Boxes of a life

It took me a week and a half to take the boxes of memories out of the car. Pictures, keepsakes, her jewelry, recipes, all filled the trunk and back seat of my car, the smell of yellowing paper and fading photographs overpowering the new car smell for days. I waited to bring them in the house, like I thought that if I left them there, somehow, miraculously, they would find the right place for safekeeping. I'm not ready to be the keeper of the family pictures, but I guess that's a time that finds us, however ready or not we may be.

My mom is the last of her generation, nine kids altogether, eight of them already dead. There is no aunt or uncle to turn to to bring a sense of our history to my perspective. My mom has slipped from us so quickly in the past nine months that it's clear now that what I know of our family's history is perhaps all I will know. I may be able to piece together a little more from cousins, but the personal connection to the past is gone.

Questions linger. I find them coming to mind on the drive home from work and I reach for the phone to call and ask her, but as I punch in the first number, I remember that the number I know by heart doesn't work anymore, and the one I don't know never reaches her, though the phone sits near the chair where she waits, day after day, for one of us to call. On good days, she doesn't know how to answer it, on bad days, she doesn't hear it at all. I've asked most of the important questions, but it's the little ones that linger, the curiosity about that special thing she did with her fried chicken that made it taste better than any I've ever eaten, the wondering about how on earth she managed to make sure all of us kids, seven of us, went to college on the salaries of two people who never graduated high school, about where she found the courage to leave behind family and home in Tennessee and never return. And then there's the reality that she's never met Lisa, and will never likely comprehend and be grateful for the incredible joy she and our life together bring me.

The boxes sit in the corner of a room in my house, unpacked, like they're waiting to go where they really belong, what's left of my mom reduced to a few boxes, scattered between Oklahoma and South Dakota, items with stories that will come quickly to mind as I pull them out of boxes, others that will make me wonder, never really knowing for sure the story they tell.

Beyond the Impasse of Polarizing Conversation

Beyond the Impasse of Polarizing Conversation
A sermon for the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Tahlequah
August 19, 2012

Reading: “Praise Song for the Day” by Elizabeth Alexander

Who is tired of political ads and public wrangling among candidates? Already? We still have just two months to go before the election. We are bombarded with interviews, debates, ads, articles, all pointing to the great divide in our country between the Democrats and the Republicans. We hope relief will come after the election, assuming that at least the ads will stop and we can return to our TVs, radios, and the internet safely. But will it end there? Is our fatigue and disenchantment only with the process by which we elect our public officials? Or is there a wider problem that comes into full focus when election time rolls around?

Somehow we’ve come to a place in our civil discourse when issues of great importance to us become issues of either-or. Either you are pro-life or pro-choice. Either you are Democrat or Republican. Either you are for marriage equality or you are for the “traditional” family. And where we stand on these issues becomes the litmus test for whether or not we belong in certain groups or whether or not we can be in relationship with certain people. After a while, under the influence of a steady stream of narratives that demonstrate this either-or thinking, we begin to think the divide can’t be overcome. We throw our hands up in frustration, unable to find a way beyond the impasse of polarizing conversation. Many of us say with the poet, “I know there’s somewhere better down the road. We need to find a place where we are safe.” We’re looking for solutions, aren’t we?

People sometimes throw out suggestions when conversations reach the point of heated intransigence. “Can’t we all just agree to disagree?” A nice thought, perhaps, but in most cases, even if we think it’s a good way to end, it leaves us feeling less than satisfied with the outcome. It’s an attempt to bridge the divide, but that bridge comes up short. It ends the conversation, but those on either side of the issue return to their respective camps unmoved and unchanged, assured of their rightness and the other’s wrongness and without much hope for any movement forward.

The problem, at least in part, I think, is that we believe the only way forward is for one group to win and the other to acquiesce. Imagining a world in which our viewpoint is no longer the dominant one seems less than satisfying, so we feel compelled to fight for the cause. Sometimes we’re even spurred on by a sense of righteous indignation. The other side represents injustice. We have to fight for justice! We are convinced of the rightness of our opinion. To move to any common ground with the other is to surrender ethical high ground, to let go of things we value highly.But as long as winning is the motivation for engaging others in conversations about things that matter, we will surrender any real possibility of solving problems, of achieving true justice, all for a chance to be right.

Frances Kissling, long time president of Catholics for Choice, has been engaged in the abortion debate for over thirty years. Much of that thirty years has been spent as an activist, advocating a pro-choice position. However, in recent years, she’s shifted away from the role of activist to one of seeking relationship with those on the other side of the issue. This new pursuit has changed her. In an interview with Krista Tippett, host of the NPR program On Being, Kissling was asked, “[W]hat goes wrong in our culture as we try to navigate this issue of abortion? Where would you start to talk about that?”

Kissling replied,

I think … I always had an approach to abortion that was somewhat different from that of the mainstream choice movement in that politics never interested me very much. You know, the idea that abortion was about getting the right people elected, that there were extremists on the side of those opposed to abortion and rational people on the side of choice never quite fit for me completely. I think that, since I did this work as a Catholic, even though many Catholic venues were closed, I probably talked to more people over the years who were opposed to abortion than most folks in the choice movement. And while I certainly think there is a twin absolutism between those who think there is only one value at stake, the value of women's identity and rights, or on the opposite side of the spectrum, the value of the fetus, that for most people, including me, both of those values exist and the abortion issue is one in which one mediates those values and others.[1]

This assessment demonstrates how most of these issues aren’t as black and white as we’re led to believe. A person who is pro-choice isn’t for killing babies, as the opposing side likes to portray. Likewise a pro-life person isn’t necessarily anti-women, as they are often portrayed. Kissling believes more people hold both values: the value of women’s rights and the value of the fetus. In the process of mediating those values through the issue of abortion, they often get pulled to one side or the other.

Psychologist Ken Gergen describes a relational process he calls “bonding.” He believes as social creatures we are pulled toward “the co-creation of shared realities, and the comfort, reliability, and trust that accompany them.[2]” He posits that the loss of security from the erosion of shared realities in our contemporary world may be what intensifies our need to bond with others who share our view of reality. The drive is enhanced, perhaps sped up, by the ease of access to likeminded people through the internet and social media.

In the process of bonding, the “I” slowly gives way to the “we.” In other words, the narrative that I tell about my own life and how I see the world gives way to the narrative of the group, which holds up those things on which we agree. Slowly, as we take on the narrative of the “we,” what we hold individually becomes less and less important, particularly if it isn’t the same as that which the group holds in common. We lose sight of the values we share with those whose narrative of “we” is different from our own. It’s the “enchantment of ‘we’” that pulls us in that direction.[3] The sense of belonging takes on a transcendent importance to us. We express our satisfaction with it by saying things like, “These are MY people. We really click.” Or, “Our connections run deep.”

Bonding is important. But when it’s done at the exclusion of recognizing what we hold in common with others, it can become dangerous. If we allow the transcendent importance of the “we” to take on a certain absolutism, we run the risk of creating a fundamentalism, a sort of rigid outlook on life, one which can never be touched by the other, which never shifts or changes.[4]

This, I believe, is the danger we face in our culture today. It’s the danger of allowing our sense of belonging to one group to become so important to us that we can never find any value in the other. And while we fight for the values of the group to be upheld, ironically, we surrender values that are important to us as individuals.

After thirty years of engagement with one of our culture’s most polarizing issues, Kissling says,

And the polarization that exists on the abortion issue in which people have called each other names and demonized each other for the past 30 years speaks against — it definitely speaks against any level of trust that enables people to come to some commonality, and so that you really have to start with this first idea that there are some people — not all — who see some benefit in learning why the other thinks the way that they do. And, you know, some of it's the simplistic stuff of humanization that the person becomes a real person, not an extremist, not evilly motivated, you know, that perhaps for some people you can overcome the epithets that we have charged each other with. And that, I'm a very strong believer in.[5]

Do you see a value in understanding how people who differ from you think? What motivates them? How were their values formed and shaped? What are the stories they tell about how they arrived at the positions they hold so dear?

There’s a lot of risk involved in asking such questions. But, I wonder, what we would discover about our own positions if we took the time to ask them of someone who thinks differently than we do. Kissling encourages people to risk in two ways: one, to find what is good in the other’s position, and two, to acknowledge what is troubling about our own position. In doing so herself, Kissling and others found themselves engaged in a dialogue in which the issue of abortion shifted from whether or not it should be legal to a scenario in which is legal, but efforts are made together, people on both sides of the issue, to make it less necessary for women to seek abortions. In a sense, then, people on both sides of the issue let go of the either-or and arrived at a place of both-and. No one changed her or his position necessarily, but they were able to find a perspective in which both views were valued.

The Sufi poet Rumi says,

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
The world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase each other
Doesn’t make any sense.

Do we dare imagine such a place? That field beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing. Who will we meet there? And what will we create together? Is it a place where both-and solutions might exist? I’ve seen this movement. I’ve seen it with theological students moving to work together, regardless of theological position, to ensure their community is hospitable toward all people. I’ve seen it in communities where Democrats and Republicans who differ greatly on issues related to welfare and how much government should be involved in meeting the needs of people who struggle financially, work together to build community gardens and make access to healthy, safe food possible for everyone. The world needs more both-and solutions.

What are you willing to do this week to hear what’s good in someone else’s view? Where are you willing to risk acknowledging your own uncertainty about your position? I believe if we will take this challenge, we take one step closer toward dwelling in that place of both-and solutions. Let us dare to be people who let love beyond all that bonds only with those with whom we agree cast a widening pool of light that leads us to a way forward.

May it be so.

[1] Frances Kissling, “Listening Beyond Life and Choice: Interview with Krista Tippett,” On Being, 2011. http://www.onbeing.org/program/listening-beyond-life-and-choice/transcript/504. (Accessed on August 18, 2012)

[2] Kenneth Gergen, Relational Being (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 175.

[3] Gergen, 179-190.

[4] Gergen, 175.

[5] Kissling.

I'm alright now: Part 2

Part 1 is here.

Home is an interesting concept. I have mixed emotions about it. If it refers to that place where my biological family exists, whether it’s where they live or where they gather together from time to time, I don’t get the feelings of nostalgia and warmth that many people do. In this sense, home is where I’m known, at least a part of me is known, that person who lived with them until I graduated high school and moved out of the house. My experiences after that changed me in ways that made going home increasingly difficult. Coming out as gay and sharing with them my theological transformation created a chasm between my family and me. My changes were taken personally, seen as a betrayal of all that's most important to the family. To their credit (and mine, too, I suppose) there is at least enough decency in our family values that we have not cut each other off completely, but what connects us is a thin, worn thread and the effort it takes to keep that thread from breaking is exhausting.

Home can also refer to that place where we live. That gives me much warmer feelings now. Until four years ago when I met Lisa, home in this sense was a place where I kept my stuff, slept when I was in town, and occasionally hung out when I couldn’t find something better to do. It was practical and functional, but not warm. Now, home has a sense of connectedness that gives me a feeling of security and acceptance. It’s a place where I love and am loved, where I let down my guard, allow myself to be vulnerable to the point where I know heartbreak is only a single breath away at any moment, but I wouldn’t trade it for anything. What Lisa and I have created together has given me the greatest sense of satisfaction and contentment I’ve ever known in my life.  And home extends beyond the boundaries of the place where live to include a group of friends who are family, people who accept us and share in our lives and when I think of them I get the warm, nostalgic feelings that many share when they talk about the homes in which they grew up.  With all of these people, there isn’t a part of me that I’m afraid for them to know. My past is of no consequence. Many among our friends share it, and for those who don’t, it doesn’t raise any red flags. It’s just a point of great curiosity. Likewise, who I am now is allowed to grow and change. That kind of acceptance, of past and present, gives me a deep sense of support, like the kind of support roots that run deep into the soil offer a plant that flourishes.

I am a fortunate woman. I am grateful for it every day of my life. Having all this finally has helped me come to a place where, perhaps for the first time in my life, I know I’m alright. I don’t feel like I have to be anything other than what I am now and that feeling provides the foundation for much healthier choices about what I will become than at any other time in my life.

But experiencing home in those relationships has helped me see that the welcome I’ve received in churches over the past few years is just that, welcome, but it is not home.  And while the most recent of those choices has come close and could in time feel more that way to me, it doesn’t for the simple fact that I feel like my past as an evangelical Christian, specifically a Baptist evangelical Christian, isn’t understood, that it’s something I have to leave behind for people to think that I’m really one of them.

To be continued (you know you're going to get tired of this)....

I'm alright now: A story of religious and spiritual exile

Religiously speaking, I’ve been an exile for the last 14 years. I grew up Baptist, went to a Baptist college, served as a Baptist missionary for two years in South Korea, and graduated from, as well as served as an administrator at, a Baptist seminary. Somewhere along the way, I started asking questions and the answers to those questions for me led me on a journey that made it harder and harder to identify as Baptist. I attribute that in part to my own theological shifts and changes, but the distance grew to a chasm by the changes that were taking place in Baptist life at the time as well. No doubt, the debates in the 80s and 90s about the Baptist Faith and Message and what one has to claim theologically in order to remain in the fold (odd reality for a group that, historically, claimed to be non-creedal) sped up my own theological transformation. Nothing creates a greater crisis of conscience than realizing one’s own livelihood depends on holding to ideas and claims that no longer work for her. For me, it was a matter of integrity that I leave, integrity as a woman called by God to serve the church in capacities Baptists would not support, integrity as a gay woman increasingly aware that the prayers I prayed for God to change me and take away my desires were prayers that could only be answered no if God were to remain true to God’s character.

I fear the path I’ve taken since then looks radical at best and wishy-washy at worst to those who consider stability and loyalty to institutions values worth upholding. There were a few years at a church affiliated with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship where I experienced Baptists who were open, but not enough, and who, at least at that time, were more committed to telling a story of how things used to be than they were in the kind of radical change I was going through in my own faith. I quit going to church for a while, though I was still working as a chaplain and completing coursework for a PhD in pastoral theology and pastoral counseling. Knowing that the day was coming when I would need to be ordained/endorsed for continued employment I finally got serious about finding a church I could join. I found myself in Presbyterian church and after a year entered the inquiry process, the first step toward ordination.

 

I was in a relationship with another woman at the time and conscious that while I felt some sense of “at-home-ness” with the PCUSA, being open about the relationship was not a possibility if I wished to successfully complete the ordination process. I’ve come to realize in the years since that there may have been a little sub-conscious self-sabotage in my choice. I really didn’t want to be ordained in the Presbyterian church. My grief from all that I’d left behind left me cynical and jaded and unwilling to trust churches enough to consider any kind of covenantal relationship with them.  On the day that I went for my first interview with the Committee on Preparation for Ministry of my local presbytery, I had a full-blown panic attack, my first and only ever. That should have been a clue, but I didn’t heed it. I kept moving forward through the process until finally the relationship I was in exploded in a mess that threatened more than my future as a minister and I chose to drop out of the process before being out-ed to the committee on someone else’s terms. The day I mailed that letter was the first day I had felt free in years.

I found a job at a seminary doing admissions and recruiting, a job I have to this day. I made a conscious decision to choose a church that felt like home, where I could be person in the pew and not someone who was preparing for ordination for a while. I visited a lot of churches and spent a lot of Sundays sleeping in when I first moved to Tulsa. I finally found a home at All Souls Unitarian Church and joined. My attraction to All Souls and to UUs in general was based on the freedom of religious/theological expression. I wanted a place where I would be able to remain within the fold as my theology continued to grow and shift and change, something that I’d come to realize was a natural progression for a thinking spiritual person. After a while, I considered the possibility of ordination with the UUs. I ultimately dropped it but could never articulate what my resistance was. While I felt welcome with the UUs, I didn’t feel at home. I now realize there’s a big difference.

To be continued….

Digging up the theological roots of the environmental crisis

A sermon preached in chapel at Phillips Theological Seminary. This is one I can't let go of. It doesn't feel as well-developed as I'd like for it. Nonetheless, it's done for now. This was a different kind of sermon that I typically preach. I am more of a narrative preacher, rather than a theological expositor. This falls more in the category of theological exposition.

Here's the podcast, where you will hear me stumble over my words a lot. Glad this one is over.
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Digging Up the Theological Roots of the Environmental Crisis

Genesis 1:26-31

Phillips Theological Seminary

April 24, 2012

I want to start with some congregational participation. I’d like to see how many of you have ever heard one of the following responses regarding global warming and other environmental issues from a co-worker, family member, friend, etc.:

1. We need to be concerned about people, not the planet. God will take care of the planet. He created it and sustains it. We don’t need to worry about it.
2.  People before animals and earth. That’s the way God ordered things.
3. God gave us the earth for us to use as we see fit. We are to have dominion over it, to rule it. That’s what the Bible says.

Even if we don’t personally hold any of these views, we are affected by them every day of our lives. These views and the theology that’s used to justify them are at the heart of the environmental crisis and our country’s response to it. As shocking as it may seem, intelligent, well-educated people hold to these views. My partner Lisa met someone who is well-educated and holds an upper level administrative position in a university who told her, “We don’t need to worry about things like plastics in landfills, etc. God will eat the garbage!” Where does that theology come from and what are we to do about it? That will be our focus today, because as one who is theologically trained, environmentally aware, and deeply concerned about the issues we are facing regarding the environment, I believe it is of utmost importance that Christians and others be able to address the concerns from a theological perspective. As religious leaders, we need to pay close attention to what the Bible says and doesn’t say to help us respond to those who use it to justify practices and opinions that endanger the future of the earth. If theology is at the heart of the problem, then perhaps theology can help lead us to solutions.

The book of Genesis opens with a declaration of God’s creative work. It states that what existed when God’s creative work began was a formless void, covered in darkness. God swept over the darkness like a wind, and with God’s own words, spoke into existence light, a separation between sky and earth, a separation between water and land, vegetation, stars, sea creatures, animals, and finally humans. At the end of each day, God declares that creation is good, and at the end of the sixth day (the day on which humans were created), God declares that it was very good. Traditional Christian theology holds that this story establishes a hierarchy in creation. The story is a narrative that builds to a climax at the creation of humankind. God says that God’s work on each of the first five days is good, but upon the completion of God’s work with the creation of humans, that it is all very good. I grew up learning that humankind is the pièce de résistance in God’s creative work, a bit ironic, I think, considering how terrified some in my church were that we kids would all become humanists if we paid too much attention in school.

At the point of that climax in this story, God says to humankind, “Have dominion over” the earth. A mere 26 verses into the Bible and already we’re in trouble. It’s that word dominion that has caused us trouble. What does dominion mean? I wish we could find an alternate translation that reveals more a sense of care and less of power. Instead, some have taken it to mean that all of creation was made for the sake of humankind. In the hands of humans for far too long the idea that humans were given dominion over the earth has been used to justify hunting of animals for personal gain, for sport, all with no concern for the hunting’s impact on the species themselves, drilling of oil and extraction of other natural resources for the “good” of humankind, with no concern for the impact of the methods used or the amount of the resource taken from the earth. This view is used to justify the commodification of animals, plants, and other resources of the planet. Coupled with a firm commitment to God’s ordaining of free-market capitalism as the way things are meant to be, animals, plants, habitat, all are considered expendable if growth of human wealth and progress is to be gained. [i]

As good students of the Bible, you already see the problems with an interpretation of dominion that justifies exploitation of creation. Many have called for a tempering of this interpretation and claimed God’s intent was not for us to rule the earth, but to be good stewards of the earth. It keeps a hierarchy in place, but puts God at the top of the hierarchy and moves humankind to a position of being God’s managers, ones who use the resources wisely. This view was explicitly stated in a comment from Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum who said the following about the Endangered Species Act, “It’s a radical ideology that says we are here to serve the Earth instead of man having dominion over the Earth to serve him and to be a good steward of that Earth.” In light of a more exploitative approach to our relationship with the earth, the shift to understanding ourselves as stewards seems helpful, on the surface, because it at least recognizes that there is not an endless supply of resources, that not all of humankind’s uses of those resources are good, and that we have responsibility for determining the right use of them. There are problems with this view, though. In the hierarchy of God first, humans second, and everything else existing to serve humankind, there is a devaluing of the earth. Such devaluation leaves the earth vulnerable to human exploitation. Viewing the earth as a resource to be used for our own benefit is not sustainable. To end the current environmental crisis and to ensure the future good of the environment, a different kind of relationship with the earth is needed.

             
So, can the creation stories from Genesis be understood in a way that points to a different kind of relationship with the earth? For starters, it helps to read the creation narratives together to enable us to see to more dimension to the relationship we are to have with creation. The second creation narrative in Genesis 2 helps temper any tendency to understand dominion as a justification for exploitation. Hebrew Bible scholar Richard Lowery points to the second creation narrative which tells us that the earth was a formless void until humans were put on it to “serve” it. Repeatedly, this story tells us that God put humans on the earth to till it and to keep it. So, Rick Santorum had it completely backwards in his critique of environmentalists. Earth does not exist to serve humans. Humans exist to serve the earth. If humankind is to serve the earth, dominion then, can be understood more clearly to be a relationship of care, of bringing some discipline perhaps to what might otherwise be utter chaos. It is the work of humankind on the earth that helps creation to flourish. Neither exists without the other.

             
This turn in interpretation can lead us to see the earth as a subject with whom we are in relationship, not a resource which can be used, whether wisely or not. It privileges interconnectedness, rather than power. But we are far from living this in reality. We live in a world where science often serves corporate wealth and greed, rather than the earth and its inhabitants. We inhabit a place where those who would spend their lives working to provide us with food become indebted to corporations bent on engineering food, sometimes even in the name of ruling or subduing the earth. We are witnesses to environmental disasters that destroy habitat for all living things, humans included, all in order to feed the insatiable hunger for petroleum which fuels the nation’s economy.

             
If we are to have hope for the future of the earth, as faith-full people, we need to work to help shift the cultural understanding from a view that gives humans superiority and unlimited power to one that privileges interconnectedness with all of creation, that no longer views the earth and all of creation as resources to be used, but as subjects with whom we are in a mutually supportive relationship. It requires us to temper our consumerism, to ask ourselves how our relationship to things impacts on our relationship to the earth. It requires us to consider outcome for all of creation against outcome only for humankind. Though it is important to continue pressing on specific issues related to the environment, no real change will come until we make a cultural shift away from a hierarchical view to one of interconnectedness. I think we have to start with ourselves, by asking where do our own self-interests leave the environment vulnerable to exploitation. My partner Lisa and I work hard to use sustainable practices in our farming and in our lives. We have not arrived at a place of complete sustainability. We ask ourselves constantly what we can do differently to be more sustainable. We seek to hold in reverence the interconnectedness of our lives with the earth. It’s evidenced in the way we structure our farm. Each creature has a purpose. Chickens provide food, but they also help clean up parasites on the pasture after the goats and sheep have fed there. The goats and sheep supply fertilizer which helps restore nutrients to the earth after what we plant absorbs them. When we’ve harvested all we can from the garden, the goats and sheep go in and feast on what’s left. We plant cover crops and leave plots unused for periods of time to allow the land to rest and restore. We use natural approaches to pest and weed control. We compost our waste from food preparation to return nutrients to the earth. Still, the relationship we share with our environment calls us increasingly to ask how do we better serve the earth.

             
Not all of us can farm. That’s not really even the point, but whether we farm or garden or not, whether we even enjoy the outdoors and appreciate nature for its beauty, we are dependent on the health of the environment. We are all in relationship with the earth. It’s up to us, though, to decide what the nature of that relationship will be. Today, I ask you, how would you characterize your relationship with the earth? For starters, when was the last time you paid attention to who you share your space with. I don’t mean just the inhabitants of your home or workplace. I mean all of creation that exists in your space. Do you hear the birds singing in the morning? Do you see the scores of bugs that crawl through your yard? Do you know what the plants are that grow in your yard, in spite of your best efforts to have only the most beautiful grass? Pay attention to these things. Cherish them. Ask them that what you can learn from them. Then ask yourself what you must do to honor your interconnectedness with all of creation.

---

[i] Ariel Edwards-Levy, “Rick Santorum Worries Endangered Species Act Values ‘Critters Above People,’” Huffington Post, March 12, 2012.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/12/santorum-worries-endanger_n_1339896.html?ncid=edlinkusaolp00000009 (accessed April 21, 2012).

Yogurt Waffles

So, this week's share comes with the following:

1/3 lb lettuce mix
1/2 lb spinach
1 bunch Tokyo turnips
1 bunch French breakfast radishes
1 bunch of arugula
1 pint yogurt
1 7oz container of garlic-herb chevre
1 dozen eggs

The first meal using the share was yogurt waffles and fried eggs for breakfast this morning.  Some of our CSA members have commented that they don't eat yogurt, or on occasion forget that they have it and are concerned that it may be too old to eat.  I LOVE yogurt, especially our goat milk yogurt, so I seldom ever have a problem considering how to use it.  I'm happy to have it with a little honey for breakfast or an afternoon snack.  However, yogurt, like buttermilk is great for baking, acting as a leavener to give bake goods a nice fluffy appearance and texture.

Here's the recipe for yogurt waffles:
1 1/2 cups flour
1 Tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 Tsp honey
3 eggs
1 1/2 cups yogurt (plain, whole milk is our preference)
1 Tsp cinnamon
1 tsp vanilla

Preheat waffle iron.  Mix flour and baking powder and set aside.  In a separate bowl, mix the remaining ingredients.  Add wet ingredients to the dry, mixing just enough to get the batter blended.  It will be thick.  Do not over stir the batter.  Doing so will make the waffles tough.

Add a little oil to the waffle iron, pour batter on (1/3 cup for standard size waffles).  Waffles are done when they are a light brown.  Once cooked, enjoy with yogurt and fresh fruit or with butter and maple syrup.

This recipe makes 10 standard size waffles.  Though we don't eat that many, I cooked all of the batter and froze the leftover waffles.  They'll be good for a quick breakfast another day, placing them in the toaster to heat them up.

Yogurt works well as a replacement for buttermilk in most of your favorite recipes.  I use it in corn bread, biscuits, Texas chocolate sheet cake.  Oh, sheet cake!  That sounds good!

Sunday meal planning for the week of Oct 2-8

Sundays are our weekly meal planning days. We take inventory of what we have already, look at the calendar to see what who is available and for how long to fix dinners, and then we decide what we’ll have each night. A new commitment to having healthy, low cost options for lunch at work means that I will also be considering what I can cook that will ensure leftovers, or what I can prepare ahead of time to have on hand to take to work. Once meals are planned, we make a list of the things we need from the grocery store (we can’t, after all, provide our own flour yet!). This is an especially important step for us, though we aren’t always good about sticking with it, because we are 9 miles from the nearest grocery store. Although I do pass several on my commute to and from work, our time is limited enough that making one trip for all that we need for a week really helps. We’re trying to get better about that.

I did an inventory today. I walked through the kitchen with a pad and pen and wrote down all that we had on store that could be used for meals. It took about five minutes to do it, and already that five minutes has saved time (and, I suspect, money) on the meal planning front. While doing the inventory, I was able to identify several things that I could potentially make this week. Here’s what we’ve got to work with:

CSA Share

The shares provided a lot of fun stuff to work with this week….some of my favorite things since it’s greens season.

• ½ pound of broccoli rabe and/or ½ pound of Asian braising mix (contains bok choi, red mustard, pea shoots, and broccoli rabe) (My share has both so that I can provide recipes for each.)
• ½ pound of baby arugula
• 7 oz each of a choice of two cheeses: feta, cottage cheese, plain chevre, jalapeno chevre, and garlic herb chevre (My share has feta and cottage cheese.)
• A few sweet peppers and/or two servings of okra (My share has both, again to provide recipes that use each.)
• 1 pint of yogurt
• ½ gallon of goat’s milk
• 1 dozen eggs

Pantry

Here’s what we already have on hand in the pantry (not including spices, oil, etc.):

• Sweet potatoes
• Potatoes
• Onions
• Garlic
  
• 2 cans of crushed tomatoes
• Corn meal
• Flour
• White rice
• Brown rice
• Pinto beans
• Great northern beans
• Spaghetti noodles
• Polenta
• Barley
• Lentils
• Dried morita chilis

Freezer

Our freezer is a little bare right now, except for a few frozen roasted peppers from last summer (2010) which probably should be thrown out, a couple of pounds of pork fat, and several packages of lamb ribs, about three or four bites of homemade salted caramel goat’s milk ice cream in two containers that need to be eaten or thrown out, and Lisa’s empty ice cream bowl and spoon (when you have an ice cream craving, you don’t want to have to walk the extra steps to the cupboard, you know).

This Week’s Plan for the CSA Share

So here’s what I plan to do with the CSA share this week:

• The ½ pound of broccoli rabe will be braised with an anchovy paste and served with creamy polenta and marinara sauce. This will feed the two of us for dinner and provide some leftover for lunch the next day.
• I’ll make an Asian salad with the Asian braising mix (it’s young and tender and can be eaten raw) with miso dressing and serve it with fried tofu and rice. Again, it will serve the two of us for dinner, and provide some leftover for lunch.
• The arugula and peppers will be used for two salads for lunch and one for dinner to be served with pan-fried okra, lentils and rice. The rule in our house is that salad dressing has to be homemade, so I’ll post a recipe for a basic dressing.
  
• I’ll take the cottage cheese to work to have on hand for a quick afternoon snack.
• Eggs and yogurt are for breakfast.
• Goat’s milk will be used in coffee and will be heated with vanilla and honey or almond extract and honey for a warm evening beverage before bed. I may use it for other things as well.

Pictures and recipes will be posted as I cook this week. What are you planning for meals?

A year of eating seasonally

The conversation usually starts something like this:

Lisa: What do you want for dinner?
Linda: [After a quick mental note that “I don’t know” usually results in disappointed glares] Ummm…what do we have to cook with?
Lisa: The usual. The same kind of stuff we harvested for the CSA. Cheese. Eggs. Lentils. Rice.
Linda: Well, I could make lentils and rice with feta. That’s one of my favorites.
Lisa: Why don’t we have soufflé, braised greens, and some roasted potatoes.
Linda: Sure, that sounds good. I’ll make the potatoes.

What’s behind all of this, of course, is the difference between the way an average cook, used to shopping in a grocery store for what she fixes, a wide array of options available to her on the shelves of the store, anything to feed whatever craving may strike, and a trained chef, who has the creative ability to see a fabulous meal in the oddest combination of ingredients, function when it comes to meal prep. Unless I plan ahead and know exactly what I’ll be fixing and can assure that we have the ingredients on hand, I’m stumped, driven only by a craving that can’t be satisfied, or so I think, and unable to see a simple, healthy meal in the beautiful food growing in the garden. I want to get over that stuckness and expand my cooking skills enough to have a much wider repertoire of dishes I know how to prepare so that I can more fully participate in meal preparation at our house and more fully live into the values I claim and which drove my desire to be closer to the source of my food.

I live on a farm, with a farmy chef for a partner who raises all (and, believe me, I mean all…well, almost all, until she figures out how to raise crab in the ponds out here) of her favorite foods. I have an abundance of good, healthy food at my disposal and all too often I’m struck with culinary dumbness. I have no idea what to fix for dinner and after 15 or 20 minutes of mulling it over, by which time I’m usually starving, I’m ready to go out for cheap Mexican in the next town over, food made tolerable only by the immediate gratification of chips and the slightly spicy ketchup with passes for salsa and the dulling of the margarita consumed before the food arrives. That’s a habit I want to break. I have much better use for that $25.

We are a farm that operates largely from a CSA model. CSA stands for community supported agriculture. The idea behind the CSA is to have a community of consumers who wish to support local, small farmers and have access to good healthy fresh food on a regular basis. CSA members pay a fee at the beginning of planning and planting for a coming season. In exchange, they receive a weekly share of the harvest. Being a CSA member requires a person to be willing to cook 4 or 5 nights a week, to try new things and be open to whatever is available seasonally, and to understand the highs and lows of farming, such as the effects of extreme heat on the egg production of laying hens or the rampant infestation of squash bugs on the zucchini and squash harvest.

I have asked Lisa and Kathleen to harvest an extra CSA share each week beginning next week. That food will serve as the basis for my meal planning for the week. I plan to do this for a year. So, in effect, it will be a year of eating seasonally. I know that the CSA share does not cover all meals for an entire week and so there will be room for the occasional out of season, not local indulgence, but the discipline of cooking with a CSA share should help me focus on learning better to prepare meals using the bounty of the farm, and thus, to better live into the values that led me to a life of farming to begin with. I’ll share the experience here, including pictures and recipes, what worked, what didn’t, solicit ideas, and provide a space for our CSA members to exchange ideas as they seek to be as creative with their shares as well.

So, stay tuned for my new culinary adventure. You might find some interesting recipes. You might learn a lot about what NOT to do. I suspect you’re pretty much guaranteed an occasional laugh, and who knows, maybe someone else out there will be inspired to live much closer to the source of their food.

The ridiculousness of hope: A sermon for the fifth week of Lent

Ezekiel 37:1-14

Audio recording of this sermon delivered in Meinder's Chapel at Phillips Theological Seminary, April 7, 2011.

Is there a more vivid image of utter hopelessness than a valley full of dry bones? The lifeless structure of what has been, left behind, bleached and brittle, nothing more than a reminder of what has been lost. It is not just a scene of death. It’s a scene of annihilation, perhaps a battlefield or the scene of a horrible disaster. The explanation for the bones’ presence in the valley is unimportant. The vision of the dry bones is given for its impact on our psyche, for the feelings of hopelessness that it evokes. Unlike Lazarus, in the gospel text for this week, who has been dead a mere four days and, in the words of the beloved King James English, stinketh, the life that inhabited those left behind in this scene of destruction in Ezekiel is long gone. With Lazarus, we’re tempted to think like the wise Miracle Max from the movie The Princess Bride, “He’s not dead….he’s MOSTLY dead. Mostly dead is slightly alive. With all dead there’s only one thing you can do. Go through his clothes and look for loose change.” Lazarus still had flesh and muscle and sinew, signs that blood flowed through his veins and breath through his nostrils, an indication that maybe life could return, a ridiculous prospect, true, but perhaps more believable than seeing the potential for life in dry bones.

Have you ever known hopelessness? The kind that sucks the life out of you, sapping you of any energy, leaving you wondering if you can go on. Perhaps you’ve seen it in others when tragedy strikes or when years of suffering and struggle catch up with them and begin to turn their vision away from the future and back to the past. Hope, in the words of pastoral theologian Andrew Lester, is “the configuration of cognitive and affective responses to life that believes the future is filled with possibilities and offers a blessing.”[1] He explains that theologically speaking, it “describes a person’s trusting anticipation of the future based on an understanding of a God who is trustworthy and who calls us into an open-ended future.”[2] There are times when that sense of God is lost and when the future seems overwhelming, for it,in our mind,promises nothing more than what we’re already experiencing, more suffering.

Ezekiel explains to us in this passage that he is speaking of Israel. We understand that Ezekiel’s vision came at the period in the history of the Hebrew people when their nation had been destroyed and they’d been sent into exile. All that they had hoped for as a people was lost. The future no longer held for them any possibilities. Their trust in God’s goodness and justice was lost.

How does it feel when you’re confronted with hopelessness? What goes through your mind on your way to sit with a family who’s suddenly lost a loved one? Or when someone talks to you about their experience of being without work for months? What about when you see children and youth caught up in cycles of violence and abuse?

What must it have been like for the prophets, like Ezekiel, looking at the destruction and hopelessness of the people of Israel? When I stop to consider the times when I’ve looked hopelessness in the eye, Ezekiel’s vision takes on a distinct quality of ridiculousness! Speaking to dry bones of life? Saying words of hope to the hopeless? Sometimes ministry is ridiculous. It calls us to trust in a transfinite hope, to use a concept from Andy Lester again, one that defies reasoning, a hope and trust in a God we are sure keeps promises of deliverance, liberation, and salvation. It assures us that what is now will not always be. That trust compels us to stay present with those who are suffering, to offer the smallest dose of hope that can be tolerated.

The process of bringing the dry bones to life in the Ezekiel text mirrors that of the creation stories in Genesis. First the body is created, then God breathes into the form the breath of life. The measured way in which the dry bones are returned to life reminds us that the process of returning to hope is one of recreation, enlivened by the spirit of God, and the minister’s task sometimes is simply to speak the ridiculous words of life in the midst of lifelessness, to be a non-anxious presence, sites fixed on the future promised by a God who does liberate and save.

Now, before we get too excited about participating in this work of restoring hope, I want to ask us to slow down and make an observation about this passage’s presence in our Lenten journey. There’s some introspective work required here, I believe. If we have any expectation whatsoever about staying with the hopeless in their efforts to regain hope, we must first face whatever hopelessness exists within us. There is a risk in life that we get so preoccupied with the tasks facing us in the present that we bury our own hopelessness, paying no attention to it, ignoring it because to look at it carefully is to feel our very breath being sucked out of us. What makes you hopeless? What steals your confidence in the possibilities for the future? Where do you need to experience the breath of God blowing through you like a strong Oklahoma spring wind, fueling fires that burn up all that’s dead, making room for newness and life? Are you willing to uncover it and face it?

You see, we’re getting close to Easter, a time when the focus is on resurrection. Many of us sitting here is this room right now know the dread that comes every year, that dread of focusing on something we’re not really sure we believe in anymore. We get caught up in theological arguments about where the notion of Jesus’ resurrection originated, was it in an actual true event? Or was it a story told by those closest to him for any number of reasons? And while I am the first to line up for a good a theological debate on this very issue, I wonder if our preoccupation with it doesn’t sometimes keep us from believing in resurrections that are truly possible for us right now, ones that come when hope is restored in what seems to be the most hopeless situation. The person who has been hopeless and has experienced the return of hope knows resurrection is real. If we don’t confront the hopelessness pushed aside in our own lives, we will never have the confidence to stand as Ezekiel, calling forth the breath of God from the four winds to restore life where it seems it will never exist again. Are you willing to do that? To make yourself truly ready to hear the message of resurrection when we get to that empty tomb on Easter morning?

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Lester, Andrew D. Hope in Pastoral Care and Counseling. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1995.

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[1] Andrew D. Lester, Hope in Pastoral Care and Counseling (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1995), 62.

[2] Lester, Hope in Pastoral Care and Counseling, 62.

Exposing the editor in my head

I wish I could download the dialogue going through my head right now. Exposing it might shut it down. Let me give it a try:

Linda the blogger: I wonder what I should write about today.
Linda the editor: Don't write about the farm. People are going to get tired of hearing about that.
Blogger: I doubt they're getting tired of it.
Editor: Okay, maybe they aren't but people at work might think you don't like your job anymore.
Blogger: Why would they think that?
Editor: All you ever write about is the farm.
Blogger: That's silly.

Am I the only one who has conversations like this in my head? I know better than to pay attention to them, but I'll admit to getting shut down by them from time to time. Sometimes the conversation doesn't even get past "What am I going to write about?" The thought of arguing with the editor in my head is too exhausting, so I move on to reading the newspaper or Facebook or something else entirely and give up on writing. I thought I'd write about this craziness today in an attempt to steal some of the editor's power and move beyond getting shut down. I'm not looking for advice. I know what to do. I'm just being honest about what goes on in an attempt to change it.

I think I have to make up my mind that writing is my choice. Whether or not anyone reads it is her or his choice. Writing for me serves a purpose well beyond entertaining a reader. It's a way of capturing my experience in the world and making meaning from it, however tentative and fleeting that meaning may be. To the extent that it connects with someone else, a reader, is going to vary from time to time, but that doesn't make the process any less valuable to me. Like all good disciplines, just doing it on a day when the greatest meaning I find is "Well, I did that," helps ensure that I will be where I need to be to do what I need to do when the times come for finding treasure in my experience, for new understanding to emerge out of the words that flow from my mind onto the computer screen or paper, sometimes with barely any consciousness of them before they appear in front of me.

Commuting

I did a quick interview with a local radio station yesterday. A friend texted me saying a reporter he knows was looking for someone who commutes into Tulsa from a rural area. He wondered if I'd be willing to talk to her. I agreed to do it.

It was a short interview, only about two minutes, maybe three. She wanted to know how far I commute, why I do it, whether or not I have any special vehicle, and how I pass the time. What more is there to say about commuting? Not much, but I'm blogging about it anyway.

I commute 100 miles round trip four days per week. I don't really think about it much anymore. I do it because we have this amazing opportunity to lease the farm we're on, a place that's a great match for what Lisa does. Anytime I get bummed about how far I have to commute and how much time I spend in the car, I think about the cabin where we hold the dinners and the ohs and ahs of guests when they see it for the first time. I think about walking in the woods when there is time for a hike. In my mind I see sheep grazing on rotation and goats running up from their pasture when I call them. It's really hard for me to stay bummed when I think about all that I have here. A long commute is a small price to pay.

The thing the interview didn't touch on (it was a FOX news radio station, after all) is how I feel about the environmental impact of my driving. I really regret that part of it. It runs counter to what we're about on the farm. I have a truck. I've toyed with the idea of trading for a more fuel efficient vehicle, but then I think about all the times that it helps to have both trucks here. I start doing the math and realize, while I could save some money, a more fuel efficient vehicle will not be so significantly less that it's worth giving up the value of having the other truck on the farm. I don't know of anyone in this area who commutes into Tulsa, so at this time, carpooling is not an option, though it's something that I remain open to if I make the right connections. If I had the extra cash, I'd consider a compressed natural gas conversion for my truck, but I don't so that is not an option right now either. For the time being, I'm stuck being a gas-guzzling, long commuter.

Any thoughts on other ways I could cut back on the environmental impact?

A change of pace

It's been a quiet week on the farm. I've been home for 10 days, except for a couple of days early last week when I went up to my mom's. Lisa and I have relaxed a lot and while I don't doubt we needed it, there were a few moments when we got a bit stir crazy. Apparently we like to be busy.

One day from last week illustrates the change of pace. Lisa worked in the greenhouse and I did odds and ends around the farm. We knew there was a hole in the fence where the goats were getting out. It hadn't been a huge cause for alarm. They always come straight to the back yard and stand by the gate until someone let's them back in the barnyard. Nevertheless, most of them are pregnant and a little on the wide side. We had some concerns that a couple of them might get stuck trying to get through or under the fence. So, I went in search of the hole.

Ordinarily, such a search happens an hour before both of us are about to leave for the day. It's a little frantic. When the hole is found, everything within 20 feet of the hole is fair game for blocking it until a couple of hours can be spared to fix it properly. The repair is made and then we dash off to whatever demands our attention next, praying the fix holds and we don't return to find goats in the hen house or garage.

On this day, I headed out to the pasture and noticed that Jai, the miniature dachshund was following me, on the other side of the fence, right into the woods that border the pasture on the south side. Coyotes live in those woods, so it's not a good idea for him to go traipsing around in them. I went out the gate and around the fence to the area where he was now chasing a rogue chicken. The hen was running wildly in circles around and through the trees, doing her best to lose him, but he matched her step for step, paying no attention at all to my calls. I called and called. Nothing. He disappeared for a few minutes and after what seemed like an eternity, reemerged, head high, panting and tail wagging. A tired chicken could be heard squawking in the background. Jai sat down 20 feet away from me and refused to come. I took one step toward him and he started running around again, so I stopped and waited until he was tired of his game and finally came to me. I picked him up and took him to the house.

On my return to the pasture, the goats followed me out. I walked slowly along the fence line and found a spot not far from the barnyard. It's an area where water rushes into a dry creek after it rains. There has been a lot of erosion. The dirt under the fence crumbled away just enough to allow for the goats to get out. A couple of the goats were curious about what I was doing. I stood back to watch what they did around the hole. One pawed at it and started to go under, then turned and saw me and pulled back. I knew then that I had the place they'd been using.

I pulled the fence down, took a thick branch that had fallen to the ground, weaved it through a few sections of the fence and pulled on it until it weighted the fence down and kept it at ground level. Then I put some other debris in front to prevent the goats from breaking my fix. Two or three of the goats hovered around me while I worked, occasionally nudging my arm, an attempt to distract me perhaps or just to beg for a little attention. Goats are curious animals, never satisfied to leave us alone if we're anywhere close.

With nowhere in particular that I had to be after I finished the "repair," I turned my attention to the goats. I sat on the ground and waited for them to come to me to rub their necks and jowls. Several crowded around me, butting others out of the way to get to a position in front of me. I love sitting where I can look them in the eye and see the soulfulness deep inside each animal. It's a treat to spend that kind of time with them, but such moments usually have to be stolen here and there. On this day, I had no concern for the work that was being neglected while I spent time with the animals. It was pure pleasure.

While I was occupied with a few of the younger goats, I looked up to see Teeny Tiny, one of our milk goats, head for the place in the fence where the hole used to be. She stood staring at it for a good while, then pawed at it, trying to get the branches and debris out of the way. Obviously, she's the leader of the break outs. I have suspected as much. Frustrated with my work, she gave up and turned to a broken down round bale of hay. A chunk of the bale rested on the ground, creating a small hill. She climbed on top, ready to challenge any goat who dared to get up there with her. Others grazed nearby, eating dried leaves and the occasional acorn off the ground. I sat back and watched, feeling the warm sun and breeze on my face.

Reverb 10: Gift

Gift: This month, gifts and gift-giving can seem inescapable. What’s the most memorable gift, tangible or emotional, you received this year? (Author: Holly Root)

Early in the year one of our CSA members contacted us about some English shepherd puppies they had. They knew we were researching herding dogs and planning at some point to get one. Initially, we said no. We were swamped and felt that any dog we brought into the house at that time would likely become just another pet for lack of proper attention to training.

The conversations continued, though, and through their persistence and after further research we decided an English shepherd might very well be a good match for us and the opportunity was one we could hardly pass up. They brought a couple of the puppies by the market for us to meet and a decision was made that the best of the bunch would be Lachsmi, a female that was bossy with the rest of the dogs. We thought she'd make an excellent herding dog. Sometime in early May, we met them in Tulsa and picked her up.

What happened after we returned to the farm is hard for me to write about. While walking with the dog, I tripped and fell and dropped the leash. Lachsmi ran. The leash caught hold of the leg of our barbecue grill and sent it flying, landing on the ground in a big crash. Lachsmi bolted and ran for the garden. I went after her, trying not to let my panic lead me to do things that made her think I was chasing her. I found her in the garden, against the fence on the far side. I was slowly approaching her when a truck with a cattle trailer came down our road, banging and clanging and making a lot of noise. Lachsmi bolted under the fence and out to the road. I ran back to get my truck so that I could try to catch her. By the time I got out to the road, our neighbors pointed across the highway, saying she'd gone that way. I slowly crossed the road and parked. I saw her in the field. She stood and looked at me for a minute. I called her name and took one step toward her. She bolted again, disappearing into the tall grass. I never saw her again.

I searched for her all afternoon, talking to everyone in the area where she disappeared that I could find at home. We made fliers to post. I put them up at intersections in the area and in a couple of stores in the small town close to us. I searched again the next day, walking all over the field where I last saw her, driving up and down roads, walking through more fields. I saw no sign of her. The friends from whom we'd gotten her came out with Lachsmi's mom and the three of us plus the dog searched again. Nothing.

I felt horrible. I still get a sick feeling in my stomach every time I think about it. The thoughts of what happened to her as a result of my clumsiness and failure to keep things under control were hard to bear. It didn't help that the situation reminded me of another painful experience with a dog that had happened a little over a year earlier. I wondered if I was destined to keep repeating the same mistake over and over. I was sure I should never be trusted with a dog again, maybe no animals at all. It was hard to sit with the awareness of how many people and animals had been hurt by my clumsiness and lack of control in those two situations.

Days went by and my heart ached. I found myself looking for her every time I drove by the area where she disappeared. I even stopped a few times and walked along the roads calling her name. As time went by, I began to accept that she was gone and so I prayed that she was safe in someone else's home, someone who simply never saw the signs we posted or didn't get a visit from one of us when we went door to door.

I went out of town on business and the time away helped. The pain began to ease up some and I found myself starting to let go a bit. A few weeks later we received an e-mail from the friends who gave us Lachsmi. They had another pup and after a lot of conversation in their family, had decided that it would help them with their healing if we would receive the other pup as a gift, no charge, and train her to be a sheep dog.

Tears streamed down my face as I read the e-mail. I did not feel at all like I deserved such a gift. I was scared to death that I would blow it again. But I could see in Lisa's face that she really wanted her and knew that it was the right thing to do. I knew that I had to get past the experience if I was ever going to survive living on a farm with so many animals under my care. We agreed to take her and responded to them with appreciation for the amazing grace they demonstrated in making the offer to us.

The next Saturday, they brought Gaia (now called Maya) with them when they came to the market. When market was over, they handed her off to Lisa who brought her home. I was nervous at first. I found myself keeping my distance. We kept her inside for a week, taking her out on a leash to go to the bathroom. We walked her around on a leash outside, slowly introducing her to the animals. Her response was completely different than the other dog's. She was calm and curious, very attentive to us, clinging to Lisa's side whether in the house or outside.

With fear and great concern a week later, we let her out for the first time without the leash. She sniffed around, did her business, ran around the yard a bit, but came back to the door, showing no signs at all that she was going to run away. Gradually, we began to relax more and trust that she was going to stay.

In the months since, Maya has found her place on this farm. Though initially intimidated by the animals, she is becoming less and less afraid to be around them. She's right at our side now whenever we work with the sheep. She goes out for hikes with us, always running up ahead of us several then stopping until we catch up to her. She is our miniature dachshund Jai's best companion, playing with him in all his craziness.

And with time, I let my guard down and let her in. Every morning, she jumps up on the bed and lays next to me while I journal and write. She lays at my feet at the dinner table and when I come home from work, she runs to greet me.

Sometimes I look into her dark eyes, the serious gaze that comes from her sober face, and I see the greatest gift of all this year, the trust of a dog who found her way into my heart and the grace of friends who decided to give us another chance.