Do Not Go Gently

I wrote this during Lent — when I reread it today, I just felt like there was someone out there who needed to read it, too.

During the eight years I served a small country church in Kansas, I did a lot of funerals. During one six-month period, there were seventeen.

Each funeral was different—once I presided with a priest at the local Catholic Church. That funeral had the rich smell of incense, the sweetness of bells, the familiar words of Mass. My first service at the local mortuary chapel had favorite old hymns and bouquets of wheat and sunflowers, the deceased with the look of a dedicated farmer even there in that place. A service for an elderly man I’d never met had the delightful gift of a piano concerto from a teenaged grandson, his fingers rippling across the keys, and once three young girls said goodbye to their grandma with sweet high voices singing “Jesus loves you, this I know.”

But those solemn services were alike, too—music, stories, an unexpected and painful kind of joy, the kind that comes from sharing treasured memories that will live on as long as there is one person to tell them. And of course, sadness, deep sadness that closes the throat and brings tears long after you think you have no more tears to cry.

And, the hard thing is, life does go on—even in the midst of planning a service, choosing a casket, of writing thank you notes, life goes on. A little girl’s voice calls you away from your tasks, “Grandma, Grandma…” and you go, knowing that this too is a precious and holy moment that will quickly pass and be gone.

Or you force yourself to fix breakfast, breakfast for one, and sitting at the table, your toast growing cold, you sip dark coffee. Suddenly there’s a bird on the windowsill hopping brightly back and forth, peering at you with a shiny dark eye. You step outside to get the paper. The air is fresh and cold and the old dog comes to lean against you, hoping you might stop to rub his ears while he groans with pleasure.

The days pass pretty much like always and that is the way of things, the way of life. I think of the people, the families I spent so much time with in those days. I held them in my heart and in my prayers as they went through these first months. Know, too, that God holds you, each of you who has lost someone, whether recently, or years past, because though it becomes easier, there is always that sad, sore spot in your heart that never quite goes away. I know that spot well. Sometimes it’s strangely comforting when I feel it, remembering dear ones who at that moment are as clear in my memory as if I’d seen them only yesterday.

Perhaps it’s the season that has me thinking of death and loss. In these weeks as I ride over West Side Road to the church, there are enormous oak trees that stand stark and leafless against the sky. The vineyards are bare, the workers hunched in the cold as they prune back the vines. As I write, the temperature has dropped and heavy, slushy flakes fall outside the window.

But sitting in the recliner this morning drinking my coffee and finishing the Sunday paper, something caught my eye—rosy buds on bare limbs, dark and velvet soft, the flowering quince outside the front window. My first thought was that it was too soon, that they will only perish in the next hard rain that is sure to come. But still I am cheered by the thought of them there, waiting to burst forth into bloom, waiting to announce that winter has once again moved on, that the cycle goes on, life goes on.

Lent is almost upon us, the season that seems harsh and spare, the time when we are called to look within, called to question what is going on in our minds and hearts, what is going on in our life of faith. We prepare for Easter by preparing for death, for loss. Then I think about Jesus’ teachings and I wonder. Is that what he taught? It seems to me that until the end, Jesus lived life to the fullest. What did he do the night before he died, the night scholars say he knew well that the cross was waiting? He ate dinner with his friends, he drank wine and told stories, he called them together to say one last time, “I love you… I love you.” And even Judas sat at that table.

I think of the Dylan Thomas poem, the words,

“Do not go gentle into that good night.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

We don’t get a guarantee of time—a year, twenty, four score and ten—all we get is the opportunity to live life to the fullest as long as we can, until the very last moment, the very last breath. When we hold back, when we refuse to give our best, that’s the sin, the shame.

Winter and Lent—time to slow down a bit, time to think of what’s going on, what’s coming, where life’s going; time to look forward to the change spring will surely bring. I pray that whatever the season, whatever the circumstances, we each find it within us to refuse to live halfway, to refuse to live anxiously, tentatively stepping through our days. No, it is far better to rage…to rage against the dying of the light wherever we are… sometimes that’s all that keeps the darkness away.

Blessings to you and may your days be filled with grace, Pam

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?