Good Friday thoughts on Easter morning

I have to admit I’m glad I’m not a minister this Sunday. I would hate to have to preach today. It’s Easter morning, but I find my mind caught up in Good Friday thoughts. I guess I’m not ready to declare hope and peace for the world yet. While I haven’t given up on hope, I don’t believe for a moment that we as a human race have in anyway recognized the extent to which we are mired in destruction and injustice. We’re caught up in outrage about many things, but are they about the real injustices? I wonder. I worry that we’re in greater danger of falling for a false hope than we are prepared for the truth about the hope that the resurrection is meant to bring us.

This week I’ve watched and listened as Christians claimed victory over their “persecution” as the Religious Freedom Restoration Act bill was passed in Indiana, with changes in the wording from the federal bill that was passed years ago, that effectively opened the door for businesses to discriminate against certain people on the basis of religious conviction. One couple proudly proclaimed their pleasure with the bill, as it would enable them to refuse to cater a same-sex wedding, even while not refusing service to gays and lesbians in their pizza shop. The left has poked fun, while the right has used the couple as a tool in their propaganda machine (see this article who started the GoFundMe campaign for the couple). Like many I’ve been outraged and at times even amused by the whole story. But now I’m just sad about the whole thing. I don’t think the couple is evil. I don’t believe they’re stupid. I’m not even entirely sure I think their refusal to cater the same-sex wedding is an egregious offense. Do I believe that we need bills and laws to protect the civil rights of marginalized minority groups? Yes, I certainly do, as much as I ever have. But I believe with all my heart there is a much wider, larger context in which that concern has to be addressed. 

I wonder if this situation is much like the night before Jesus was crucified. The authorities’ displeasure with Jesus’ message and leadership was no secret. As he gathered in the upper room with his disciples and later in the garden when he struggled in prayer, he sought to prepare them for what was about to happen. They, however, were still caught up in political ideas about what Jesus was going to do for them. They wanted him to save Israel. He was calling them to love and care for the whole world around them.

There’s no greater demonstration of this conflict than in Jesus’ prediction that Peter would deny him. It didn’t require magical thinking or a crystal ball to see what was about to happen. Jesus knew he wouldn’t fight back against the authorities. Peter was ready to fight. When Jesus refused to be the savior, the leader that Peter believed he was, Peter was done with him. Such was the disillusionment he felt about Jesus’ message. All that Peter believed they were working toward was lost in Jesus’ refusal to fight back. I believe Peter bought into a false hope…one that depended on nationalism and political maneuvering. I believe he was so convinced that was the answer that everything he heard Jesus say throughout his ministry was twisted somehow to support that conviction. Sure, he had moments of seeing things more clearly, but in the end his deeply held convictions about the unique nature of the nation of Israel and its importance to God’s plan for humanity blinded him to Jesus’ relatively consistent message of equality, turning the other cheek, giving food and water to those in need, to his championing of the marginalized.

These days I see Christians, liberal and conservative, evangelical and progressive, equally blinded by their own ideas of Jesus’ message. They stand ready to defend Jesus, when Jesus simply accepts his fate, mind and awareness fixed on the bigger picture of injustice in the wider world around him rather than on the paltry battles of majority religious people in a land of excess, battles about who’s right and who’s wrong, whose rights are being abused most, about who gets to decide what Christianity is supposed to look like. Yes, Christians we are no different than Peter, sword in hand, swinging it wildly, defending against what we believe to be the real evil, all the while missing the very real possibility that it’s not about us at all, and is in fact, more about surrendering our power and privilege, so that the world’s suffering may be eased.

It troubles me how much attention has been given to the situation in Indiana this week, while the story of 147 Christian college students who lost their lives in an attack at Garissa University College in Kenya was barely mentioned. One-hundred forty-seven black African Christian bodies killed and so little outrage that such could happen. Yet, the ever growing GoFundMe campaign of the Indiana pizza shop owners is still trending on the news. Liberals and conservatives battling it out over whether or not Christians have the right to refuse to serve pizza at the wedding of two people whose relationship they believe goes against God. In the few mentions I’ve seen of the massacre in Kenya, so little was known about the situation that those commenting on it mistakenly reported it happened at University of Kenya, when it actually happened at Garissa University College. Our vision is so narrow and skewed. This is just this week’s example of it.

I believe we’re still in the darkness of Good Friday, not really ready to understand the source of hope for the world. We haven’t even gotten to the point of screaming with Peter, “I NEVER KNEW HIM!” We haven’t reached the point of disillusionment yet. I think the disillusionment that screams “You aren’t what I want you to be!” at the top of our lungs to the idols of God that we have erected in our churches and institutions of faith is a critical step to accepting true hope. We have to let go of our own notions of the solutions to injustice so that we can embrace the self-emptying kind about which Jesus preached during his time on earth, the kind that Jesus lived during his life on earth.

My hope for us rests in the fact that somehow between Good Friday and Easter, Peter got it. He let go and began to see what Jesus was saying all along. I wish I had the same kind of trust in today’s Christians that Jesus had in Peter. I do want to believe we’ll get it, but I wonder what it’s going to take to get our attention. How long, O Lord? How long?

Mom's blackberry jam cake

I inherited my mom's recipe box when she died a couple of years ago. I haven't had the heart to do much with it since then. It's been sitting on the shelf collecting dust. Thoughts of a Christmas favorite compelled me to take it down to see if, by chance, there was a recipe for it. I was lucky. There in the midst of three recipes for lime jello pineapple salad was the folded and stained recipe for blackberry jam cake.

The recipe is in my sister's handwriting, I think. My mom's is less artistic, though pretty similar. I suspect my sister asked my mom for the recipe which was not recorded anywhere and wrote it down for her, making an extra copy to leave in mom's recipe box. There are recipes for other things in my handwriting that were written down when I asked how to make something that was just in her memory or was on an old recipe card so worn out from use that it was barely readable. The stains fascinate me. I suspect they are drops of batter and oil from hands that greased the pan before she poured in the batter. Whatever this was copied from, no doubt, looked equally used.

Blackberry Jam Cake is a family tradition passed down from my mom's family. It's a southern dessert, representative of my mom's upbringing just south of Nashville, Tennessee. The cake has a little sugar, but not much. Most of the sweetness comes from the jam, which no doubt would have been homemade using wild blackberries picked in the summer.

My mom loved picking blackberries as a child. She wore her brother's overalls and long sleeve shirts, a pragmatic concession to the strict rule that girls should only wear dresses. They took buckets with them and picked all day. The purplish stains around their mouths betrayed their claims that all berries went in the bucket. As mom admitted, the warm berries were too hard to resist and they often ate enough to make them sick to their stomachs while they picked.

Her mom made the blackberry jam cake for Christmas. It, along with a wheel of cheddar cheese that they enjoyed with their morning biscuits, was a special treat, a cake too expensive to make more than once a year, but a Christmas staple. My mom brought the tradition to our house. Even after we grew up and left the house, my mom would make each of us a jam cake for Christmas. I've been known to freeze pieces of mine before it got stale to have for later in the year.

The cake is quite moist, and resembles a spice cake in flavor. The nuts and raisins add great flavor. As you can see from the recipe above, she did not specify what nuts to use. As I recall, she just used what she had on hand. Often at Christmas time, we had black walnuts, English walnuts, and pecans around the house, either to eat as a snack or to use in baking. I remember loving the distinct flavor of the black walnuts in the cake.

My brother texted me on Friday night saying, "I wish I could share a piece of my jam cake with you." I'm not sure how he knew I was craving it at the moment. I had already pulled the recipe out earlier that day. His wife took up the tradition several years ago. I called her yesterday for some pointers. I'm glad I did. As is often the case with my mom's recipes, there were things missing, nothing especially important, but little tips that help make it a better cake baking experience.

Here's the recipe (with helpful additions from my sister-in-law):

5 eggs
1 C sugar
2 C jam (blackberry, seedless)
1 C nuts (I used black walnuts)
1 Tbs baking soda
1 C butter
3 C flour
1 C buttermilk
1 C raisins
1 Tbs cinnamon
1 Tbs allspice

Preheat oven to 250; grease and flour a large bundt pan. Toss raisins and nuts in flour to prevent them from floating to the top in the batter.

Separate the eggs. Beat the whites until stiff and set aside.
Sift flour, baking soda and spices together and set aside.
Cream butter and sugar. Add the jam and blend. Add egg yolks one at a time and blend after each addition. Add flour/spice mixture and buttermilk alternately and blend after each addition. Add nuts and raisins. Fold in egg whites.

Pour in greased/floured bundt pan. Bake in 250 oven until done. Use toothpick to test doneness. Bake time is approximately 3 hours. Remove from bundt pan and let cool on wire rack.

Christmas Eve Confession of Faith

That Jesus was born in a stable makes more sense to me now that I’ve been a farmer for a few years. The barn is often holy ground. It’s a place of birth, of feeding, of sleeping, of waiting for the storm to pass, a place of death.

Our barn was that kind of sacred space a few nights ago. I went out to feed the guardian dogs like I always do, just after dark, in the hour when it seems darkest to me…all light of the sun gone, stars twinkling but not yet noticeable in my intense concentration to see what’s in front of me. I balanced the scoop of dog food in one hand while I held my smartphone in the other, the flashlight app shining in front of me, searching for one food bowl and then the other.

When I stopped at the second bowl, I noticed our old ewe lying on her side, half inside the barn, half out. She was barely moving. I knelt down to lift up her head and immediately saw that she was weak. I tried to stand her up, but she couldn’t unfold her legs for me to get her up. I called Lisa. I needed her help to move her into a warm area of the barn. I wanted her to have a chance to say goodbye. I’ve seen this before. I knew we were losing her. They say a down sheep is a dead sheep, and we most definitely had a down sheep.

The ewe is our oldest animal, a sheep that came from a flock from which Lisa first started her own flock. We call her Left Teat, her proper name long ago forgotten after she was christened with the new upon losing half of her udder to gangrenous mastitis. Left Teat is a battle axe of a ewe. She has a deep, raspy bleat that sounds like she’s smoked two packs a day her whole life. Her thin legs hold up her large, sagging body. Aside from the infection in her udder, she’s never been sick a day in her life, well, at least not that we know of. She sat vigil with her grandson and later with her daughter when they each died earlier this year. She’s slow now, but she has a powerful will to live.

Lisa came out and sat down next to her. She held the ewe’s head in her lap. I filled the dog food scoop with sweet grain, a treat that a sheep or goat with any life at all left in them can’t resist. I placed the bowl in front of her. She plunged her head into it and ate vigorously. A good sign, I thought. But, I’ve been tricked by that before. I know better than to believe that’s a guarantee we can nurse an animal back to health.

Lisa heard some gurgling in her lungs, so I ran into the house to get a syringe with an antibiotic that we know works well with respiratory illnesses. I drained the nearly empty bottle dry. We had just enough to give her one dose.

After her shot, Lisa and I moved her to a comfortable area in the middle of the barn, free of drafts and away from the hay feeder where the goats were jockeying for position to get dinner. Lisa quietly held her head. Tears were streaming down our faces. We decided to see if we could get her to stand. Her weak legs struggled under her weight, but she stood, and stayed that way until a young goat, inexplicably, rammed her and knocked her down. We helped her sit up and sat down next to her, waiting, crying, trying to make meaning of the tears.

We’ve had sheep and goats long enough now that the older animals are reaching the natural end of their lives. We lost several this year. There was Spot and Sunshine, Jewel and Belize, all fixtures in the Living Kitchen barnyard. Each died after what would be considered a normal lifespan, but still too soon for us. With each one’s death, we’ve wondered if we still have what it takes to farm with livestock. It takes a toll. We share a special connection with the animals, and they with us.

 After we got Left Teat comfortable, Sally, our oldest goat, walked over to where we were sitting. She lowered her head and nuzzled her nose into Left Teat’s neck. She stood like that for several minutes. We cried harder, moved by the gesture. Sally lifted her head from Left Teat and began to lick the tears from Lisa’s face. For the next several minutes she comforted first Left Teat and then Lisa.

We didn’t want to leave, but it was getting late. The dogs needed attention and we needed to make a gesture toward eating dinner. Before I turned in for the night, I went out to check on her one more time. I walked slowly toward the barn, dreading the sight, already feeling the frustration and anger of losing another animal well up from deep inside my gut. When I passed through the barn door, tears were already falling from my eyes.

The light reached the pile of hay where we’d left Left Teat and with one more step covered her, revealing two animals sitting up, side by side, chewing their cud. Goat and ewe were cuddled up, doing what they do. Not only was Left Teat still alive, she was better, holding up her head, faraway look in her eyes as her jaw slowly gyrated from side to side. I was shocked.

I slept more peacefully that night than I expected. When the alarm went off the next morning, I put on my boots and coat and grabbed the flashlight. I didn’t want to lie in bed one minute wondering if she was still alive. When I got to the barn, I found her on her side, several feet from the spot where we’d left her. Sally was still lying in the spot next to where Left Teat had been. She hadn’t moved an inch. Left Teat let out a deep-throated bleat when she saw me and started struggling to get up. She didn’t quite have the strength to do it, so I helped her. I moved her back over to the spot next to Sally. She sat up and started chewing her cud. She’d lived through the night, the loving care of an old goat to keep her company. A few hours later, she was up wandering around the barnyard. Lisa let her into the yard, where she grazed all day. Later that night we found her in the barn sitting between Sally and another goat, Dottie, head held high, chewing her cud.

I fear I project too much onto the animals, making meaning of their gestures that so anthropomorphizes them that I perpetuate a ridiculously romantic notion of what it means to care for animals on a farm. They are animals, not people. I don’t have any real idea what they understand and how they make sense of what happens, but something bigger than me, than the animals was at work that night in the barn. No scientific explanation would diminish it for me. It moved me in a way that no experience with the animals ever has.

Alan Lightman, author of The Accidental Universe and a professor at MIT with dual appointments in science and the humanities, says this,

Faith, in its broadest sense, is about far more than belief in the existence of God or the disregard of scientific evidence. Faith is the willingness to give ourselves over, at times, to things we do not fully understand. Faith is the belief in things larger than our selves. Faith is the ability to honor stillness at some moments and at others to ride the passion and exuberance that is the artistic impulse, the flight of the imagination, the full engagement with this strange and shimmering world.

Maybe faith is the ability to believe that an old goat can sense our distress and offer comfort where we can’t, to sit with an old ewe with a powerful will to live, keeping her warm, assuring her that she isn’t alone, until the medicine can work its wonders. Maybe it’s the ability to let go of any scientific notions about the separation of species and believe for a moment that sometimes we can care for and save that which is vastly different than us because we are connected in time and space, breathing the same air, walking the same ground, feeling the same sunshine on our faces and the same cold, biting wind cut to our bones. Maybe its believing that will to live, care, love, and empathy are as important as medicine in curing an ailing being, accepting that animal and human are equal in their inability to make an illness just disappear, but also equal in their ability to offer care for one who is suffering.

I think there’s no mistake this happened at Christmas time. Jesus' birth was really not so different from the healing of an old ewe. They both remind me that God came to us in the same way I experience life with these animals…connected with us in time and space, flesh and blood, able to feel what we feel and participate in those things that are much bigger than our selves. Much theological training has left me knowing very little with certainty these days, but on this Christmas Eve, this is my confession of faith.

Conversation with the Autumn Wind

The wind blows. It gusts with such urgency, heaving from deep inside the lungs of the earth to expel all that is left of summer. In its wake the air slowly grows cool and crisp. Leaves turn to gold and red and surrender their hold on the branches of the trees.

Something inside beckoned me away to a quiet place to reflect. I hiked to a small pond, a place of solace and respite. I sat on the soft ground, dead leaves crackling under my weight. I looked out past some trees at the edge of the pond to a log that was protruding through the surface of the water. A turtle had been resting there, soaking in the warmth of the sun. He was no longer there, but a quick glance around the pond revealed his whereabouts. He was swimming. The chiseled, angular shape of his head looked like the tip of a branch floating across the water.

The pond was full of clear, fresh water. It was darkened by the shade of the trees that surrounded it and the layer of dead leaves that had fallen to the bottom. My thoughts turned to the dark that had enveloped me for several days. It sneaked up on me from behind, reaching around to cover my eyes. It refused to speak. I hadn't been able to name it.

Sunlight filtered through the high branches of the trees, yet the water remained dark until gusts of wind rippled its surface. Small waves caught the light and spread it across the dark surface in glittery explosions like fireworks in a summer sky. As the wind died down, the pond darkened and settled again.

I asked the autumn wind to blow through me. I begged it to awaken the dark surface of my grief with ripples of sacred light, explosions of truth and meaning, of joy and hope in all that has come from what is no more. The wind spoke to me and said, "You are a turtle. You wear your fear on your back, retreating, hiding at the first sign that someone sees you, knows you."

I wanted to argue, but I surrendered instead, breathing deep, allowing the truth to reach inside me. "Yes," I said. "I am known in this place. It scares me, yet I long to know and be known more fully."

The air grew still for a moment. I sat with the tension of my awareness. The feeling's familiarity turned fear to dread. Tears began to flow. The wind spoke again. "Fear's call to retreat leads you into the dark waters of your grief. You swim in that darkness, looking up occasionally, checking to see if it is safe. I am the wind blowing through you. I am a fierce autumn wind. I have the power to break loose the hold of that which is dead inside of you, making room for the new to take hold."

"Why do I hold on to the old, dead things? Why does it feel safer than the new things I've worked hard for?"

"You cling because you do not yet trust the new things to be different enough to change you. You cling because you do not yet trust that you are different."

"Then what must I do?"

The autumn wind breathed deep and let her words ride on the gust of her warm breath. "Trust is a leap of faith. You are different. You can trust yourself. You can trust those around you, but you must have faith. Surrender and let me blow through you. I will turn your fear to trust."

I laid back on the soft ground, fists tight and teeth clinched. The warm breeze blew across me, relaxing the tight muscles in my face, my arms, my stomach. I took a deep breath, letting the autumn wind sweep through me. It blew with such strength that I feared losing everything, that it would sweep away even that which is new. I cried out, clinching my fists in anger, demanding that it take only the dead things. The gusts continued and I felt myself relax again. A deep peace and calm held me. I sat up and looked around me. The pond had a new layer of dead leaves skimming across the top like tiny sailboats at the mercy of the wind.

And the turtle was on the log, legs and neck stretched out to soak in the autumn sun.