Earlier in this summer, Peggy, a Facebook acquaintance, noted she was traveling through a town nearby. I piped up, “Why don’t you come and visit?” She’d gone north, heading for the badlands, and turned around to stay over for a night because of my post about how I believe that small and hidden are just as much evidence of God’s blessing as people with large followings. While I was cleaning, I wondered what was I thinking? I am not good at hospitality, but felt like a door opening.
We put Peggy up on her way out west and her way back. She has a gift of giving people words from the Lord that encourages and guides them. At her conferences she paints pictures for each attendee with messages from God. She told stories of being in the right place at the right time to help people. But I felt uneasy being with a prophet who might know more about me than I’ve revealed. I put my hands up saying, “I’d been hurt by past prophets. I’d been told about a black blob hovering behind me, about being a rainbow wrapped in chains, how I should try to be a famous writer.” That last felt like branches laid down, at a time when all I could do was write these online essays and read perspectives for our local NPR station because my brain was so overwhelmed.
Peggy listened to my hesitation. We swapped stories, ate ice cream, and gave some attention to Mrs. Horse. Several times she said, “This is your little piece of paradise.” Our farm is so ordinary, her comments went by me. We spent a year renovating it, our contractor, was a carpenter like the one we know from 2000 years ago. All those decisions in the wake of the NIU school shooting, were sometimes heart wrenching. For several years the house felt like a horse tense and ready to buck. I think the house resented all the changes we made—opening up the staircase, which was creepy and haunted when we first visited the house. We unhinged several doors, and moved them to the shed. Closed doors give me the willies. We added a bathroom, made a bedroom smaller so I could have a walk in closet, redid the kitchen. We rewired, and replumbed the place. Since the furnace was dangerous, we installed a new geothermal heat plant. But no house likes their clothes ripped off, with months of standing naked in the cold winter winds, while the new clothes were fashioned. The house resented us for some time after.
At any rate, I thought nothing of Peggy’s paradise comment until bees swarmed on our farm twice. Bruce and I heard them when were walking behind our chicken yard. We have a path that runs behind our yard, that gives the dogs a little longer walk and I don’t have to pick up their poop. Logs from the dead pines, Bruce toppled and cut and hauled lie next to the path. Slowly he is burning them. We heard the bees before we saw them clumped up in elderberry bushes and scrap that grow along our septic line. They probably split off from the hive in the walls of our milk house, a hive that has been there for several years. Back then the local beekeeper wondered if they would survive the winter. They did. And they have survived the assorted sprays when farmers treat their crops.
Then one day when we were walking back to the house, from throwing the ball for Omalola she walked over by the fence. I thought she was staring at. Mrs Horse who was staring back, not happy that I was playing with Omalola when I could have been playing with her. No, Omalola wasn’t in a staring contest with the horse, she was watching a swarm of bees looking like a beer belly hanging down from our fence. I snapped a few pictures and called her back. People have said honeybees are gentle. I was glad they didn’t sting Omalola.
At a loss for what to do, I grabbed a honey bottle with the name and number of a local beekeeper. I sent him a message, but he was out of town. “Sometimes they stay for ten days then leave.” Our neighbor said the bees had stopped by but weren’t enticed to their empty hive even though he set out scent to attract them. He was too ill to come over. By the time we found someone who could come, the bees had moved on. Then we heard our big poplar tree humming and saw a few bees flying but didn’t see the swarm. Perhaps they settled there.
In a recent talk for St. Basil’s Writer’s Workshop, Paul Kingsnorth tells the story of an Irish saint who talked to the bees while he was training under a monk in England. They talked back. He set out to travel back to Ireland when the bees followed him, even across the sea. This happened a few times. His abbot eventually gave him permission to keep the bees. Kingsnorth talked about how there are wild saints who make friends with wild animals. The animals behave like we are back in Eden and the enmity between us is no longer there because we are so empty of ourselves. Kingsnorth is writing the Lives of the Wild Saints on his Abbey of Misrule Substack and is likely to publish the collection as a book.
I wondered if maybe Peggy’s off comment about our farm being paradise might be a word from the Lord for Bruce and I. What if paradise is still here? What if we can turn our places into paradise simply by being God’s people, by emptying ourselves and letting God’s love fill us.
Maybe, just maybe Bruce and I have filled our farm with our prayers that are more presence than mumbled words breathed into the atmosphere. Maybe they have become a presence like they do in churches when the faithful come together. Maybe those boring walks with Omalola, where I offer thanks are flinging blessing to the neighborhood like the seed I flung across our hayfield. My friend Laura has said she goes to church on Wednesdays to meditate on the Christ filled bread and wine. She says the whole church is filled with prayers. During the Olympics Paris went dark except the Sacre Coeur church, where people have been praying continuously for a hundred years. Maybe our prayers bring light when all else is dark.
Psalm 15 asks who shall ascend to your holy hill? “He who has clean hands and a pure heart. He who walks blamelessly and does what is right, and speaks truth in his heart and does not slander with his tongue and does no evil to his neighbor and does not takes up a reproach against his friend…”
What if “I have come that you might have life and life more abundantly” (John 10:10) is really true? What if we are not just tortured on the cross, or bursting out of the tomb, or singing with the Spirit, but ascended with Christ, in the throne room, with a sea like crystal and seven golden lampstands, and strange creatures whirling? What if the power that raised Christ from the dead lives in us? And paradise is here, now. We just have to receive these gifts freely given. We just have to ask the Lord to open our eyes.
We live in a frightening time, where it appears western civilization is moving rapidly towards totalitarianism. The technology exists to clamp down on all of us. I often wake up afraid. But what if taking hold of paradise now is how we shake our fists at the powers. What if we choose joy that doesn’t spring from politics but from the breath of God’s Holy Spirit? What if we stay present in the present and not fly off into fear ridden what ifs?
In Saving Paradise by Rita Nakishima Brock and Rebecca Ann Parker were astonished when they say the crucifixion was not depicted in Christian art until the tenth century. They found images of Jesus as shepherd, bread and wine and fish. They offer an interesting response to my fears of martyrdom in the wake of western civilization’s collapse. “Early Christians did not regard martyrs as victims, but as people who manifested the power of God. When faced with Rome’s coercive threats, the martyrs held fast to their freedom and their relationships within the Christian community. They would not surrender these to an oppressive power. Rome chose to kill them, but they chose to preserve life in paradise. They had already experienced paradise in their early life, and they knew death could not take that from them…A martyr’s death was a paradox; in refusing to submit to unjust power, the martyr witnessed to the true power that generated paradise on earth” (66).
The roadside flowers are beautiful this year. I caught a picture of a bee on beebalm during one of my walks. A male goldfinch skipped ahead of me in the weeds. The next day the female skipped ahead. The corn is tall as the first story of a house. Our oaks, linden, black walnut, apple trees shout up to the sky. They frame the moon.
Works Cited
Brock, Rita Nakashima, and Rebecca Ann Parker. Saving Paradise. Beacon Press. 2008.
Holy Bible English Standard Version. Crossway, 2016.
Kingsnorth, Paul. St. Basil’s Writers Retreat. 22 August 2024.
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