yearly Meeting Conservative, I hopped in the car and fled to Iowa City for the day, but I did not lose a day to illness.
This year, the cropdusting will keep me away from that beloved yearly gathering. I am pregnant, and I'm afraid that because I can’t seem to protect myself from these chemicals, then I also can't protect the baby growing inside me. Going to yearly meeting feels like going home in some way. It helps give me strength for the rest of the year. I feel like I offer something special to the yearly meeting, too, and I feel wrong staying away from it. Still, the trip sounds too risky this year.
I feel angry about this, but I think I might've felt even more angry in past years. My faith has grown enough so that at least at this moment, I am more willing to wait eagerly for the window that God always opens when a door is closed. More than going to any gathering, I want to walk in true faith.
Worship had ended for the morning, and few dozen Quakers had scattered about the campus of Scattergood Friends School, waiting for lunch. We had just spent the mornings in the bright, plain Quaker meetinghouse, considering business slowly and worshipfully. Even after the time of waiting worship has passed, silence stretches on in the midst of the daily business deliberations. The old meetinghouse has absorbed hundreds of years of silence which nuilt into a palpable presence. The group of people is elderly and sweet and some of them are grounded in generations of Friends' traditions. I feel that when I talk there, I can be heard, and that when I listen I can listen with all my heart. I feel the presence of God intensely in that safe and faithful setting, and I have often been called to vocal ministry.
However, I have developed a problem that makes it harder for me to attend the gatherings. A couple years after my son was born, I started to feel sick almost all the time. It was like trying to live with a low-level stomach flu that sometimes became a debilitating sickness for a day or two. Very gradually, I began to recognize that I was sickened by things like applying sunblock or using contact paper to create supplies for our religious education program. Regular life suddenly seemed full of booby-traps. One of those booby-traps is cropdusting.
When we attended Iowa Yearly Meeting Conservative a couple of years ago, and little planes started buzzing overhead, I got flulike symptoms and had to sleep for a whole day. After all that sleep, I felt somewhat better, but I lost another day to sleep and sickness as soon as I returned home. Maybe I had a virus, but I had experienced very same symptoms over and over again during the previous months. I blamed the cropdusting for that little bout of illness.
The regular doctor said I was getting ill because I'm a survivor of violence and my body overreacts to things that it perceives as dangerous. He said get counseling and do not avoid the things that make me sick. His advice did not sound compelling. An osteopath suggested an outrageously strict diet, but I tried it, and within a week, I started to feel better. I stayed on that diet, and last year, when they started cropdusting at Iowa Yearly Meeting Conservative, I hopped in the car and fled to Iowa City for the day, but I did not lose a day to illness.
This year, the cropdusting will keep me away from that beloved yearly gathering. I am pregnant, and I'm afraid that because I can’t seem to protect myself from these chemicals, then I also can't protect the baby growing inside me. Going to yearly meeting feels like going home in some way. It helps give me strength for the rest of the year. I feel like I offer something special to the yearly meeting, too, and I feel wrong staying away from it. Still, the trip sounds too risky this year.
I feel angry about this, but I think I might've felt even more angry in past years. My faith has grown enough so that at least at this moment, I am more willing to wait eagerly for the window that God always opens when a door is closed. More than going to any gathering, I want to walk in true faith.
Monday, April 11, 2011
Walking in the fields
While eating breakfast, I started to feel like I should walk around in the fields. I put off doing it until I almost felt as though ants were crawling all over me and could no longer bear to be inside. Stepping over last year's corn stalks, I zigzagged across my 20 acres trying to memorize the dips in the soil where waters still stands between the furrows that were turned last fall. I noticed the sandy places, and the places where the soil is rich and soft as a buttery biscuit dough. Even someone as inexperienced as I am can see the soil is rich and good.
Within me rose a chorus of old voices that say that this land is the best kind of wealth. Maybe I heard my forefathers who farmed rocky soil or died in poverty if they didn’t inherit the farm. Maybe I heard the voices of those who worked land they could never own, or who lost their land to bankers or armies. I don’t know. I am almost frightened by the fervor, and by the suffering that bubbles just beneath such a longing for good land. I am ashamed that I don’t fully understand how to care for this wealth that I have been given.
As I walked, I also became aware again of this child growing in me, and again I experienced it as a light that accompanied me, listening and watching. We stood on the western border of our property and looked into the golden fields of corn that have been standing all winter, waiting to be harvested. The corn fields are vast, and they whisper in the strong wind. I do not understand them, and I am still not sure whether they feel friendly or not, but I feel awash in colors when I stand near them. We walked again and marveled together at a small hunks of rose colored granite that frost brought to the surface of the soil.
Climbing the gentle slope that leads from the field up to our yard, I knew that I need to take this unborn child out to see the soil and sky every day if I can. We need to listen to plants and trees together. I think this is a fabulous idea, but I am still bewildered. My other two children did not appear to me as light and start asking me to do things with them before I’d even made it through half my pregnancy. I'm starting to wonder what kind of child I might be dealing with here.
I am so grateful to be amid fields, balanced between the dreams of those who came before me and the passion of one who is yet to come. Finally, I am able to see this pregnancy as a wildly generous gift. Finally, I am in awe.
Within me rose a chorus of old voices that say that this land is the best kind of wealth. Maybe I heard my forefathers who farmed rocky soil or died in poverty if they didn’t inherit the farm. Maybe I heard the voices of those who worked land they could never own, or who lost their land to bankers or armies. I don’t know. I am almost frightened by the fervor, and by the suffering that bubbles just beneath such a longing for good land. I am ashamed that I don’t fully understand how to care for this wealth that I have been given.
As I walked, I also became aware again of this child growing in me, and again I experienced it as a light that accompanied me, listening and watching. We stood on the western border of our property and looked into the golden fields of corn that have been standing all winter, waiting to be harvested. The corn fields are vast, and they whisper in the strong wind. I do not understand them, and I am still not sure whether they feel friendly or not, but I feel awash in colors when I stand near them. We walked again and marveled together at a small hunks of rose colored granite that frost brought to the surface of the soil.
Climbing the gentle slope that leads from the field up to our yard, I knew that I need to take this unborn child out to see the soil and sky every day if I can. We need to listen to plants and trees together. I think this is a fabulous idea, but I am still bewildered. My other two children did not appear to me as light and start asking me to do things with them before I’d even made it through half my pregnancy. I'm starting to wonder what kind of child I might be dealing with here.
I am so grateful to be amid fields, balanced between the dreams of those who came before me and the passion of one who is yet to come. Finally, I am able to see this pregnancy as a wildly generous gift. Finally, I am in awe.
Thursday, March 31, 2011
The concert
Last week, my fourth-grade daughter played cello in an all-district orchestra concert at the high school. I climbed almost up to the top of the bleachers with my husband, son, mother-in-law, father-in-law and sister-in-law. There we sat, staring down at a basketball court filled young people sitting in folding chairs and holding instruments.
We listened as each grade level performed a couple of songs. Almost all the groups had played when something unusual happened to me. It felt like a panel of white light extended from my legs to my shoulders. I could see the room through the lens of that light. When I did, I was acutely aware of the family around me, especially my son sitting by my side. These people felt solid, strong and warm, like good fertile soil. The full auditorium felt alive as a landscape, and even though the audience was quiet, many bright songs floated in rich layers beneath the melodies of the orchestra.
The brilliance of it all was almost difficult for me to bear. I switched between seeing things as I usually do and seeing them through the lens of this bright panel of light. It was like wearing a pair of sunglasses, lifting them up to peek underneath the lenses, letting them fall back, and then doing it over again. After a while, this got too intense for me, and I was able to make myself stop, although I was still aware of the panel of light.
It seemed to me that the light came from the baby I am carrying. I think it was aware on some level of everything around us, and that is why I could see the room through two separate lenses. In some limited way, I was feeling what it felt.
For the last song of the concert, all the young people played the 1812 overture together. When hundreds of instruments chimed in for the familiar melody, it was so powerful that I started to cry. Then I felt terribly embarrassed about crying. I tried to stop. As I crunched down on myself to keep the tears inside, the panel of light reflected my embarassment.
“You don’t need to crunch down on yourself like that," I told it silently. “Be passionate and brave. I will try to show you how.” I took a deep breath and let the tears fall.
We listened as each grade level performed a couple of songs. Almost all the groups had played when something unusual happened to me. It felt like a panel of white light extended from my legs to my shoulders. I could see the room through the lens of that light. When I did, I was acutely aware of the family around me, especially my son sitting by my side. These people felt solid, strong and warm, like good fertile soil. The full auditorium felt alive as a landscape, and even though the audience was quiet, many bright songs floated in rich layers beneath the melodies of the orchestra.
The brilliance of it all was almost difficult for me to bear. I switched between seeing things as I usually do and seeing them through the lens of this bright panel of light. It was like wearing a pair of sunglasses, lifting them up to peek underneath the lenses, letting them fall back, and then doing it over again. After a while, this got too intense for me, and I was able to make myself stop, although I was still aware of the panel of light.
It seemed to me that the light came from the baby I am carrying. I think it was aware on some level of everything around us, and that is why I could see the room through two separate lenses. In some limited way, I was feeling what it felt.
For the last song of the concert, all the young people played the 1812 overture together. When hundreds of instruments chimed in for the familiar melody, it was so powerful that I started to cry. Then I felt terribly embarrassed about crying. I tried to stop. As I crunched down on myself to keep the tears inside, the panel of light reflected my embarassment.
“You don’t need to crunch down on yourself like that," I told it silently. “Be passionate and brave. I will try to show you how.” I took a deep breath and let the tears fall.
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Squash and Salsa
I was reading about winter squash in the Fedco Seed catalogue. These writers add serious romance to their descriptions. After describing the Sweet Dumpling variety’s “inherent buttery richness and sweet-tangy taste,” the catalogue makes this recommendation: “To experience its sweet dry and memorably rich deep orange flesh, make sure your Dumpling is ripe.”
A dry, academic description of these varieties would cause me to light up as I imagined wild rambling vines with big sweet squash swelling into strange and wonderful shapes under a canopy of leaves. I would picture them emerging, steaming from my oven and then sitting on my dinner table like a symbol of everything in the world that makes me feel grateful.
This year, I want to try the Sibley variety of banana squash. It is apparently slate blue and grows to be a foot long. You aren't supposed to eat it right away though. You have to keep waiting for it throughout the winter as it dries and sweetens while sitting on a shelf. Finally, in January, it will come into its own, the catalog says. In the bleakest months of winter I imagine it will be like sunshine that I can embrace by eating it.
The Winnebago Indians apparently developed this variety, and then the Sibley family faithfully grew it for many generations, finally making its seeds more widely available. I felt thankful to these people and was picturing all these diverse generations enjoying this strange wonderful squash in the middle of winter.
As I read and daydreamed, one of my Zumba albums played Latin dance music in the background, and my favorite salsa song began. It starts with a syncopated riff, and then intricate tropical drums layer themselves over it. Horns join in, measured and powerful, and finally the vocalists top it off with another rhythm sung in percussive Spanish.
I had already been hovering near my capacity for delight, and this song pushed me over the edge. My face and ears grew hot, as they always do when I blush, but instead of heating up and then settling down, they kept feeling warmer. They heated up until they were so uncomfortable that I had to set the catalog down, leave the room, and splash my hands and face in cool water.
I returned to the Fedco catalog and the salsa music with a new sense of clarity: For reasons that only partially understand, we should have a large patch of squash this summer and that strange blue banana squash should be part of it.
A dry, academic description of these varieties would cause me to light up as I imagined wild rambling vines with big sweet squash swelling into strange and wonderful shapes under a canopy of leaves. I would picture them emerging, steaming from my oven and then sitting on my dinner table like a symbol of everything in the world that makes me feel grateful.
This year, I want to try the Sibley variety of banana squash. It is apparently slate blue and grows to be a foot long. You aren't supposed to eat it right away though. You have to keep waiting for it throughout the winter as it dries and sweetens while sitting on a shelf. Finally, in January, it will come into its own, the catalog says. In the bleakest months of winter I imagine it will be like sunshine that I can embrace by eating it.
The Winnebago Indians apparently developed this variety, and then the Sibley family faithfully grew it for many generations, finally making its seeds more widely available. I felt thankful to these people and was picturing all these diverse generations enjoying this strange wonderful squash in the middle of winter.
As I read and daydreamed, one of my Zumba albums played Latin dance music in the background, and my favorite salsa song began. It starts with a syncopated riff, and then intricate tropical drums layer themselves over it. Horns join in, measured and powerful, and finally the vocalists top it off with another rhythm sung in percussive Spanish.
I had already been hovering near my capacity for delight, and this song pushed me over the edge. My face and ears grew hot, as they always do when I blush, but instead of heating up and then settling down, they kept feeling warmer. They heated up until they were so uncomfortable that I had to set the catalog down, leave the room, and splash my hands and face in cool water.
I returned to the Fedco catalog and the salsa music with a new sense of clarity: For reasons that only partially understand, we should have a large patch of squash this summer and that strange blue banana squash should be part of it.
Thursday, March 10, 2011
Waking up
On Tuesday, I woke up to a world that seemed more colorful than it had been when I went to bed the night before. A fog had lifted behind my eyes, and I could think clearly again. It was like waking up from several weeks of absence instead of waking up from a night of sleep. My first trimester officially ends just about now, so the hormone haze must be lifting.
On Wednesday, I was driving home, and my eyes were drawn to a steep little hill were some oak trees grew in a patch of wildness surrounded by farm fields. This has happened before, in other places. Groups of oak trees growing on undisturbed land force themselves into my attention. My head turns towards the trees, moved by the same reflex that makes a pedestrian suddenly turn to meet my eyes when I watch her silently from behind the wheel of my car. I do not understand this, but when I am drawn to look at the trees, I experience somber expansiveness. I experience grit, and I experience light. I experience something I can only liken to the sound of a voice, and every time my eyes are drawn to a hill full of oak trees, I hear the same aged voice again.
On Thursday morning, my daughter called from her bed, "I have not heard that birdsong all winter." By late morning, the trees outside my house had become a waterfall of chirps and trills. I cannot identify birds, but some of the songs reminded me of the redwinged blackbirds that lived in the cattails around my pond when I was a child. Their dark bodies in the tops of the trees looked like fat buds swelling out of the delicate fringe of branches. I counted 114 of them.
Throughout the day, I cast glances out the window at the woods across the street, aware that when I did this, I felt a sense of vulnerability. I think I am being asked to hold the woods in prayer during a tender time for them. This is unexpected. I have been wondering if I'm hearing my own vulnerable condition reflected by the woods. Maybe not, though. Maybe even the first stirring of spring feels like nausea, fog and uncertainty instead of a miracle.
On Wednesday, I was driving home, and my eyes were drawn to a steep little hill were some oak trees grew in a patch of wildness surrounded by farm fields. This has happened before, in other places. Groups of oak trees growing on undisturbed land force themselves into my attention. My head turns towards the trees, moved by the same reflex that makes a pedestrian suddenly turn to meet my eyes when I watch her silently from behind the wheel of my car. I do not understand this, but when I am drawn to look at the trees, I experience somber expansiveness. I experience grit, and I experience light. I experience something I can only liken to the sound of a voice, and every time my eyes are drawn to a hill full of oak trees, I hear the same aged voice again.
On Thursday morning, my daughter called from her bed, "I have not heard that birdsong all winter." By late morning, the trees outside my house had become a waterfall of chirps and trills. I cannot identify birds, but some of the songs reminded me of the redwinged blackbirds that lived in the cattails around my pond when I was a child. Their dark bodies in the tops of the trees looked like fat buds swelling out of the delicate fringe of branches. I counted 114 of them.
Throughout the day, I cast glances out the window at the woods across the street, aware that when I did this, I felt a sense of vulnerability. I think I am being asked to hold the woods in prayer during a tender time for them. This is unexpected. I have been wondering if I'm hearing my own vulnerable condition reflected by the woods. Maybe not, though. Maybe even the first stirring of spring feels like nausea, fog and uncertainty instead of a miracle.
Saturday, March 5, 2011
I love this town
For the last 10 months, I’ve been teaching Latin dance-based fitness classes at various places around town. My classes are popular among good-humored women who are 50 or older, and so when I teach, I feel like I’m sharing something joyful with extended family. We do Salsa and the Cumbia, and all sorts of dances that involve shaking our hips in a manner that is new to most folks in my class. I dance my heart out, trying to give everyone in the class permission to do the same.
A few days ago, one of my dancers said she was finally satisfied with a hip sway that she’d been trying for almost six months. Her sister, who is also in the class, asked her how she did it, and she replied that it was the same movement she used when a cow leaned against her and trapped her while she was milking. She demonstrated, thrusting her hips quickly from side to side and calling, “Move over!”
I feel like I’ve really come home.
A few days ago, one of my dancers said she was finally satisfied with a hip sway that she’d been trying for almost six months. Her sister, who is also in the class, asked her how she did it, and she replied that it was the same movement she used when a cow leaned against her and trapped her while she was milking. She demonstrated, thrusting her hips quickly from side to side and calling, “Move over!”
I feel like I’ve really come home.
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
Snowmobiles
Miniature “yield” signs barely peek over the snow on each side of our driveway. At the start of the season, they stood more than 3 feet tall on iron posts, but during the snowy winter, the ditch has filled until only the red and white triangles are visible. It looks as though the signs are tucked into the snow with one corner and secured that way.
The signs are for the snowmobiles that cruise down our ditches. I am not sure how many of the drivers actually see the yield signs, especially on Saturday nights. Little troops of them, approach single file in the dark, looking like bright points of light speeding towards us in the dark. They gather speed in the ditch then vault up the steep little slope that leads up to our driveway. They go airborne. They soar across our drive, thump down on the other side, and speed away down into the ditch in a fury of noise and headlights.
After it snows, a John Deere tractor with tracks instead of wheels laboriously drives down the ditch during the afternoon, dragging some kind of implement behind it to groom the trail. The implement levels the little walls of white that build up along the edges of our driveway. As the tractor heads back down the steep slope from our driveway into our ditch, the implement often goes askew. A patient looking man often hops out of the cab without a jacket, makes an adjustment to the implement, and dutifully pushes on towards the south.
In spite of the care that goes into preparing their trail, the snowmobiles often sound kind of cranky, like children complaining about a home-cooked dinner. When I am outside, I hear small engines whine back and forth in complaining phrases punctuated by silence. Sometimes they join in an undulating chorus that is almost like the howling of coyotes, except it is lower and less ethereal.
After listening to the howling snowmobiles all winter, I again heard the actual coyotes. I am still afraid of those animals, and I am still bitter because I suspect that they ate my beloved cat. When I heard them though, my heart jumped with gladness for the first time, and the eerie tones made me feel more alive. Before I could think, I spoke to the coyotes: “Thank God you're still here.”
The signs are for the snowmobiles that cruise down our ditches. I am not sure how many of the drivers actually see the yield signs, especially on Saturday nights. Little troops of them, approach single file in the dark, looking like bright points of light speeding towards us in the dark. They gather speed in the ditch then vault up the steep little slope that leads up to our driveway. They go airborne. They soar across our drive, thump down on the other side, and speed away down into the ditch in a fury of noise and headlights.
After it snows, a John Deere tractor with tracks instead of wheels laboriously drives down the ditch during the afternoon, dragging some kind of implement behind it to groom the trail. The implement levels the little walls of white that build up along the edges of our driveway. As the tractor heads back down the steep slope from our driveway into our ditch, the implement often goes askew. A patient looking man often hops out of the cab without a jacket, makes an adjustment to the implement, and dutifully pushes on towards the south.
In spite of the care that goes into preparing their trail, the snowmobiles often sound kind of cranky, like children complaining about a home-cooked dinner. When I am outside, I hear small engines whine back and forth in complaining phrases punctuated by silence. Sometimes they join in an undulating chorus that is almost like the howling of coyotes, except it is lower and less ethereal.
After listening to the howling snowmobiles all winter, I again heard the actual coyotes. I am still afraid of those animals, and I am still bitter because I suspect that they ate my beloved cat. When I heard them though, my heart jumped with gladness for the first time, and the eerie tones made me feel more alive. Before I could think, I spoke to the coyotes: “Thank God you're still here.”
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
A whole conversation
A couple weeks ago, I went to the woods across the street and stood in the snow, listening. I told the woods that I loved them, and I rested in the peace that I feel among the trees.
My mind wandered, and I realized that for more than half of my adult life, I have been totally financially dependent on my husband. Although this seems like the best choice for our family, it weighs on me. I had been looking forward to developing our farm and bringing in some more money, but now it looks like that plan will be delayed for several years while I give most of my energy to mothering.
"You don't make money either," I told the trees offhandedly. Then something completely new happened. The trees answered me, quickly, in a way that I could understand.
"That's right," they said. "We don't make any money. But we make songs." I nodded. I hear the songs when I listen carefully. They vibrate up to the sky like chords played on an enormous guitar. "You make songs too," they said.
"We make light," they continued. I nodded again, because I have seen in this light as well. "You make light, too," they told me. "And that is enough. It is more than enough."
If this had happened several years ago, I might've been terrified, but I wasn't. If the trees were giving sage advice, I wanted to make the most of it, so I asked a question that has been weighing on us for a few years.
"What do you think we should do with our farm? What should we grow?" I asked. I waited, but if they had any advice, I could not understand it. I was starting to feel kind of excited.
"You're getting a little riled up here," the trees said. "You can be more like us. Stand tall and let the peace flow through you." I did my best, and again I felt the peace of the trees soothing and strengthening me. I decided it was probably time to go home and took a few steps in that direction, but then another thought occurred to me.
"Was it wrong to ask you the question about the farm?" I asked. "When should I be talking to you, and when should I be praying to God?"
"It is very important to praise God," the trees said. "Feel the ground and how solid it is. God is like that. Praise God as you touch the ground. Now look up at the sky and feel the power and joy that trembles there. Praise God like that. Now go home."
I thanked them, went home, and have not gone back there since that day. I will though. I'll go back.
My mind wandered, and I realized that for more than half of my adult life, I have been totally financially dependent on my husband. Although this seems like the best choice for our family, it weighs on me. I had been looking forward to developing our farm and bringing in some more money, but now it looks like that plan will be delayed for several years while I give most of my energy to mothering.
"You don't make money either," I told the trees offhandedly. Then something completely new happened. The trees answered me, quickly, in a way that I could understand.
"That's right," they said. "We don't make any money. But we make songs." I nodded. I hear the songs when I listen carefully. They vibrate up to the sky like chords played on an enormous guitar. "You make songs too," they said.
"We make light," they continued. I nodded again, because I have seen in this light as well. "You make light, too," they told me. "And that is enough. It is more than enough."
If this had happened several years ago, I might've been terrified, but I wasn't. If the trees were giving sage advice, I wanted to make the most of it, so I asked a question that has been weighing on us for a few years.
"What do you think we should do with our farm? What should we grow?" I asked. I waited, but if they had any advice, I could not understand it. I was starting to feel kind of excited.
"You're getting a little riled up here," the trees said. "You can be more like us. Stand tall and let the peace flow through you." I did my best, and again I felt the peace of the trees soothing and strengthening me. I decided it was probably time to go home and took a few steps in that direction, but then another thought occurred to me.
"Was it wrong to ask you the question about the farm?" I asked. "When should I be talking to you, and when should I be praying to God?"
"It is very important to praise God," the trees said. "Feel the ground and how solid it is. God is like that. Praise God as you touch the ground. Now look up at the sky and feel the power and joy that trembles there. Praise God like that. Now go home."
I thanked them, went home, and have not gone back there since that day. I will though. I'll go back.
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Richly blessed
A couple months ago, I was marveling at how big my daughter has grown and how much we share in common. Because she's here, I often have a perceptive, artistic little lady in the house as a companion, and I am so grateful for that. I was remembering the day I found out I was pregnant with her and thinking that I had no idea what a gift I was being given. I decided that if I ever were pregnant again, I would at least have a clue that I was richly blessed.
Except right after that, I found out that I actually was pregnant, and I am not feeling richly blessed. Intellectually, I'd agree that I am, but emotionally, I'm not there yet. Mostly, I just feel exhausted.
Maybe this is part of being human. We often can't keep up with our blessings.
Except right after that, I found out that I actually was pregnant, and I am not feeling richly blessed. Intellectually, I'd agree that I am, but emotionally, I'm not there yet. Mostly, I just feel exhausted.
Maybe this is part of being human. We often can't keep up with our blessings.
Monday, January 31, 2011
Barbecued chicken wings
I wanted to take something delicious to the Sustainable Farming Association potluck Saturday. Once, because I forgot that a farm tour also included a potluck, I arrived with a bag of potato chips that I bought at a gas station. I am still trying to live down the shame of it. These potlucks are a showcase of delicious homegrown foods like organic sausage and expertly cooked heirloom beans and pickled beets and freshly baked bread.
We sold almost all of our chicken from the past season, but we still had a few packages of wings down in the freezer. I found a promising barbecue wing recipe that I could cook in the crockpot, so I rose early on Saturday morning and started to stir up an exciting concoction, even breaking out the cooking wine and the Worcestershire sauce. Right before I had to leave to teach my fitness class, I popped the top on the pot and predicted that it would be ready just in time.
When I returned a couple hours later, I opened the door of my home and inhaled deeply to gauge the progress of the wings. At exactly this point, my morning sickness kicked in. The smell of barbecue inhabited my home like an ogre, and I stood in the doorway aghast, wondering whether I should just go back outside. I knew that the wings probably smelled good to any normal person, but I'm no longer a normal person. I am hacking my way through the first trimester of pregnancy. A strong smell is almost enough to defeat me.
I made myself enter the house and act pleasant, but I was almost relieved to hear that my daughter had woken up with a terrible headache and was still in bed upstairs. I tore upstairs to see her, and as I expected, the smell was not strong up there. While I was allegedly comforting my daughter, I was really working up the nerve to go back downstairs.
Finally, I felt strong enough to face down my enemy. I made my way down the steps with a determined smile, and my husband suggested that I check on the wings because the potluck time would soon be upon us. He did not realize what he was asking me to do. Still, I felt that I was the best person for the job, so I approached the pot, breathing through my mouth to bypass my whole sense of smell. Then, as I stood before my slow cooker, a little bit of the odor sneaked past my defenses and set my mouth watering so much that I wondered if I should run to the bathroom.
The crisis passed. With trepidation, I opened the lid and dipped a spoon into the mass of saucy wings. They actually look pretty good. I set one on a plate and cut into it with a fork. Then I picked it up and bit it. It was fabulous. I dished about five more wings onto my plate and lit into them, thankful that I cooked up such a full pot. Once my stomach had some good food in it, the nausea evaporated, and the barbecue smell was no problem.
I stayed home from the Sustainable Farming Association meeting and potluck to take care of our sick daughter, but my husband reported that many people helped themselves to seconds from our crockpot. He thought my wings were the best thing there.
I think this is a good sign. Right now, with this pregnancy, I am stuck in a haze of nausea, uncertainty, and even dread. However, I believe that I will eventually make my way through to the meat of the situation, and when I do, I will tear into it with gusto.
We sold almost all of our chicken from the past season, but we still had a few packages of wings down in the freezer. I found a promising barbecue wing recipe that I could cook in the crockpot, so I rose early on Saturday morning and started to stir up an exciting concoction, even breaking out the cooking wine and the Worcestershire sauce. Right before I had to leave to teach my fitness class, I popped the top on the pot and predicted that it would be ready just in time.
When I returned a couple hours later, I opened the door of my home and inhaled deeply to gauge the progress of the wings. At exactly this point, my morning sickness kicked in. The smell of barbecue inhabited my home like an ogre, and I stood in the doorway aghast, wondering whether I should just go back outside. I knew that the wings probably smelled good to any normal person, but I'm no longer a normal person. I am hacking my way through the first trimester of pregnancy. A strong smell is almost enough to defeat me.
I made myself enter the house and act pleasant, but I was almost relieved to hear that my daughter had woken up with a terrible headache and was still in bed upstairs. I tore upstairs to see her, and as I expected, the smell was not strong up there. While I was allegedly comforting my daughter, I was really working up the nerve to go back downstairs.
Finally, I felt strong enough to face down my enemy. I made my way down the steps with a determined smile, and my husband suggested that I check on the wings because the potluck time would soon be upon us. He did not realize what he was asking me to do. Still, I felt that I was the best person for the job, so I approached the pot, breathing through my mouth to bypass my whole sense of smell. Then, as I stood before my slow cooker, a little bit of the odor sneaked past my defenses and set my mouth watering so much that I wondered if I should run to the bathroom.
The crisis passed. With trepidation, I opened the lid and dipped a spoon into the mass of saucy wings. They actually look pretty good. I set one on a plate and cut into it with a fork. Then I picked it up and bit it. It was fabulous. I dished about five more wings onto my plate and lit into them, thankful that I cooked up such a full pot. Once my stomach had some good food in it, the nausea evaporated, and the barbecue smell was no problem.
I stayed home from the Sustainable Farming Association meeting and potluck to take care of our sick daughter, but my husband reported that many people helped themselves to seconds from our crockpot. He thought my wings were the best thing there.
I think this is a good sign. Right now, with this pregnancy, I am stuck in a haze of nausea, uncertainty, and even dread. However, I believe that I will eventually make my way through to the meat of the situation, and when I do, I will tear into it with gusto.
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Carrying a light
A couple weeks ago, while sitting in meeting for worship, I felt a white light touch down in my head, and then light up beneath my belly button. It was clearly a blessing, and that the time, I thought that it could be a sign that I am pregnant or alternately that our family of four is complete and whole.
The second interpretation was far more likely, but the first one was accurate. We are in shock.
This pregnancy is very new, and I am fully aware that one half to a one third of all pregnancies end in miscarriage. At this point, it seems premature to say that I am having a baby, but I want to share that I am carrying light within me. Whatever else happens in the next year, this experience of the light will always be real to me, and true.
Like in my other two pregnancies, I often feel as though I am caught between two worlds. Sometimes, I float just a little bit out of my body. Sometimes, I feel the company of something wonderful and warm and strong and female. Sometimes, I believe I see things the way the new light within me might see them, and my children, standing beside me in the kitchen, light up like lanterns. They are a source of comfort and guidance.
A message that I received a couple weeks ago is coming into clearer focus as well. The message was that I am not able to do anything very well except to love, and it seems that I have a new opportunity to love here. This opportunity comes at the exclusion of other opportunities. We had planned to sell our chickens at a farmer’s market, but we are not sure we should be planning to do that anymore. We had been talking about a five-year plan for the farm, and now the most basic agreements about that are in question. Mothering babies has been very hard on my health in the past, and this time around, should I get to that point, I will be older and even less healthy than I was with my other two children. I feel as though I cannot see any farther into the future than the next two months. In some way, we are grieving.
At this time, I feel as though my thoughts and emotions are shared by the new light within me, and so I'm doing my best to be reassuring. I picture myself like the Statue of Liberty – solid and bearing the torch of hope. The image feels a bit overwrought, but it keeps coming to mind, so I'm not going to argue with it. More helpful than that is the sensation I had last night of being accompanied by women and bathed from head to foot in light. I know I am nourished by something beyond myself.
(Hi Friends! I’m going to end this essay with a note. It feels so important for me to share this writing with you, and I know that it will be easier for me to keep writing what I really need to write if I can keep posting it on the blog. At the same time, I’m feeling really tender and confused! This was not planned. I really cannot picture myself with another baby, and trying to do so is painful at this point. So even if a person felt like offering congratulations, I’m not at a place where I can receive them well. Prayer would be great, though. I’m always up for some of that.)
The second interpretation was far more likely, but the first one was accurate. We are in shock.
This pregnancy is very new, and I am fully aware that one half to a one third of all pregnancies end in miscarriage. At this point, it seems premature to say that I am having a baby, but I want to share that I am carrying light within me. Whatever else happens in the next year, this experience of the light will always be real to me, and true.
Like in my other two pregnancies, I often feel as though I am caught between two worlds. Sometimes, I float just a little bit out of my body. Sometimes, I feel the company of something wonderful and warm and strong and female. Sometimes, I believe I see things the way the new light within me might see them, and my children, standing beside me in the kitchen, light up like lanterns. They are a source of comfort and guidance.
A message that I received a couple weeks ago is coming into clearer focus as well. The message was that I am not able to do anything very well except to love, and it seems that I have a new opportunity to love here. This opportunity comes at the exclusion of other opportunities. We had planned to sell our chickens at a farmer’s market, but we are not sure we should be planning to do that anymore. We had been talking about a five-year plan for the farm, and now the most basic agreements about that are in question. Mothering babies has been very hard on my health in the past, and this time around, should I get to that point, I will be older and even less healthy than I was with my other two children. I feel as though I cannot see any farther into the future than the next two months. In some way, we are grieving.
At this time, I feel as though my thoughts and emotions are shared by the new light within me, and so I'm doing my best to be reassuring. I picture myself like the Statue of Liberty – solid and bearing the torch of hope. The image feels a bit overwrought, but it keeps coming to mind, so I'm not going to argue with it. More helpful than that is the sensation I had last night of being accompanied by women and bathed from head to foot in light. I know I am nourished by something beyond myself.
(Hi Friends! I’m going to end this essay with a note. It feels so important for me to share this writing with you, and I know that it will be easier for me to keep writing what I really need to write if I can keep posting it on the blog. At the same time, I’m feeling really tender and confused! This was not planned. I really cannot picture myself with another baby, and trying to do so is painful at this point. So even if a person felt like offering congratulations, I’m not at a place where I can receive them well. Prayer would be great, though. I’m always up for some of that.)
Sunday, January 23, 2011
The daughter of actors
Ever since I was a child, I knew that the inner life was real. My folks, who were both actors, often practiced lines in the living room, talking animatedly to the air and nodding in response to unseen companions. I was drawn right into this. By the time I turned 6, it was often my to job read along with scripts and be sure my parents were saying their lines correctly. I also understood from a very early age that my family's financial security came from my father's ability to captivate people and move them. The crests and swells of other people's emotions were not ethereal, passing fancies. They paid for our home, our cars, and later on, they paid for my expensive college education.
Most performers can feel the emotions of a crowd, and they know clearly when an audience has offered up its heart, and when it bristles with impatience. Even skilled, experienced performers sometimes fail to move their audiences, but my parents could not afford to do that very often. They were not abstract artists. Their success depended on whether people could understand them and feel what they felt. This was perfectly clear to me from an early age.
My first language is still the charged sparks of awareness and emotion, the language in which my father earned his living. In addition to feeling the emotions of an audience, as most performers do, I feel smilar electric movements almost whenever I am able to quiet myself and listen. Mostly, I feel the movement of the Holy Spirit and I feel the almost magnetic awareness of plants, but I know that the world is teeming with more voices and motion.
Listening to those voices is my job. This became clear to me over and over again, even before my faith was deep enough to guide me. In partifular, I remember one night many years ago when I left an audition on a summer evening and found that I had been unaware of a thunderstorm on the horizon. The fragrant air was heavy, and the pink-tinged sky was swollen and streaked with lightning. Nothing was more important on that night than standing in awe of that storm, but I had missed much of it. I knew at that time that if I could not find a way to greater intimacy with the natural world, part of my heart would always be broken.
So I am trying to become a farmer, in part because I don't want to miss another thunderstorm. I am hoping that the disappointments, joys and exhaustion of trying to work with the land will give me intimacy with the fields and skies. It is a messy, often painful intimacy, but I am willing to let it change me, and I am willing to be wrong. I am also willing to be filled with wild, inexhaustible joy, and sometimes, already, I am.
It is becoming clear to me that the other part of my job is to write about my experiences of the Spirit. On a gut level, this feels dangerous. I know that when I write about listening to plants, then many people writes me off as nutty before they understand what I'm trying to say. A voice rises up from the place where my spine meets my skull and shrieks that this means starvation and abandonment! I hush that voice and roll my eyes before lamenting that nobody can benefit from writing that they cannot understand.
When I told these things to my gentle husband, he almost scolded me. “You are having a deep spiritual experience, and you are worried about whether you are being a good enough artist?” he asked, and then he pointed out that arts and ego can be entwined. I knew he was right. In the Bible, too, I found a subtle rebuke as I landed on the passage that said not everyone can understand spiritual messages. It doesn't mention anywhere in there that a message should be silenced because it might not be understood.
I am so grateful that I grew up as the daughter of actors, but I believe God has called me to other work, and so reluctantly, I am opening my tight grasp to let the wind blow away a little bit of what I thought was wisdom. Bit by bit, as I let go, I find myself less afraid.
Most performers can feel the emotions of a crowd, and they know clearly when an audience has offered up its heart, and when it bristles with impatience. Even skilled, experienced performers sometimes fail to move their audiences, but my parents could not afford to do that very often. They were not abstract artists. Their success depended on whether people could understand them and feel what they felt. This was perfectly clear to me from an early age.
My first language is still the charged sparks of awareness and emotion, the language in which my father earned his living. In addition to feeling the emotions of an audience, as most performers do, I feel smilar electric movements almost whenever I am able to quiet myself and listen. Mostly, I feel the movement of the Holy Spirit and I feel the almost magnetic awareness of plants, but I know that the world is teeming with more voices and motion.
Listening to those voices is my job. This became clear to me over and over again, even before my faith was deep enough to guide me. In partifular, I remember one night many years ago when I left an audition on a summer evening and found that I had been unaware of a thunderstorm on the horizon. The fragrant air was heavy, and the pink-tinged sky was swollen and streaked with lightning. Nothing was more important on that night than standing in awe of that storm, but I had missed much of it. I knew at that time that if I could not find a way to greater intimacy with the natural world, part of my heart would always be broken.
So I am trying to become a farmer, in part because I don't want to miss another thunderstorm. I am hoping that the disappointments, joys and exhaustion of trying to work with the land will give me intimacy with the fields and skies. It is a messy, often painful intimacy, but I am willing to let it change me, and I am willing to be wrong. I am also willing to be filled with wild, inexhaustible joy, and sometimes, already, I am.
It is becoming clear to me that the other part of my job is to write about my experiences of the Spirit. On a gut level, this feels dangerous. I know that when I write about listening to plants, then many people writes me off as nutty before they understand what I'm trying to say. A voice rises up from the place where my spine meets my skull and shrieks that this means starvation and abandonment! I hush that voice and roll my eyes before lamenting that nobody can benefit from writing that they cannot understand.
When I told these things to my gentle husband, he almost scolded me. “You are having a deep spiritual experience, and you are worried about whether you are being a good enough artist?” he asked, and then he pointed out that arts and ego can be entwined. I knew he was right. In the Bible, too, I found a subtle rebuke as I landed on the passage that said not everyone can understand spiritual messages. It doesn't mention anywhere in there that a message should be silenced because it might not be understood.
I am so grateful that I grew up as the daughter of actors, but I believe God has called me to other work, and so reluctantly, I am opening my tight grasp to let the wind blow away a little bit of what I thought was wisdom. Bit by bit, as I let go, I find myself less afraid.
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