Beginnings

I hadn't intended this blog to be a book review; more of a homesteading journey, a chronicle, a bit of an almanac, a how-to recipe organizer kind of place. Oh well, this is a season I suppose. I just re-read the first chapter entitled Beginning in Emilie Griffin's 'Clinging' on prayer. The opening paragraph really grabbed me by the throat. 

"There is a moment between intending to pray and actually praying that is as dark and silent as any moment in our lives. ...an abyss of our own making that separates us from God"

It hit me where I live. Where I am. Where I've been before. In that gulf, that dry place; questioning, anxious, afraid, cringing at the change to come if I really jump off, enter in, relinquish the driver's seat (realize I'd never really been in it). I'm hesitant to even begin the next chapter (entitled Yielding!) much less begin to pray. 

Prayer changes things. Once entered into who can know where it will lead? I mean really, a conversation with the all-knowing, all-powerful, maker of heaven and earth? Sounds fabulous. Who wouldn't want to enter in? Why wouldn't I? Maybe because I have a sense that change is in order, perhaps overdue. Maybe I don't want anything to change? 

Maybe if I'm really honest, I don't want to change. 

I like my life. I love my farm, my home, my animals, my dude. Not necessarily in that order.  I like growing and preserving our food and sharing that with others. I like my job, my boss, what we do there and how that impacts our community. I want to do more, not less. I want more hours in the day, more time. Approaching the end of my 56th trip (or 55th or 57th, hard for me to nail that down.) around the sun I am impressed that time is short and that there is so much more to be done. Tomorrow is not  promised! I've always known this, we all know this. It just seems so much more real now. 

I'm the healthy one, the one who doesn't get sick. But I just spent several days in the hospital on IV antibiotics with a life-threatening infection on my face. On my face! Right up there near all the really important real estate, the heart, the lungs, the brain. I was told not to worry when I asked, "How do I prevent this in the future?" When we see this on the face it is usually a one and done sort of thing they told me. Just go home and do your thing. Do what you always do they said. So I did. I came home. I finished the antibiotics and all the horrors that that implies. I don't do antibiotics well. But I was good. I did everything I was supposed to do. 

When we are good, when we do what is right, what is good for us and good for others we expect good to follow. Good results. But. Hahaha, there's that but! But the thing came back and I panicked. Panicked! Really panicked. Three trips to the VA in four days panicked. Back on the awful antibiotics panicked. Reading books on prayer and being afraid to pray panicked. Doing the 'what ifs' panicked. I'll spare you all the what ifs, I'm sure you have our own list. 

I think Dane was getting a little irritated with me, "It could be worse" he said. He knows. He really knows.  He's seen worse, been through worse, up close and personal. He survived his first wife of 30 years who died of cancer. I'd hate for him to have to go through that again. The truth is though that one of us will. Barring a freak accident that takes us both, one of us will outlive the other. We are all dying, it's just a matter of time. 

I'm not afraid of dying. What I am afraid of is living. Living with illness, living with infirmity scares me. I don't do sick well; my pride prevents me from asking for help. Dependency scares me. Being a burden scares me. Not being able to do what I set out to do scares me. 

And so, here I stand (or here I soak, as this is where I do my deep thinking these days) on the brink of that abyss. Here in that moment between thinking about praying and actually entering into prayer. Entering into the presence of the one who made me, fashioned me in my mother's womb, knows my every thought before I even think it. Loves me unconditionally. What could go wrong...?

Muscovy Flight

I am nearly bereft. I've been re-reading Annie Dillard's 'Pilgrim at Tinker Creek'. I have just one chapter left and I am already grieving.

This morning I read, "Last year I saw three migrating Canada geese flying low over the frozen duck pond where I stood. I heard a heart-stopping blast of speed before I saw them; I felt the flayed air slap at my face." I was instantly transported back to Sunday morning when I was again lying in bed reading Dillard.

Since a recent unexpected hospital stay I have been consciously carving out time each morning for silence, and reading, and coffee; for feeding my spirit before I face my day. My husband has very graciously accommodated me by delivering me my first cup of coffee before I get out of bed. He probably has no idea the deep impact this small gesture has upon my day. Sunday morning I was there later than usual, with the window open. Our headboard is a window looking out over our front yard. The birds were singing, the breeze was fragrant and I was reading the chapter entitled Stalking.

In it she writes about a summer she spent stalking muskrats and an astounding instance where she had been standing in a bush motionless and staring at a group of bluegills at the bottom of a deep sunlit pool along Tinker Creek. As she stared, lost to herself and her surroundings she had this encounter,

"All at once I couldn't see. And then I could: a young muskrat had appeared on top of the water, floating on its back. Its forelegs were folded langorously across its chest; the sun shown on its upturned belly. Its youthfulness and rodent grin, coupled with its ridiculous method of locomotion, which consisted of a lazy wag of the tail assisted by an occasional dabble of a webbed hind foot, made it an enchanting picture of decadence, dissipation, and summer sloth. I forgot all about the fish."

I read on as she described methods of stalking and waiting, and seeing and being seen; of physicists becoming mystics, of causality and the Principal of Indeterminancy, the lines blurring between the Natural and the Supernatural. She wrote of Moses begging God to show him his glory. And of God telling him to hide in the cleft of a rock while his glory passed by and he should perhaps look upon his backside as he passed. I was remembering my Bible reading of this encounter and how Moses' face shown so afterwards that he had to cover it while he addressed the Israelites lest they be afraid.

I was transfixed, transported. Suddenly, inches from my face, through the screen at my head the air exploded! Two of our Muscovy flew past my own window and frightened the living daylights out of me. I was exhilarated. Heart pounding, delighted I began my day, new born.

This morning, as I remember, yes I grieve the finishing of this amazing read. I think I may postpone the reading of this final chapter til Sunday morning as an offering of thanks and gratitude.

Time to stop reflecting now and do the work of the living. Wash the eggs, feed the fowl, release the captive flock from their evening imprisonment and get myself dressed for the office. Perhaps I'll be rewarded by the muscovy taking a loop around the farm? I've seen and delighted in this often, but never quite so up close and personal.