Shalom

A sad day

Just before bed I often check my hometown's county newspaper, just to keep up on the happenings of Shelbyville, IL.  This evening I was saddened to see a familiar face looking back at me in the obituaries.

Mrs. Price, age 86, has passed from this life.

I remember sitting in my sandbox, watching her feed the chickens scratch grain.  Suddenly, like a snake her hand reached out and grabbed a rooster by the head and swung it over her head to break it's neck.  She taught my mom to garden and preserve the harvest.  She took me to my first tent revival meeting.  When mom had to be rushed to the hospital with her tubal pregnancy, Mr and Mrs Price took care of me until family could arrive to pick me up.  I learned to hunt on their acreage.  I learned to care for animals with their guidance.  The first barn I ever thought of as "beautiful" was their barn.

Mrs Price loved me and I loved her. 

She was the first Christian that I ever knew.  Shortly after my baptism I wrote her and her husband to thank them for the lives that they had lived before me.  Mom had the opportunity to see her every few months and relates how she enjoyed the pictures and stories of my own children.  I wish she could have met them in the flesh.

She had a hard life and she ran all 86 years of it faithful to her Lord and Savior.  She buried two sons and a husband during that time.  Rest in Peace Frances.  We are poorer for your absence.  We are richer from the giving life you lived.  Until we meet again,

Ears to Hear

This morning Otto, age 3, was helping me with the morning chores.  After he had taken the eggs to his mother and we had given hay to the rabbits Otto asked, "What is that sound dada?" 
"I hear a car Otto."  I replied.

Listening with his head cocked to the right as the sound of the car moved into the distance, "No, I hear an airplane."

Now it was my turn to cock my head.  I could not hear the airplane.  All I could hear was a flock of nearby birds whose proclamations seemed to drown out all other sound.  Just as I was about ready to come to the conclusion that Otto was mistaken, there it was.  I too heard the airplane.  "I hear it too Otto but do you hear the birdies?"

Listening again, the seconds passed.  Finally a smile came to his face.  "Yes I hear the birdies.  I hear a lot of birdies."

Because we do not hear something, does not mean that it is not there or that those who do hear it are wrong.  Sometimes it just means we need to cock our heads, turn our ears to listening and filter out the other noise.  Sometimes it is our job to listen.  Sometimes it is our job to ask others to hear.

The work and the image of God

I felt it in my shoulder on Wednesday, when the terrier brought me his rope and we began to play "tug."

I felt it in my back on Thursday, listening to a lecture in Zorn Arena at the University of Wisconsin in Eau Claire.

On Monday and Tuesday I carried 1200 pounds of concrete up our hill to the site of some future garden beds.  The site is badly eroded and the earth has very little organic material to it.  A few weeds grow there now but even they do not thrive.  I am laying the blocks in a course two high to create a miniature retaining wall.  Afterwards I will mix manure and topsoil to the native sand and, I hope, restore the area to productivity.  I hope to get two such beds done in time to plant my corn up there. 

It is a rare thing for organic matter to oppose gravity.  Perhaps a predator occasionally leaves a carcass at a higher elevation but otherwise wind and water conspire along with gravity to move organic material toward the oceans.  Where there was stasis, humans have largely disturbed it.  Along the great plains where thick sod protected the soil, we sowed row crops.  Forested hillsides once protected the ground from water while leaf debris acted as a series of obstacles to keep the earth close to home.  We have harvested them for lumber and firewood, leaving the ground vulnerable.

Moving topsoil uphill is to co-participate in an act of creation.  It is a way of bringing life to where there is no life.  But it comes at a cost.  One must care enough to be pained at the barren landscape.  One must exert themselves physically and sometimes that involves physical pain.  One must also realize that their best efforts may result in failure.

Greater than my little attempt at ecological restoration are those who work for peace, both in our neighborhoods as well as on a geopolitical scale.  Human communities, large and small, seem to drift into conflict.  There are periods and formulas of stasis, but they are easily disrupted then chaos and violence take hold.  People begin to flow to violence as topsoil flows to the ocean.

The role of the peacemaker is to carry concrete blocks and topsoil up a steep hill.  It can be a painful job as they carry the building blocks of peace and life against the gravity of violence and death.  One must care enough to see the pain of others and having seen that pain to not look away.  One must take the chance of getting involved.  I only face the pain of a sore shoulder and back at worst I might damage my body and require time to heal.  The peacemaker risks suffering a sore or damaged soul as they struggle to restore community to a place that it has been lost.  That pain is much more distressing than the physical pain of physical exertion and the soul takes much longer to heal than a muscle.

There is also the physical risk.  It can be a deadly job as one enters the conflict zone.  Domestic dispute calls are the most dangerous calls faced by police.  No one needs to be warned of the danger of a war zone.

Peacemaking, however, is co-participation in the work of God which makes the pain and the risk worthwhile.

God bless the peacemakers, returning to productivity those swaths of earth, those nations and neighborhoods, too long given over to barren weeds.  There is no household too small to deserve their attention, there is no nation so complex to be beyond healing.

Taking a Stab at Cartharthis

Part 1:

I did not anticipate buying the house when we came out to look at it.  It was at the highest end of what we had decided to pay and, from the pictures, it was unimpressive.  It looked better in person though still in need of some loving care.  It was a lot of house for the money (we made our realtor drive us to all of the "cheap houses") so we made a bid and bought the house.

I knew the roof was bad and needed to be replaced but I was surprised when, as I was inspecting it the next spring, it started to give way beneath my foot.  Knowing as much about roofing as I know about the English Civil War (i.e. just enough to sound like I know what I'm talking about) I repeated that time honored moment between father and son when I verbalized what I had suspected for many years, he knew a lot more than I had given him credit for in the past and I needed his help.  The first time he came to see his first grandchild became a work trip to replace my roof.

We took the measurements and did the math and concluded how many squares of shingles we would need.  "That just doesn't seem right."  He said but doing the math again we came to the same conclusion.  I know he was just concerned about spending my money so he suggested that we get a smaller number of shingles and just go back to town if we needed more.  I ended up making two more trips to town for shingles.  The lesson I learned, just trust the math.
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Part 2:

For years I have wanted a truck but just have not been able to justify the expense.  I only really need one a couple of times a year and for each of those times I have found a way to work around the problem.  For example, I found a gentleman who, for a small fee, is willing to deliver small bales of hay twice a year, 30 bales at a time.  The small extra expenses that I incur from not having a truck do not even add up to the insurance or the extra fuel expense if we were to exchange one of our current vehicles for one let alone if we were to add another vehicle.

Running out of hay this week I called our supplier.  He was out for the year and everyone who advertises hay quickly runs out so a new plan was needed.  I decided to rent a small moving van, still a lot less expensive than owning, and made a trek to get the hay today.  The financial math still firmly on my side I was pleased with my thrift and creativity.

To say that moving vans are not that good on snow and mud would be an understatement.  Once the hay was unloaded it took me an hour to get it out of the drive.  The truck became stuck 3-4 times and I was constantly rocking it to get it moving.  I finally got it out of the driveway though, to be honest, three times I was pretty sure I was going to need a tractor or tow truck to extricate it.

"Experience," I thought as I drove back to the rental company, "would have warned me that this would not work as well as I had originally hoped."  The lesson I am taking away, sometimes math does not tell the whole story but must be informed by wisdom.
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Part 3

I was leaving for work tonight and while the snow is melting, making the driveway appear less ominous, the road pact beneath is water logged, making its navigation more difficult.  Thinking about the days earlier activities as I walked out the door I told Kristi, "I'm off, if I can get out of the driveway one more time!"  It seemed funny at the moment.

Driving down the temporary ruts of mud bordered with snow I began to think of all the times I drove down dirt roads not too unlike our driveway as a kid.  Steering out of the rut, as I remembered the experience, made for better traction and an easier to control commute.  "What the heck." I thought, so I pulled my car out of the muddy rut and up onto the snow.  For a few seconds all the promises of better control and traction were met.

Without warning or time to compensate I was pulled to the right and into the snowbank which has developed over the numerous plowings this winter.  My momentum drew me forward and up and over some ice, which has developed from so many freezings and thawings.  Forty-five minutes of digging and rocking got me no where helpful, so I had to call in sick to work.  Not only is my car stuck but it is blocking the drive so I cannot take Kristi's car.

The lesson I am thinking, "Sometimes the unexpected negates the best of experience."  Or perhaps most important, "If something works, don't change it."
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Conclusion:

My muscles and joints ache in that manner peculiar to the aftermath of short-strenuous abuse and I'm trying to be philosophical about the whole days events.   What I am realizing is that each body of knowledge is good for its own set of questions.  Trust math to figure out how many squares of shingles you need and experience to tell you if you should drive a moving van down a muddy drive.  For that matter, I did trust experience to inform  me how to get the truck out of the driveway, even when I had given up reason and could only hope that I could get the truck out.   

Concerning the unexpected I do not know what to say.  Either I can counsel that one learn to accept the inevitability of it or that when faced with a challenge one should trust recent experience of what works over the old experience of what worked better.  At the very least the former is a lot easier to practice within the scope of human events.  The latter could also stifle creativity and experimentation.

Perhaps I should just listen to the words of my dad who has in recent years become fond of counseling,  "Just go to bed.  Every problem looks worse than it really is when you are tired."  There will be enough time to sort out the lesson of it all in the morning... right after I get the car unstuck. 

"Just Kill the Dumb Duck: Rebuke, Repentance and the Love of God

There is a saying in my immediate family.  A saying that is repeated solemnly anytime a story is told of serious damage incurred from an attempt to do a small, but ill-advised, good deed.  It is a proverb of unintended and unpredictable consequences.  It communicates a strong sense of imbalance between the bitter cost incurred and the small good we hoped to accomplish.  The saying is simple if, initially, a little cryptic: “Just kill the dumb duck. “   

The story begins like this.  About 20 years ago my dad was driving his 1982 black and red Ford F-150 pick up truck to town one spring Sunday morning for doughnuts and a Sunday paper.  The sky was clear and the morning crisp.  A thin layer of dew coated everything causing the grass to glitter and giving the blacktop a dark sheen. 

On the six miles of blacktop between my childhood home and town was a small subdivision of 15 homes, each on a one or two acre lot.  The southern most home had a small pond, constructed by the erection of an earthen dam across a gully with a rather steep grade that continued down to the road.  As dad approached the dip in the road where it intersected with the gully, he noticed a solitary duck begin to ascend from the right side ditch onto the blacktop immediately before him.  According to my father's report he barely touched the brake pedal, just enough to break his own momentum and give the duck a chance of crossing the road unharmed. 

When he touched the brake, however, the truck began to spin and after one or two revolutions it flipped onto the driver's side, on which the truck continued to spin until it came to rest in a freshly plowed field.  The owner of the pond was drinking his morning coffee in his yard and witnessed the crash and, after asking his wife to call for an ambulance, ran out to the crash scene.  After watching a rattled, beaten up man pull himself out of the passenger side window he asked, “Are you alright?”  Dad looked around and watched a lone mallard finish its ascent of the earthen dam to the well manicured pond beyond.  Dad looked at the man and said, “I should have killed the dumb duck.”

The ancient Hebrews had a different proverb, “Better is open rebuke than hidden love.”¹ When we read the proverb in English there is a tendency to emphasize the tragedy of hidden love but I'm increasingly convinced that we should place the emphasis on the expression of love which is an honest rebuke.  The thrust of the proverb, as I interpret it, is not that hidden love is even worse than open rebuke but that open rebuke reveals love.  Better is open rebuke in the community of faith than a love so hidden that it allows a brother or sister to continue unabated on a course of sin.   

The love of God is a complex and often unpredictable thing.  If anyone claims to be able to control God, to manipulate his love in such a way as to guarantee a result, whether to guarantee healing or wealth or success, they are not representing the God of Abraham, Moses and Jesus.  The God revealed to prophets and disciples is a God who will not be controlled like a machine or manipulated like a rag doll.  God loves us but he is not our servant.  God's love is beyond our imagination so it refuses to be constrained by it.  “Better is open rebuke than hidden love.”  Sometimes the love of God or the love of a friend is displayed in the act of an honest rebuke even when it does not feel like love at the exact moment.  True love, whether it springs from the divine or a friend, seeks what is best for the beloved, even if it risks alienating the beloved and sometimes we need to be rebuked. 

Rebuke, whether it comes from God or a friend, is a terrifying thing.  It pays no respect to age, honor, accomplishment or wealth.  It can come as a pang of conscience and it can come in the tumbling of empires. It can be dislocating, confusing, and can dismantle that which we worked hard to accomplish.  But when it is spoken in truth and grants opportunity for correction, it is an act of love.  If we are walking on a path of destruction, however we are knocked off of that path is an act of love. Even if we are embarrassed or humbled for a time, that is a small price to pay to be turned toward truth.   Rebuke, when needed, is always better than the alternative.

I want to try to be clear; there is no doubt that we witness the love of God in every good thing that we experience in life from the provision of our daily bread to the joy of the natural world and of our children.  But the truth is always one of those good things. Even when embracing it requires admitting that we were wrong in the past.   

Jesus cared for the Samaritan woman but he did not flatter her.  He did not attempt to charm her into accepting him as Messiah.  He did not seek to avoid truth because it might offend.  He merely spoke truthfully and the truth always comes with hope.  He is offering her the opportunity to change from an unfulfilling path to the truly liberating call to the discipleship of grace.  By the manner of his speaking and the knowledge that he displayed he won her to faith. She did not deny her life's trajectory or take offense at the master's audacity of talking about.  She understood the experience as a sign that the promise of God had come and that what she was being offered was true freedom. 

All too often I think we feel locked into poor choices by a trick of the brain that economists call the “Psychology of Previous Investment.”  The idea is simply that as human beings we have a tendency to continue to support stocks or business plans even after there are many rational and compelling reasons to reject them.  We do this because we have become invested them financially but more importantly, emotionally.  The more emotionally invested we become the more difficult it is to see any other options but continuing on the path of destruction.   

If someone continues to buy stock in a company, even as it spirals into bankruptcy we say, “They are throwing good money after bad.”  If they continue repeating the same personal mistakes of the past we might say, “They are repeating the same behavior expecting another result.”  Either way the psychology of previous investment is at work.  Unfortunately, it is easier to see in others than in ourselves.  When the love of God is at work in a rebuke, it draws our attention to the matter and grants us the opportunity to see what we were otherwise unable to see.  Rebuke breaks the cycle of the psychology of previous investment and forces us to evaluate our actions more objectively.

It is not necessary to travel too far into adulthood before we realize that everyone makes mistakes and sometimes they are doozies. If we do not sometimes hear the rebuke of God then it is only because we are not listening.  All too often we do hear but we do not respond.  God's love is not only evident in our joys and celebrations.  The love of God is evident anytime we are wrong and confronted with truth that illuminates our own mistake.  It is, under the circumstances, the only way that God's love could be manifest. If there were no rebuke then we would have to assume that either God does not love us enough to draw us away from our error or that his love is so hidden that it will not come out from its hiding place in order to correct us.

Confession and repentance are not sad times or a time to be wasted beating ourselves up but times for rejoicing.  It is a time for rejoicing, because it is during those times that the love of God, made manifest in the speaking of truth, is embraced.  Accepting correction results in a strengthening of our discipleship and that is always a good thing.  Let me emphasize: it matters little by what detour we came to that greater understanding and more faithful practice but it is in greater understanding and Christian practice that we experience the freedom that God grants through truth.   

What should be mourned are those rebukes which go unheeded, when our guilt is revealed to us but we find a way to ignore it, brush it aside or discount it.  A failure to heed a righteous rebuke may be an act of pride or a result of the power of previous investment or it can be rooted in fear.  Fear that the grace of God will not be extended or that the love of friends is not deep enough to forgive. I know that the fear that God's grace is incapable of reaching us is false and can only say that the love of true friends extends much farther in our time of need than we give it credit for when we are afraid. 

Now I like ducks, they are very cute.  It is relaxing to watch them paddle around a pond or walk across a grassy plain.  I also like to be liked and if people have a good opinion of me, so much the better. Maintaining that standing before others, however, is not worth ignoring truth and protecting it is not worth departing from the path of discipleship.  It would be like my trashing my truck and sending myself to the hospital in order to save a duck. 

After dad’s accident, I remember sitting in the emergency waiting room and hearing my mom yell, “Joe?  Joe?  This is not funny.” After which I heard a “SLAP” as she tried to revive him when he inexplicably fell unconscious.  Dad recovered quickly.  He was out of the hospital the next day and everyone had a good laugh at the welt across his cheek and the story of the sacrifice he made for the dumb duck of Rose Township.  I like ducks, but not enough to risk a human life to save one, not enough to trade my dad for one.  I like my reputation but not enough to risk departing from the path of discipleship for it.

The topic this third Sunday of Lent is the love of God, a love that is present not only in our successes and our triumphs over sin or injustice but also in our repentance; which is, truth be told, just another kind of victory over sin and injustice.  Now if anyone here is faced with a pained conscience or a need for repentance and change, I am ignorant of it.  I only know that none of us is perfect and all of us, everyone of you and I myself, will be confronted with the call to change at some point.  I know that experience can be difficult and the time spent there can feel dark and lonely but it is out of these dark moments that the love of God shines most clearly and the warmth it brings to our soul shines most vibrantly.  The love of God brings the rebuke that we may know the truth and thereby be set free.

After Lent comes Easter.  After Good Friday comes resurrection. After confession comes the rejoicing of a million angels and a more fulfilling walk with our Savior and King.  So when you are faced with an honest rebuke I have only one piece of advice, “Just kill the dumb duck” because, "Better is open rebuke, than hidden love."

Peace of Christ to you 

1 Proverbs 27:5

Lent II: Building an Orchard

In a few months 16 fruit trees will be delivered to my front door.  The south facing hillside has been cleared and the brush is waiting to dry a little before being removed. 

Were it not for difficulty I would have proceeded in the manner of the orchard of my youth.  A grass carpet to be mowed every other week.  Yet I am faced with difficulty, the difficulty of geography.  I do not live on the plain of glacier leveled Illinois any longer but the hills of Western Wisconsin.  The orchard sits on a hill, a hill too steep for a standard garden tractor.  A hill filled with birch brush until a few months ago, too rough to mow, even were it level enough.

Shaken from complacency of habit by the uneven hand of reality, I am given the opportunity of reshaping what I think of when I think "orchard."  I am lucky in the fact that many others have rethought the idea before me.

Fruit trees are plagued by certain diseases and insects, like all living things and benefits in its relationships with other living things.  Living things which draw beneficial insects, living things which deter predators, living things which draw nutrients from the subsoil and deposit it in the rich humus where it is more readily available.  Kentucky Bluegrass does not accomplish these good ends with any efficiency.

There are plants, however, that do fill this role and many of them are rather beautiful, they grow deep roots and bloom lovely flowers but they do not look like grass and the cannot be mowed like grass.  Some of them will even grow rather large and make traversing the orchard difficult except in the fall as they prepare for winter, drawing life from the foliage and storing it in the roots; just in time for harvest.

So my second Lenten conversion is a decision to not convert the hillside to that which it is not but to build the orchard to accommodate the steep and rolling hill on which it will be planted.  Beneath the trees will be clover, yarrow, comfrey and rhubarb.  Each tree will pass its youth in the company of wild onions, butterfly bush, buckwheat and bee balm.

As a species we have succeeded in bending the will of our environment to our own expectations.  While we must live in the world and in many respects it must adapt to our presence we too should adapt to its will and its personality.  In marriage we take this as common sense, if a couple is to long live together they must learn to live in a union that allows them to retain their individuality.  If we are to live long on the earth, the species must learn to do the same.

A Black Oxford apple.  One of many nearly forgotten varieties of that I look forward to planting this spring and then getting to know as they grow and mature.

Lent

In years past I have made it a point to stop eating doughnuts.  I'm embarressed to say that it has been more a response to the pounds that I tend to accumulate over the course of the winter than pure spiritual practice of deprivation.

This year I have decided to spend each week of Lent looking at my use of the earth's resources and attempt to find ways, little as they might be, to break out of the inertia of my current consumption patterns to engage in some creative new patterns.

I was surprised one morning to notice my razor.  A small plastic disposable, of a major brand, that I enjoy that I have found to do a good job and last multiple shaves.  Each precision combination of metal and plastic cost a little over a dollar.  On the whole it doesn't use that many resources or create that much trash, unless I suppose you multiply it by the male population of the nation.

So this week I bought an "old time" safety razor.  The investment for the hardware was a little over 40.00 (including shipping) and the double sided razors run 1.50 for 10 (20 shaving edges total).  So each shaving edge cost 7.5 cents a piece and uses fewer resources than the disposable.  In about 5 months my initial investment should be reclaimed.

It won't save the world but I never claimed to be a Messiah.  It will take some time to learn how to use this new device, but I've never opposed change.  It is just one small adjustment to a lifestyle that is a little bit more sustainable. 

Monday I'll write about my spring time plans for a permaculture orchard.

More Drama... and a blessing

I have been waiting with no little bit of anxiety for our does to give birth.  Yesterday morning I walked out to do the chores and found one doe with a kid stuck, half emerged from its mother's womb.  It's sibling near death from cold, it had not been cleaned and dried by its mother.

I took the chilled kid in the house and then ran back outside to deliver the second kid.  The first leg came free and into position easily.  The second came much more difficulty and distress to the doe but it came free and the kid was born.  When I returned to the house the first kid was dead.

I thought that the doe was going to die but after two hours I went out and, figuring there was nothing to loose, jerked her to her feet and made her walk.  Almost instantaneously she began to look better and I quickly returned the surviving kid to her.  When I left for work both mother and daughter looked well.  Otto has named the kid "Boo." 

She sure gave me a fright.

God (and our) love of creation

A concise and well-framed question can be much more memorable than the most articulate or enlightening answer.  I won't forget one that went like this, “Yeast consumes and multiplies until it drowns in its own waste.  Explain to me how people are different.”  It was entertaining an unique in the way it was framed and it was a good question as it reflected a piece of observational truth.   

As Christians we claim that God is infinite.  To say that God is infinite is to say that nothing can be added to God or, for that matter, taken away.  And if God is infinite then there is no place that God is not, for if there could truly be a God-forsaken place, a place apart from God then God would not be infinite.  Every blade of grass, God is there.  Every passing sparrow, God is there.  In the most distant star and in every wave of sunlight warming your skin, God is there.

The Hebrew poets knew this and made mention it in their songs all of the places they had seen God; they saw the Lord in the life giving processes that surrounded them and surrounds us. 

They heard God in the screams of toddlers.

They tasted God in the harvest

They saw God in

• the movements of the sun and stars

• the eruption of springs in the desert

• the drying up of streams

• the immovability of mountains

• the expanse of the sea

• and in a simple pasture, God's provision

The life of creation and the activity of God are so closely linked in the poets' minds that the simple act of a summer shower and the mundane activity of grain drying in the field is connected with the activity of God.  While we like to think of ourselves as more sophisticated than the ancients, or superior because of our scientific accomplishments it has come at a cost.  We have lost some of the awareness of God at work around us.  I don't think it is because we care about the work of God less but we have become divorced from the processes which underlie the bread, vegetable and meat that we consume.  If we do not appreciate the rain it is because we do not connect famine with its absence.  If we do not see God in the food that will nourish us following Sunday service, the problem is not necessarily that we do not love God enough, but we are divorced from the processes from which our subsistence is delivered from God.  The life of creation and the activity of God are so closely linked within the minds of those worshipers of God because they knew that God's provision for their existence was found in those things.

Through out human experience there are a number of different attitudes towards nature that seem to inhabit the human mind, depending upon culture, circumstances and personality.  We can have an adversarial relationship toward nature.  This attitude is marked by a belief that the piece of creation that we are utilizing is expendable, either because it is far away and unseen or because we believe we can easily move on to another piece later.  An adversial attitude can also arise when need is great due to an increase in population or a decrease in yields as we become desperate to span the gap between what is needed and what is provided.  There are times, even if they have not been experienced lately, when mother nature does seem out to get us. 

The attitude can also arise when we view creation only as an avenue to reap the reward offered by the marketplace for the efficient extraction from the earth of what ever it is that we are selling.  We are more willing to try novel approaches in order to get those resources to market more cheaply, whether we are extracting coal from mountain tops or corn from Iowa, if we view the earth as nothing more than a big ball of resources to be exploited.  An adversarial relationship grows from a short time horizon.    

Human experience, however, has been marked by another attitude towards nature.  When our subsistence comes easily from the land and our livelihood does not depend upon exploiting a resource we are more likely to have a domesticated view of nature.  We may desire to see it maintained in some fashion.  Taking our subsistence for granted, we generally ignore nature unless some landmark or our a part of our immediate surroundings that we find aesthetically pleasing is threatened.  We do not see ourselves as participants with nature, neither do we see it as God's handiwork.  We see it as little more than a decorating choice which adds to the character of our homes or neighborhoods or as a type of museum, to be ignored except when we go on vacation. 

These views share at least one thing in common, they reduce creation from a gift given by God to a  commodity; either as a resource to be extracted or an aesthetic to be managed.  There is another attitude, however, one born out in a wide variety of cultures and times.  It neither seeks to bleed creation dry nor does it treat creation like so much exterior decoration.  This view, a view which I think is reflected in the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures, recognizes that humanity is part of the larger ongoing processes at work within creation.  It recognizes that as members of a finite physical world we take from and give to the working of the processes which all life depends and that these are the good gift of a loving God.  If we train our minds to think in this way, we can escape the trap of commodification and enter a world of revrent use.

While we can and should make distinctions between human and non-human creation, we need to realize that we live in and depend upon the non-human world.  The difference between people and yeast is that we are capable of comprehending our dependence upon the resources around us.  We can appreciate them and, if we put forth the effort, we can conserve finite resources and be wise stewards of renewable ones.  A yeast cell cannot make choices about how much or what it consumes. We do have that choice if we elect to exercise it.

There are practical reasons for wanting to be in touch with the world around us, but it is also a matter of Christian discipleship and worship.  Through out history followers of God have looked at the world around them and been brought to their knees in awe, worship, and prayer.  Worship does not come from hymnals, it comes from witnessing and appreciating the work of God around us.  It comes when we notice God's work of grace and forgiveness, it also comes as we appreciate his provision for us in coming of the rains, the sprouting of seeds in the soil and even the deep cold which thins the population of overwintering insects, providing some protection to the plants and animals they prey upon.  One does not need to take a course in biology or environmental sciences to be led in this worship.  One must only learn to see what is happening all around them and wonder at the glory of it all; to look around and see the care and activity of an Almighty God.

While Jesus, in our gospel reading this morning, was primarily encouraging his listeners to faithfulness, reminding them that they should not fear even the most ruthless of human opponents more than God.  He does so by observing that every sparrow is known and loved by God.  If they are known and cared for by God, than this is enough of a reason to say that they have some inherent worth.  This does not mean that we should not take from nature as we interact with it.  We will harvest from nature but we need not consume it without judgement.  We will turn some wild places to domestic use but we should do so mindfully and with wisdom that recognizes wild places should only be domesticated when they can be done so to good purpose and sustainably.  Some places should not be brought under cultivation because they will not bring any long-term benefit and the destruction of the original ecosystem will entail long-term harm.  God cares for the sparrows. We should not displace them without good reason.   

In the end, I suppose that some degree of commodification is necessary.  I have no better idea about how to distribute things like lumber, coal generated electricity, chicken wings or marsh-mellow peeps other than put a price on them.  Though, I hope, we can come to a price that truly reflects the cost of production. A cost that accounts for the destruction done in the process of delivering a good to my doorstep and discounts those products which are created in such a way that treats the natural world with respect.  I think it is important, as creatures striving to be faithful to a creator who cares for the whole of creation that we not assign value based only upon what the market is willing to pay for a truckload of 2x4's or a ton of coal.  The tree and the mountain top are cared for by God and while they should be used, they should be used wisely and, even, reverently.

Even as we utilize creation we must do so as a gift, not something that we have earned and can therefore dispose of as we like.  Creation may be bought and sold, but we need not value it cheaply.  It is a gift, to be cared for as well as used.

Peace of Christ to You.

 

 

My Very Bad Really Stinky Day (or "The Stupid Thing I Did")

When I pulled into the driveway this morning I looked where the goat barn should be and saw this instead:

Before leaving for work the night before I had gone out to check the animals and noticed that the smoke from our wood burning stove smelled funny.  I almost went back in the house to check out the stove, but I had just checked it before walking out the door to check the animals before work.  I now realize that what I had smelled was the smoldering of hay in the goat shed.

The three goats are o.k.   Only General Lafayette was singed, which is a bit of a miracle.  Their pen is not that large and not three feet away from where they would have standing a plastic feeding pan was half-melted.  In good buck goat he must have kept himself between the girls and the fire.  They are now living in the garage, having a gay old time.  The first doe is due to give birth later this week.

Four rabbits perished in the blazed, including my buck rabbit.  It does feel like a significant personal failure.  God has given us the animals to care and protect.  We should consume them with respect and thankfulness, making sure their death is as humane and painless as possible.  They did not get the protection that they should have, and I am penitent.

Three rabbits did survive, remarkably.  Their water dishes melted into the wire bottoms of their cages, their hutches are severely charred, and the vinyl siding I used as a roof, melted.

I had been worried that the goats would give birth during the cold snap we recently experience.  We were only expecting so early in the spring because of my excitement at getting a buck led me to bring him home before I had a separate pen prepared for him.  Though I thought I had taken every precaution, every precaution was not good enough.  Either through an electrical short or, more likely, some failure with the heat lamp led to this senseless and needless loss.

No person was hurt.  The family slept through the inferno.  I guess neither the neighbors nor any passing car noticed the blaze, though it must have been quite the sight.  I am thankful that it was not worse than it was.

I spent the day cleaning up the debris.  Tomorrow I start in that most human of endeavors, on repairing what has been destroyed.  I spent the day cleaning up the debris.  The truck from the lumberyard is scheduled to arrive at about 9am.

Here are a few other photos of the destruction: