Remember how I told you about those mini communities that we can find in waiting rooms and grocery stores? Well, something magical happened by the grapes at Woodmans but first I need to back up a bit.
A few weeks ago, I participated in a Tracking Wonder class about cultivating community through my writing. Tracking Wonder is a business that helps creative people find themselves as entrepreneurs by asking questions that work to get at their core values. Jeffrey Davis points us to wonder. His workshops are affordable and practical, conducted on Zoom. He sent enough personal emails that convinced me to join, even though I’ve lost hope as far as marketing goes. I believe in the goodness of serving a country church (you my readers) and don’t have much ambition for explosive growth.
For an early exercise he asked, “Think about your dream.”
There I was facing boxes of energetic, hopeful people’s faces. “Think about your dream.”
Tears welled up because I don’t have a dream or the drive to untangle my brain and collect essays from Substack or rework drafts that have already been laid down. There are several literary publishers with open reading periods right now. But I have no drive to come up to my office and shape that work. My collection of essays are maybe closer than I think to collect and send out. But I have no drive, and some of the essays, well, I’m not sure I want to make them public or that you might find them too raw.
I have no tree to aim for, like a farmer used to aim his tractor to plant straight lines. No tree, no teacher, that’s right, keep your eyes up, adjust the wheel to stay straight. Look back at the planter. Then look ahead.
So when Jeffrey Davis asked about my dream, I mumbled, “Write a vision of glory” leaning back on that old call from the big barn in a cold rainstorm in winter, the call to write a vision of glory that sprang out of my longing to do for others what C.S. Lewis did for me. That year I read as much of C.S. Lewis as I could get ahold of for an English term paper and his words sparked a bittersweet longing. I was homesick even though I was home. Deep wrenching tears came. Maybe one day I will share the essays about this. But so much silencing, so much disappointment, so much rejection, made my drive go limp.
I fear you’re thinking, what are we chopped liver? I am grateful for Substack giving me the opportunity to find you, but often I feel like I work hard on these essays, send them out, only to be met with silence. Those of you who are supporting this page financially mean the world to me. There are essays I would not have written were it not for you. It’s been wonderful to take a break and to not push for an essay every week. There are several in the works.
During class, I was impressed by the energy and creative ideas from the other entrepreneurs. My main takeaway was to ask my readers what you think and to set up guidelines for comments. (Substack has helpfully offered a comment box before the comment section, where I can state my rules for respect.)
That evening we were finishing up Last Man Standing on TV when a certain light slanted across the fields making the fields, the barn glow—the setting sun flashing up beneath clouds. I ran out to look. The light was that alive. A vision of glory. I walked toward the barn and toward surprise when I saw a rainbow hanging between the barn and pump house and old well house now home to wild honeybees.
What? Where’s the rain winnowing the light into seven colors and a bunch more we don’t see. When John said a winnowing is in Jesus’ hand, he’d burn them up with unquenchable fire, I wonder if that fire would be like the winnowed colors made by sunlight and water.
Morgen waited for me. She always comes and waits when I step outside. And there was a bright rainbow, farther south than I’ve seen it. I ran to get Bruce. And it just hung there longer than most, like an aroused stallion. The clouds glowing inside pink.
You know how I talked about finding community in the grocery store? Even though it was godawful hot, I told Bruce we needed lettuce and I wanted to make sure we’d canceled our Costco membership. “You need grapes,” Bruce said just before he drove off to get gas.
As I pulled up to the grapes counter, I recognized Joan Krumm, a dog breeder I’ve known since I started showing my dogs. She sat in a motorized shopping cart, dressed in bright colors, with a bright hat. She knew me. And it was a feat on my part to recognize her. “Where’ve you been?” She asked. I’d gone to conformation class with Mr. Wild dog. (In these classes dogs are trained to stand still, while a judge feels them up. They trot out, so the judge can look what their gait looks like. It’s a wonderful discipline because dogs get treats and learn to be quiet when someone greets and touches them.)
 “I didn’t want Aiden to knock you over.”  In class she looked fragile, said she’d just had hip surgery. A fall would be catastrophic. She’d said, “He needs an obedience class.” So I signed up for an obedience class. Sometimes meetings in the grocery store are providential, good gifts from a God who brings people together and answers a prayer, we might not quite say.
“You need a dream,” she said.
How’d she know I don’t have a dream that lights me on fire? (Writing seems to be one of those gifts and calling that are irrevocable, but I’ve lost the fire, especially for drafts sitting in notebooks, that weigh on me with guilt and overwhelm.)
 “I don’t show any more, but I love helping people show their dogs and win,” she said.
There she was, frail elderly, needing a motorized shopping cart, not able to do what she loved-show her own dogs-dressed to the nines, for the store, lit up about helping people show their dogs.
“Give me a call.” She wrote down her number and handed it to me. A woman nudged between us and picked out some grapes. “I have to be at the dog show and watch my students but I’m available on Sunday. You should bring Aiden to the show. He needs to get out and be socialized.”
I felt a little hope.
Often I have regretted bringing Aiden home. He’s been too much dog—circling the coffee table in the evenings, his eyes blank. He pushes boundaries so well, pushes boundaries so well, my anger sprouts like thistle. My voice bellows. He has an uncanny talent for chewing things that are the most “beloved”—my mother-in-law’s stuffed Mongolian bear, papers from the doctor’s office. He took out chunks of several chapters of I Corinthians in my little Bible. The more I push him away, the more he pushes back. My treat bag has made a fool of me several times when he jumps for it and succeeds in reinforcing himself by gobbling the treats he has scattered.
He’s taught Omalola how to be naughty. Before Aiden she was well trained, able to be loose in the house, and our walks, her eyes looking up at me, companionable. Now she plays hard to get when it’s time to come in. Her gaze is penetrating when Aiden takes my attention.
Sometimes the idea of the option to place him rises, which we are committed. I tell Bruce he does better with him because Aiden will lie down when Bruce is watching TV. I tell Bruce Aiden is his dog. I have been too inconsistent. And yet when I leave him in the yard to go in the house, he looks for me, his eyes betraying how we are bonded. But he’s come a long way from the dog who circled or wrestled with Omalola when I walked him.
That weekend I took him to a local dog show and was shocked to find how calm he was. Aiden stayed by my side. He laid down. He allowed strangers to go over him. I first learned how rewarding a dog for doing it right with Laager, a Bernese Mountain dog who became more wound up the more I disciplined him. But if I rewarded him for being quiet, he learned how to relax in the chaos of dog shows.
A week later I met Joan at a local training facility. She was hopeful and positive we could get Aiden behaving better. She asked me to tie him to the wall and use another leash and collar to correct him. If he moved, I’d tighten my leash and loosen it when he stayed still. It was all very quiet. The pressure on a buckle collar. The release soft and as important as the pressure. I was reminded of traditional horse training that uses pressure, release to unite horse and rider. Sometimes putting an animal in a posture of quiet, they learn to be quiet.  I left with some useful tools to calm Aiden. (Not knowing how to respond made me more reactive, which made him more reactive.) I left with energy and hope and joy I hadn’t felt in a long time, maybe because someone poured their know how into me. And Joan is a role model for that dreaded frail elderly stage, that a person can look beautiful and find ways to offer their gifts and love for their sport despite physical limitations.
Because I was so hopeful and want to give Mrs. Dog the attention she deserves, I found a rally dog class that will occupy her mind by asking her to kinda dance with me. As an even bigger gift, the class is set up so the dogs are crated and other class members can visit with each other while we wait for our turn. I’ll bring Mr Wild dog along too.
Before we finally cut our hay, we chased rainbows. They showed up in odd places at sunset, hauling the light that makes the barn, trees, grass glow. They kept coming. Kept reminding. Storms became a kind of friend, their violence going north or south. Then the weather took a breath and dried enough to drop our hay, bale it and put it up.
This is going to sound odd, but it’s been disorienting that life has been so quiet and so good. There have been heart aches and loneliness and griefs, yes, but not like the turmoil of my working life, or the long walk through grief after my parents and brother died within in a six-year period.
Maybe just give thanks for these days, for this quiet. Let the thanks banish the guilt that I’m not sliding into the grave exhausted from working hard for Jesus, words I’ve heard come out of preacher’s mouths. Or the fear of how I’ll be judged for these quiet years.
This morning I read reassuring words from Eugene Terekhen in “Why We Must Remember In Order to Forget: Dante’s Secret River of Healing.” He talks about how Dante must wash in the river Lethe, a river of forgetting all his sins, and then he must wash in the river Eunoe:
Gazing at Hell disintegrates the soul.Â
Everything good that has happened to us in this earthly life must be carefully stored in the vaults of memory. Every time we build good memories, we wash ourselves in Eunoe, the mysterious river where all good is “born anew.”
So there is good in looking at the cornflowers along the road, and the dove that flies up from the paddock and the orgasmic corn as it tightens its leaves towards the sky and tassels. There is good in watching the setting sun light up the leaves of the trees as the dogs chase the ball and each other at full tilt.
But maybe we need to know how to be in paradise, how to give thanks. We can ask God, “Open my lips and my mouth shall show forth thy praise.” The other night I woke thinking about the latest bad political news. Finally the Lord’s prayer, and the words, “Glory to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning, is now and will be forever” drew me down to sleep.
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