Stop feeding the monster: Bird lessons in life

This week a handyman finished repairing holes in the siding of our house. A woodpecker hammered away until there were three holes large enough for chickadees to nest in. This is not a joke. They actually did. If you timed it right you could see a parent returning with little green worms and if you listened closely you could hear the ecstatic cries of the babies when dinner arrived. It was an odd thing to see a chickadee perched on the hole’s edge, its head poking out the side of our house. Whether advisable or not, we waited until they moved out before the work was done.

We are a little obsessed with bird-watching around here and learn all kinds of life lessons from them. Not that I take to the woods with binoculars. No. I’m too fat and lazy for that. We have extremely popular feeders on our deck so all I need to do is sit at my desk sipping coffee and twist my neck to watch. I try not to get too distracted by the constant commotion outside my window, but the other day I was disgusted by something I’d never seen before – a tiny song sparrow feeding a baby bird about four times her size. The baby was fluttering its wings as young ones do while the exhausted parent flew back and forth to the feeder, grabbing seeds and popping them in the demanding open mouth. Back and forth, over and over. I was witnessing the perpetrator of a malicious crime. Slavery. A murderer of sorts. An imposter. Pig. And here was a mother who didn’t even know this was not her own child.

This was a purple finch (little larger species than song sparrows) nest we found on our porch some time ago, but you can see the cowbird egg which is larger and a mottled brown. I removed it returned the nest to the rightful owners. 

Male Cowbird

The baby was a young cow bird whose mother had spied the innocent song sparrow’s nest a month or more ago and stealthily laid her own fat egg among the tiny sparrow eggs. The cow bird can’t be bothered to hatch her own eggs and instead sneaks into another bird home and leaves a fake. And it isn’t like the hatchling joins the rest of the brood thankful to be fed, thankful to be anywhere at all – it always hatches first – ugly, (okay all baby birds are ugly, but I’m annoyed here) blind and featherless, and then it commits fratricide by pushing the other eggs out of the nest to destroy all competition. You may not approve of this, but my husband set the foster mother free by dispatching the imposter.

It’s one thing to hear David Attenborough talk about certain disturbing aspects of bird life, but altogether a different thing to witness it firsthand.

I love metaphor and this was so flagrant I had to reflect on it. I don’t know if you’ve ever found yourself far gone down a road you had no idea would end up severely depleting or even destroying your assets? Or health? Or family? I once nurtured a multi-level marketing company thinking it could make me, if not rich, then able to purchase “extras” like Calphalon cookware, percale sheets and massage therapy. I loved the product and invested a lot of money trying to make sales only to learn that as the months passed with little to show for my effort, it became clear I was the worst salesperson on earth. This was not becoming the nest egg I’d hoped for because I couldn’t bring myself to tell you how much good this skincare line could be for your flaky, pock-marked face. But I continued feeding time and money into the maw of the business hoping it would get better. Gradually, I fell into discouragement and guilt, but for several years I was afraid to quit. How could I admit such failure to my husband who had supported this risk? How could I make up the lost dollars? Finally, I told him how much I hated sales and how sorry I was for the wasted money and how afraid I was to stop feeding this monster in my life because I’m not a quitter, but what could I do? Then came one of the most wonderful proofs of grace in my life. He said – “Stop doing this. Let it go and don’t worry about it. It’s a valuable thing to try something out to see if it will work and to find out it doesn’t. You didn’t know this wouldn’t be your thing. So let it go.” I quit immediately and I’ve never forgotten the love he demonstrated in walking through that with me.

Epilogue: we’ve seen another batch of song sparrow babies that are genetic offspring. Definitely. I even imagine I’m hearing happier songs.

Making a room for love and writing

It  always encourages me when I come across a writer who writes more slowly than me. One year at the Festival for Faith and Writing at Calvin College, I went to a workshop given by a man who had taken twenty years to publish his book. I left snapping my fingers saying, yessss. For my first book, The Exact Place, took seven years from start to finish. 

Jake & Joie Meador

 So what to do when you come across someone who writes so fast his pencils smoke?

Well, I think many factors are woven together in a person that makes his or her writing style unique. Personal habits, stage of life, natural talent. And it helps to be someone who doesn’t wait for ideal conditions in which to write. (I am expert on that topic. I often avoid putting words to paper because I am waiting for my body, the pantry, the weather, the stars to align before I get down to business.) So I applaud this young friend, Jake Meador –  as he pours himself wholeheartedly into the art of writing. He has a fascinating array of interests and is able to write well about each of them. From theology to soccer columns, journalism reports to blog posts about the demands of love in Harry Potter, they all pour out of his head. I once asked him how he managed to write so prolifically and yet do it well. He answered like this – and I have permission to share:

“My wife and I joke that I have undiagnosed Asperger’s, which is actually a real possibility, and so being in a place with noise is actually awful for my working. I need silence b/c I want to focus super intensely on whatever I'm doing, but I hear everything at the same time at close to the same volume, so being able to focus is hard for me if I'm in a place with a lot of noise. So I either work in a home office or in the stacks at the local university's research library. The upside to the Asperger’s is that I'm able to do a ton of writing in a fairly short amount of time at a level I'm happy with, which is probably the only reason I can write for four soccer sites while also doing work for Mere Orthodoxy, Fare Forward, and whatever freelance stuff I pick up.”

Yesterday Jake posted a piece about the work of Wendell Berry on Fare Forward. It is so insightful that Jake had me wanting to go back to read all of Berry’s work in order to explore this particular theme. His piece is a summary, in a way, of Berry’s understanding of what it means “to daily break the body and shed the blood of Creation.” Clearly, the burden of learning to live in creation lovingly and knowingly is suffused throughout Berry’s essays and works of fiction. Jake’s summary is done with such tender insight I had to share it with you. Go to the site, read the post. You’ll be blessed.

 

“In Berry’s work, marriage isn’t simply a social contract or an emotional bond; it’s a way of orienting oneself to the rhythms of creation. It’s the process of undergoing an organic “breaking,” much as one would break the earth when plowing, in order to produce a harvest. Seeds are planted and in time we reap a harvest—Paul might say a resurrection. For Berry the language of marriage is never far from the language of health, flourishing, and beauty.”  - Wendell Berry’s Room of Love by Jake Meador.

Witness to life

     The cowbirds in our neighborhood have been busy. They are like cuckoos and practice a kind of bird abuse that ought to be punished, in my opinion. I would like to punish them and can’t think why this is part of creation, unless to remind us that life is not always the lovely, sweet place we wish it to be.

Bronze-headed Cowbird

     Last spring I found two cowbird eggs in the nest the purple finches built on our front porch. This year when I checked on the progress of mother finch’s nursery I found three finch eggs and one rouge. You can’t miss the difference. Notice the larger egg is a spotted buff color =  cowbird. The finch eggs are turquoise. The cowbird lays her eggs in another bird’s nest, leaving the responsibility of parenthood to someone else. The problem is, birds being what they are, the parents don’t recognize this egg is not their own and the female hatches and feeds the little criminal as if it were native. This hatchling is always larger than the real offspring and aggressively, starves the other babies and is soon able to push them out of the nest where they die on the ground. That’s why I removed the egg.

Purple Finch nest

Cowbird Egg

   I noticed the fine architecture of the nest - it is so pleasingly and carefully woven with grass, wool, and even flowers are incorporated if they are in bloom. And see how they surrounded the nest with little snippets of cedar? I heard that long ago the remedy for bedbugs was placing cedar boughs under the bed. Bugs and pests don’t like cedar - hence cedar chests that safely store wool blankets and clothing. So I wonder if this helps repel the mites that birds are prone to host. A natural wonder. So interesting to find both wisdom and villainy right on our front porch.
This may be one of the last acts of charity I perform while living at Toad Hall. Our days here are numbered as we pack the house and get ready to move in a week. Saying good-bye to many friends and leaving our home of thirty-three (!) years will be hard. But we look forward to our new place where there may be many more birds who will benefit from my moral compass.  We found a house in a quiet neighborhood in Savage, Minnesota, and the back yard abuts a wooded ravine that drops down to a little stream and a forty-six acre park called “Hidden Valley.”
All I can say right now is everyone was right - that we would find something. This is a gift. A mercy. Grace upon grace. Something my wizened heart does not always expect in this life. I’m more accustomed to expecting difficulties and impostors. I am so thankful.

God is gross

This gives you an idea of how long her wool can get.

When Honeysuckle's principal owner, Anita, is gone, seeing to her health and well-being as a pet falls on me, though Denis is good to bring her dandelions in summer and kale in winter. As we all know, sometimes our pets purposely do things that are disgusting - I'm thinking about how our dog used to find things to eat on the boulevard during walks; things I don't even want to know what they were; things I could't stop him from gulping down however quickly I jerked back on his leash and yelled NOOOO. Or, and this is true of any animal we may be responsible for husbanding, like cows or goats, …. or it may not be anything they can't help, like musky glands or baby lambs stuck in birth canals. Or even the normal digging, biting power cords, chewing one's home to bits.

Anyway, I was thinking about things like this as I had Honeysuckle positioned upside down on my lap because her long wool sometimes needs to be trimmed away from certain parts of her anatomy - she had a buildup of matted and clotted fecal matter that needed to be carefully and meticulously cut away. She lay patiently on my lap as I snipped away and thought what a nasty mess this was. But as usual, I couldn't help thinking about the deeper meanings our encounters hold for us if we think about them for more than two seconds. How good I felt helping this innocent animal with something she couldn't do herself. Although it was stinky, it felt right and proper and grace-giving - like in that moment I was doing exactly what God told us to do when he blessed our Mother and Father in the garden and sent them out to take care of the earth.

Then as I was reading and reading and reading, because it is such a looooong book that requires eating in small bites, The Letters of C.S. Lewis to Arthur Greeves, I came across a letter on the very topic of how we can be repulsed by the natural consequences of being a natural beast, and thought how clever I might have been to be able to scold C.S. Lewis for his scruples.

"Physical disgust is a sensation which I have very often and of which I am always ashamed. If one lets it grow upon one it will in the end cut one out from all delighted participation in the life of nature. For God is gross and never heard of decency and cares nothing for refinement: nor do children, nor most women, nor any of the beasts nor mien either except in certain sophisticated classes. And yet it's hard to feel that the faculty of disgust is a sheer evil from beginning town. I don't know what to make of it." (#146, p. 371)
I couldn't agree more. 

Do even part-time owners look like their pet? Here we are getting ready for a clipping.

Special Needs Rabbit - Honeysuckle recovers

Honeysuckle's Headtilt

 A while back Anita found Honeysuckle huddled in a corner and for a day and a half she did not move. She didn’t eat, drink, chew or poop her little brown beads. Then she began to strangely lie on her side as if she couldn’t hold herself in an upright rabbitty position. She dirtied herself in a most sad, uncommon way. When we picked her up she rolled onto her back and couldn’t seem to right herself. When she fell down her ramp, we were alarmed and knew something was very wrong. The vet diagnosed her with Pasteurellamultocida , a bacterial infection that had settled in her inner ear and was giving her vertigo. By then she was so dizzy she couldn’t even sit up. Rabbits often die from such infections. The outcome was uncertain as she languished for about two weeks, getting antibiotics and being fed timothy hay puree and canned pumpkin from a big syringe because she couldn’t eat on her own.

It’s been two months now and she seems to have stabilized, but has neurological damage that gives her a permanent head-tilt. She has one good eye that is always pointing up as if she has a question to ask. The other one uselessly gazes at the floor. Her energy is back and she is almost normal except that she cannot sit up quite right and one ear is always flopped. When called for a treat – we call her “Honeysuckle! Sweetheart, come get your carrots.” (She loves grapes, too.) She hurtles toward us but usually overshoots the mark as if her brakes are also missing.

Strange isn’t it? How we have tender feelings toward God’s creatures? I know, especially the cuddly, cute ones. But we care for her more especially now – needing to clean her more frequently, be more careful with her diet. And in turn, she seems even more affectionate. Demanding to be petted and loved. She continues to have a good life on Toad Hall’s back porch.

Since many of you, in the past, have followed her little life. I thought you’d like to see our angora rabbit who now has “special needs.” Please excuse the blue-tint. We are amateurs.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ptlCMVwk9o&feature=youtu.be

Time to change

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It is snowing this morning. The first day of “Daylight Savings.” Daylight Time used to change when Spring was firmly established in flowers and light. Today, ironically, it is still winter. Snow falls straight down in heavy-cotton chunks. Theirs is a quiet, passing beauty. The kind of snow-fall that doesn’t last. Quickly it fades to small flakes and then disappears altogether.

I am thoughtful this morning. Considering changes. Time, weather, place. What to make of unwelcome changes?

Yesterday, driving from Lincoln to Rochester meant passing through most of Iowa on interstate highways. First miles and miles east to Des Moines on I-80 and then up, up, north and north through the “fruited plains” on I-35 until at last the bluffs of southeastern Minnesota gently rise.

About thirty miles west of Des Moines traffic suddenly slowed, came to a stop. We could see the road ahead was clogged with cars and trucks idling in the rain. An accident.  Someone’s tragedy unfolding far ahead; who we would never know. As we approached the standing point, some vehicles were making a k-turn, passing us on the shoulder and exiting the wrong way up the on-ramp. One questioning glance from Anita, and we were doing the same. It was a satisfying crime. A justifiable change of direction. We quickly followed a line of traffic heading cross-country. Along the back roads, we had time to call up Google Maps and decided to follow the perfectly paved Iowa county roads, straight and smooth, skipping Des Moines and Ames altogether.

A map of Iowa hints at its history – a perfect grid of right-angle roads. Rich, black soil precisely divided into sections worth millions. One mile on a side, 640 acres within the square. Farmland that made the lives of men and women who raised crops and animals to feed hundreds of others. Often there is still a stand of old trees on one corner of a section, remnants of a homestead, a house that might still be lived in, if it’s lucky, but the out-buildings –  the out-buildings. All dying, sinking back into the ground. Barns three stories high with an elevator still sitting beneath the haymow door as if one day the farmer was raptured, or died or moved to Arizona. Round barns, barns with graceful cupolas, hipped roofs, angled roofs, stone, oaken, bricked, square, reflecting styles of German, Norwegian, Dutch immigrants.

Iowa barn in winter

Not as many of these places are seen from the heavily traveled interstate, but on back roads they never leave your sight. County after county the quiet is eerie. In the stillness of winter the machines are gone, the land is dark, the buildings are broken, blackened, faded red. Granaries, barns, coops without an animal or human in sight.

Perhaps one reason American factory farming troubles me is because I feel alienated by it. I want to be wholly restored to land and creation. I want us to be careful caretakers of, not just the earth, but of people. I mourn empty places that were once alive with chickens, cows, horses and pigs. I want to repopulate them with children and dogs and tire swings. Restore a garden. Perhaps it is true Home I wait for – that impossible place of meaningful work and unbroken restoration God will bring about one day.

Tomorrow, I will be more settled. More distant from dying places I can’t fix. I will focus on my desk and maybe I’ll think about the small patch of urban earth outside our back door. Flower and seed catalogs are here and we need a few more climbing roses and stone walls for them to thrive upon.

A message from my dog

In December, I received the following card that turned out to be my favorite surprise of the season: “A Holiday Message from the Dog you Killed…”

 Inside was a silly poem. In typical doggy generosity and faithfulness – Bing forgave me and wished me a Merry Christmas. HOW did Hallmark Cards know? All I can think is that I must not be alone for this to be a salable topic.

A friend who read the first chapter of The Exact Place found this card SOMEwhere. In my defense, I would LIKE to remind everyone that it was an ACCIDENT. Although it is true that this was strictly against the rules I didn’t want him to get hurt when I set him on the horses.  “With a flying kick, Duke sent Bing somersaulting through the air until he rested quietly on the floor of the woods among decaying leaves and tiny blue violets. From a distance he looked like a still life, a bouquet of small white flowers pushing through the chilled earth….a tiny marsh of blood forming beside his head.”

 

I still think of Bing occasionally and wonder if dogs will be in heaven. Sometimes I imagine being joyfully greeted and bowled to the ground (gently) by all the pets we ever knew. All these creatures God has made and that we have cared for and loved or not loved as well as we should have…. I give thanks for them.

Longing for wholeness

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Bumble bee visiting a giant zinnia

     Today while I was in the backyard admiring the zinnias once again, I caught this bumble bee visiting one of the blossoms. I’m certain their season is nearly over, as fall is here. We almost turned on the furnace this morning. I know these gentle, bumbling pollinators are becoming less common as their environments become increasingly toxic. It was odd to come across a woman from the tenth century who teaches us more about caring for God's creation.

     Hildegard of Bingen’s (1098-1179) term for the grace of God inherent in all living things was viriditas, or greenness … Hildegard’s holistic approach to God and humanity is relevant today, particularly to those longing for wholeness and healing for all of creation.

She wrote, “we shall awaken from our dullness and rise vigorously toward justice. If we fall in love with creation deeper and deeper, we will respond to its endangerment with passion.”

Resource: Common Prayer by Claiborne, Wilson-Hartgrove, & Okoro.

Cast-iron versus nonstick

There are now more reasons, my friends, to cast out your nonstick cookware and begin using my favorite kitchen colleague: cast-iron! I know. Giving up expensive wedding gifts and throwing away the Cuisinart nonstick set purchased with blood money won’t be easy. But after the following information, in good conscience you may not even be able to give it away. So fair warning, you can stop here. Sorry, sorry, sorry. On the bright side cast-iron is such a fabulous way to cook. And it may support more healthy living than we imagined.

      Baked squash ready for the oven in my large 12 inch cast-iron skillet

A few years ago I was surprised to learn that pet birds die when exposed to the fumes produced by heating nonstick cookware. Did you know that? Birds are easily poisoned by PFOA and PFOS – the compound that is vaporized when the cookware is heated. The poor canary in the coal mine only this time it’s in the kitchen? Lucky thing humans aren’t quite that sensitive. I occasionally wondered about the surface that wore off into the food we ate and if it was good or bad for us. No matter how careful I was someone was always throwing away a groady old pan and buying me a new frying pan for Christmas.

Apparently, the compounds which go into making plastics are hard to get out of the system once they’re in, and the medical community is finding more concrete data about the effect on humans.

JAMA published an article  (this link is slow to load) in January reporting research on PFOA and PFOS and a related compound PFHxS  (I have no idea and am only parroting) – they are used to make nonstick surfaces in cookware and fabric, like in the trade names Teflon and Scotchguard)  Following a group of Faroese children from birth to age 7, researchers at Harvard Public School of Health found that the more exposure children had to these compounds “the less robust their response to vaccines.” ( I know. Some of you don’t believe in vaccines, but this is about immunity not vaccines.) Children with an “inadequate response to vaccinations was particularly common;” they were not showing sufficient levels of protective antibodies. Philippe Grandjean of Harvard and his colleagues who led the study called the results shocking. (They noted that the blood levels of the pollutant in the participants were, on average, lower than those found in American children.)

The findings are leading them to raise questions about whether the immune deficiencies point to more vulnerability to allergies, asthma, and autoimmune disease. Science News Magazine reports that Toxicologist Margie Peden-Adams of U of Nevada calls the study impressive and “Those of us in the field will be excited to see it.” (My emphasis. Exciting? Understandable irony when your passion is poison.)

     Simmering mixed lentils with dried apricots and cranberries using Dutch oven on stove top.

I’m not saying that cooking with cast iron is the answer to all our ills. Maybe you or your child’s margins are adequate to handle more pollutants from the environment, no problem, I can’t say. Personally, we’ve seen more allergy, ear infections, strep, and other immune issues in our family than we’d want. It can’t hurt to gradually move from using nonstick pans and aluminum to glass, stainless steel, enamelware and cast-iron. Maybe it’s a little piece of the puzzle? If there is a connection between PFOAs and immune deficiency, it’s easy to project that the manufacturing industry will vigorously protest and deny any links to ill health.

Full with your love

      …as we watch the Gulf enfolded, blanketed, blotted with the black energy we all use and can’t entirely escape. I read in Psalm 119 this morning: “The earth is filled with your love, O Lord; teach me your decrees.”

     Have also been reading a little book by Frederick Buechner: Speak What We Feel: Not What We Ought to Say. Found these two quotes that reach beyond the time in which they were written.

“The present era of incredible rottenness is not Democratic, it is not Republican, it is national.”   - Mark Twain.

“The depravity of the business classes of our country is not less than has been supposed, but infinitely greater.” - Walt Whitman.

     Corruption has been with us since the beginning. I can’t say I’m innocent or haven’t contributed. It’s a challenge to maintain calmness and trust (as opposed to anger and ranting) and the intention to do right as creation groans with the weight of our footprints: God has not forgotten the earth. Despite the bleakness of parts and the worsening, deepening of its groaning, it will be made whole again one day. Meanwhile, I still hear wrens sing and see bumble bees drink from the dianthus in our back yard… and that’s more fullness than I deserve this day…Thanks, O Lord.

Expunge

When the stench from the refrigerator is bad enough to get a whiff of it even when the door is closed and you’re just walking past you don’t really have many options. At least, I don’t. It’s not like I could move out or call the maid or anything. And, although I really hate to discourage Denis from doing anything in the kitchen, I don’t like it when he gets all logical about this odor and says he’s going to find the source. What he really means he’s going to get in there and try to pitch stuff like the apples that feel like Nerf balls – I was going to make apple cake with them someday. Then he starts pulling out containers, opening lids, slipping the trashcan over to the door, exclaiming, WHAT is THIS? And, HERE, SMELL THIS. And WHY are you keeping THIS? I don’t want to get into it with him about why I’ve kept half a jar of capers for eighteen months, or the unopened bottle of angostura bitters for five years. And he may not like four different kinds of mustard, but I do. I just want him out of there. I don’t go into his office and riffle his papers, or rearrange his mountainous stacks of books and cds.

But. Because there was something that was knocking me back when I passed the refrigerator, I knew I didn’t have much time. And it is New Years Day. What better way to say I’m going to be a better person, I’m going to never over-buy or compulsive purchase. We will be eating every leftover, no fruit will rot… the deli meat will not get slick and smelly, and…. Nevermind. Just for today, at least, the fridge smells okay and there’s more room in there than there’s been for about three months.

So, happy New Year, Denis, my love. With very few excuses, this is what’s either freezing (it’s minus 2 degrees right now) out in the trash can by the alley or has been flushed down the toilet:

¼ jar of fermented salsa. - It got pushed to the back. Along with about fifty other jars of jam, pickles, olives.

Canned salmon with cream cheese, lemon, dill. - From the second you made this, Denis, I dropped to my knees retching. 12 days later… there are no words. You were supposed to eat it.

A bowl of greenish-molded boiled potatoes. I was going to make potato salad with these leftovers from a raclette dinner a month ago.

2 rotten apples.

2 limes brown and mushy. – The color of fresh limes make me happy, but I don't eat them much.

A shriveled piece of ginger. - A mystery. I didn’t put it there. Probably Anita.

A small bag of blackened cranberries. They were organic, even. Spoilage proves it. I made something with them in early November, can’t remember what. These were leftover.

4 egg whites growing clouds. Didn’t need them for the Mexican chocolate pots de crème.

1 serving of Mexican chocolate pots de crème with now sour whipped cream on top 3 ½ weeks old. - I thought Anita wanted it. (I know you don’t like chocolate that much.) She thought I did. Now neither of us want it.

A plastic bag of swampy brown and yellow liquid that leaked under the drawer.

Port Grim, Tasmania

I was deeply interested by the contrasts in this BBC news report, and the inexplicable, unpredictable response of humans. It seems there is a question to be asked: what explains or predicts human happiness? Can one be “happy” in a poisonous environment? Obviously, yes. I love clean air and pure water and think I can’t live without it, but perhaps we need exuberance, human laughter, shared community more than a perfect atmosphere?

Yard News

Yesterday for a second I had a heart attack over what looked like a drowned cocker spaniel floating in the rain barrel. It was just Anita’s sheep fleece soaking in prep for carding and spinning. She’s learning things the books don’t tell you. Apparently the experts leave a few little surprises like if you soak the fleece in cold water for two days, as they suggest, an aroma builds beneath the thin film of lanolin that seals the surface. It reminded me of cleaning the calf pen after three months of bovine elimination and bacterial orgies. But now she has it soaking in my washing machine in a bath of hot water and Dawn detergent so it should improve.

Again this spring, I’m awed by the number of bird species visiting and nesting in the yard. We’ve been on a campaign to control squirrels, (It’s a secret how, but we’ve eliminated 18 so far.) which have no natural predators in the city and, in fact, prey on song birds by destroying their nests and eating the eggs or young. Not that we, in all our wisdom, are able to expressly figure out or balance the environment in our urban existence. But fewer squirrels, plus laying off the weed killer and chemical fertilizers seems to have invited the birds back.

Wrens have moved into the birdhouse that hangs off the back porch and forced me to consider wearing jetway ear protectors. How on earth can something that weighs about an ounce awaken us like thunder from a dead sleep at five am?


A pair of doves are mourning in the pine tree. I assume that’s their happy sound. There are two pairs of robins. One in the crabapple tree and one in the arborvitae. Denis reached up and snapped a pic of their eggs. They squabble over a boundary and surrounding airspace that seems to run up one side of our house and down the other splitting our lot in half. Last night as we ate on the porch I heard a lot of commotion and ran out to police them. They are fighting again as I write. Denis is skeptical about my involvement here.

We have a bunch of English sparrows in the hedge as usual and I don’t much like them, they not only get on my nerves with their repetitive, tuneless chirping, they like to wait around until the robin parents are off doing meal prep, and then they have at the babies, carrying them off to eat them. Seriously. Not much I can do about that either. Although to shut them up, I’ve been known to run at the hedge and bang it with a broom.


The weirdest thing is a pair of mallards that keep returning to our yard as though they haven’t been able to find affordable housing anywhere else. Last night I tried to encourage them to eat polenta and oatmeal from a pan, but after standing in the street to stop traffic and directing dog-walkers to the other side while the couple waddled across, I felt I was making a nuisance of myself and Denis was definitely getting embarrassed. I’ve thought of setting up the kiddie pool. But that would entail more feeding and policing against stray cats, so I don’t think I should get involved.

Farmers of this kind

The first time I met Joe & Becca I thought they might be brother and sister with their tawny red hair, fair skin, and earth-toned woolen sweaters. They are related, but as husband and wife, not siblings. It’s weird how some people get wired, I mean, just made with certain gifts. Either one of them can do about anything with their hands – music, carpentry, wool-making, raise 50 varieties of heirloom tomatoes, and make killer lasagna.


I am seduced, awed, like maybe if I did life over again, this time I’d be them and get a farm, too. A lot has happened in three years since they married, moved to Stony Kill, New York, where for the first season they lived in a tent at the garden’s edge, and for two more seasons continued to manage an organic vegetable farm, saving every penny to buy land in SE Minnesota. Because they’ve been researching, because Joe’s father is also an organic farmer living in this area, and because they know their calling and have prayed so many times for guidance – when forty acres of land went up for sale at a great price, they bought it.









A couple weeks ago Denis and I drove out to see their land. It’s a property with some good sheds, a barn, and a condemned house. The barn floor was covered with freeze dried horse manure. No one has loved this farm in a long time. It’s overgrown with nettles and brambles. Fences are falling down. There junk piles. But hidden in tall grass we found a ray of red against the curse of thorns – a handful of tomatoes, a green pepper, and parsnip – volunteers from some old garden.



This is where their life will begin in December when they return to Minnesota and see the farm in reality for the first time – their work in NY hasn’t allowed any time away before then. The good price of the land allowed them to buy twice what they’d hoped, so Joe will be able to keep horses to help reclaim the soil and begin a vegetable farm. They plan to build a straw bale home next year. They know better than to think this will all be easy, having suffered in ways themselves. But they also know God is pleased when they make beautiful soil and good food from creation.

Next February I will be interviewing them for a workshop at the 2009 L’Abri conference. Hearing their story, their dreams, witnessing their energy for raising local food is a small, but significant push back against a fallen world. Or perhaps it’s a way of listening more intently to the groans of creation.

Do you believe what you say?

Sorry, I haven’t been around for awhile. It’s been easy to sit and stare, not thinking about anything at all, as though that were possible. It’s another autoimmune issue and not that serious. Some parts of it are funny. Especially when I get dead man’s fingers. (Great. Just in time for Halloween.) Looking at the yellow cadaver-like ends, (it’s always temporary, muchas gracious) Denis and I wondered if it could be a warning to people who use certain fingers in aggressive, rude gestures. (That wouldn’t be me.) Just like when your mother used to say, don’t stick out your lip like that or it’ll stay that way.

I’ve recalled parts of the Heidleburg Confession -- I’ve always liked that piece of work. It has a beauty to it that other confessions sort of lack.

Q & A 26
Q. What do you believe when you say,
"I believe in God, the Father almighty,
creator of heaven and earth"?

A. That the eternal Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
who out of nothing created heaven and earth
and everything in them,
who still upholds and rules them
by his eternal counsel and providence,
is my God and Father
because of Christ his Son.

I trust him so much that I do not doubt
he will provide
whatever I need
for body and soul,
and he will turn to my good
whatever adversity he sends me
in this sad world.

He is able to do this because he is almighty God;
he desires to do this because he is a faithful Father.

So, do I really believe this?
When I take a long view of life, one that extends past death, there’s no doubt; I believe he will provide all I need. It’s more difficult living with what daily life dishes up. You know you’re a little imbalanced when you drop your peanut butter toast face down on the floor and feel like crying. I grab the scruff of my neck and ask: Oh, yes! And what about your brothers and sisters living in Zimbabwe who have no toast at all? That should make you weep.

When I look at tragedy -- large or small, I would rather say God allows adversity. But I can’t argue that’s always the case. I know he does send adversity. It’s the modifier “whatever” that I find comforting. “he will turn to my good whatever adversity he sends me in this sad world.” Whatever.

The last two lines are sort of a kicker. There is the paradox that gives hope and healing! That someone of such power is both – almighty and tender. Mighty on my behalf. Tender to me. I count on that every day, in every circumstance. Not just for myself, (how self-absorbed!) but for all who groan.

Today, is an achingly, beautiful fall day. The air is cold and still, but the sun warms. The last of the cabbage butterflies and bumble bees loaded with pollen strain the asters with their clumsy weight. Friend, Anita, lovely and unexpectedly strong for someone so small, has a staging ground in our side yard, where pots of grass, bearded iris, and lady’s mantle wait to be set into the front beds. For a while we stood under the fir tree watching the chickadees and gold finches spar and swear at one another for a place the thistle feeder, and we decided we wanted to go back to the Garden and work there. We could help Adam & Eve rearrange the dogwood shrubs and lay stone borders.

Yes I do believe.