Hold Everything: Last Sermon of Summer

Sermon for Proper 16B 2012: “Hold Everything”

(Based on 1 Kings 8:22-30, 41-43 & Ephesians 6:10-20. Copyright Mainecelt 2012))

We had to stay awake. It wasn't easy-- most of us at the Conservation District meeting were farmers, and we'd been up since dawn for one reason or another: nursing a sick animal, repairing a fence, picking greens and packing them off for a long day at the farmers' market. But the District's monthly meeting was an important one. The hard metal chairs and the fluorescent lights would have to be endured.

Now, usually, these monthly meetings are pretty routine. Maybe a landowner needs help with erosion control, and the District's staff works with the board to develop a service plan. Or maybe a town has trouble with storm-water runoff and they ask the Conservation District to help with assessment and management. Usually there's great news from the one of the District's educators, who works with schoolkids on all kinds of projects, like local food lunches and hands-on science where they study the ecology of wetlands and streams. We hear the reports, smile and applaud, and go home feeling pretty good about all these good local efforts to care for our land and water.

But this time around, everything was different. After the usual reports, a new document was handed around, and the room grew quiet. When a copy reached my hands, I realized why. The title read, “Going in Reverse: The Tar Sands Threat to Central Canada and New England.” Nineteen different organizations had signed on, from the Maine Clammers' Association and the Appalachian Mountain Club to the Natural Resources Defense Council and Maine Interfaith Power & Light.

In twenty pages, it laid out the properties of tar sands oil, a type of bitumen: extra-corrosive, extra-acidic, extra-abrasive, and basically extra-everything-bad. There was a map of the 60-year old pipeline they want to send this stuff through, from Alberta, Canada, to Portland, Maine. It explored the potential harm to waterways and watersheds, from the Great Lakes to the Androscoggin, Sebago Lake and Casco Bay, if this bitumen ever busted through the aging metal anywhere along the way.

Turns out, the stuff is so heavy and thick they have to dilute it with lots of chemicals to make it flow at all. They have to pump it at higher pressure, and it tends to heat up as it flows. The more we learned, the more concerned we became. That 60-year old pipeline was built before they imagined pumping anything this thick. And because the pipeline was already built, the company could reverse the flow at any time, without even informing the public.

I lived in Alaska from 1989 to 1994. I knew what a regular crude oil spill could do to wildlife and fishing communities. But this stuff wouldn't just float on the surface and wash up on the beaches. Bitumen sinks. We don't have any containment systems designed for that. If the Conservation District was going to figure out how to serve the public in the event of such a disaster, it was going to require the wisdom of Solomon.

Unfortunately, Solomon had his own containment problem. His people had been on the move for so long, pushed from one place to another, caught up in conflict after conflict...and now that Solomon was king, he wanted to make good on his father David's promise: to raise up a temple with a solid foundation, to root God's people in one glorious place, to announce that God's favour had come to rest right here, right now, finally, in a purpose-built structure with the best materials and designs and craftsmen that royal money and influence could buy.

Solomon was probably a little bit stressed about this. His own route to the throne hadn't been particularly neat and clean. His older brothers had all been victims of wartime schemes, power-plays and horrible misunderstandings, until finally Solomon was the one left standing—the tenth boy-child of David, practically the last in line. And so Solomon prayed. He prayed not for riches or power, but for wisdom and understanding. And God heard Solomon's prayer and blessed him with that very gift.

Now, after all that, the big day arrived: the precious box of holiness that had rolled alongside God's people for so many years, that bouncing little God-buggy called the Ark of the Covenant, was carried up the steps by specially-selected priests, observed by the gathered elders of all the tribes of Israel. They proceeded to sacrifice so many sheep and oxen that the Bible says they lost track. Then the priests carried the ark into the inner sanctuary and installed in the newly-completed temple.

What happens next? A cloud of glory fills the whole temple. It knocks the priests to the ground and rolls through the corridors and seeps out of every possible crack and opening. The temple cannot contain the raw power and beauty and love of the Creator of the universe. Solomon has a serious containment issue. He cries out to God: “But will God indeed dwell on earth? Even heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you, much less this house that I have built. In other words, never mind the oil. This is a Godspill of epic proportions, and nobody makes clean-up gear or haz-mat suits for that.

Good thing Solomon prayed for wisdom. Wisdom tells him to open himself up to all God's glorious possibilities—and it tells him to keep praying. Pray he does—not just for his royal house, not just for the priests and the elders, not even just for the people of Israel. God is uncontainable. Solomon gets it. And so he prays for foreigners, for everyone beyond the circle of the chosen and the blessed. He prays that all the peoples of the earth may come to know the God who spills out everywhere, and that God would hear and answer even the prayers of the lost and wandering, the poor and the placeless.

Meanwhile, over in the New Testament, Paul is having some containment issues of his own. He's under a special kind of arrest, literally chained to a Roman soldier—sort of a living ankle bracelet for rabble-rousers. Waking and sleeping, he hears the clatter and clank of his captors' plate-mail, the iron rings rattling as they shift, leather bands creaking underneath. There's no ignoring the flash of the swords and daggers suspended from their wide copper-plated belts, or their bronze helmets with the long cheek-guards and wide brims, fancy crest-ornaments stuck on top for extra show. Every soldier's footfall rings on the tile walkways thanks to the iron hobnails on their leather boots. These sights and sounds, along with the clanking weight of his own chains, create the rhythm of Paul's days and nights.

Yet, somehow, Paul is allowed to write. Manacled and under watch, he is still allowed to compose and send letters that travel far. He knows his words may be carried from one household of believers to another, from one faith community to the next. And so, for the sake of his brothers and sisters in Christ, Paul has a little fun at the soldiers' expense. He suggests another dress code for followers of the Christ: not the gear of an imperial warrior, certainly not the gear of his Roman security guards: “ Put on the whole armor of God...fasten the belt of truth around your waist, and put on the breastplate of righteousness. As shoes for your feet put on whatever will make you ready to proclaim the gospel of peace.” Shoes that make you ready to proclaim the gospel of peace... Not Bean boots? Not Nikes? Not Crocs? What is Paul suggesting? He goes on with his list of recommended gear: a shield of faith. A helmet of salvation. And the only weapon in the list: “the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.”

This is not, as some Christians suggest, battle gear for Armageddon or the Rapture. This is how we prepare ourselves for all the everyday temptations, all the subtle evils and seductive double-talk that bleed us, bit by bit, in our daily lives. It is gear for our efforts on the home front: gear that shores up the spirit, gear that keeps a heart from breaking in the thankless, exhausting work of care-giving, gear that keeps us engaged in community outreach, gear that helps us respond to those who fear disaster, gear that keeps us connected to the health and healing of our wider world.

The whole armor of God is a metaphor, a way of reminding ourselves that we cannot fight evil with its own weapons—we have to use something different. It is a reminder that God's loving, creative, redemptive power trumps all our clever human constructions, from fancy shoes to temples to pipelines and empires. It is a reminder that we are God's beloved family, bound into the same cosmic network of action and accountability.

Especially, it is a reminder that this work is not for superheroes in a galaxy far, far away. It is here, now, in our own time and place, that we must take on the work of living faithfully. It is here, now, that we shoulder the challenge of reconciliation and justice-making. It is here that we must learn how to walk, proclaiming with each step the Gospel of Peace.

We have to stay awake. Because, all around us, people are trying to shove and shoehorn God into boxes and temples, trying to blind us to the glory of God that seeks to bust out in our midst. They're trying to weigh everyone down with the heavy armor of empires, until our helmets cover our eyes and we trip over our own chains. But we serve the God of the foreigner, the God of royal wisdom and holy foolishness, the God of the last-in-line. We serve the God who longs for our wholeness— and the wholeness of Creation.

We serve a God for whom there is no containment system, and God's power and love spill out everywhere, transforming and healing each of us. This is the Good News. Thanks be to God!

Photo credits: Solomon's temple found here. Roman armour found here. Maine local lunch found here. Ruth Duckworth's "The Creation" found here. Sebago Lake map found here.

EnRaptured

Six o'clock came and went, like the swift spatter of summer rain that swept across our farm this afternoon. There were no little piles of clothing dotting the landscape, unless you count the shirt and stocking blown off the clothesline. We were left behind, it seems, by the latest in a long line of apocalyptic billboard-buying End Times trumpeters. The Rapture did not happen here. It did not include anyone we knew. It did not include us.

And yet...we did share the experience. While there was no packing of picnic baskets or precarious perching on rooftops, we did prepare ourselves for something glorious, something potentially life-changing: another day on the farm.

There are ritual elements even here. We go down on our knees regularly. Who's to say if there's a difference between planting a seed, gathering a freshly-laid egg, or offering a prayer? We fill the cup--or the trough--for each blessed creature. We break bread and scatter it for a flock, and who's to say our chickens are any less worthy of the sacrament of communion? In this place, communion is something we celebrate every day, as the creatures of the earth are tended and fruits of the earth are gathered in to be prepared for our shared table.

Today, we shared the day's work joyfully. Our first official WWOOFer contributed to our lifted spirits considerably. ("WWOOF" stands for "Willing Workers On Organic Farms" or "World-Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms." Traveling volunteers trade work for room, board, and agricultural education.) With her enthusiasm and our combined energy and effort, we plowed through a formidable list with light hearts and earnest determination. Our shared laughter rose like a hymn to all that is good and right in the world: communion, indeed.

"Prayer," says Parker Palmer, "is the practice of relatedness." Four days of wet weather have quieted and slowed the urgent growth and activity of this season, and we've been keenly aware of that relatedness- keenly aware of just how many lives rely on the return of the sun. When, early this afternoon, the clouds finally dispersed, we celebrated the sudden surge of activity. We reveled in the preening of poultry, the opening of damp blossoms, the exodus of hungry honeybees. The cattle lifted their shaggy wet heads in the pasture. Muddy ground firmed up and soil temperatures warmed, awakening plump, well-watered seeds.

We are ready for the rapture--not because we are waiting for it to happen, but because we discover it unfolding, continually, all around us. We are enraptured by the revelation that we have NOT been taken. We are Left Behind to attend to the holiness with which the tattered, beautiful world is already imbued.

We are called--it is our vocation--to remain in this richly challenging place and serve as stewards of its goodly gifts. There is no greater embodiment of grace.

Just Say Mow.

An atmosphere imperiled by fumes and an ocean poisoned by hemorrhaging oil--what can a self-proclaimed steward of Creation do?

There are options besides the "paralysis of analysis." You could reduce your own petrochemical use and collect spare hair or pantyhose for the cause. You could volunteer with the wildlife rescue teams or support locally-led reclamation programs in affected communities. If you happen to be an ArchDruid, you can guide people towards a more holistic understanding of the situation. Or, if you happen to be the Archbishop of Canterbury, you could bury your head in your mitre and obsess about something completely different.

We don't have hairdressers or pantyhose, and our budget for largesse is pretty much nonexistent, no matter the urgency of the cause. But there's one thing we can do: we can Just Say Mow.

We have a gasoline-powered lawn mower. It works well, though it's noisy to run and our uneven terrain causes the operator some unwelcome excitement with dips, bumps, scraped rocks and ejected debris. If a verdant expanse of precise and coordinated stem length was the central pride and joy of our lives, starting that machine up might be worth it. If we lived in a gated or planned suburban community, perhaps others might compel us to rev up the mower, citing terms of the Community Covenant.

But we don't live in a suburb. We live in Maine, the state where Katherine S. White wrote her great 1962 essay, "For the Recreation & Delight of the Inhabitants," on the bizarre, unnatural notion of "the lawn." Our sloping, rambling dooryard full of violets and clover may not, strictly, BE a lawn, but it is a rapidly-growing expanse that ought to be managed one way or another.

Our first thought was that the cows would take care of it. They do a decent job, though not a neat one, when we set up a temporary electric fence and turn them from their pasture into the yard, but there are some things they won't eat. They DO do a nice job, though, of fertilizing our "lawn," and the free-ranging chickens are good at distributing the fertilizer when they tear it apart in their quest for tasty grubs. When the cows are done, there is a mostly well-cropped expanse dotted with cowpats, lush tufts of unmunched grass, (where the cows peed), and tall, healthy weeds (which, for some reason known only to themselves, the cows occasionally refuse to eat).

So, what to do with the tufts--or with a whole yard--that must be mowed when the cows are engaged in their standard rotational grazing pastures? Time to requisition some equipment from our Luddite arsenal: get out the whetstone, the peening jig, and the scythe!

A scythe--how quaint. It triggers images of old-country peasants sweating in their masters' fields--poor unschooled bumpkins. Surely this tool could not be used today by those seeking improvement and innovation and a better way forward...or could it?

The fact is, a well-made scythe is a marvelous tool: beautifully crafted, exquisitely well-balanced, easy to heft, use, and maintain for decades. It requires no "inputs" other than the moderate strength and comfortable movement of the average human. How many gas-powered devices can make that set of claims?

The best thing about working with a scythe is the way it draws a person into active presence, opening rather than limiting one's ability to engage with nature. There is no engine's roar, whine, and sputter. There are no petrochemical fumes to urge one's movement away. There is just the feel of the smooth wood in your hands, the satisfying "snick" of the blade through damp grass, and the dance-like gentle movement of step-swing, step-swing. It is a simple and pleasant pursuit, particularly when accompanied by a friend with rake in hand, ready to gather and pile up the fresh cuttings for composting back into good, rich soil.

Unlike gas-powered mowers, scythes work best when the grass is wet: at daybreak and before, after, and even during a shower of rain. And so I rise in the morning, when the air is still full of birdsong and the dew is scattered like a hundred thousand jewels along the grass. I pull on my boots and my favorite work gloves, smiling at the now-faint "women's work" logo emblazoned on their backs. I take the scythe from its hook on the wall of the shed and the whetstone with its belt-clip holster. I add just enough water to the metal holster to keep the stone wet. I take a moment to admire the whetstone, another low-tech marvel. It is formed to fit two things precisely: the enfolding grasp of the human hand and the slope and curve of the scythe's long blade.

Once the stone is well-doused, I take it up and give a few ringing strokes along the blade. It's fun to make the blade sing, both of us tuning and warming up for a grand performance, preparing to step out onto the stage. When the blade is sharp, it is time to go. I survey the tall, grassy expanse around me. I swing the blade down and wrap my hands around the honey-coloured wood of the handles. I take my place at the edge, move into position, and begin the dance that is scything: step, reach-and-swing. Step, reach-and-swing. Step, reach and swing.

I hardly notice the reach. It is not an awkward extension but rather a subtle adjustment of eye and hand that has become, with practice, nearly automatic. (I'm still new at this, but I'm getting there.) If my arms begin to tire, I remind myself to use the rest of my body more, to let the scythe balance and skim along as I plant my foot and pivot my waist. The grass and clover fall in soft arcs before me. Looking back, I can see the cleared swath that is proud evidence of a working blade--all of this accomplished with barely a sound.

Around me, the birds have not faltered in their singing. The chirp of crickets goes on. I can hear our rooster proclaiming his place in the scheme of things, and the neighbor's sheep in their distant pasture offering a response. If a yellow admiral flutters by on bright wings, no hazardous, loud-motored machine keeps me from noticing and admiring it. Even the blade of my scythe tells me things about the world: the juiciness of grass stems, the playful sprawl of clover...and if a honeybee should land on a clover blossom near my blade, it is no trouble at all to turn and mow elsewhere until it has gathered its fill.

Even with all these things to admire, the work gets done. There is a slight variance in the newly-mowed expanse--after all, I'm still learning and perfecting my techniques--but, while this yard may not make the cover of "Cosmopolitan Home," it makes us happy and proud. I feel good about my work, at home in my body, in love with this land. I need extract no oil nor pay any corporation to tend this beautiful green place.

Huzzah for the scythe!

Time in a One-Toilet Town

We wouldn't want to get too far above ourselves, so this past weekend we took a wee break from the drudgery of house-building and mud-farming for a holiday in a one-toilet town.

We were headed to Muscongus Island, a small (3 miles by one mile) island in Midcoast Maine. Our friends Julia and Fred, of Castlebay, helped us get the gig--the job of preparing and leading worship for this wee island "community" the morning after a Castlebay-led ceilidh on the deck of one of the summer residents' homes. This island no longer boasts any year-round residents--the last one left more than a generation ago--but the older Summer Folk can still recall many of the permanent residents, their ways of life and their stories.

The island has some odd dynamics. It is an ever-changing collection of people who live in close proximity yet rarely think of themselves as a community. There are no electrical lines, no televisions, no paved roads and no land-line telephones. (Actually, they tried to install a telephone system several years ago, but it never quite worked. You can still find remnants of the wire decaying along the tractor-paths that connect some of the more remote houses.) The island--until very recently--also had no flush toilets.

Everyone still proudly uses their outhouses except one Mr. Plimpton, who first earned the other residents' scorn by gutting a historic island house of its ornate decor to make way for modern decor. He then used his lawyerly skills and deep pockets to acquire permits, bring over heavy equipment and materials, and install the island's first flush toilet and septic system.

The other Summer Folk responses ranged from disgust to righteous indignation. By tacit agreement, they had abided by the common understanding of minimal impacts and respect of limited resources. They had invested in solar lights to cut down on their use of kerosene. They were careful to pack out all their trash...but Mr. Plimpton, apparently, couldn't trouble himself to abide by Island Common Sense.

As I prepared for the weekend on the island, I wrestled with my sermon. What could I say? After all, I was just another non-islander, another Person From Away. It was Julia who suggested I think in terms of other islands--the islands I've visited in Scotland, and the island, far to our west, on which I grew up. That was helpful-- every island has some sort of resource-use issue. Every island copes with the tension of building and maintaining a sense of community. But I still figured I'd have to go off-lectionary.

The Common Lectionary is a three-year ecumenical cycle of Bible readings designed to expose congregations to the vast majority of the Bible's themes, books, and important stories. Each week's readings include a reading from the Old Testamant/Hebrew Scriptures, Something from the Book of Psalms, Something from one of the Gospels, and a reading from one of the New Testament Epistles. Usually I try to stick to the lectionary readings--it's a good discipline, a sort of "writing prompt" for preachers. The weekly challenge is to find, in the assigned readings, something that speaks to a news item or community issue, and then craft a sermon that reflects honest engagement with the historical texts in light of our contemporary situation(s).

I figured I'd have to go off-lectionary for sure--what could a two-thousand-year-old collection of letters, poems and stories possibly say to a bunch of islanders in 2009 who were upset about a flush toilet? Well, might as well read the lectionary list for this week before I get on with the work... HAH! What I found were a bunch of people stuck in the wilderness together, worried about their food supply, and an early church congregation arguing over the relative value of each other's gifts. As they say, "That'll preach." (Readings may be found here. I used the readings from Exodus 16 and Ephesians 4.)

The piper and I arrived on the island Saturday evening by small power-boat. We weighed down the three-bench boat with unusual cargo: a fiddle, a guitar, Great Highland Bagpipes, Scottish Smallpipes, assorted flutes and whistles, bags of food and clothing, a large Celtic harp, three musicians, one preacher, and one very nervous farmdog. There were folks waiting at the dock to haul all our gear up the hill through the deep, dark mud created by a summer of unusually heavy rain. We set up for the ceilidh on the deck and enjoyed a lovely summer evening: music, potluck snacks, and an after-ceilidh supper at the home of the island's spry 85-year-old historian.

Sunday morning dawned with sweet birdsong and pearly light. The Piper and I had slept in the parsonage attached to the island church--our room was right next to the belltower. As instructed, I pulled the rope and rang the bell at fifteen minutes to nine to call the islanders to church. The Piper was poised and ready outside. As soon as I finished ringing the bell, she struck in her pipes and played in the thickening mist as the islanders made their way along the footpaths. Children were carried on shoulders. Dogs came as well, too rambunctious to tell if they were wearing their Sunday-go-to-meeting collars and leashes.

After the welcome and announcements and prayer of invocation, we had a hymn sing. People called out suggestions and a woman jumped up and offered to play the piano as we sang a few verses of each favourite hymn. As they opened their mouths and sang out the first hymn, such a glorious blend of strong voices and sweet harmonies arose--such a joyful noise in such a dear wee kirk! I felt deeply blessed by the Spirit moving in that place.

A young woman from the congregation read the first Bible reading, and I read the second. Next came the sermon:

SERMON FOR LOUDVILLE CHURCH, MUSCONGUS ISLAND, AUGUST 2, 2009:

It was a summer Sunday like this one, the air heavy with moisture and salt, no other cars on the roads, just the rise and fall of the ancient stone hills before us. We were in Scotland. We had just finished a week on the island of South Uist at a traditional music school. Now, with another student, we had rented a car to spend the weekend exploring the rest of the Outer Hebrides. It had seemed like a great idea-- pack four musicians and all their gear into a station wagon, grab food along the way, and wander merrily wherever we wanted.

Our traveling companion was fascinated by standing stones, and since he was our driver, we happily agreed to let our path be plotted by the locations of significant stones. Saturday had gone well enough-- we'd meandered through empty fields, along sheep paths and near low stacks of drying peat, to stand in front of this or that ancient monolith, used for nobody-knew-quite-what. It was a lovely diversion, and we'd been well-fortified by a full Scottish breakfast at a bunkhouse on the island of Harris.

Saturday afternoon, we headed north to the Isle of Lewis, my father's ancestral stomping grounds. The plan was to reach the biggest town, Stornoway, by nightfall, then spend the entire next day heading from one great stone wonder to the next, including the great stone-age fort called the Carloway Broch and the ancient circle of stones at Callanish.

Somehow, though, we'd missed a crucial bit of information. People had warned us, but we hadn't quite believed it. “Fill up your tank the night before; Lewis is closed on Sundays.” We didn't quite realize what it would mean. Lewis, it turns out, is a stronghold of conservative Protestant devotion, and when they keep the Sabbath, they really keep the Sabbath—to the point of padlocking the swings in the public parks.

The morning was beautiful. We went to the lighthouse, dipped our toes in the other side of the Atlantic on a wee white-sanded beach, and watched endangered seabirds wheel above the ledges of some of the oldest rocks in the world. We romped through the remains of thousand-year-old fort. We polished up the last of our crackers and cheese and looked forward to afternoon tea at the Callanish visitors' centre, complete with a view of the standing stones.

But the visitors' centre was closed. The grocery store in the next town was closed. The petrol stations and convenience shops were closed. Even on a summer weekend, even at the height of the tourist season, Everything Really. Was. Closed.

We kept driving, bellies grumbling and growling, scanning the wide expanse of peat bogs and lichen-encrusted stones that reached to the horizon, hoping less and less for another picture-perfect monolith, hoping more and more for a convenience store around the next bend... Our panic continued to rise as the light faded from the sky. We realized we'd misunderstood the rules, misinterpreted our guides. We wanted bread. The island offered us nothing but stones.

Then we remembered Maggie. Maggie was a classmate of ours at the traditional music school. She'd introduced herself as a local girl—she lived on Harris. In the friendly, welcoming way of the Highlanders, she'd invited us to drop by. “Especially if you're there on the Sabbath;” she had said, “You'll need a home-cooked meal then.” Her remark had seemed oddly pointed at the time, but we understood her meaning now, all too well. We rummaged through our packs and found a copy of the school contact list. Tired and hungry and unsure of ourselves, we put in a call to Maggie.

“Och, sure! You're just doon the road! Come, then, the lot of ye! I've got supper on the stove.” One slight wrong turn and twenty minutes later, we were on her doorstep. She ushered us in with exclamations of welcome and genuine delight, took our jackets, offered us tea, and showed us to the kitchen, where dinner was indeed on the stove: four enormous dishes, heaped with food, cooked the day before, the pilot light's heat just barely enough to give them a hint of warmth. She had made this enormous feast the day before, so as not to trouble herself with the work of cooking on the Sabbath. There were bashed neeps with butter and curried rice salad with apricots. There was a platter of cold sliced meat and a tray with bread and cheese. It looked like enough to feed a village—certainly more than Maggie's small household, more than enough for them and four hungry musicians.

Maggie's hospitality startled us, dazzled us, and moved us deeply. She had known us only a week, and then mostly in passing. Yet here was this feast, and afterwards the demand that we put up our feet by the peat fire, rest a while, and share some tea. Her unqualified, whole-hearted welcome fluttered around us like a flock of quail landing in the wilderness, like manna in the desert. Here was pot-luck beyond our wild imaginings, canceling out all our fears of scarcity.

Islanders or desert wanderers, we all move with the burdens of hunger and fear. For the Israelites, it was the fear that their resources would not be sufficient to nourish their whole community. On Lewis, we faced a similar, though far less drastic, fear.

The island where I grew up has its own community struggles. Our island, unlike yours, has no bedrock. It is merely a pile of silt and gravel, the remnant of a glacier that got tired. To the executives and engineers of a mining company, all that pre-crushed rock made our island the perfect source of raw materials for all manner of lucrative clients, near and far away. They threatened to take a portion of the island—including protected shoreline and sensitive woodlands--by Eminent Domain in the name of Public Works.

We raged. We whispered. We made phone calls and wrote letters. We gossiped, prayed, and picketed. We raised such a stink that the county commissioners, engineers, and other highly-placed personages made their way from the mainland to the island. The cause became a celebrated one.

I wish I could tell you that we won, flat out. But real life rarely wraps things up so neatly. Nobody got exactly what they wanted. In the process, though, something has changed on the island. We've learned to be clear with each other. We've learned to work together—farmers, lawyers, schoolkids and grandparents, mechanics and politicians—to understand what matters most to us, what makes the island such a vital, precious and important place.

It remains to be seen whether all those tons of gravel will be pulled from that particular lump of earth. In the meantime, we have sowed seeds of good stewardship, and we have begun to reap a harvest of wisdom. As Paul said in his letter to the Ephesians,
“We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people's trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming. But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way... into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body's growth in building itself up in love.”

Speak the truth in love-- how hard that is, when anxiety and frustration—and even righteous indignation—crowd out compassion from our hearts. And how hard it is to grow together, to find some all-too-uncommon Common Ground. On Lewis, that place of ancient stones, they wrestle with the decision to run ferryboats on Sundays, raising the fear that this will cheapen and weaken this tiny stronghold of Sabbath Rest. Here on Muscongus Island, you have your own struggles with resources, your own hard quests for Common Ground. But you also have sources of wisdom, strength and nourishment. You have auctions, workdays, and wonderful potluck feasts!

On the old agricultural calendar, today marks the beginning of Lammas or Lunasdal: the harvest season. On the Isle of Lewis, as on the Scottish mainland, it was a time to honor those who laboured in the fields. Bread and beer-- gifts of grain and the fruit of the earth—were shared in abundance. It was a kind of communion. There were toasts to praise workers and landowners both, ways to honour the well-rooted and the drifters. Although most of us no longer till the fields with our own muscles and sweat, the memory of these things is powerful—so powerful that the Common Lectionary, the shared cycle of bible readings heard in churches around the world, offers on this particular Sunday a plate full of manna, fresh harvests, heavenly bread.

Here, on this small island, on this particular lump of stone and earth, our fieldwork awaits. Let us ask ourselves and our neighbors: what shall be our harvest? What nourishment will we share with others, to keep the Spirit's gifts moving among us? What manna will we gather, together, in this place?
Amen.


Manna, indeed: for the rest of our stay, we were invited to share meals and hailed cheerfully on the footpaths. We shared more stories and savoured the hospitality of many...and used more than one of the island outhouses, each decorated thoughtfully and distinctly. Farmdog, Piper and I roamed the island's beaches with our friends. I swam in the cool saltwater. We read books from the island library by solar flashlights after dark. It was a time of renewal, a time of nourishment for body and mind and soul. We've even been asked back for another Summer Sunday, next year!

Making Hay...?

"No, I never said that." So claims the woman at the end of the line, bringing me to the end of mine. Back in June, she said she could get us a winter's worth of haylage from her fields. We were jubilant--the favorite winter food of our cattlefold, sourced locally from another Farmer Woman. "Put us down," we said, meaning, "Add us to your official customer list."

Yesterday we learned that she had, indeed, put us down... that is, she dropped us.

We had called at the request of Iona, Cattlefold Matriarch, who announced with insistent mooings that the pasture grass was about used up, and the musty henhouse hay just wouldn't do. How lovely--how luxurious-- it felt to ring someone up, knowing we'd planned in advance. How wonderful it felt to rest and wait for an answer, knowing her supply would be there to meet our demand... Then came the awkward pause, followed by denial. "I never said that! No, I don't have enough to feed my own!" Turns out the fellow who was supposed to hay two of her fields never did the job.

We asked who, and she gave out a name we've heard for years. It's Farmer Drown, the same guy we tried to get hay from last year, the same guy we get referred back to EVERY time some other tractor operator claims they're just too busy to work our fields. "Why don't you call Farmer Drown?" they all say, "He lives near you." Then we explain, once again, that we have indeed called him. For three years, we've been trying to buy his hay, trying to hire him for tractor work. Farmer Drown never calls back. That's the point where the other guy usually scratches his neck, looks away for a sec, then says, "Yeah, he IS kinda hard to get ahold of..."

"So," we ask Hay Lady, "what's up with Farmer Drown?" After a few choice but unprintable words, she finally blurts what we've suspected, but never dared confirm: "the guy's crawled inside a bottle by noon." Now the familiar knot of anxiety rises in our throats, the well-known dread sinks back into our bellies, and the fragments of the tale fall into place: One man--one capable, strong, experienced local man with barns, livestock, good equipment and fine farmland--has allowed his personal demons to hold not only his own farm hostage, but ours and others as well. Because of his bond with the bottle, animals and families go hungry all over town. Because of this, we must thumb back through old phone logs and retry last year's exhausted list of potential hay suppliers. All this unfolds as the Almanac trumpets a coming winter of bone-chilling, mind-numbing cold.

The cold has settled over us early, indeed, though the thermo- meter shows the mid-sixties. We are cold in anticipation, shivering with stress and fear. We walk outside when the light is most golden, trying to warm ourselves with the beauty of the farmstead. We murmur appreciations at the well-feathered hens strutting in the green September grass, the fattening pigs with their deep bass welcoming grunts, the dear shaggy cows that come running... Then we wearily admit that their affections depend largely on being fed. Our minds spiral back to bald pastures, empty haylofts, and ever-higher grain bills. Back and forth we perilously swing, hoisted and hanging between two passionate extremes: "Why the hell are we farming?" and "Oh, we love this farm so!"

How grand it will be, someday, to look back and laugh at this year's comedy of errors. We'd been congratulating and comforting ourselves all summer over the hay--securing this supply was the one thing we'd done right. Meanwhile, we made the rounds of the aforementioned tractor-operators, trying to find anyone who could disc-harrow our newly-stumped fields. Most had traded in their disc harrows years ago: "Good luck finding one. Nobody uses them now." A few guys had disc harrows, but--curiously enough--were overbooked with work. A handful actually had the grace to come walk the fields and talk the job over, but they all admitted a hearty disinterest, citing other projects with better payback and less "fussy-work."

The last guy showed up two weeks before the last possible pasture-seeding date. We walked down and perambulated the potential pastures. Yes, he had the right equipment, and yes, he could do the job, but it wouldn't come cheap--see, he'd rather be working on his own house, to have it ready for the winter, so he'd charge us a premium for his time! Trying to hide our shock, dismay, and a fair amount of disgust, we continued on with our little farm tour, taking him over to see the orchard and the pigs. "Well, shoot," he said, shoving his John Deere cap back on his balding head as he caught the scent on the mellow breeze, "you didn't tell me you had PIGS."

Leaning towards us with a confidential air, he adjusted his bombast to an almost conciliatory tone: "Now, I'm always happy to save folks money if I can. You don't need me. You don't need my fancy equipment. You've already got most of the equipment you need. Here's what you do: get your lime spread, then lay out some temporary electric lines and fence those pigs out in the new fields. They'll work it over and till it up real fine. Send 'em off to the butcher, hunker down and let the snow fly, then--come Spring--it'll be plantin' time!"

Well, didn't we feel dumb. Good little Luddites like us, spending a whole summer in thrall to the Big Lie of Heavy Equipment, when we could have had our pigs out there tilling. Worst indignity of all--it took a Big Ol' Tractor Man to point the whole blessed truth out to us!

September 15th is the last frost-free sowing date for our "hardiness zone." We still have the pigs, but not enough time to get grass established in this calendar year. That means we can't fulfill the requirements of our farm's Conservation Plan, which had us scheduled for completion of "pasture/hayland planting" in 2008. Our farm has benefited from conservation programs--without them, we could not have afforded good fencing or the field hydrants we had installed last year. Unfortunately, due to this summer's misguided and fruitless tractor-quest, we'll miss out on this year's cost-shares. The money spent for stumping and lime delivery in preparation for tilling, (over $4,000), will haunt us like a phantom limb, aching long after its severance.

So, time to wrap up this entry and get on the phone. Time to see who, among the farmers in nearby towns, might have some hay or haylage they're willing to sell. Then it's time to finish off this year's pigs--maybe with a few weeks in the new fields--and sell all the pork to pay for that hay. Come February, sure hope those cows still appreciate us!

Some farmers make hay while the sun shines. Some farmers make way toward the cheap wines. And some farmers--like us--buy hay while we stun swines.

Wait 'til next year!