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.

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.

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.

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.

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.)

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.

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.