Also this year, we set a record. Over seventy folks came to the party. I cannot be more specific than that because people were coming and going all day, and I am not even sure I spoke to every visitor. And the guests were not limited to the Seattle flock. One woman who is a regular reader of this blog came from Sequim so she could see the place she had been reading so much about. What a joy!

When people come to my farm I see it through new eyes. Sometimes I spot things that I should have taken care of, but I have just stopped noticing. One child asked if my farm tractor worked. Of course one of the first things kids spot, after the lambs, is that old tractor out in the field. But I stopped noticing it months ago. “No, it needs to be fixed,” I answered. “Well, let’s fix it now,” he replied. “I know how to fix tractors!” I know if could have found a wrench he would have marched right out there to try. Such optimism.

And some folks see things I haven’t seen at all. One year a child made a map of the woods after he had hiked through, and on the map he placed, to help others find their way, the following landmarks: “Dead bird #1″ and “Dead bird #2.” By the way, those landmarks weren’t there this year. But the people who did prepare the trail found some bones, probably from a deer, and thoughtfully placed them to the side of the trail for some young adventurer to spot. This year, someone found a lamb’s tail in the pasture. I band the tails when the lambs are a few days old, and this one had apparently just fallen off. His parents declined to let him take it home.

And always my visitors open my eyes again to the beauty all around me. One of the folks who came early to help get things ready said, when I told her how hesitant I was to ask for help, “Don’t ever worry about that. It’s like you are asking for help with paradise.”

After everyone had left, I heard peeping coming from the incubator sitting on the washing machine. Twenty one days earlier I had put in six eggs in there, hoping, that kids could watch a baby chick hatch. I looked into the incubator to see a brand new chick, with egg shell pieces scattered all around her. She had arrived about two hours too late to be witnessed by anyone but me. I took her out and put her under the heat lamp. She is the only chick who hatched out of those six eggs I had tended for three weeks. But she is doing well, and growing, and just one more symbol of the abundance of life all around me.

So today’s post is mostly a thank you to all who helped prepare this farm for the visit, for those who came, and for those experienced Lamb Day through the stories and pictures others brought home. I am grateful for all the wonder I experience whenever my two flocks meet.

“Normal” is the bell-curve we are seeking to broaden and deepen.  (George Cady)

“I was part way through my lecture when I realized that I didn’t believe what I was saying.  I was talking about what it means to be a human being, a person made in the image of God, but in ways that didn’t include my son.  That moment changed my life and work.”

Tom Reynolds is a professor of theology at Emmanuel College in the Toronto School of Theology, and his son, Chris, is autistic.  Tom’s search to re-imagine what it means to be “human” and “made in the image of God” led to the writing of his book, Vulnerable Communion: A Theology of Disability and Hospitality.   

Last weekend, Tom was with us for our Lecture Series and challenged us to re-imagine that we “image” God not through being productive, efficient, rational people with seamless beautiful bodies, but rather in a way of being together.  

“In our mutuality and our vulnerability, in that togetherness, we image God.”

As I looked around the room on Saturday I witnessed an amazing image of God – a community that showed the many different ways we are bodies in the world, in a diversity of ability and disability.

We heard a lot of stories – of pain, exclusion, deep hurt.  Everyday, ongoing struggles of individuals and families to find access to care and services.  The longing to be met, heard, loved and understood in the different experiences of what it means to be a “human being”.   

Leaders in my generation led the hard work for “inclusion” and equal rights over the past decades.  We helped extend access to voting rights, marriage, schools, housing, employment, and religious institutions to those of us who have been seen in one way or another as “different” or “disabled”.  

Having experienced deep exclusion from many of the institutions that frame our lives, we saw gaps and worked long and hard to fix the problems we saw through policy and institutional changes that would lead to a wider and deeper inclusion.  

And while this work for institutional and policy change needs to continue, Reynolds made me recognize that our work today and the work of this generation is different. 

For the work for “inclusion” only takes us so far.  As Reynolds pointed out, “inclusion” can sometimes be an invitation for others to come in and “fit in” with the rest of the group and follow their norms and lead.  

Today’s work goes beyond mere “inclusion” to what Reynolds calls “belonging”: 

“Are we willing to let our coming together in all of our distinct ways of being “bodies” in the world change us as individuals and as communities?”

I have learned well how to change things.  My generation’s gifts of seeing what is broken and seeking to “fix” problems runs deep in me.  I hear pain, I want to provide relief.  I hear sadness and I want to take it away.  I hear stories of exclusion, and I want to make changes so others can be included.

But last weekend I realized something:  sometimes my own interpretation of what is “broken” and running to “fix” it and “include” others can just be another way to make others “fit” into my own way of being in the world and understanding of how the world “should” work.

For us to continue to grow and deepen as communities of care, a different kind of “change” is required than “fix-it” energy.  It means risking the unsettledness, the challenge, the dis-ease of being changed by the community that has gathered.  

Sitting in the uncertainty, unknown and truth of what is before us and within us as a gathered community and wondering how we might be a community of care more fully together. Running to “fix things” can sometimes get in the way of the deep transformation of how we are together that may be needed.

So what if today, before running to do anything, fix anything, what if we first made room to hear each others stories?  The stories of the different ways we are “bodies” in the world and what helps us be in community. 

Hearing each other with the commitment that at this time ours is not to “fix” or “solve” but to sit and hear each other, to hold together the discomfort of challenging stories and hard experiences. To risk really being-with each other instead of running to take care of each other.  For as I was reminded of last weekend, truly the best way we know we are cared for is when others risk first just being-with us in our pain and hope.

I wonder who we might realize we are…

I wonder what call we might hear to become a fuller expression of God’s image in the human community, rich in diversity, and yes, better and truer because of it…

I wonder what might happen if we risked the conversation, and opened ourselves to being challenged and changed….

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The artwork in this blog was done by 4th graders at Bertschi school.  Their project, a partnership with Disability Rights Washington, “Portrait of a Whole Person:  Paintings and Biographies” is on exhibit at the Montlake Library through May 17.  I hope you can go see it. 

For more information about this project, please contact Disability Rights Washington at 206-324-1521 ext. 206.  The full online gallery of the show is available at http://disabilityrightsgalaxy.com/tag/portrait-of-the-whole-person-project/.

The portraits of the persons with disabilities included are: Marlee Matlin, David Beckham, Chuck Close, Tom Cruise, Jean Driscoll, D. Elaine Johnson, Lewis Carroll, Harold Russell, Stephen Hawking, Michael J. Fox, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Lauren Potter, and Christy Brown.

The sheep know this routine by heart. By the time I have everything ready, they are usually banging on the door in their eagerness to get out. But in the spring, when there are lambs in the barn, the new ones have to learn for themselves. Once they are safely born and bonded to their moms, helping the lambs get comfortable with “the journey” is one of my trickiest shepherding tasks.

After all, there is nothing compelling them out the door. Everything they need is right there with them, whenever they wake up. By the time things are ready for the adults, the babies have already had their breakfast and are probably curling up for a nap.

When lambs are born, they spend their first few days with their mothers in small pens in the barn. For some reason that is beyond me, these pens are called “lambing jugs.” Once the lambs and ewes have gotten through those first critical days of bonding, though, they rejoin the flock, and become a part of the breakfast run.

Except that almost always, the first time the door to the barn is flung open for the lambs, they just come to the door sill and stop. Usually their mothers stop there too, resisting breakfast’s call because of the stronger instinct to stay with their lambs. Occasionally the moms will lead their babies out. But usually everyone just stands there.

That is when I, as a shepherd, step in. What I do is catch the lambs and carry them to the field, with their moms following right behind, calling out to them. It is either a kind of panic or reassurance, I am never quite sure.

When the lambs get a little bigger, they begin to join the running sheep as they leave the barn. But since they don’t know where they are running to, they often stop short of the fenced pasture and hang in limbo half way from barn to field. If I leave the gate open too long, waiting for them to figure out where they’re going, the older sheep gobble their grain (what I call “sheep candy,”), begin to look back at the open gate. I can see them thinking (correctly, in the spring) that the grass is much greener out there. Then I have morning chaos, with some sheep in the pasture and other sheep running up to the green upper field, and lambs everywhere in between.

But if I close the gate too soon, the lambs can’t get in, and then I am chasing lambs on one side of the fence while their mothers run back and forth hollering on the other side. Three day old lambs are relatively easy to catch, but one week old lambs are not. Sometimes I have no choice but to open the gate again, let the whole flock out, and start over with grain, hoping the candy will be more tempting than the greenery.

A few days ago, when I posted a picture on Face Book of one of the lambs stopped at the barn door on her first day out, I got quite a few responses. Many of them were in the category of “I feel like that lamb some days.”

Well, a preacher can’t help herself when a metaphor like that comes along, so I started thinking of my own journeys, and the journeys I have witnessed in others. Because it is true that sometimes I find myself just standing at the threshold, unsure of where to go. Some times I rush out with everyone, and then get lost along the way. And sometimes, with the help of a companion, or even a good shepherd, I make it all the way.

“Yes,” I thought, as I considered the two lambs that had been born in my barn that very morning.

“And,” he ended, “thank you God for puppies.”

At that point I opened my eyes and smiled. Amen!

Peter was ending his prayer with a reference to a very specific joy I had shared with him earlier that morning. After a long search, and much longing and hoping, I had finally purchased a new puppy.

My colleagues and others in the congregation have endured this search with me. I have been talking to anyone who will listen. showing them different pictures of pups I considered and then decided against, as my restless quest continued. Until finally I found myself at the website of the International Sheep Dog Society and their lists of breeders. And from there, I found my way to a litter of pups in Yorkshire. These pups are the great grandchildren of Becca, the Welsh-bred dog from Ireland I saw win the World Championship Sheepdog Trial in Lowther, England two years ago. And one of those pups, a little girl, seemed to be just the one I had been looking for. In her picture, it even looked like there was a comma on her forehead, as if to remind me that “dog is still speaking.”

Could I really have the courage to ask for her?

After all, I am just a part-time shepherd from Washington State. This pup not only was related to the dog I so deeply admired from two years ago, she also had names in her pedigree that I recognized from when I first got interested in border collies two decades ago: Bobby Daziel’s Wisp, John Templeton’s Ben, and even some dogs from the great Welsh handler Aled Owen. And, in my opinion, she was the pick of the litter.

All of which brings me back to Peter’s prayer on Sunday. During this last month, as I have been searching for a pup, I have also been enjoying the class on prayer that was organized by the Capital Campaign Prayer Team, and led by our new member Cassie Emanuel. The Prayer Team chairs, Arlene Strong and Carol Fleagel, thought if they were going to ask people to pray during this campaign, they ought to give folks some tools. And Cassie, a retired UCC pastor and an excellent teacher, agreed to lead the class. So we have been exploring what it means to pray, and how we might go about it.

But, of course, talking about prayer is complicated by the fact that prayer is so hard to define or describe. Mostly, I can say what prayer is not. It isn’t a way of getting just what we want, as if God were a cosmic vending machine into which I can put just the right currency and get my chosen item. Nor do I think prayer is nothing more than an empty verbalization of our longings into an eternal void.

In general, I think of prayer as a kind of centering, and a kind of opening. In prayer, I center myself into a deep sense of the Sacred that is at the heart of everything I know, and yet beyond all that I know. Then, however I can, I open myself to any awarenesses that come from that centering.

And, in the midst of it all, I hold on to my prayer motto: “Always ask.” That motto is actually a quote from an old t.v. show that had nothing to do with prayer. But for me, it has become an affirmation of the mystery that I think is at the heart of prayer; a mystery that makes a definition of prayer so hard to articulate. When I begin my prayers, I “always ask,” not expecting that I will get what I ask for, but knowing that if I don’t start with my own sense of need and desire, I will probably not be able to get beyond that to any kind of centering or opening. So I always ask, and then God and I smile at each other, and then the prayer goes on.

Writer Anne Lamott used to say that the two most useful prayers she knew were “Help me, help me, help me,” and Thank you, thank you, thank you.” She has since added a third prayer, a prayer of amazement, and has put her prayer observations into a very nice little book titled, appropriately, Help, Thanks, Wow. I find her formula extremely helpful in my own prayer life, and use her words right along my own “Always ask.”

Which now brings me back to the puppy. I didn’t exactly pray to get this puppy. If God is going to grant that kind of individualized prayer request, I would prefer to pray for world peace (and, by the way, I do.) But I did turn my prayer motto into a plan of action for my immediate puppy situation. I wrote the breeder and asked for the exact pup I wanted. And after several emails back and forth across the Atlantic, through time zones of eight hours difference, and cultural differences beyond my understanding, the breeder said, “Yes.” I will pick up the as-yet unnamed pup next month on my way home from Iona, where I am going with folks from my congregation.

I think my colleagues are grateful that the puppy decision has now been made, and my conversation can move on to other things. So when Peter prayed for puppies last Sunday, I think what he was saying was, “Thanks.”

To which I reply, “ Wow.”

Amen.

Sometimes the present can free us from the shackles of the past and help us build the future, but it is also true that sometimes the past can free us from the shackles of the present and help us build a future.  (Frederick Turner)

Last month, our church launched a new spiritual community called “Simple Path”, an experiential community of love and justice for those who might never walk into a church for a 10 a.m. worship service.  In other words, a new way to be “church” freed from some of the baggage about what “church” has meant for some of us, but for those hungering for meaningful community, spirituality, and the gifts of what a life of faith can bring.    

But instead of celebrating the church’s future at the Simple Path gathering, I went to a place of memory, and attended Lloyd Averill’s 90th birthday celebration.  Some might know that Lloyd was on the search committee that called Dave Shull, Don Mackenzie and me to University Church some 19 years ago.  Others might recall his sermons that bring words like “erudite” to mind – long and poetic meditations on deep theological matters.  Some might have read his books.  Others might have attended a class he taught as our theologian-in-residence for many years.  

But everyone who worships with us will know Lloyd through the words that he and others crafted for our church covenant that we recite each Sunday.  Lloyd also wrote the words of our communion liturgy based on the gospel story of the Risen Christ meeting two of Jesus’ disciples on the road to Emmaus.  

Today, Lloyd is living with an advanced stage of Parkinson’s disease.  He’s in a wheelchair, smiles when he recognizes someone he knows, but can’t use his quick wit and mind in the way he has counted on.  But on Sunday afternoon, he was reminded, we were reminded, not only of who Lloyd was for us but is for us today.  My only adequate response was the tears in my eyes, and a heart full of thanks for the connections we have shared these many years.   

I’ve been thinking a lot about the past, and memory lately.  Last month, I attended a friend’s wedding in Ithaca, New York and on Sunday morning worshiped at First Congregational Church, the first church I served after graduating from divinity school some twenty-six years ago.  It was the first time in twenty-four years that I had walked through the doors of that church on a Sunday morning.

I realized that part of why I needed to make this trip to my past, was to stand at the time for prayers and concerns, and thank this congregation for all they had taught me about ministry, and their graciousness to me, as a very young man.   I was reminded in this visit to my past, again about what really matters – the love and connections, the relationships, we share.  

Sometimes, there are a lot of things that keep me from that awareness. For all of us, our pasts, our memories, are a mixed bag.  I can easily weave stories to tell myself and others about the hurt or disappointment I have experienced in the past that can quickly become my present identity. 

Recently, I’ve been challenged by Miroslav Volf’s book, The End of Memory.  Volf wrestles with how to remember “rightly” in a world where we have been hurt, and for some, like him, violently.  Volf notes, letting go of memories of wrongs strikes us as “immoral, unhealthy, dangerous – to top it off, impossible.”  (Volf, 143)    

But in my visits to the “past”, I have realized that I have a better story to tell than of clinging to any hurts I have experienced and defining my life around them.  It is the story of the Love that lasts.  It’s true, as Volf writes that,

“One should never demand of those who have suffered wrong that they “forget” and move on.  This impossible advice would also be the wrong advice.  The “forgetting” of wrongs must happen as a consequence of the gift of a new “world”.  (Volf, 146)

It’s the new world Isaiah sings of,

“For I am about to create new heavens and new earth; the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind.   (Isaiah 6517)

It’s the new world that I glimpsed again, in the tears in my eyes at a birthday celebration and a visit to a congregation – a reminder of what I want to remember more than anything: that we are being taken by Love out of ourselves and placed into Love’s own pure Goodness. (Volf, p. 175) 

Yes, sometimes like these past weeks, I know that it is true – I feel it and experience it.  And today, I want to trust in it again:  to give myself to the Love that finally is all that lasts.     

Somehow in my busy lambing schedule I have found the time to read Barbara Kingsolver’s new book, Flight Behavior.  Someone told me it was about raising sheep, so I got myself on the very long library wait list, and jumped in as soon as it was available.  Turns out the novel is more about butterflies than sheep, but there are sheep in the background, and the dramatic lambing scene near the end is quite authentic.  Just ask Gail Crouch, who witnessed a similar drama on my farm a few years back, newborn lamb being swung around and all.  In the novel, Hester Turnbow, the mother-in-law of main character Dellarobia, tells her, “A shepherd can’t complain about her flock, because the flock she has today is the result of all the past choices she has made.”

As the shepherd of two flocks, I take those words to heart.  Not that I ever complain about either of my flocks.  I m deeply blessed to have good sturdy Romney sheep on Whidbey, and to serve a phenomenal congregation in Seattle.  I have certainly made choices for the Romneys, but that Seattle flock is the result of profound, faithful, and courageous choices which they themselves have made through the years.     

And that brings up the tender balance between the Kingsolver quote, that sense that what we have now is the result of what we have chosen, and the other reality- that some things in our life that are far beyond our individual choosing affect us in profound ways. Flight Behavior is a book not only about butterflies, and sheep, but also about climate change. It is a novel, but one that is built on good science and solid research. I noticed that both in Kingsolver’s accurate picture of sheep care, and also in her acknowledgments at the end of the book, where she mentioned Storey’s Guide to Raising Sheep as a source for her lambing information. I own two editions of that book myself, although the older edition has what I think is the more charming title, Raising Sheep the Modern Way.

When it comes to the huge topic of global warming, there are indeed some choices I have made that have not helped. But there are also choices being made around the world that I have had no say in. In fact, there are times when any effort to raise my voice on this topic feels futile.

When I feel that kind of discouragement I have learned that finding some way to be in community helps restore me. My Seattle flock is just such a community, as they work to be faithful followers of the Good Shepherd. And in this spring season, the United Church of Christ is engaged in Mission 4/1 Earth, what they call on a shared resurrection witness for Planet Earth. During “50 great days of greening up, powering down, and shouting out,” we as a community have been invited to work toward three goals, that they hope we will achieve between April 1st and May 19th (or, liturgically speaking, from the first day of Eastertide through to Pentecost Sunday.) The goals are one million hours of engaged earth care, one hundred thousand trees planted around the world, and one hundred thousand advocacy letters on environmental concerns to elected officials and local and national newspapers. You can read more about Mission 4/1 Earth, and get involved, by gong to http://www.ucc.org/earth/. And there is a neat little counter graphic that shows how we are all doing in our work. You can record your own efforts there, and you can even see the numbers change as you watch!

On my farm on Saturday, May 11th, my two flocks will meet. My congregation will be coming for our annual “Lamb Day” celebration of new life and of community. And we will also be planting some trees, and engaging in some earth care, and perhaps even signing on to some advocacy letters.

Because if it is true that the flock we will leave to the future will be the result of all the choices we are making now, then I want to be with the community that is choosing to care for our one earth.

“Very truly, I tell you, we speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen; yet you do not receive our testimony.”
(John 3:11)

Tell me these things I do not want to know —

How your daughter said, “My pillar parents crumbled”,
and you nodded and said, “We did.”

How you said,
“My son went from the most loving child
to someone I didn’t know,
and then I lost him.”

How you had to tell the locksmith
that you were changing your locks
one more time
in order to keep your own son
out of the house.

Tell me these things I do not want to know—
yet another story I do not want to hear
of addiction, and families that are broken and keep on breaking,
with costs beyond measure.

Tell me these things: yes, but also tell me this:
Tell me about the man in the back row,
who sits and hears it all,
smiles, nods, and keeps on nodding.

How he’s seen it -
born it, worn it, done it all,
and seen it through
to something else
that doesn’t deny what was
but isn’t locked there either.

He’s come clean.

And in the clean that he shines today,
all that he has known and born and is —
is so awake, alive, so full knowing,
smiling and nodding.

A kind of knowing that I need
as I hear of bombs in Boston,
so many wounded, traumatized,
an explosion in Texas,
so many dead.

A defeat, once again, in Washington
the triumph of fear and a story we aren’t yet able to outgrow.

But today, tell me this:
Yes, tell it to me,
tell it to us all once again,
what is true and here that we must face
so that we too might see and hear, know as he does,
smiling there in the back row.

A smile born of everything that is,
a heart broken open in the truth and the pain,
that leaves him here
nodding, smiling, full of such knowing.

Peter Ilgenfritz
April 18, 2013

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Last Thursday evening I heard David Sheff speak at the Recovery Café.  Sheff was at the Café to talk about his new book, Clean, about what he has learned about addiction and recovery from his son’s crisis of substance abuse and mental health.  

Sheff wrote Beautiful Boy with Nic about the ten years when Nic was caught in the storm of addiction.  It started for Nic in 9^th grade when he smoked a joint and received a revelation.  He felt better.  For the first time in his life, he wasn’t dragging around the depression and anxiety that he had always carried.  He felt like himself.  

When the joints stopped working, he turned to drink and later meth amphetamines.  Nic said, “If I had been breast fed on meth, I’d be able to be the person I want to be.” 

As Nic learned, drugs work, until they stop working.  And then we, like Nic, find ourselves spiraling out seeking more and more ways to feel that elusive way of wholeness that we so want to feel and hold on to forever.

Nic and David’s story reminds me that it takes time, a long, long time, sometimes, to find our way through.  A path that for many has its own twists and turns, retreats and defeats along the way. 

But a path that I see the men and women at the Recovery Café walking.  It gives me hope.  Hope, like I see in the man in the back row, that we too can continue to walk out and through the prisons we have made of our lives and  find ourselves beside him in the back row smiling, nodding, full of knowing: We too have seen it all and something else besides:  we are seeing it through.

 Thanks to the Café, to “church” in all the ways we find it:  communities of hope that make healing possible.   

That post turned into a two week FaceBook adventure, which I wrote about here last year (see the blog, “A Spring Parable” from April of last year). And, it turns out, the adventure continues.

This year, remembering last year’s journey, I waited to start posting my “No lambs” photos until I was certain lambing was imminent. And I promised myself (and any who would join me in this vigil) that I would only post once a day.

So this year’s lamb watch was shorter- it began last Thursday and ended, not weeks later in the early morning hours in the barn, like last year, but out in the field on Tuesday afternoon.

But what surprised me this year were the comments I got as soon as I posted my first “No lambs.” People said things like “Your ‘lamb watch’ brings drama to us all,” and “I love the annual lamb watch.” Perhaps the most telling was this one: “I love the yearly lamb watch on your facebook feed.” So, in one year and one day, I guess I had created a “tradition.”

Put as soon as I realized that, I became aware that I too was enjoying the tradition of this spontaneous community, watching for birth, and accompanying me on this journey, and reassuring me with their presence, their patience and their anticipation. Somehow a moment of connection has come my way. For those who are not sure about the value of a “virtual” community, I will say as one on the receiving end of it, this feels like support. It is nice to know that others are taking even a moment from their own heavy schedules to take note of what is happening on this little farm on Whidbey Island. It is nice to see people whose connections with me are so varied come together in this season, to watch with me.

I know there are some things a virtual community cannot do, at least not yet. I know the folks who connect with me in the Lamb Watch do not necessarily connect with each other, and that is an important part of community too. But it is true that some of those folks are connected in other ways, and I have heard them talk together about enjoying the Lamb Vigil. And it is also true in any community that some are more inter-connected than others, and that is ok. Like the establishment of traditions, it’s just what communities are like. And one of the things that I think matters to all of us as humans is to have communities that carry us. However they come together, even in their messiness, they are precious.

So when I came home to find one lamb in the field with her mom, and then a second one was born shortly after I arrived, I pulled out my camera/phone and took a picture of them all, with the newborn in the front, just minutes old.

That photo received the largest single response to anything I have every posted on Facebook- with 89 “likes” and 42 comments as of this writing. And of course I turned to traditional words to accompany the photo- and by traditional, I mean the same words I used last year to mark the end of the Lamb Vigil. Like a benediction to this blessed and spontaneous group, I offered a single word:

“Lambs.”

The reality is, I am lambing late this year. Most of the lambs on the big ranches in the Pacific Northwest are born in January or February. But mine is not a big ranch, and I arrange lambing more for my convenience than for anything else. And there are other places in the world where shepherds are in the midst of lambing now. I have gotten emails from a few folks in Great Britain that have included comments like, “We are in the middle of lambing here and things are quite busy at the moment.”

“Quite busy” is, I am sure, a British understatement. Terms like “frantic,” “hectic,” and “exhausting” are probably more accurate. Even with my tiny flock, lambing season means getting up in the middle of the night, and knowing that any other plans for the day might be put on hold for a ewe in trouble. A woman from the Lake District in England wrote me just this morning, talking about something she hadn’t gotten to yet because, “Lambing interrupts everything!”

This is a wonderful time of year, watching for new life to emerge. And one of the things I have learned over the years of lambing is that it is a fragile and anxious time as well. Things can go wrong quickly, and there is great risk for all involved. I tend to stick close to home during lambing, and especially try to avoid being away overnight. The reason I said “yes” to going on our church’s Girl’s Retreat (for girls in middle school and high school), for example, was because I know it would be before lambing began.

I was cutting it close- the retreat was last weekend. But I am grateful that I was able to go. Because, here too, there is something wonderful about watching new life emerge. The young women of this church are right at that moment where the reality of now and the possibilities of the future are blending in magical ways. They are living that moment with such strength, and grace, and faith. And they are being accompanied so well by our amazing youth leader Margaret Irribarra. It was a gift to be able to be a witness to all that, in some of the same ways I feel gifted to be a witness to the beauty that is unfolds every spring on my farm.

By the way, I finished of my long retreat weekend by hurrying back to Seattle to participate in the inaugural gathering of “Simple Path,” our congregation’s community for folks in Seattle looking for new ways of engaging with the Way of Jesus. More springtime energy.

This is the time of year for optimists, who reckon that even with all the fragility and anxiety that comes with newness, the abundant blessings that are possible make the birthing worth the risk. And such an observation turns me inward as well, to ask where the places of new life are within my own soul. How can I nurture those fragile seedlings? How am I making room for newness even there?

On Friday I took the ferry to Victoria to have lunch with Herbert O’Driscoll.

I met Herb four years ago at what was the final class at the College of Preachers at the National Cathedral in Washington D.C.  Herb had taught the class on preaching for something like 50 times.  I met students who had taken many classes with him and yet had come back this one last time just to be in his presence.  

Now at 85, Herb is long retired from his career as an Episcopal priest but has continued actively teaching, writing and leading workshops of which I attended two in Seattle this past winter.

I’d written asking if I could come to see him with a pocket full of questions about preaching, writing, poetry; crafts that Herb has spent his life honing and that he speaks of with such presence, simplicity, honesty, and quiet care.  

On the way to Victoria I wondered what I was hoping for from this time. I soon realized that I had come to receive the gift of a six hour sermon and the privilege of having a front row seat.  At coffee, lunch and in his study at his home, Herb spoke of memory, the art of preaching, poetry, and especially words – the shaping of narrative and image as we seek to bring meaning to all who are hungering for a word of life.  
 
In thanksgiving for the grace of this time, I share these words:

A Rope of Words

I wonder why I have come so far,
hours away, to another country,
to sit here sharing coffee with my teacher.

And then he begins to tell me the story again,
the memories of an Irish child
and of his uncle who had gone away
to a farm in some faraway place named Ohio in a land called America
and the faded picture on the living room wall that his uncle had sent,
hand on his tractor, hair whipping the wind.

I have come for this -
as he cups his hands and speaks of a time
“when America was a magical word”
and how it was words that were the rope his ancestors held
in worn and callused hands as they wound their way across the windswept ground of grief
as relatives left never to return.

The taking of this peat mossed and unsteady land
under which so many have been lain by despair, disease and violence
and the words that have held,
and helped find a way.

He has given his life for them
this shaping of word and story,
the bringing of scripture alive and urgent,
rope lines cast to weary souls in back pews and lecture halls
and today across a glass topped table at this sharing of lunch.

I have come for this -
to hear him say with blue eyes sparkling,
” ‘In the beginning was the Word’
and in words worlds are made.”

The audacity of shaping and sharing such a word
and the care that is needed
to craft in image and particularity
a word that might be a rope line for others, like us,
seeking to find our way across dangerous ground
we do not yet know how to cross.

I came for this –
to receive the gift of a six hour sermon
and the privilege of having a front row seat.

Came with a pocket full of questions,
leave with a pocket full of words
and more confidence in the necessity of finding our own -
that we too might echo the grace of those passing before us
who have paused, turned, called back through the fog -
and trusting their voice, we have stumbled ahead
after words that remind us we are finding our way.

Our need
to pay attention
to all that is here -
to be felt, seen and wondered on
as in this silence
between cupped hands
we speak now of that
we struggle to name
and so lean closer still
that we might yet understand.