Self-Help, Helping Others

I’m always picking up self-help books, everything from “I Refuse to Lead a Dying Church” to “The Smash Fat Diet.” I have this fantasy that if you buy the book, your life will magically change for the better. Perhaps that’s why self-help books are such a popular genre—people have a tendency to suffer from what the psychologists call “Magical Thinking.” If we think it, it will come true.

Self-help books are supposed to change our lives. Sometimes they may do that, at least I hope so. As for mine, they mostly gather dust on the shelf.

Novels can also be self-help books; at least they have the power to change our lives if we let their stories transform our hearts. A seminary friend of mine has told me that reading the novel “The Poisonwood Bible” certainly changed her.

Written by Barbara Kingsolver, one of the most gifted writers of our time, “The Poisonwood Bible” is the story of Nathan Price, a driven and troubled man. In 1959 Price drags his wife and four daughters to Africa so he can follow his call to spread the Word of God to the “heathens.”

It’s a powerful tale that I’ve read twice and also listened to as an audio version. In a time of great upheaval in Africa, the Price family travels from their home in Georgia to a tiny isolated village in the Belgian Congo. There, Papa Price preaches sin, hellfire and damnation to people who are desperately poor, people who may very well be the very least of “the least of these.”

After reading the tragedies that befell the Prices and the people they lived among, including an attack of army ants, drought, starvation, and a war for independence, my friend Wilma began a juice fast that lasted the entire season of Lent. She said that Kingsolver’s powerful words reminded her that for many people in the world, life is a struggle just to survive.

“In the face of that kind of suffering,” she said, “the way we live is obscene. Knowing that I spend more money each month on pet food than many families spend for their entire month’s meals made me ashamed.”

I haven’t seen Wilma since that conversation several years ago so I don’t know where her journey has taken her. I do know this—I continue to struggle with trying to live more simply, to consume less, to live lightly on the earth.

It’s tempting to give up, to just forget about it. But then I hear a story like Emily, Babe Lambert’s great-granddaughter, told in her letter from Africa—how the children she met there have so little and are so grateful for the smallest gifts.

Or I remember my time in Kentucky when a woman who lived in absolute poverty and squalor asked if I would sing with her. Her voice rang out loud and clear, “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound…” When I left her tiny cabin, she called out, “Honey, remember, Jesus will see you through the hard times.”

Like the disciples, we decide to follow Jesus—this charismatic teacher, preacher, savior who came to show us The Way—the way to live, the way to love. But we forget that decisions always have consequences. “The Way” isn’t as easy as throwing down our fishing nets, packing our bags, and hitting the road. I fail and fail again and I, too, feel ashamed. So I vow to try one more time and ask the Holy One to forgive me. I also try to remember that Jesus will always see me through the hard times.

Blessings, Country Woman

The Parable of the Chicken

Several years ago we acquired four chickens—a motley crew, there was one small red hen with very strange ways, a large red hen that reminded me of a church lady I once knew, plus two black and white hens that we promptly named Pepper and Salt.

For over three years our small flock seemed content. A few months ago, that all changed. First Miss Wacko, who often refused to come in at night, disappeared. Not long after surviving an attack by a red-tailed hawk, Big Red gave up the ghost.

In the days that followed Salt and Pepper seemed contented enough to have the coop to themselves and wander the confines of the pasture, escaping occasionally to make a break for the barn or the orchard. I must confess that Salt’s demise rests on our shoulders. One Saturday evening we drove to Guerneville to dance to the rockin’ rhythms of Michael Adams’ band, The Fargo Bros. By the time we got home, we were so tired, we forgot that we had not closed the small back door to the chicken house. The next morning, Pepper sat alone on the perch except for a pile of feathers in the corner.

Each morning we let Pepper out. She wandered alone, pecking here and there, a small black and white figure against the sea of green. Who knows if chickens get lonely, but they are flock animals after all—they naturally form communities. So we asked around until we found a farmer north of Ukiah who had young hens for sale.

We were so pleased to bring home a dozen new companions for Pepper—four white hens, tall but slender birds, three red hens much like Big Red, and five Araucanas, large birds feathered in rust, brown, and black in gorgeous patterns.

However, chicken psychology is obviously not our forte. Much to our surprise and dismay, Pepper rejected all attempts to introduce her to this new family. As soon as we began unloading the newcomers, Pepper set up a terrible squawk. As each chicken was set on the floor, her insulted and angry screeching grew louder. When I let her go, she immediately rose up like an avenging angel, striking out with her heavy talons at any chicken that dared approach her.

It has been five days now and each time we let Pepper out of her cage, there is a violent but short-lived struggle. Amid a great flapping of wings and flying dust, I manage to snatch her up and put her back in the large pet carrier that has become her refuge.

How strange that even chickens reject strangers, even their own kind, just because there’s something about them that’s just a little different—the wrong color, the wrong size, the wrong smell, the wrong behavior. This is especially intriguing to me in the midst of the ongoing battles over health care reform and immigration.

Don’t people realize how they sound? Underneath all the rhetoric, their words are pretty clear. “I take care of me and my own—you can darn well do the same.” Or “This is my place—you look different, you talk different, you even dress different and you’re not welcome here.”

Like dogs fighting over a few scraps or a none too smart chicken that doesn’t realize that a new flock might just be a blessing. Amid a great flapping of lips and a cloud of innuendo and insults, our leaders have refused to see that we’re all in this together, that we need each other. Many of them seem to have lost their way and sometimes they fool the very people who put them in office into following after them.

Worst of all, lots of people on both sides claim to be Christians. Maybe they read a different Bible than I do. The one I read says over and over that our differences don’t matter. It says we’re all part of the same family, brothers and sisters, children of the King. The Scriptures that I read say that everyone is our neighbor, even those we fear or despise. Again and again Jesus speaks of love and forgiveness and grace.

A chicken can’t read, but human beings have no excuse. No excuse at all.

Peace and blessings, Country Woman

Living on Foggy Mountain

On Saturday morning we castrated all the ram lambs. It wasn't as drastic as that sounds, no blood or sharp knives, although drastic enough. My husband caught up a lamb and held it sitting on its rump on the corral fence. My job was to take this tool called an "elastrator" that resembles heavy duty pliers, put the smallest, tightest rubber band on its four prongs, spread the prongs stretching the rubber band wide, and place it over the poor lamb's testicles, letting the band return to its original size. Within a few weeks, the testicles will have dried up and dropped off, a supposedly painless procedure, though I have my doubts.

Our ranch is 106 rocky, tree-strewn acres. We're 1500 feet up from the valley floor and on a clear day we can see the very top of Mt. Tamalpais though San Francisco is hidden a bit beyond. Most mornings we walk a mile-long loop up around the far end of the ranch and then down again to the house. Some mornings we're startled by a flock of wild turkeys, their feathers puffed up in fright, their anxious calls like nervous church ladies. Other times we'll see a herd of wild pigs snuffling their way along, seeking grubs, bugs and acorns among the leaf duff scattered beneath the oak, madrone and bay laurel trees.

It is a gift and a blessing to live in such a place. There are times we don't leave it for three or four days, depending on work schedules or those necessary errands we can't do by mail or phone. Even when I must leave, the beauty of it, the peace it offers stays in my mind. When I return, I stop to open the bottom gate, a mile from our house, and find myself breathing a long sigh of relief, knowing that home is only minutes away.

Living in such a place also means hard work, lots of it. If the water pressure fails, we must follow the pipe lines, check the water tanks, inspect the spring boxes. When one of the sheep escapes, someone has to walk the fence lines until a hole is found and fixed. If a tree falls, we let it age, and then we cut, split and stack the wood that will warm us that winter. In the rainy season, we walk the ditches and shovel out the leaves and debris that block the culverts. The work keeps us mindful of the natural order of things, mindful of our place in the natural world, aware that our bodies were meant to be used.

People visit us and envy our peaceful, pastoral life. Being "good hosts," we sit with them and drink iced tea while two red-tailed hawks circle overhead and the lambs jump and play in the orchard pasture. When they're gone, we return to the work for the day—transplanting tomato starts, pruning grape vines, whatever the season requires. Most days, though, if only for a few moments, we pull up the lawn chairs to rest and talk and admire the world around us.

Searching for Heaven

When I started this blog, I intended to be faithful about writing in it every day or so. Well, like most good intentions, that one went by the wayside. Well, here goes again—I want to use this blog as a discipline, a spiritual discipline of sorts, writing as healing, writing as a way to focus on the holy moments in my life and in the lives of those around me.

All day my mind and heart have pondered a rather amazing book by Barbara Brown Taylor. Taylor is a a former Episcopal priest, now a college professor and a famous keynoter and guest preacher. She speaks and writes with profound eloquence; she's one of those "shining star" preachers, a celebrity in preaching circles, and rightly so. Her words often bring a lump to my throat, sometimes tears and laughter, and once in a while, the thrill of discovering something truly holy.

This morning I read the intoduction and first chapter of one of her latest works, "An Altar in the World." She speaks of how God's true home is in the world, out here where people live and breathe, drink beer and curse, call their children home from their play, build cities and bomb them into oblivion, make love and babies, live out their years. More often than not, at least the people I've accompanied on that last journey, more than anything, on their deathbeds, they wish for one more day on this earth with those they love.

Barbara Brown Taylor has done what every preacher aims for—she has disturbed my complacency; she has held up a mirror and for just a moment, I've seen the face that hides behind the veil, read thoughts that I only dare speak in private. I'm a pastor. A lot of my work happens in a church. It's a beautiful church—built of redwood, circular with an altar constructed of an enormous polished redwood trunk and a gleaming slab. The altar sits in the middle of that circle; it rests under an eight-sided peaked roof that reaches toward heaven, or where some folks say heaven is.

But sometimes I can't help wonder if people somehow think the place is magic… if I think it's magic. Is this God's home? Is God here somewhere in the dark, or did we miss the sweep of wings, angel escorts protecting God from the press of the crowd? Do we come to this place with the hope that if we pray the right prayers, sing the right songs, put our hard earned dollars in the brass plate, we'll win that lottery ticket to heaven? Or is heaven what we seek when in our last moments we yearn for one last day, one moment, of life… with its toil and tears, its heartbreak and its joy, life on this holy place we call earth, God's home filled with all the good things God spreads before us.

Lost at Sea

Rev. Pamela J. Tinnin

When a month or more passes without us taking a day off, my husband, mother-in-law and I decide to go to the coast. The route we choose varies—sometimes it’s over Skaggs Spring Road to Gualala, sometimes out River Road to Jenner, or many times, it’s our favorite, Highway128 through Boonville and Philo to the mouth of the Navarro River.

Several weeks ago, we turned south where 128 meets Highway 1 and made our slow, meandering way to Point Arena. Zack’s mother lived there as a child, back when it was a small, sleepy village of loggers and fisherman and their families. The fishermen are still there, at least to some extent, though these days both fishing and logging are pretty sparse in that part of California. As we drove through the almost deserted streets, Mary pointed out her long ago home and the church she attended, still open all these years later.

We saw some fisherman down at the cove, a few sport fishing from the pier that extends out into the sea, others commercial fishing in the boats we could see far out on the horizon. We stood there behind the railing, watching the surf going in and out, waves big enough that there were a half dozen or so surfers, paddling around looking for the “big wave.”

The three of us were watching an osprey circling overhead, when the “big wave” found me, rising up over my head and drenching me, then moving up the parking lot about 10 inches deep before receding once again. Standing there, water dripping off my jacket and pants, I burst out laughing, surprising even myself because I’m not what you’d call a “water person.”

For some reason they call those waves “sleepers,” I guess because if you don’t pay attention, if you “fall asleep”, they catch you by surprise and may even sweep you out to sea. Every few years, the newspapers report a swimmer or rock climber, caught in the undertow, swept out to sea and lost. That day I wasn’t swept out to anywhere, just left sopping and bedraggled, shaking in the cold breeze, and laughing, our nice little ride to the coast interrupted by an unexpected adventure.

Sometimes I forget life is like that—you go along doing the ordinary, mundane things that make up your days, thinking that finally, at last, your life has settled down, you’re secure, you’re safe. Without warning, all that “safety” can be swept away by the undertow of unexpected events. A financial crisis, illness, a death in the family, a divorce, an unexpected pregnancy, the loss of a job—those “sleepers” that catch you by surprise, the things that leave you stunned and shaking, wondering what happened.

Not long ago I was talking to a clergy colleague, telling him about our church’s financial struggles, saying that I wasn’t sure what the future held, for the church or for me. Fred sort of chuckled and said, “You know, Jesus never said it was going to be easy.”

At first I was offended and thought to myself, “How insensitive is that?” But you know, he was right. Remember Job who was a righteous man and yet suffered all kinds of torment? Remember Joseph who was sold into slavery by his own brothers? And didn’t Jesus say that rain fell on the just and the unjust?

There are no guarantees, not for you, not for me, not for anyone. There’s just a promise—that no matter what happens, no matter if we’re lost and out to sea, we’re never alone. Even when we feel abandoned and cast aside, Jesus is there waiting for us to open our lives to his presence and our hearts to his grace, waiting to hold us and breathe new life into us once again.

IF YOU CAN'T STAND THE HEAT
Rev. Pamela J. Tinnin
I must confess, summer is my least favorite season—it's the heat. I'm just not a hot weather person and in these past weeks we've had some 100 plus days here on the ranch. With several fans going and by keeping the shades down, it hasn't been too bad. We walk the dog in the early morning while there's still fog in the valley, then I help Zack pick vegetables before noon. After that, if it's not a day for me at my office, I usually spend my time working on the computer, a fan pointed right at me, sometimes with a cool, wet washcloth draped around my neck.

Last night as I sat here I remembered another hot summer, a summer in the late eighties. It was a time of terrible drought in northern California, long days of heat that reached 118° several days running, and the worst fire season in years. Day after day was filled with the sharp smell of ashes and the throaty rumble of the World War II bombers that were used to drop fire retardant on the flames that would suddenly flare up and race through the dry grass.

To escape the heat of the house at night, my husband and I set up a bed outside, an old iron-framed three-quarter-sized cot with a tufted cotton mattress, placed to catch the slightest breeze. We'd lie out there, covered with a thin sheet, and watch a sky full of stars. As we waited for sleep, there was little sound except for our soft talking, an occasional rustle of small creatures in the grass, or the muted cry of a coyote in a far off canyon.

No matter how many seasons pass, record-breaking hot summers always seem to take me by surprise. Some thirty years ago, I spent such a summer in Oregon. My husband, children, and I had moved to a small town in the farm country that surrounds Salem, the state capitol. Mostly there were small farms that raised mixed vegetables and a variety of berries for the truck garden market. One afternoon after my husband arrived home from work, we gathered up the kids and drove to a popular picnic place on the banks of the Molalla River.

Some of the local farm workers were gathered there, mostly Hispanics and a few African Americans. After a day's hard work, the women sat around on blankets fanning themselves with folded cardboard, the men wore sleeveless white undershirts, drank warm beer and played horseshoes, the children waded in the water and splashed each other. As we spread our blanket nearby, the women smiled shyly, the men tipped their straw hats, the children grew quiet.

We sat down and opened the bags we carried. I passed out bologna sandwiches to our kids, poured Kool Aid, and offered everyone cookies. Eventually the migrant children resumed their chatter and called my two to come and play. They dashed into the water, squealing as they jumped and ran in the shallows. Finally it grew late and we all began to pack up, us to go back to our little house and electric fans, most of them to return to tiny migrant worker cabins or tents, while others just bedded down in their cars or pickup trucks.

Remembering that evening, I thought of my favorite scripture: "What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God." (Micah 6:8) There's an expression my Oklahoma Great Aunt Ola used to say to her pastor—"Brother Harold, that scripture just plain convicted me." There have been many times those words from Micah 6:8 have "just plain convicted me."

I complain of the heat while in Africa a husband fans his wife as she lies dying in the hospital hallway because there's no medicine and no bed for her. I whine about my discomfort while a family of nine settles down to sleep in their cardboard shanty in Brazil. I fret about no air conditioner while right here in our own country thousands of mothers and fathers worry how they'll put food on the table for their families or, hearing the baby cough in the night, they pray it's only a cold because there is no health care insurance and no money for a doctor.

I don't want to be a Sunday morning Christian. I want to be like Peter and James and John, ready to leave everything and follow the One who came to show us how to live, how to love. I want to act justly, love tenderly, walk humbly. Then why is it so hard? Why is it so hard?

THE BREAD OF HEAVEN
Back in the early 1970s, my family and I lived in a rural community in the mountains of Oregon. Called Scotts Mills, the little town had fewer than 50 houses, but it did have a small grocery store, a one-room Quaker Church with a bell that tolled every Sunday morning, a grange hall, and a kindergarten-through eighth grade school.

The town had been invaded, at least that’s what some of the old timers claimed. The back-to-the-land movement had brought young families seeking out that perfect place, that pastoral Eden, where they could settle down, live the “good life,” and raise their children. I guess I was part of that movement, though I had wanted to be a farmer as long as I could remember. One of the best presents I’d ever been given was the miniature farm set that waited under the tree one Christmas morning. I must have been six or seven and by the time I outgrew it, long after I was the age for it, and finally agreed to pass it on to my younger sister, the tractor was missing a wheel, the metal barn had its share of dents and scratches, and the paint was nearly gone from the miniature horses and cows.

Although we had come to Scotts Mills to live in the back of the old hotel and run a gift shop, I was determined that this was my chance—my chance to be a farmer. Soon I discovered the wonders of the Tuesday auction barn. My first time there, I brought home a 3-day old blind goat kid and a tiny speckled pup.

These proved to be less than wise purchases. I cured the goat’s blindness with boric acid baths, but he quickly learned how to open the back door, jump on the kitchen counters, and devour whatever he found there, including my four-year-old son’s birthday cake. As for the pup, despite the old blankets I put in the woodshed, when night fell, he began to cry. Yip-yip-yip would continue until his voice grew hoarse or until a neighbor came banging on the door and we’d have to bring the puppy in, which was what he had in mind in the first place. Needless to say, our new family members found their way back to the auction. I can only say I hope they found happy homes with owners who had more patience than I.

You’d think I would have learned my lesson, but several months later, my lifelong dream came walking into the auction ring—or I should say limping—an elegant dark bay mare who had made a good run at the rodeo circuit, but was past her prime and had never healed from her last fall.

She was a beauty, but her right rear hock just above the hoof was swollen twice the size of the others and the bidding stayed low. I tried to sit on my hands—we certainly had no money, not to mention a place, for a horse. Then a woman I’d just met leaned over and whispered, “I’ll loan you the money and you can pay me back at $20 a month.” My hand shot up and in seconds the auctioneer said, “Sold to the little lady over there.” I was the proud possessor of a broken-down horse I named “Baby Mare” and I was $175 in debt—not to mention wondering where I would keep her.

Well, that problem was solved much more easily than I had thought. There was an elderly couple who farmed just up the road west of town about a mile and a half. They raised a few beef cattle, grew their own hay, and had an enormous garden and huge berry patch. Jim and Hannah Atchison were probably in their eighties, but shared the belief that if you slowed down, you began to die, so their lives were as busy as ever. Mr. Atchison was at the auction that day and he found me at the horse pen where I stood staring through the rails, stunned at what I had done.

“If you want, I’ll haul that little mare to my place—she can pasture with the cattle if you’ll help me put up my hay next week.” I wasn’t a churchgoer at the time, but it felt like an answer to prayer.

That next week I showed up early Monday morning. The old man had already cut and baled the alfalfa, the bales lined up in neat rows up and down the field. There were others there to work, three men about my age, mid-twenties, two with long hair tied back with bandanas, and the third an African American with an enormous afro. When they found I couldn’t lift the bales more than a few inches off the ground, much less throw them on the back of the old flatbed truck, I was assigned to drive. All that morning, I sat in the old cab, moving slowly through the field, grinding the cranky gearshift, and feeling like at long last I was a farmer.

Around noon, Hannah Atchison called us in to eat. They had set up a sheet of plywood on sawhorses under a large oak tree and there were platters and bowls nearly covering it. We each found a chair and began to pass the food around—steaming corn-on-the cob, thick sliced tomatoes sprinkled with salt and pepper and vinegar, roast beef that cut with a fork, tiny new potatoes fried crisp, and bread like no bread I’d ever tasted, a large round loaf, dark and crusty and covered with seeds. The bread sat on a plate in front of Jim Atchison and just as one of the guys lifted his fork to his mouth, Mr. Atchison said, “I’d like you all to join me in a prayer.”

We looked at each other, put down our forks, folded our hands and bowed our heads, as the old man’s raspy voice began, “Gracious and merciful God—we come to you this morning with grateful hearts. We thank you for the works of your hands, the water, earth and sky; we thank you for these young people who bless us with their presence at our table; we thank you for this food, this bread that will nourish and sustain our bodies. Most of all, this day and always, we give thanks for the true bread, the gift of your Son, the one who strengthens us for the journey. In his name we pray. Amen

More than thirty years have passed and I still remember the dappled sunlight through the leaves, the smell and heft of the bread, and Mr. Atchison’s words, whose meaning eluded me that day, and for a long time after. “…the true bread, the gift of your Son, the one who strengthens us for the journey.”

“Give us this day our daily bread” we pray, and bread is indeed, the staff of life, the stuff of life. Toast and pancakes, wholewheat loaves and egg-rich bagels, garlic-smeared slices and flatbread split and stuffed with good things. But the reality also is, for many in this world, plain, ordinary bread may be all that stands between them and hunger.

When I took a bread-making class, I noticed that the instructor handled the dough with respect; she kneaded it with care—she even told us, “Don’t be rough with it—you’ve got to develop a feel for it.” Bread is precious, more precious than many of us in the richest part of the world realize—for some it is all they have to eat; a piece of bread is what stops the cries of children when their stomachs grow empty.

There is another kind of hunger, isn’t there, a hunger that we all know, rich and poor alike, a hunger that will not be satisfied—not with bread, not with a feast like the one we ate that day at the Atchinsons’. It’s a hunger of the heart—a hunger for love, for sharing, for grace, a hunger for a life that has meaning. The recipe for true bread, the things Jesus offers us—not flour and honey, oil and water—but love, sharing, grace, family and good work.

My horse stayed at the Atchisons’ for the next several years. Mr. Atchinson showed me how to make a poultice for Baby Mare’s leg. The swelling never disappeared, but the limp did and she was faster than ever. Hannah taught me how to can peaches and she told stories to my children. We joined them for picnics and swimming in the creek that pooled cool and deep in the woods behind their house.

More than thirty years have passed since an old man and woman invited four strangers to share their table, their home, and their lives. They asked us to break bread with them, to be in fellowship with them, and by their words and their lives proclaimed “Taste and see that the Lord is good!”

May every meal be a reminder that it is the true bread that sustains us, the true bread that strengthens us for the journey, the true bread that heals us and calls us to invite others to the feast where there is always more than enough for all.

Peace and blessings, Country Woman