Visiting the woods

As my husband and I sat in worship before bed, I nodded off and dreamed that I was the main character in the book The Chosen. I was in a powerful scene near the end of the book, and my father was gravely explaining that when someone asks to speak with me, it is very important to honor the request. I felt ashamed for failing to do this and woke up with a jerk of my head. Disoriented from my tiny nap, I found myself promising that I would do better, and that I would visit the woods that had been asking to speak with me. It took a few moments to realize the full implications of this. By that time, I was fully awake and able to dismiss the message as a strange dream.

A couple days later, I woke in the morning wrapped in the memory of another dream. A very patient and fatherly figure told me that while it was true that I could hear God in the woods, and that it was wonderful, I wasn't actually very good at it. The only thing I do really well was to love. I am not certain that I became a more loving person because of the advice, but I resolved to visit the hundred-acre woods across the street from my house.

The next day, the wind chill was well below zero. I worked around the house and kept postponing the time when I would bundle up to stand among the trees. Finally, I went out to get the mail, but almost without deciding to, I walked right past the mailbox and across the street. I crunched over the top of deep snow that lay on the meadow, and tucked myself just a few feet inside the border of the woods.

There, in a charged silence that I have only experienced in the presence of many trees, I stood and breathed. I smelled the light scent of snow which draped over darkened branches and blanketed the ground, imprinted with tracks. I felt tremendously grateful, and then I began to feel other things as well. Like I sometimes do during meeting for worship, I began to shake and then cry. I felt the presence of people who knew the woods and who had been colored by its charged silence and by its patterns of branches until the people and the woods were married with a bond more powerful than death. Then the woods burst into a violet radiance all around me, as though they were suddenly filled with a glowing mist. The delicate branches that form the upper canopy seemed especially bright.

I had to leave. I stayed away for many days, but often thought of the woods and their purple treasure. Finally, I went back a couple days ago and stood again within the fringes of the trees, peeking over my shoulder so I would know when the school bus pulled up in front of my house to drop off my children. I did not see violet light again. Mostly, I felt the tremors of my own busy life vibrating all around my body and running interference. I just stood and watched the snow fall in the woods, quiet and holy.

Cutting up chickens

I spent yesterday afternoon and evening cutting up chickens. First, at a workshop about poultry health, a veterinarian from the University taught us to perform autopsies on chickens with the goal of protecting the rest of the flock from illness. When the practical portion of the workshop came, my husband and I donned gloves and plastic aprons and cut into the dead chicken that had been flopped onto the table in front of us.

It was a hen that had been culled from a large conventional laying operation and then donated to the University for our workshop. You could tell that she had always lived in a cage because her claws were so long they were wavy and reminded me of some strange variety of hair. This chicken did not have much chance to walk around in her life. The vet said that she had laid maybe 300 eggs in her two-year life. Her breastbone was very slightly curved with a variety of osteoporosis because she had been putting calcium from her body into her eggs to form the shells. According to the vet, this chicken might have had a couple of good laying years ahead of her, but all the hens are culled at the same age.

We cut up the chicken as the vet told us and examined all her organs. I had not really been looking forward to this, but I was surprised by the gratitude that I felt as I learned the details of the way her body lived. When we began to discuss her reproductive system, I knew I was in the presence of something holy. Within her rested half a dozen egg yolks already quite large, and dozens if not hundreds of tiny buds that would have become yolks in time. It was like looking at the place where spirit could become flesh. I was humbled to think that even though this bird had lived in such a confined and unnatural situation, the force of life was pushing through her with vigor.

As soon as the workshop was finished, I sped to my friend’s house to help cut a bunch of his whole chickens into ready-to-cook parts so they could fit in his freezer. While chatting with friends, I tried to find the perfect place to separate the drumstick from the thigh without applying too much force or poking around tediously for the joint. I felt the size of the breasts and sliced them from the keel bone and ribs.

Unbeknownst to me, my hands had become obsessed with the job. The next morning, when my children came to snuggle me, I felt the muscles under their skin and found myself matter-of-factly assessing the size of the meat there just as I had judged the size of the chicken breasts. The same thing happened when I patted my husband. It was not a romantic thought. A bit later, when my husband asked me what I was thinking, I answered honestly. I was wondering what would be the most efficient way to cut through my knee and separate my calf from my thigh. (Probably it would be easiest to start from the inner back corner so it would be easier to slip the knife between the bones.) It did not feel terribly creepy to me at the time, just practical.

This evening, when I told my story to folks at worship group, one friend looked queasy, another said I could skip our parting hug this week, and one exclaimed with delight, “Oh! You're a kinesthetic learner! You learn with your hands!” He is right, of course. With my hands, I am learning about how to handle chicken, and I'm also learning about the art of living in a vulnerable body that will eventually fail. I am learning about the kinship of all living things, and I am learning that the sacred extends into messy minutia, even during times of deprivation and destruction. When spring comes, and we are raising chickens again, I never want to grow so busy or distracted that I forget my gratitude to them.

Planning

The snow is falling. Big, lacy flakes make the woods across the street look like a smoky gray blur, and they show up bright against the dark maple trees in my front yard. I watch them through the window as I sit at the computer trying to draw up farm plans for next year. It is a task that I would rather avoid, but it is January, a month of no excuses. For a short window of time, I am free from pressing outdoor jobs or looming holidays, so here I sit.

Today, I have been researching how much it would cost to soup up the truck with batteries to power a freezer so we can take our chickens to a farmer's market. (It costs about $1500!) I have also been sizing up my courage as we get ready to press more of our dream out of the realm of the ethereal and into the muddy world of exhaustion and tight finances and machines that break down. It makes me wince.

It feels right though. I am praying for humility and for the ability to set fear aside so I can better hear the instructions of the Boss. That is more than enough.

My agnostic elder

My mother says that after decades of feeling troubled by other people's opinions, she has reached an age of freedom and no longer really cares what they think. I have not reached that state yet, I told her, but I hope I will someday. Right now, I am feeling painfully awkward about the last message I delivered in Quaker worship.

Mom, a self-proclaimed agnostic who has never attended a meeting for worship, listened supportively as I told the story. In silent worship a few days ago, I felt a sense of something rising all around me. It was flowing from the floor to the ceiling with the power of a river. “Maybe this has something to do with the ascension,” I told myself, but that did not feel right at all. “Maybe I am supposed to stand up and deliver a message,” I thought, and this felt right, but I sat testing the feeling for a very long time with my heart pounding before I let that wild river carry me up slowly to standing.

When I got up there, I had nothing to say, but I let my hands keep rising up. Then I stood there moving my arms along with the motion that I felt around us. It seemed like I did this for a very long time, and I feared that I heard someone sigh impatiently. I started to shake, and tears started falling down my cheeks, and I wished fervently for some words. Finally I recieved some words of thanks and praise and devotion, but after they were delivered, I was not certain that the message was really done. I moved my hands some more and finally sat down.

Instead of feeling excruciatingly awkward when I think back on this, I wish I could say to myself: “I had a powerful and mysterious experience with the Spirit in worship this week, and I tried very earnestly to be faithful to it. What a blessing!”

“There!” my mom responded. “You said it! See? That’s great. Just let it go at that now.”

“But Mom!” I said. “Nobody else does that kind of thing!”

“Well, then!” said my mom. “Maybe it's high time somebody did.”

The blizzard and the willow

During the blizzard on Saturday afternoon, my husband and son started pulling on jackets and acting as though they were going to go outside.

"I'd better go with you," I said. "I am supposed to go out to the fields."

"I don't think you're going to get to the fields," my husband said. He was right. Standing on the deck felt like enough of a wilderness experience to me. The snow was falling hard, and each flake made a quiet, sharp sound as it hit the hood of my jacket. The wind was so cold that it hurt bits of bare skin around my eyes that I had not been able to cover up. It rushed between our parked vehicles and made huge snowdrifts in front of our cars and trucks. White plumes came whistling off the peak of each drift.

My son crouched down and busily started digging paths through the snow. He was joyfully engrossed, and eventually headed out for his fort behind the garage, but we called him back because we did not want him to disappear from our sight. As a child I used to be able to entertain myself like that outside, but it does not come as easily to me now, and so I busied myself carrying boxes into the house from one of our cars. Like my son, I wanted to be doing something purposeful while I spent more time outside.

Carrying those boxes was tough. I had to lift up my legs high to trudge through the deep snow, and the wind had turned deadly cold. It hissed ominously through the trees to my north. With the last box in my hands, I thought disapprovingly, "This is really overdone. This clearly goes beyond the limits of good taste.” Right away, I was shocked by my arrogance. It doesn't seem right to take a superior attitude with a blizzard.

At that point, I felt what I can best describe as a change in pressure just to the east. Instinctively, I looked in that direction and saw the huge weeping willow tree that stands just outside my kitchen window. I waited there with a box in my arms, and I understood that I was being asked go to that tree. After setting the last box inside, I trudged around the house and found a place for myself just inside the fringes of the willow's swinging branches.

I have wanted to feel a connection with this enormous tree since we moved to this house a year and a half ago. Late in the summer, I allowed the power company to remove some of the willow's branches, and I felt uneasy with the tree for months. Throughout the fall, I talked to it, stood with it, and even rested with my arms wrapped halfway around its trunk, but I only felt anger and shame. Not knowing whether this was coming from me or coming from the tree, I finally asked a friend to drive out from Minneapolis and stand beside it in with me. This friend of mine has a very loving heart and has been willing to stand by trees with me before. On the couple of occasions, I have experienced a very clear feeling that the trees appreciate her presence. I appreciate it too.

On the day my friend came, I had a migraine, and so she stood outside alone. She eventually came back into my living room and reported that although she does not often experience these things, she felt a special warmth at the end of her time with the willow. A couple of days later, my attention was drawn by the sound of the wind in the leaves of the willow, and as I looked up into its branches, I felt a wildness and a powerful pull from the ground to the sky. It was magnificent. I believed that the tree was speaking to me in its way.

Standing beneath the willow in the blizzard, I heard an intimacy between the wildness of the tree and the wildness of the blizzard. The storm was not a stranger but a relative, and something of it would remain with the tree long after the snow passed. I believe the tree wanted me to understand this. I stood listening to the sound of the ice flakes and wind hitting dry leaves that still cling to the yellow willow whips. I noticed the snow drift near my house, evidence that the tree had slowed the North wind before it hit my home. Before I was satisfied that I had heard everything that I was meant to hear, I trudged back through the house and went inside.

My husband greeted me as I peeled off my jacket. “I was worried about you!" he exclaimed. “Did you go to the fields?”

Blizzard

There is a blizzard warning in the Rice County, where we live. Early this morning, our neighbor's field of tall, brown corn stalks appeared to be last thing on earth before the white oblivion of the bare, snow-covered fields farther south. Throughout the morning, our world shrank. Gradually, a veil of white slowly drew closer to the house as heavily falling snow hid all but the closest rows of corn. Now the corn is a blurry shadow, and I cannot see the woods that stand across the street. Snow piling up against my window is striated with layers of dark and light, recording the different qualities of the snow, the changing moods of this storm, which lie beyond my understanding.

Everything we had planned for the day has mercifully been canceled, except for my plans to bake Lucia buns. Our children will get up in the darkness tomorrow morning, and speaking in whispers, they will put on special clothes and assemble a tray of Lucia buns and hot drinks. Then, lit only by my daughter’s crown of candles, they will slowly walk in and serve us breakfast. In past years, I have struggled between wanting to watch them approach and wanting to open my eyes when they are beside the bed because they are always afraid we will wake up before the appointed moment.

Last night, we celebrated Santa Lucia day in Northfield, and drove home just as the snow was beginning to fall. Dozens of children in white robes filed into the darkened room, glowing with the candles they carried, and singing the familiar Swedish song about light coming into the darkness. The song began to rise from the whole room as the adults joined in, until the whole space was filled with gentle, haunting melody. My mother-in-law, sitting beside me, said that if her father had been there, tears would have been running down his face. I could barely answer her because I thought that a sob might come out instead of words. I believe, in a special way, my children's great-grandparents were there, along with many others.

After all the children had delivered cookies and filed out again, someone flipped on the lights, and we began to sing Swedish carols. First, we listened patiently as a lady explained the translation of the lyrics. As soon as we heard each tune, my mother-in-law and I looked at each other with round eyes and exclaimed with delight, “Oh! It’s that one!” We knew them all. By the time folks were dancing around the Christmas tree, I was singing with unbridled gusto.

My heart still feels full from all that beauty. Like grief, deep joy can make it difficult for me to understand how the world can continue blithely on with all of its regular details. Today, my world can't carry on. Today, because of the blizzard, my world has stopped in awe and delicacy.

Just as I thought I finished this essay, my daughter called out for help with a terrible headache, so it only seems fair to add that some parts of my life are clearly carrying on as usual. That is okay. My cup runs over.

Going to the fields and coming home fast

During the last couple of weeks, I have been asking God how I should be spending my time. Should I be doing the laundry? Drawing up a budget for raising beef cattle? Teaching more exercise classes?

The only clear answer that I have felt in my heart has been, “Go to the fields.” I have heard this call periodically for over a decade, and I am never sure what to do about it. On Saturday, when I heard it again, I asked follow-up questions. “So, God, should I work on the beef budget because that has something to do with fields? Should I should turn down the invitation to teach another exercise class?” My follow-up questions are usually unproductive, but on Saturday, I heard an unsatisfying answer. It was something like, “You are making this way too complicated. Just go outside and hang out in your fields.”

That afternoon, I climbed a maple on the west edge of our shelter belt. The wind was strong on my back, and I draped myself along the length of a long, arched branch. I smelled the melting snow in the dried leaves and tried to soak in the mysterious evening colors of the winter sky. I told myself that I was soaking in some kind of light that might grow inside me to help light the world.

For the next three days I stayed inside, marveling at how easy it is to dismiss the quiet promptings of the Spirit. If someone asked me what I would want from heaven, I would tell them that I wanted a chance to stand surrounded by fields and trees and to listen with my soul to the music that rises up from them. Even with God asking me to do just that, I filled my days with "more important" work and stayed inside.

Late Wednesday night, I went out again, carrying a bucket of compost as if my mission were purely practical. After emptying the bucket, I strolled across our dark southern field to our property line, where the neighbor's corn still stands. I expect he will harvest it in the spring, as is his custom. The crunchy snow sparkled like the stars in the sky, and I stood in it waiting for my second sense of hearing to kick in. My second sense of hearing lets me listen to the song of trees, and plants and fields. Sometimes I have to wait for a while before I am blessed with it, and sometimes I wait for it in vain.

A gentle breeze from the west began to rustle in the dry corn. It sounded as though the whole field were suddenly alive and moving, and as my second sense of hearing kicked in, I became aware that the corn harbored no warm feelings for me. It wasn't exactly hostile; it was just wild and focused on other things. My heart started beating fast.

At that point, a coyote howled, and it didn't sound too far away. I sprinted towards the house, forgetting that I was running over the earth that Ian had plowed up for next year's garden. Our clay soil was turned in ridges that were frozen as hard as concrete. I tripped and went sailing into the air before crashing down with my thumb squashed underneath me. As I wriggled around on the ground in pain, several more coyotes joined the eerie song. I scrambled to my feet again as and limped to our back door. Standing safely in the doorway, I listened to the wild yipping and moaning and howling, trying to appreciate it. I couldn't. I know coyotes are God's creatures, and they wouldn't hurt a person, but they scare me beyond reason.

Inside, I found that my thumb was basically okay, but my shin and knee were impressively bloody. Looking around my quiet family room, I found more compassion for myself for spending the last few days inside. When God asks me to do something, even the simplest thing, I can never predict what lies ahead. It is not in my control, and it is not really about me. Staying inside, surrounded by my illusion of personal power, feels much more comfortable.

It lacks glory, though.