And So it Begins....

And so it begins... Sunday was a bitter/sweet passage. Relationships forged over five years will be greatly missed, even as tomorrow comes, like a raincloud, full of promise and surprise. 

And so it begins...the end of my term as minister of Covenant United Methodist Church; my journey from the ordered round of predictable and worthy routines, institutional safe guards and retirement security; from a group think often afraid to risk, into a wilder rhythm of spontaneous adventures and encounters with creative gospel, gloriously grounded in the life giving routine of daily living WITH the earth - watering the alfalfa, harvesting a handful to feed the chickens, collecting their eggs with a grateful heart and enjoying breakfast as the gift of a mutual relationship of caring. To look each avian personality in the eye, welcoming them to shepherd me toward a lifestyle of domesticated wildness connected to the earth and the creativity of engaged fullness. That's my journey beyond Covenant.  

It starts today, with this blog entry typed to a chicken's "song" clucking the arrival of yet another gift outside my open window. Nature's eternal round of fullness in relationship.

"Weary with Absence, I Return to Earth"

Wendell Berry's poem tells it straight!

"I have again come home through miles of sky                                                                                            from hours of abstract talk in the way of modern times                                                                                when humans live in their minds and the world, forgotten, dies into explanations. 

Weary with absence, I return to earth.

...and sink into the ancient happiness of slow work in unhastenable                                                            days and years."                                                                                                                               

 - Wendell Berry, "This Day: Collected and New Sabbath Poems" 1992, VIII 

 My end as pastor of Covenant arrives in just a few weeks. And with Berry I wonder at my own preoccupation with hours and hours of abstract theology and preaching "in the way of modern times," while the "world, forgotten, dies into explanations." Just how effective, or ineffective, have I been to help meet the challenges of our day, never mind just to be? 

 I too am "weary with absence" and with this appointment to a year of discernment intend a "return to the earth." It's time for some intentional Jerusalem-cross-gardening of my own, that gardening "of soil" that promises the "ancient happiness of slow work in unhastenable days and years." 

 

 So it begins. Raised beds, in the shape of a Jerusalem cross, planted to annuals. A herb spiral as guild ("a group of plants harmoniously interwoven into a pattern of mutual support") of cullinary and medicinal plants. An apple tree, marvel of gardening craft with four varieties of apples grafted onto a common rootstock, the tree surrounded by multiple plants serving as bird attractors, insect attractors, grass suppressors, mulch providers, nutrient accumulators, and nitrogen fixers. And chickens. Everyone needs companions and participants for the journey who give and receive in the mutual flow of a caring relationship. 

 And all of it a glorious congregation-of-life in my own backyard wildly dancing with the Christ in the universal pattern of order, disorder, and reorder. 

Joining this dance is perhaps that "ancient happiness of slow work in unhastenable days and years" of which Wendell Berry writes, that "return to earth," arriving as my time of pastoring "in the way of modern times" ends.