I delight in squirrels running the trees, jumping from one to the other, sometimes dropping ten feet from one twig to an another. They curl around each other, fighting. I thought the rabbits were gone, but I saw tracks today in the snow. We watch through our brand-new kitchen window, that Anderson Construction plugged into the wall last week, and trimmed out this week. We’d grown tired of feeling cold air pouring into the kitchen when winter nights fell. Bruce would climb on the counter every evening and hang a blanket stapled over a dowel rod. Then he took it down every morning to let the sunlight warm us. You might comment on the view, but the view has always been the same, just not framed in clean white vinyl and wood. We also repaired a couple doors that leaked cold air. As they say a door closes and a window opens. Or maybe both stay closed and that’s wisdom enough.
What a glorious day, the wind blowing hard, clapping my back, chilling my neck. I turned up the gravel road to walk up the hill, to give the dogs new grasses to sniff. I looked across to the barn and see Bruce had let Morgen out, the back barn doors open.
Dolly circled around me and around me herding me to turn back home, so I turned into the wind and walked down the hill we just walked up. Both dogs pulled alongside each other like sled dogs and I thought to walk fast. Our neighbor pulled up behind me driving slowly because I didn’t hear him. Usually I hear the tires on gravel and know to step off long before a car pulls close. But the wind muted the sound. The clouds were chopped up and beauteous. The wind was enough to knock your breath. But the honest cold felt good wrapping around my legs and holding my face in its hands.
Dolly is picky in the morning but I lace her canned dog food with cat food to entice her. It’s a good sound listening to her eat her sniffing, her licking the plate. Omalola takes seconds to gobble hers. She’s supposed to be on a diet but kibble and green beans leaves her ravenous. I left my wrapped granola bars and returned to find torn wrapping and the bars gone, a dietary indiscretion, that would make her wake us twice in wee hours of the night.
I walked out to Morgen and put her hay right behind the barn and inside. Usually, I place her hay buckets across the paddock so she has to walk between them. She is glad for my hand outs. Sometimes she’ll come in the barn and stand while I brush her, currying the cupped part of her back that she can’t reach with a good roll. She will stretch her head neck out and curling her lip with pleasure. Then I brushed her. And picked out her feet, so they can dry out, or on a wet day like today, the manure cleaned away before the muddy ag lime squishes in. She drops her head and eats. I slosh yesterday’s water into the paddock and refill her buckets.
Then I recorded my perspective for WNIJ, twice, because the cat decided to play, the knocking showing up on the first recording. It airs two days before Thanksgiving and isn’t exactly about giving thanks, though it is a call to resisting the fear many are feeling post election. Then I filed papers that had piled up on the printer. I ate lunch and made soup and chili.
Bruce and I read the Psalms in the break between dinner and the evening TV shows. A local Orthodox church is encouraging people to read the complete book through during advent and we decided to follow along. He reads one and I read one. Then we say Compline on the Mission St. Clare app with blessings that are wonderful before sleep. It opens with: “The Lord Almighty grant us a peaceful night and a perfect end. Amen. Our help is in the name of the Lord: The Maker of heaven and earth.” And closes with: Guide us waking, O Lord, and guard us sleeping; that awake we may watch with Christ and asleep we may rest in peace.”
The nights have been dark, though the sky has been striated like different ages of rock between dark and light. As I walked back to the house from final chores, I saw a white cloud that wasn’t catching a village’s light. It was glowing slightly. It spooked me like seeing a coyote slink between me and the barn, then slip inside to eat the cats’ food and drink the water. When I was a foolish girl, I used to long for an alien ship to zoom me out of this life. All I saw were gorgeous jetliners on approach to the Albany airport. I suppose my wish came true, because those jetliners did carry me away from my life as a child, into adventures that surprised me, with how good and difficult they were.
While Bruce and I were reading the Psalms between 38 and 46 my phone flipped to a song about or by Marduk, the lyrics scrolling down the page. I hadn’t touched it. It just came on by itself. Apple music says the artist has an “unswerving commitment to blasphemy.” I’m told the powers of darkness like our technology. Later I played Layton Howerton’s International Harvestor from his Boxing God album to cleanse the machine and to hear joy. I almost wanted to ask my pastor to bless my phone. This weirdness is just a distraction. I think these battles are fought by recognizing thoughts that are not “whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence if there is anything worthy of praise think about these things” (Phil 4: 8, ESV).
Here’s how I was tempted by some pretty dark thoughts and pushed back. On the local community Facebook page, someone wrote about how she had finally found her dog. She was pretty cavalier about her dog’s getting away. Another person told her to take better care because people aren’t always so kind to bring him back. My imagination began to fly. Bad thoughts rose. I prayed: “Lord Jesus Christ, son of the living God, have mercy on me a sinner.” We were driving to church and a service about Christ the King, the last Sunday in the church year, so the temptation to think these bad thoughts faded as we sat down—George on one end of the pew and Joy on the other, Bruce and I in the middle.
I was chilled despite wearing my coat. It’s not easy or cheap to heat a building with ceilings that high. Our pastor asked how would we feel about Christ’s return, would we be afraid, joyous, indifferent? Well, a few weeks ago, I imagined myself in a cave, cringing, hiding from the ferocity of His Return in “The Wrath of the Lamb.”
But later, I also imagined the following from How to Walk When the Sun Comes Up: “Just out of sight in my memory/mind I see Jesus climbing into a cave looking for me, the cave where I’ve joined the others who cry for the rocks to hide them from the wrath of the little lamb who was slaughtered. The rocks smell alkaline. I shiver and drop into sleep. The fierce man I see in icons, his hair parted down the middle, one eye kind, one eye frightening, ducks under a ledge. He’s no brighter than the moonlight. He touches me with his toe. He says, so gently my heart breaks, “What about there is no condemnation for those in me don’t you believe? What about what I’ve said, “Therefore do not pronounce judgement before the time, before I come, who will bring to light things hidden in darkness” (I Cor. 4: 3) Come. Come with me. I’m bringing you to the light. Bringing you to receive your commendation. He smelled like corn when the plants make love, soft and green.”
We read from Jude urging us to stay awake along with a doxology, pastors sometimes say when the service ends.“Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy” (Jude 24). I hold onto this, when my sense of missing the mark overwhelms.
When Pastor Campbell read the scripture that says that heaven and earth will pass away, I thought about the tree I look to, the squirrels, the rolling folds of northern Illinois fields with clumps of trees that remind me of islands off the Maine coast. I thought of the barn and shed and house. The linden tree and the giant elm that spreads her leaves over the paddock.
Even without Christ’s return, all these things could be lost if the neighbors or even the state decides to plant wind turbines or solar. A tornado could take down the trees, our house and barns. And for us personally, one day, we will die, “O Lord, make me know my end and what is the measure of my days; let me know how fleeting I am! Behold, you have made my days a few handbreadths, and my lifetime is nothing before you. Surely all of mankind stands as a mere breath!” (Ps. 39: 4 – 5). And even Before our death dates, we might find the farm too much for us or become so disgusted by how the state is run, that we leave. We will weep. Perhaps God will too.
Meanwhile every morning I walk into the kitchen first thing, unplug my phone and watch. I check for messages. I watch a squirrel running up one branch, leaping across a gap between branches, carrying a black walnut in his mouth. I watch another squirrel and another, one right after another and think about a fancy model train set, the trains circling over bridges and through tunnels, only the squirrels are alive and wild, a delight to watch before I put leashes on the dogs and walk out, still watching, as the dogs do their business.
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