Category: Quarantine

Categories: Prayers, Quarantine, Red Birds Posted on

“…that he that runs may read it”

Yesterday early morning I heard my feller rumble up the gravel drive in his truck; scrub pants and a tshirt on, homemade scrub cap in his bag full of pens and notepads and journals of all kinds. He left the role of Husband, Dad, and Farmer behind for another dark-to-dark day of doing his very and mightiest best to understand, just a little bit better than he did the day before, how to treat a packed-tight hospital full of people … Continue reading“…that he that runs may read it”

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When You’re Alone

The other day I took the kids to school, it was my birthday. It was their first day all four of them in school at the same time in weeks. So I went for a walk, to feel less alone. I think we can be too alone, not alone enough, or both at the same time. Do we all feel a little in that last category these days? I told a friend that I think there’s a trick to feelings. … Continue readingWhen You’re Alone

Categories: Birds, Home, Kids, Quarantine, Red Birds Posted on

July

I haven’t written in a month, but July is like that every year. July is kind of like December. You love everything that there is to do but you don’t intend to keep up this kind of pace forever. Also, the boys keep finding me. My red birds have moved into their summer home in the cedars along the little springs and creeks under the trees. Goldfinches are still around at the feeders and the hummingbirds have moved back in. … Continue readingJuly

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When Sorrow and Hope Hold Hands For a While

Maybe this is how the year feels to you so far: Like it’s been struck by lightning. Loss feels a little helpless watching things burn up. It begs for an answer, scrambles for a plan. So often we have tears in the middle of our prayers, don’t we? It’s like the thing that drives us to Hope, is Sorrow. Sorrow and Hope hold hands sometimes. And sometimes we just need to let them.  

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When Our Humanity Fails Us

Last evening I got the boys in bed before sunset, and walked up the hill behind the house, thinking and feeling very human. Very small. We want to go out and do, and save all of the wounded. Oppression cripples us, rage lights the world on fire. We ache to drop the walls of our humanity like a bad habit, because days like these we feel a little trapped. How can we “glorify God”, like the catechism says we’re to … Continue readingWhen Our Humanity Fails Us

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A Change In the Light

For the days when those low hanging clouds seem brush the top of your very soul. When maybe just last night, a whole sky full of rain and winds of doubt squashed flat the places in you that had started to grow. Where do you look on days like this, when the whole world feels damp? At everything that’s wrong with you and your work and the people around you, and the weather, too? We’ve worked a whole day long, … Continue readingA Change In the Light

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The Gray Hay Days: When the Sun Rinses Out

This was our first spring at the farm here in Virginia. Where the fields had been used for corn before we moved here, there was no telling how good of a hay cutting there would be our first year here. But the guys got heaps and heaps of pretty grass mowed and raked, tedded then raked again. It was pretty hay and perfect haying weather too- a sky as blue and sharp as any sky in Eastern Montana ever was; … Continue readingThe Gray Hay Days: When the Sun Rinses Out

Categories: Prayers, Quarantine, Spring Posted on

Just a Bunch of Grass

  There’s literally tons of grass rolled up and sitting in the field across from my house right now. I don’t have a job, a college education, or even a perfectly tidy house really. But I see grass and sky and cows and critters, all day long every day. Yesterday morning I sat in bed early and read in Luke 19- What had the servants done with the minas their master had given them to hang onto while he was … Continue readingJust a Bunch of Grass

Categories: Quarantine, Spring Posted on

The Rest That We Need

  I read this morning with the curtains open and facing a newly mown field, early morning shadows laid across the rows as if to hold them gently in place.   Psalm 23- “You make me lie down in green pastures…”   Acceptance of our humanity, of the rest that we need from time to time. The back of my neck still aches and all down my spine, my stomach reminds me it’s still not ready for a full meal, … Continue readingThe Rest That We Need