In The Dark: A Celtic New Year Sermon

(I was invited to be a "guest preacher" last Sunday at my home church. It always seems a bit funny to serve the role of a guest when I'm already part of the family there! Since this month marks the start of the "dark half" of the Celtic year, and since one of this Sunday's lectionary readings talks a lot about light and darkness, it seemed natural to dwell on the interplay of shortening days and lengthening nights.)

Sermon for Proper 28A: In The Dark
(based on I Thessalonians 5:1-11, NRSV)

Every morning, as the light reaches in between the dark spines of the trees on the ridge, we watch and wait. First the rays of pale gold stretch across the dark hollow of our farm to touch the trees on Gloucester Ridge. Then, slowly, the angle of the light changes and dips down to gild the empty branches of the ash tree, the oaks, and the maples on our own land. Finally, the light spreads to the cold earth itself, and the hard edges of the frost begin to melt off the pasture grasses. One of us ambles down to survey the situation, then returns to the wood-fired warmth of the house. Every morning, lately, the other one asks the same question: “how many legs?”

We've been waiting for calves to be born. We know what day the bull arrived, but—I hope you don't think I'm being indelicate here—there are certain other details we seem to have missed. It's just as Brother Arnold warned us last year, when we went over to the Sabbathday Lake Shaker Community to discuss their own herd of Highland Cattle and get some ideas. We'd told him our tale of woe, about the challenge of finding and affording a vet who could work around those wild-looking, big-horned beasties of ours, to say nothing of the challenge of timing. Brother Arnold nodded his head knowingly. “You won't see many signs of readiness,” he said, “Highland cows are...well, they're very subtle.”

Subtle, indeed. So, here we are, ten months after the bull moved into the pasture. It takes nine months for a calf to be ready, just like a human baby. Ten months have past and our two round-as-a-barrel cows show no sign of imminant calving. So, we wonder. We worry. We ask ourselves what went wrong, and what could still go wrong now. Sometimes, we dream: a new calf could offer so much to our farm: the expansion of our herd, the proof of their capacity for new life, and the promise of another fine full-grown animal to transform into needed income or good, homegrown meat.

So, each morning, we cast hopeful eyes out towards the pasture, and we count legs, looking for a sweet gangly little body tucked alongside one of the cows. “How many legs? Still twelve?” “Still twelve.” There's nothing we can do to hurry it along, and—although there are signs we can watch for—there's no way we can predict the exact moment of the herd's increase. We're kept in the dark about it. It's subtle. We have to keep wondering. We have to hurry up and wait.

This morning's scripture comes from another bunch of people-in-waiting. Paul is writing to the fledgling church in Thessalonica. That little church was caught up in in the fashion and fervor of the day, waiting for the Rapture, the Day of the Lord. There were signs all around them: earthquakes, floods, plagues, riots in the streets, cities being destroyed, governments shifting and falling, and different religions battling it out, each claiming to have exclusive access to the “Truth.” Sound familiar? And if you weren't sure what to believe, there were street preachers to tell you where you'd go and street vendors to sell you just the right handbasket!

It's hard not to be afraid when everyone around you is talking like that. It's hard not to let all the fear-mongerers and doomers get to you. When the loudest voices cry out, “pain and suffering! Death and destruction!” no matter how much you try to laugh it off, it gets a little harder to sleep at night, a little harder to keep peace in your heart.

Remember how the Rapture was predicted by a radio preacher, who declared Judgement Day for May 21st, 2011? Did you hear about this? Did you find yourself checking your calendar? After the day came and went, he recalculated for October. When November came, did you breathe a sigh of relief, or did you get a little nervous, because now we're almost to December, rapidly honing in on the next big date for the End of the World...?

A good teacher once said, “What you contemplate, you imitate.” Whatever stories you tell yourself, whatever dramas or sitcoms you watch on television, whatever magazines you read, whatever ads flash in front of your eyes—all these things echo around inside you, the images shimmer and reflect, until it all becomes part of the way you understand the world. We can't help it—what we contemplate, we imitate. We tend to copy what we see and repeat what we hear. Now, that's one thing when you're a new Christian sorting through the competing tales of Roman politicians and travelling preachers. But there's a whole extra layer of difficulty in an age of mass-media and instant communication.

What if the stories we hear and and the images we see are mostly lies, carefully crafted by marketing experts? What if every commercial is a lie, a message that, by yourself, you're a weak, ugly nobody, but if you buy whatever they're selling, you could be SOMEbody, even somebody strong and beautiful? Bit by bit, the carefully-crafted lies eat away at us. The marketers sling mud until it covers our souls. We lose perspective. We give up our power. We learn to live in doubt and anxiety and fear. What you contemplate, you imitate. Little by little, we forget how to shine. We become children of the darkness.

Writer Jeffrey Pugh imagines a demon, writing a management guide from his basement office in hell. The devil explains his latest strategy:
“As part of my toolbox I’ve always used distraction to deter them from truly considering the world as our opponent wants it. I like it better when they become fascinated with the things that do not feed their souls. In the old days, of course, we had bread and circuses, but in the age of technology we have even more wonders at our disposal...We don’t want them to cultivate ways of living that bring them together. We want them torn apart, polarized, and at each others throats. Any question about how they should live needs to be buried under the scandal of the day... I want an entire planet entertaining themselves to death. No, seriously, I mean it. If they start to think seriously about the world they build and see the possibility that the world could be different, well, it’s time to Release the Kardashians!!”

Now, get that clever devil out of the spotlight and listen to the Good News:
But you, beloved, are not in darkness, for that day to surprise you like a thief; for you are all children of light and children of the day; we are not of the night or of darkness. So then let us not fall asleep as others do, but let us keep awake...

Children of the light: that is how God made us. There was a beautiful mystic tradition among the Jews and early Christians that God was the first, best and brightest light in the whole universe, and everything God made had God's light trapped inside: flowers, weeds, bushes and trees, rocks, rivers, snakes, salamanders, codfish, sharks, woodchucks, camels, even bugs—all just bursting with God-given light, full of sparks of divine fire.

That's true of people, too—not just the wealthy and powerful, but everybody: the bank president with the elegant shoes and the woman in scuffed sneakers at the laundromat. The construction foreman with the gleaming new truck and the greasy-haired guy who works nights at Gas-n-Go. We are—all of us—children of the light, all created with the potential to shine, to brighten the world with hope and healing, possibility and promise. Most of us maybe don't know it. Some of us start out knowing it, but we forget. We let our minds fall on other things. We dwell on failure and fear. We stop shining. We stop noticing all the other divine sparks around us. Our vision gets hazy. We get drunk. We fall asleep.

...we are not of the night or of darkness. So then let us not fall asleep as others do, but let us keep awake and be sober; for those who sleep sleep at night, and those who are drunk get drunk at night. But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, and put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation.

Do you hear that? Wake up! Listen up! WE—We, right here, all of us—are full of divine sparks, stuffed almost to bursting with God's beautiful, radiant, powerful light. Fear and anxiety are not our masters—God is! As soldiers discipline themselves for battle, so should we discipline ourselves for the challenge of making peace. Give the muscles of faith a workout. Build up the stamina of your hope. Get ready to love longer and harder and more deeply than you ever have before. Repent—change your ways—because the Beginning is Near!

For God has destined us not for wrath but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ... so that whether we are awake or asleep we may live with him. Therefore encourage one another and build up each other, as indeed you are doing.

As Paul says, “Build each other up.” In a culture geared to pettiness and appearances, it can be hard to make this change. I suggest an exercise, what they used to call a spiritual discipline: Turn away from the false and intoxicating lights of all the little glowing screens around us. Remember: what you contemplate, you imitate.

In this season of darkness, seek illumination from a different source. Light a candle. Sit with that small flame and pray. Reflect on the light. Make space for God's light to stir and shine within you. Wipe away the mud and clear away the debris until you find the deep smoldering goodness of your own soul. Breathe with it. Feed it. Let the wind of the Holy Spirit stir it, like a sudden gust across the coals of a campfire, until sparks catch fire and dance up into flame. Wake up each morning ready to search the landscape for signs of new life, ready to celebrate the wonders that may be born on this day of New Beginnings. We are Children of the Light. We are brothers and sisters of the Light of the World. Let it shine! Let it shine! Let it shine!!!


(All images copyright Mainecelt 2011 except for Calvin, borrowed from here, and handbasket, borrowed from here.)

Quoth the Raven: Galore! Galore!

Samhain comes at sundown. The Celtic New Year signaled, for our ancestors, the end of a half-year's intense outdoor labour. Samhain ("sow-when", literally "summer's end") heralded the onset of the year's dark half, a time to come indoors, gather around the fire, share stories and music, and re-weave the deep roots of cultural wealth and wisdom that bond us to this dear old Earth. Samhain--or, if you prefer, "All Souls' Night"--is also a time to honour our ancestors and all other dear ones who've gone before us, a time to acknowledge and even befriend our grief. Older reflections may be found here and here and here.

It is a time to embrace the gapped and tattered nature of life. On a recent foraging walk in the woods with two of our WWOOF volunteers, one of them noticed that, in the woods, almost everything was nibbled at the edges. Every leaf, stone, hump of earth or bit of bark was food or shelter to some living thing. Most of the mushrooms we found had been delicately edge-munched to satisfy some itty-bitty appetite, but creatures seemed content to share. Nothing was left perfectly whole, but neither was anything eaten down to the stem. Just as all foodstuffs of substance were nibbled, so too were gaps quickly mitigated: an ongoing dance of presence-absence-presence. Edges were quickly claimed by lichen, mushrooms, and insects. Other creatures claimed hollows as water or food caches, hiding places or homes.

There is a word for this strange harvest-time ache of awareness, the wisdom that comes from working with bushel baskets and sharp-edged knives. The word is GALORE. It comes from a Gaelic term variously spelled gu leir, gu leoir, or gu leor. It means both "sufficiency" and "abundance." In the Gaelic worldview, we are surrounded by abundance--and we are also expected to honour this abundance by living within the limits of the goodness the natural world provides. There is no need to hoard or overconsume: with goods gathered sufficient to our needs, we have wealth galore. The key is to perceive and celebrate this basic truth: Enough IS abundance. Or, as a related Scottish proverb says, "enough is as good as a feast." Perhaps our greatest "sin," as humans, is our tendency to forget this truth, to hoard and grasp too much, to dwell in the illusion of scarcity so masterfully crafted by the magicians of merchandising. When we take only what we need and give the rest back, the anxieties dissipate and we are freed to unclench, to recreate, to heal and dream.

We have gathered in the gifts of the earth. We have harvested herbs, flowers, and vegetables from our gardens. (The land was gracious and merciful: when all of our squash vines withered, pumpkins and butternut vines sprang forth from last year's pig-grazing range and mostly ripened in time to harvest before the frost!) We have gathered berries and apples and preserved them for the cold months to come. We have respectfully raised and butchered birds for our winter meat. We have taken five well-tended pigs to the butcher so we may feed other families as well. We have foraged for wild mushrooms and harvested them gently, always leaving some for the rest of the woodland creatures to enjoy. Now the larder shelves and freezers are full and the dark is rapidly descending. Music of thankfulness wells up in us. We dwell in remembrance of all the lives that enable our own.

So it goes. We enter the dark half of the year ready to share stories, ready to sing, ready to dance. We carve pumpkins as our ancestors carved turnip-lanterns: a creation of absence and presence, of wholeness made hollow and emptiness illuminated, all to shine the Old Souls home to the Land of Plenty. Welcome to the season of Samhain. May you all be graced with sufficiency and abundance, goodness and grace galore!

P.S. Buidheachas gun sgur-- unceasing thanks to Andrew, Amy, Robert, Antonn, and all of our other WWOOF volunteers who have contributed to our sense of abundance. Without your contributions of time, enthusiasm, curiosity, and energy, we would have much less to celebrate!

Housewarming, continued...

We had a ceilidh--a house-party--last week. It was an effort to hold ourselves accountable to joy: the joy we want to feel, the joy we know we should feel, the joy we can't always figure out how to feel. We decided we'd have a handful of friends come over for a potluck, followed by some shared tunes, songs, and stories to celebrate our farm ownership and usher in the Celtic New Year. We figured the presence of friends, feasting and merrymaking, would help us reconnect with the vast array of Goodness that has touched and warmed our lives. Besides, parties are always a lovely excuse to neaten up the house!

We'd had a housewarming party once before-- our friends Bruce & Sue joined us more than a year ago to help us celebrate our official inhabitation of this woodshop-turned-farmhouse. Sawdust was still on the floor and wallboard joints were still waiting to be plastered. We ate at the folding table I use for the Farmers' Market, but we had a wonderful time and together christened the place, "home." Their surprise gift that night, a basket of domestic goodies that included kitchen goods, two wineglasses, and a toy for our dog, proved immediately and continually useful. The memory is bittersweet because Bruce died later that year, a dear friend lost to cancer far too soon.

This year's We-Bought-The-Farm party fell on October 30th, almost exactly a year after Bruce's memorial service. The greatest gifts this time around? The songs, tunes and stories shared in the post-potluck glow, including many recollections of Folks Gone Before. Yet we were surprised with some more tangible treats, as well-- a jar of home-canned dilly beans from one friend, jars of rhubarb jam and chutney from another friend, and a beautifully turned salad bowl of local alderwood cleverly disguised by...well, a bowlful of salad. Oh, and then there was the bottle of champagne handed off with a conspiratorial grin--we were told to tuck it away in the fridge and save it for a "private celebration" of our own!

But there was one person who didn't make it to the party--didn't even know it was happening, in fact--and sent something anyway: my Fairy Blogmother, MamaPea. MamaPea is a homesteader and gardener extraordinaire who has been a sustaining source of wisdom, kindness, good humour and understanding. Her gifts were a very sweet surprise and could not have come at a better time. They were actually part of a "pay it forward" scheme among some craftsperson bloggers, but that deserves a future post of its own. For now, I want to share the tremendously thoughtful work bestowed upon me by MamaPea, who is a professional quilter of obvious talent, wit and skill!

Here's one view of the four quilted potholders MamaPea made for me. By the way, they match our kitchen's colour-scheme perfectly. I have NO idea how she managed that, since she's never seen our kitchen! How clever of her to work in so many salient motifs: alphabet fabric for my love of words and writing, images of old-fashioned farmsteads interspersed with a print of tiny quilts to commemorate our friendship and our homesteading foremothers, tiny gold stars and all those trees and branches and leaves...

Here's a second view, showing the potholders flipped so you can see (gasp!) their backsides. Such perfect colour-coordination! Such splendid designs! I feel so blessed and delighted to be the recipient of such gifts! (Trivia item: the potholders were photographed while resting on the tile runner of our dining table, one of the last items made in our house when it was still a working woodshop. The house is just small enough, and the table just big enough, that it dictated the placement of the stairwell and, by extension, the dimensions of all other rooms in the house.)

MamaPea didn't just treat me to a sampler of her own talents--she also sent a packet of beautiful photo-cards made by her daughter, an off-the-grid homesteader and artist/designer who blogs as ChickenMama. Most of the images come from Swamp River Ridge, the site of her Northland homestead. They betray the keen eye and deep appreciation for nature that you'd expect from a serious homesteader. Not only are the photographs themselves strikingly beautiful, they're also nicely mounted and elegantly packaged. I'm sure there's a wonderful story behind every image, and if I could just lure ChickenMama and MamaPea over to Maine, I'd love to sit down with them and hear every single one!

So, here we are: surrounded by friends and stories and gifts from many hands, our hearts full of gratitude, in a small farmhouse well-stocked with warmth and love.


P.S. Happy Birthday, Piper. I think this year's going to be a good one!

Autumn Thaw

The frost has come. The last late raspberries have been hoarded like a handful of rubies into the freezer. The pigs snuggle close in a nest of old hay, the cows lumber across the pasture in a quest for the year's last green tidbits, and the chickens scramble no longer for fresh worms and juicy bugs, their morning treat limited to scatterings of old bread. In the lower garden, all that remains are a few stalwart cabbages. In the upper garden the beets wear purple leaves in mourning for the black skeletons of tomato plants, recently uprooted and laid to rest on the damp branchy base of this winter's burn pile.

The land's production has ground nearly to a halt. We move slower too, weighed down by feedbags and slopbuckets, gathering firewood in the frosty air. But something strange is taking place, just as the cold weather sets in: we are starting to thaw.

When you live for years under the ax, waiting for that dull blade to fall, you becomes well-acquainted with fear, despair, and depression. The threat--in our case, the threat that our farm would be lost--becomes a familiar, if not friendly, presence, and you forget what life was like before the sky was marred with that great hanging wedge of cold metal above you. You forget how to walk outside without bowing and wincing and wondering when it will finally fall...

And then, one day, the ax disappears--life changes, new possibilities appear, the loan comes through and we finally buy the farm--but we're not sure how to stop bowing and wincing every time we step outside. We experiment with lifting our heads. We flicker an experimental gaze now and then at the sky. We say to ourselves, "We're safe. This farm belongs to us. We belong to this farm." We try to say it like we believe it...once in a while, we succeed. We flash each other a grin--but the next minute we're ducking our heads and wincing again, returning to the movements and rhythms we know.

Call it a crisis of faith. We have forgotten that hope is a free gift, not an exclusive commodity. We are enduring the long-awaited thaw of frozen dreams, and our movements are still stiff and unsure.

Bear with us. Samhain, the Celtic New Year, has come at last, carrying the promise of warm fires and songs in the deepening night. Our spirits drape themselves near the woodstove, gradually unfreezing like a pair of trapper's mittens. We are stirring, humming, and warming to life's possibilities.

Rockin' the Big House: a Tribute to Bruce Malcolm Cole

I preached my first funeral last Saturday. It was a rather unusual service.

How unusual?

Well... let's just say I am now part of a rather small club: the association of clergywomen who have stood in the pulpit of a large Catholic Church and led a Celtic New Year-themed service on Halloween.

It was Bruce's idea--Bruce, dear grace-filled trickster, who knew he was dying and was determined to go out in style. You see, Bruce was the kind of guy who loved to move behind the scenes. By profession, he was a facilities manager, the man with all the keys who understood all the mystical mechanics and secret spaces. As his wife wrote about the church, "He always referred to it as "the big house", but with affection, like a nickname for a cherished friend." Indeed, Bruce poured himself into the meticulous care of the schools and churches he tended, taking pride in details nobody else might ever notice. Yet he also had a theatrical streak, and he loved to be the center of attention. The best times for Bruce usually involved the chance to feast, the chance to tell stories in diverse company, and the chance to play with fire. (The picture give you a hint of his sense of humour. It comes from a charity fundraising calendar called "Under the Kilt.")

When Bruce received his diagnosis of pancreatic cancer, he understood that it was serious. He understood that such a diagnosis came with a lifespan of mere months, sometimes mere weeks. He spoke of "beginning to live in two worlds"--one in which he maintained a powerfully positive outlook with a fierce focus on future living, and one in which he pragmatically began to put his affairs in order to prepare for a fast-approaching end. Soon after his diagnosis, he approached one of the priests of the large Catholic church where he worked. He knew full well the merit of his work, knew how to play his hand as their only non-Catholic employee...and really, when a man says he's dying and wants to have his service in your church because the place means a lot to him, how could anyone say no?

The venue secured, he proceeded on to the next step of his subversive plan. At a Scottish Heritage society meeting, he pulled me aside. Would I, as chaplain to the society, officiate at his service and see to it that his heritage would be honoured? Again, how could anyone say no? In my mind, I pictured a quiet, intimate gathering in a rustic chapel somewhere...peaceful shadows and flickering candlelight...a simple, unadorned place without too much fuss where a youngish clergywoman could manage, decently, her first attempt at a funeral. Silly me. I don't know what I was thinking.

As the weeks and months unfolded around us, Bruce battled his cancer with all the courage and dedication you'd expect of a serious caber-tossing athlete. He stormed through chemotherapy and other treatment protocols in a blaze of glory, gritting his teeth and grinning at the slightest hint that he might be winning. He sought out an energy healer and seized the opportunity to improve the well-being of his spirit as well as his body. Yes, there were days when the strain showed, waves of nausea and sudden urgent trips to the doctor...but those of us at the sidelines found ourselves frequently bewildered by Bruce's newfound vigor. He was so determined to embrace life, to live fully in every moment, that some days he actually seemed MORE healthy, not less.

Bruce flexed his growing spiritual muscles and exercised them frequently. For years he had been mentoring others, but now every meeting was another chance to impart wisdom, and he tried not to waste a single chance. When we complained of our frustration with The Disappearing Plumber, he told us to "stop being angry and let it go." When we got wound up about things, he would say things like, "you may think it matters, but it doesn't. It really doesn't matter as much as you think it matters." Then he would counsel us to turn our attention elsewhere--to love, to shared comfort and laughter--and get on with the business of real living.

Over shared meals, Bruce gradually ate less and less, but we feasted together on laughter. He could build up a story, then suddenly flip it around, leaving its legs treading the air and leaving us nearly helpless with laughter. He had known plenty of rage and anger in his own life--he often reminded us that we would not have liked him when he was younger--but he clearly was intent on a different path now. Bruce, mighty-muscled and built like a tank, entertained himself now by mentoring amateur athletes for the Maine Highland Games, building runs and feeders for the wee wild beasties in his back yard, crafting traditional Scottish knives and elegant walking sticks as gifts for his friends, and weaving his own words and music together with the help of a good guitar. He counted his riches in the affection of his beloved wife, his two rescued "special needs" dogs, and the diverse range of folks he counted among his true friends.

Diversity-- that was another thing that mattered to Bruce. He welcomed both myself and my partner into his circle of friends and lauded the way we cared for each other. And when his ecclesiastical employer chose to vocally advocate the overturn of Maine's recently-passed same-sex marriage law, I suspect Bruce decided to have a little good-natured fun at their expense. So it was that he secured a huge, ornate Catholic church for his funeral venue, then asked me to lead the service and asked my partner to play the pipes.

And so we did-- three days before election day. His wife and I planned the service together and settled on the Celtic New Year as a day with particular meaning for Bruce, who deeply loved his Celtic heritage. We used the funeral service in the UCC hymnal as a guide, but included a prayer from this book along with a poem that echoed Bruce's earthy, earthly spirituality. So: Catholic church, check. Woman in pulpit, check. Pagan Celtic readings, check. Prayer for lightning not to strike me down in the middle of the homily: check.

Now, I've officiated at weddings, at christenings, at house-blessings and tree-blessings and other rituals, but I'd never done a funeral. When the full impact of the situation hit me, I confess that I got a little, well, freaked out. I don't put much stock in conspiracy theories, but after stepping into that sanctuary and seeing all the contribution envelopes for the "Stand for Marriage" campaign at all the entryways, I did feel a bit like I'd been sent into hostile territory and would soon be found out and "removed." I had to remind myself that we were there to celebrate Bruce, and that hate and petty sectarian bickering had no place in his celebration. We called the administrative head of the parish and asked him to start the service with some words of welcome. We called another priest and asked him to say the prayer of invocation. They both agreed. Now it was up to me to walk the line, to call up every ounce of worship-planning skill and diplomacy in the service of honouring my friend.

Perhaps Bruce's spirit was still "facilities manager" that day. Somehow it all came together. Somehow, it all worked, and it was beautiful. Somehow, I sat between two priests in the front of that opulent sanctuary, in front of hundreds of people, and I never triggered their "heretic and abomination" alarms. There was a massed bagpipe band in full regalia in front of the church. There was a Celtic harper inside, weaving a gentle, comforting web. There was the most heartbreakingly beautiful a capella rendition of Danny Boy--a song I usually deride--I'd ever heard. Bruce's niece played a Bach sarabande on cello. All of the readers offered scripture and poetry and prayers in clear, strong voices. Hundreds of voices joined together in "Be Thou My Vision" and "Amazing Grace." Amazing it was--and, yes, full of grace. At the end, the sound of the bagpipes swirled up and echoed from the high stone arches. Together we wept, and together we smiled, bound together in grief and love for a truly remarkable--and gleefully subversive--man.

Waiting for the Wind

It feels like Spring.

Aye, I'm fully aware that it's early November, but this morning is so golden and the day so full of possibilities, I almost expected the dooryard to be decked with a blooming carpet of crocuses.

Happy Celtic New Year to one and all! Samhainn has arrived, and with it the Dark Half of the year when we step inside, rest, and replenish our energies. I open my arms to welcome this darkness, even as I enjoy the golden light. It has been an exhausting agricultural season and I am much in need of rest!

Happy Election Day to one and all! Whichever way you plan to vote, hie yersel tae the claisest booth an dae yir civic duty!!! (Sorry, but my constitutional right to free speech allows me to use Scots words, now and then.) Here in our small town, we revel in the act of exercising our rights. We glory in our historic--and energy-filled--town hall, where the old wooden voting booths have been carefully stocked with "number two pencils with the erasers cut off." There are no machines to fret about, no touch-screens or hanging chads. My partner's favorite saying bears repeating here: "We're so far behind, we're ahead!"

Tonight, when the polls close, I'll join local citizens of every political stripe to hand-count and tally every single vote. We'll each be paired with someone of a different party registration and sent to a table with a stack of fifty ballots and a tally sheet. We'll take turns being "caller" and "counter", then check the two tallies against each other to make sure each count was correct. The ballots and tally sheets will be then be handed to the town clerk for further official documentation and proper handling. We'll do this until there are no more stacks left to count. With the number of questions and candidates on the ballot this year, we anticipate a very, very long night. Fortunately, rumor has it that the town clerk will be providing a grand spread for this gaggle of vote-counters: not only the usual plate of cookies from the "Town Clerk Emeritus," but other home-baked goodies, casseroles and pizza.

And now, I'd love to write more, but I have to seize the day and take full advantage of the mild weather before the Wild Winds of Change (and Winter) hit. There are trim-boards to paint, creatures to tend, pig-food to purchase, non-hardy bulbs to dig and store, and the ever-elusive fieldwork contractors to find. (We're still in need of someone with a tractor & manure-spreading rig to distribute a 30-ton load of woodash on our future fields. Know anyone you can recommend?) And then there's the important matter of a birthday present for one of last year's farmhands... time to get going and "get 'er done."

I remember, growing up in the Pacific Northwest, that we'd often have fantastic wind-storms on Election Day. We always referred to them as The Winds of Change. After a campaign season of ridiculous length and feather-ruffling rhetoric, I'm ready for the wind. I'm ready for a cleansing storm that snaps loose and shoves off the dead branches of our current (lack of) leadership. Though it's quiet just now, and the light is still hazy and golden, I'm watching the weatherglass for signs of change... and I'm planning to vote for Barack Obarometer!