The Comma

Well, it has been one of those weeks.  A week of chores.  I define “chores” as those things we do on a regular basis that are simply maintenance tasks.  Chores usually aren’t particularly exciting, or stimulating, or daring.  You just do them because they have to be done.  I do remember once when some fifth graders from our church had a sleep over on my farm and one of the things I did to prepare for their coming was to print our schedule for the overnight on a large poster.  For the morning activities, at 7 a.m. I listed “Chores (optional).”  Of course, as soon as you see the “optional” part of that listing you might say to me, “Catherine, chores are not optional.”  True.  But I listed them as optional for those kids because in that case, for that group, they were.  I knew I was going to be up and working, but I was not going to add to my list of chores, “Wake up sleepy fifth graders and take them, protesting, out to work around the farm.  Keep track of them.  Make sure they don’t let the sheep out of the pasture to meander around in the upper field and find that hole in the fence, or leave the door of the chicken coop open so the chickens run loose, or forget to put water out for the ram . . .”  You get the picture.  Of course, the surprise of that event was that as soon as the fifth graders saw the schedule, they said, quite enthusiastically I might add, “Chores?  We get to do chores?!!” 

I’m sure it was the novelty of “farm chores” that caused this enthusiastic response.  Farm chores were not a regular part of their lives, so farm chores sounded fun.  The image that came to my mind, shaped as it was by 1950’s TV shows, was of Timmy, accompanied by his faithful dog Lassie, out on his sound stage farm, with the sun shining, and everything set up for him in advance, doing his chores.  Feeding the chickens, cleaning the barn, fixing a fence, never lasted more than a few minutes before some adventure began.  It was never raining, he never had to stop everything and spend a half hour looking for that hammer that he was sure was right there a minute ago, and he never kept doing the same thing, day after day, month after month, year after year. 

Chores.  They are part of every life, of every work.  A farmer does chores, and a preacher does chores.  On the farm this week I fed the animals, worked on fencing, worried about a sick ram and wondered if I should call the vet (he recovered on his own- a subject for a whole different post on “when a shepherd worries”), gathered eggs, got up in the night to feed the bummer lamb his bottle of “multi-species milk replacer.”  In Seattle this week I participated in meetings, read reports, talked on the phone, met with folks, and even attended to the yearly chore of going to the annual meeting of the Pacific Northwest Conference of the United Church of Christ. 

I am not really sure how to end this post.  The thing about chores is that while they are those regular, maintenance things we have to do, in each chore, in each moment, there is wondrous possibility.  I know that.  I know that God very often shows up in the ordinary.  God shows up in the chores.  That is true on my farm.  If I can just remember to look up rather than look down as I do my chores, I find myself fully in the moment and fully blessed.  If I can remember to breath “thank you,” even more so.  And that is true at my church as well.  But as I write this, I also am aware of the non-chore-like situations that surround us.  We continue to be held in the grip of a tough recession, and people I know and love are losing their jobs and unsure about their futures.  And I am listening to news about a flu epidemic in the world, in our nation, and in our city, and wondering what that will mean for my congregation.  I am still aware that we are a country at war, and I still long for peace.  I deplore the hatred that is spread abroad in the name of religion- any religion.  I long to do big things, to make a big difference.  And yet, I am called most often to my chores.  And I know there is a connection between those two realities, one that requires an everyday balancing of the big stuff and the chores.  Maybe finding the balance is the deepest spiritual practice in stressful times.  Maybe that’s my real chore (in the best sense of that word, of course) for now.  Any thoughts?

I do think (and even hope) that this will be my last “lambing” post until next spring.  But since lambing has been dominating much of my time these past few months, lambing stories have been dominating my posts as well. 

This week I thought I might be taking a break from lamb stories.  I have been incredibly busy at the church, evidenced in part by the fact that I am posting this about twenty four hours later than I intended.  In this very full week, in fact, I have had very little time at home.  I have left the island early every morning, and have had an evening meeting or event every night.  That means I have been away from the farm for 12-14 hours a day.  And I was hoping to be done with lambing by now, so that things on the farm would be all settled down, with ewes and lambs in the field, cared for (because they were not in need of much care) and contented, and me focused in a more concentrated way on my Seattle flock.  Of course that is not how it has worked out.  Because I had a sneaky young ram loose in the flock of ewes this year way past normal breeding time, I started this week with one last ewe waiting to lamb. 

So Monday morning I got up early and went out to the barn to do my chores before heading into the city.  The bummer lamb, who is now just over three weeks old, needed feeding, and then all the sheep, chickens, dogs and cats needed care.  Still ahlf asleep, I stood holding the bottle for the little lamb who always comes running when he sees me.  Then I put the feed out for the rest of the sheep and opened the barn door for their stampede to breakfast.  And of course, this last ewe waiting to lamb stayed in the barn.  My first thought was that she had already had the baby, but she had not.  Clearly, though, the delivery was imminent.  But just as clearly, it seemed, the ewe was in trouble.

Now when I went to lambing school, one of the guidelines they gave us for sheep labor was to wait to intervene until we had observed the ewe in active labor for an hour with no progress.  In fact, they said, if you see a sheep in labor, the best thing to do is to go about the rest of your chores, and then come back and check.  Just as a watched pot never boils, a watched ewe never births.  That rule of thumb has served me well, since it is tempting to jump in with help too soon (and sometimes that is a good rule of thumb for my other flock, as I can also be tempted to push people in their spiritual growth as well).  So I did the rest of my chores before I came back to the barn, hoping that things would just progress normally without me.  But the ewe had made no progress, and in fact was lying on her side (almost never a good sign with a sheep) by the time I returned to the barn.

I will mention here that my sister the midwife happened to be visiting last Monday.  She was asleep in the house, but just knowing she was there helped.  She has attended so many births, I just knew she would be an excellent resource if I needed one.  So when I realized that I was going to have to help with this birth, I went and called up the stairs to my sister.  She found some old clothes (she had not packed any labor and delivery scrubs) and we went back down to the barn.  While she held the ewe’s head, I soaped up just like I was James Harriott, and reached inside the ewe to see if I could figure out what was going on. 

It helped that this was not the first time I had assisted with a lambing.  So some of what I was encountering was familiar.  Still, when a ewe is in trouble and a lamb is not coming, it is a scary time.  A lamb is supposed to dive into the world, with both front legs forward and head tucked between them.  But this lamb had the worst presentation I had ever encountered.  His head was almost out, but both his front legs were back.  And while I had seen this at lambing school, and even told people the story of what I had seen the vet do there, this was one of those situations I had hoped would never happen in my barn.  I had wondered if I could handle such a tough birth. 

As it turned out, though, as soon as I figured out what was happening, and that indeed I had made the correct call by recognizing the ewe’s distress, something inside just took over.  I remembered exactly what the vet at Lamb School had taught me.  First, I pushed he lamb’s head back into the ewe.  (Yes, it is an image to make every woman shudder).  Then, I held the lamb in while the ewe strained to get it out, while I found each front leg and brought it forward.  My sister was a great coach, reminding me to cooperate with the labor efforts rather than to resist them- wait to move the legs until the ewe relaxes (as much as she can in such a situation), then wait to pull until the ewe pushes.   It was almost magic the way each leg came forward, and the head tucked down.  Then, as I held the two front legs and pulled gently, and the ewe had another contraction, the lamb was born. 

It was a huge white ram lamb, and he was covered with muconium (lamb poop), which means the birth had been significantly stressful for him.  While I slapped his side to get him breathing, my sister felt his chest and said, “He has a strong heart beat.”  That is the midwife in her- I don’t think it has ever occurred to me to check a lamb’s heartbeat.  I just watch to see if they’re breathing.  But “heartbeat” was the first place she went.  It was great to have her there.

Immediately after the lamb was out, the ewe perked up, and began cleaning her baby.  Within another hour the lamb was up and nursing, and I was off to the rest of my day.  But what a lucky ewe this one was.  If she had gone into labor at almost any other time this week, I would have never seen her distress in time to help.  And without help both she and the lamb would have been lost. 

I don’t know what to make of such luck.  Such grace.  It is beyond me.  So all I can do is to notice such moments and be grateful.  And that gratitude is the framework in which I have been living this week. 

At the Seder last week Rabbi Ted told about a tradition of “counting the Omer.”  Basically, according to the Rabbi, one is invited every day from Passover (the day of deliverance) until Pentecost (the day of receiving the Torah on Mount Sinai) to pay attention to what day it is.  There are fifty days to count from the second day of Passover to Pentecost- hence the name “Pentecost” (from Greek- “to count fifty”).  Rabbi Ted, at the end of the Seder, led us in the fist counting, and then invited us to count each day purposefully, and with a blessing.  He told us we could use this as tool for the spiritual practice of “noticing.”  And that, of course, reminded me of my frozen chocolate and my own counting of forty days from Ash Wednesday to Easter.  When the Rabbi called my attention to counting the days, I realized (with pleasure) that I had only three days to go until the end of Lent and the thawing of the chocolate, and the breaking of my chocolate fast.

My brother came to visit me the day after Easter, and I mentioned to him that I was just back to chocolate after giving it up for Lent.  He said “You gave up chocolate for Lent?” and he kind of sniffed when he said it, as if to also say “Well now there is a silly ritual.”  Brothers can be like that, can’t they?  And I, his little sister still, even though I am well into my fifties and he is well into his sixties, had to defend myself.  So I told him about why I give up chocolate (the details of which you can read in an earlier post “Frozen Chocolate for Jesus”) and I told him about counting the Omer, and I told him how much I appreciate the opportunity to pay attention to each day, and to my “daily bread,” whatever it is, and to knowing where I am.  And I told him that I am in the season when chocolate tastes the best, the time when I am most noticing how good it is. He relaxed a little then, and said “Oh, OK,” which from an older brother is a glowing compliment.

The church calendar helps me notice, as we change colors for each season and note the change in our worship words, and in our stoles and antependium, (the cloth we hang on our communion table and pulpit and lecturn, from the Latin ante-“before,” and pendere- “hanging”). (Note- can you tell my brother picked up the two volume “New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary” while he was here, and then left the two volumes with me because although it is the “Shorter” dictionary, it is still huge, and he could not carry those heavy books with him on the plane? Now I am having so much fun with them it might be awhile before I ship them to him.)  I appreciate those external clues to help me see better.  I sometimes suspect that were it not for the church calendar I would just put my head down, my shoulder to the wheel, my nose to the grindstone, my hand to the plow, and work, work, work without ever noticing the quiet of winter Advent or the blooming of Easter spring. 

Of course, my sheep help my count the days too.  Most especially I work hard at planning their year, from the quiet summer days when the grass is lush and they are in “ordinary time,” to the thought I give about when in late summer and early fall to “put the ram in” with the girls, and then counting the five months after that, until the lambs start to come.  I regulate their feed according to that counting, and I hire the shearer according to that counting, and I watch their behavior according to that counting, as lambing approaches. 

And in my attempts to balance the lives of my two flocks, I try to count the sheep days in conjunction with counting the church days.  Most especially, I plan my lambing so that I am all done by Easter.  The last thing I want to deal with on Easter morning is a ewe who needs my assistance just as I am rushing off to a congregation all dressed up for one of the most significant worship services of the year, when even the strays will be finding their way home.  So when I count the days for my sheep I always “take the ram out” no latter than five and a half months before Easter.  (Note the ram’s year is much more boring than the ewes’ year.  The girls have at least five seasons- grazing, breeding, gestation, lambing, weaning.  The ram’s year can easily be divided into two parts: a month with the ewes, eleven months in the bachelor pen.)

But one last word about counting days.  Sometimes, in the midst of our counting, we discover we are in a very different season than we thought we were.  That is life.  That is its mystery, its delight, and its dismay.  So this Easter, despite my best efforts, lambing was not finished by Easter.  And this Easter, as I was with my Seattle flock, the ewe who had not yet lambed found her way to the cedar tree that has become a favorite birth center for the ewes for some reason I cannot discern, and had her lamb.  All this while I was paying attention to something else.  She did not need my assistance, and I did not even notice that it was about to happen.  It was simply an Easter blessing, and a wonderful surprise, as such blessings almost always are. 

Today is seven days, which is one week of the Omer, and today I am richly blessed.