One tiny daffodil blade has broken through.  I found it this morning while rescuing Scout who had wrapped herself around a tree and was crying like she’d die ~ like I don’t always come and get her every time she does this.  No matter how many times I walk her back the other way, unwinding as she goes, she cannot do it by herself.  Like me and my surprise to see that baby green spear again, as if spring weren’t coming back this year.
​
I love winter, so long as the ground is snowy or dry.  But muddy. . .  gee whiz I hate muddy winter.  I hate it because dogs love it, which means we get muddy winter outdoors and in.  My floors are filthy, and the dogs smell constantly like . . . well, like wet and muddy dogs.  Winter dog baths are not fun because then the bathroom (instead of the back deck) has to be power washed as well.  Chickens like the mud as well, but they stay outdoors no matter what.  Their feet get hilariously muddy, then tarred with feathers and pine bedding which they spend the afternoons pecking off.  They comb the mud for bits of grass and other treats, then shake their feathers out and bask in the winter sun.

I remind myself the winter’s barely half over, but it’s a pretty day and I saw a flower blade.  We’ll blink and spring will be here, everything brand-new baby green.  On days like this we get to live in both seasons, if only in our thoughts.  I pray the day is warm in ways you did not expect.

Beloved:

    35 degrees is a nice alternative to the “+2 but feels like -10” of last week.  The sun is also shining, which always makes winter seem less hopeless.  Some websites say big snow is coming by week’s end, but they’ve made such promises before so I try not to get my hopes up.  The chickens loves this weather through and through.  The colder it gets, the more they pile up in the henhouse.  At +10 degrees they still sleep outside all night.  I trek down there twice a day to trade their frozen bucket for thawed water.  They drink and drink knowing it won’t stay thawed very long.  In the afternoons I let them out to eat grass and snow.  They stand on one foot to keep the other warm, like flamingos.  One day I cooked them a pot of oatmeal and stirred in several sticks of string cheese.  I should have made a movie of them eating – plunging their heads into the steamy cloud, pulling back the stretchy gooey oatsy cheese.

    The woods are bare as bones and I can see the junkyard cars glinting on the ridge.  I pretend it’s jewels made just for us, else I get mad that they never clean it up.  Anyway, I can only see it in the winter and I’ve gotten too lazy to complain.  Some boys came over and split loads and loads of wood for when my husband’s out of town almost two whole weeks.  I’ll be lonely but I'll be warm, so he’s still taking care of me while he’s gone.

    I like pretending winter is the warmest season, knowing only privileged people think so.  Except for tending chickens I rarely spend more than five minutes outdoors.  My garaged and heated car moves me from one heated building to another, where I am mostly sitting down and thinking about things.  I sit and think and all the while wear soft, warm clothes with a blanket handy should there be a chill.  So for all the people who know better – that winters like this winter are not the warmest season – let us give a thought. 

• The ones at 4 AM who check the school bus roads; 
• People who have to go to work no matter what:  doctors, nurses, EMT’s, firefighters, police, hospital & nursing home staffs;
• Road crew workers – yikes, they must be cold!
• People without decent housing to keep them and their kids safe in freezing weather;
• Farmers with animals to tend;
• HVAC, plumbers and all the service people who keep our houses warm and safe.

    God bless and be with them and with all the ones I left out.  Should the weather get crazy again, stay home if you can and take care of your neighbors.  


~ peace and prayers, 
pastor annette

Happy New Year, My Beloved!

    On Sunday Rob* asked for New Year’s resolutions and then later asked me if we ought to have a church-wide resolution too.  “That would be fun,” I said, or something like it, paying him less attention than I should.  But it came to mind again this morning reading Thomas à Kempis.  The New Year’s resolution I would offer to all of us and to our life together is this:  Be At Peace.   

    Be at peace with one another . . . . 

        Be at peace with the world . . . .

            Be at peace in any circumstance  . . . .

    As Thomas explains so thoroughly in The Imitation of Christ, being at peace is entirely internal work, work between oneself and God.  For your reflection - I’ve written out Book II, Chapter 3 for you here.  This is Ronald Knox’s translation with my own gender pronoun adjustments.  It’s as good a piece as one will find on how to be a church.  I pray you’ll join me in this adventure of peace.  

~ peace & prayers, 
pastor annette
​