Surviving the Muddy Season

Yesterday at the farm I made the mistake of getting ready for work before I had finished my chores. Thus I had on my last clean white shirt when I went down to tend the chickens before heading into Seattle for the day.

The chicken yard is very muddy right now. In Western Washington this time of year, mud is what we live with. On my farm, it marks the sheep path from field to barn, and settles into a swamp at the barn door. It accumulates around the watering tubs and the feed trough, and makes mud soup by the gate. Mud makes it hard for sheep or humans to navigate very nimbly. I have had to step out of boots that were stuck fast. I have slipped in mud and fallen backwards, so that when I stood up there was a thin layer of it covering my back from head to toe.

This year my oldest ewe “Silver” has often gotten so mired in it that I have had to help that beloved, mud-bound girl get through more than once. The dogs, of course, get covered in the mud, and are as oblivious as young children about tracking it into the house. So mud is everywhere around here right now. And sometimes I even create more of it, when I forget to turn the water off and the buckets in the field overflow.

Mud is something I have learned to expect, to manage, and to survive.

All of that leads me to our current political season. Just yesterday another political ad was released in Michigan, showing a look-alike of one of our presidential candidates chasing a round after a cardboard cut-out of another of our presidential candidates with a paintball gun full of mud. As the mudder shoots again and again at his target and mud goes everywhere (except on the actual cardboard candidate) the voice over talks about mud-slinging. At the end of the ad, the gun jams and ends up spraying mud all over the one who has been doing the shooting.

It doesn’t really matter whose names go where in that ad, but if you want to actually see it, a YouTube search for “Mitt Rombo” should get you there. Regardless of the names, however, the ad is a pretty good summation of the current level of political discourse, something one “pundit” called a “preemptive negative attack attacking (the other candidate’s) negativity.” Wow. We are in the middle of muddy, aren’t we?

And I know we have been here before. Just like any farmer knows the cycle of mud, so any voter does as well. But this year I am feeling a particular urge to speak out, because the mud seems to be coming from new levels of low. In the presidential campaign there is not only the usual nonsense, but a descent into to very thinly veiled racism. “Food stamp President”? “Phony theology”? “At war with religion?” “Born a Muslim”? Come on people!

In our state, I see a mudslide coming as the move to stop marriage equality heats up. We are hearing ugly things. And we will hear more. I told a colleague of mine yesterday that I just want to hang a banner from our church that reads, “No matter what you hear between now and November, just remember that you are a beloved child of God.”

Because as my dear ewe Silver can tell you, sometimes there’s just no way to avoid the mud. And as you go through it, you might slip in it. You can get stuck in it. When it is all around you, it is bound to get all over you. But while we might not be able to stop it, we can survive it.

Here are a few thoughts I offer on making it through. And I would love it if you would offer a few of your own as well.

First, let’s not add to the mud. Turn off whatever faucets you see running- no matter who turned them on in the first place. And let’s not pick it up and throw it back (like I sometimes want to do when my dog Mac jumps on me with muddy paws).

Second, let’s help each other. When you see a mudbound sheep, help her get to her feet. When my boot is stuck, I will reach out for the hand of someone standing on higher ground. Let’s keep reminding each other we are all beloved children of God, and God is not a Republican or a Democrat.

And third, let’s keep coming back to the cleansing pools we know will help.

When I went to the muddy chicken coop yesterday dressed for work and wearing my Last Clean White Shirt, I did have my barn coat on over it. But it didn’t matter. What I wanted to do was catch one particular rooster and put him in a different part of the chicken yard. What the rooster did when caught was turn and peck me twice, then flap his mighty chicken wings (they seemed mighty at the time) and fly himself free. I in turn fell into the feathers and the mud. The sleeve of the barn coat scooped that mud right into the sleeve of my LCWS.

I resisted thoughts of chicken soup, went up to the house, and scrubbed the mud off my bleeding hands. And I wore a purple shirt to work yesterday. Some think it is a better color on me anyway.