The Sylvr Pen

“GIFT” is the prompt word for this week’s

FIVE MINUTE FRIDAY.

So…

GO!

“’Tis a gift to be simple, ’tis a gift to be free, ’tis a gift to come down where you ought to be…”

Those words from the old Shaker hymn come to my mind first with the prompt word “gift.”

“Simple”? In this complicated world? In this complicated life of mine (which might not look complicated but is, with nearly every day presenting some discombobulating complication)? You bet it’s a gift. But have I that simplicity amid and despite all the complications? I don’t know…

“Free”? I certainly don’t feel free. I feel too much lately instead like I want to break free. There is something that binds me, holds me invisibly, prisoner.

Have I come down where I ought to be? Well, I’ve certainly come down. But I don’t feel that the down where I have come to is the down where I ought to be. It doesn’t seem just. And God is just as well as merciful.

So…

Maybe I ought to think of the simple, free gifts that He gives me everyday.

I do that. I count them. Without numbers. With naming, and thank-You’s. And just that has a way of simplifying, freeing, bringing down to peace and settledness. A gift.

STOP.

Five-Minute Friday FreeWrite prompt: “Follow.”

Go:

Oh, my Soul…

When you’re lost in the woods, and someone walks by, and off toward somewhere, you will naturally want to jump up and follow them. The need to get out of this lostness will drive you.

But where are they going? Where will they lead? Will anyone else come by and walk past, and go on to a better place?

Desperation can drive you to follow the first and possibly only, but Wisdom whispers, “Wait.”

But wait while lost? Wait in need? Wait when all seems falling apart and falling away, when even survival itself seems to depend on getting out of this lostness at any cost?

The cost of lost is desperate confusion. But getting found by the wrong things, that price is higher yet. And ends you up more lost than before.

Wait. There is One Who passes through, indeed waits Himself here in the shadows and in the whispers of wind even now, surrounds you with His Presence, invisible.  Why He is not making Himself easily known may knit your brow, and hands, and heart. But listen. Stop yourself from precipitous pursuit of straw men blown by wild gales, or false light shining off tumult-tumbled trash through trees. Wait to realize His Presence. Follow the True. Only. You may even find following Him means staying right where you are. But no longer lost.

Stop.

*****

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It came again this year. Timed just right for destruction, just as in the past three.

I watched it grow, up from the grass, in swaths across the dawn-blurred lawn, beckoned forth by the rising sun.

It etched paths criss-cross on  new mown grass.

.

Thick it came on roofs,  chilling white blanket.

And the apple tree, it just stood there and took it.

What else could it do?

The tender young crops in their wooden boxes we could cover with shields that held in warmth. But not the tree.

And so, for three years past, and now again for four, we will see no fruit.

Frostration.

Have you lived it? The biting off, to death, of efforts from your heart, so earnestly and painstakingly prepared? Again. And again?

I know how that is.

Yet at my window, the birds still sing.

*****

The Five Minute Friday Free Write prompt today is “Door.”

Go!

So many doors.

My house has too many doors. Three front doors? For what reason?

We never could figure that one out. And so many doors within: closets and closed stairways and pantries and cupboards and even a defunct dumbwaiter door.

The trouble with too many doors is they take up space that otherwise might be more usefully employed. And they offer too many choices.

Too many choices? In a time when freedom of choice is the rallying cry?

Yes.

When people come to our house for the first time, unless they know us and we’ve told them just to come to the back door like all our close friends, they’re baffled as they stand on the porch and try to decide which door to knock on. There’s even a doorbell push button beside one door and an old-fashioned hand-turned doorbell ringer on another!

Life in this world has become like that. Now we have so many opportunities that we don’t know which of those doors to knock on either. An overwhelming burden of trying to make the right choice leaves many people wavering, uncertain, and never able to move forward, bold in a single purpose, while others make a bold choice, then when they find its outcomes are fraught with difficulties, suppose the choice must have been wrong, that “I should have chosen…” door 2 or 3 or 4 or… Some of us live in regret or jump around after all kinds of possibilities all our lives. How many college students change their major several times and never quite get their bearings even after graduation—or, from even the beginning list their major as “undeclared.”

I hesitate to tell you how old I am, but I still feel I haven’t quite figured out yet “what I want to do when I grow up”!

How about you? Do you ever get restless in your present state, thinking maybe you’re wasting your life on the wrong life choice(s)?

Too many doors. Too many choices.

Then I think of another door imagery. Jesus used it of Himself.

“I am the door,” He said, “The door that leads to life.”

We get all kinds of doubts thrown at us about choosing, and sticking to, that choice, too. But I know how real He has been in my life, of the amazing things He’s done, of His amazing love and intervening care He’s shown me, despite whatever lack of good judgment might have baffled me about all kinds of other choices.

Maybe it doesn’t really matter which morally neutral “door” we pick, if we’ve entered real Life by “the true Door.” Even if that looks  to the rest of the world like the back door!

*****

We lost three. One by one, they weakened and died, poor little things, while the rest just trampled over them, oblivious to their trouble. Too hot under the hover light, otherwise dehydrated, or injured in a baby poultry stampede…

Now if they’d had their Mamas here…

That’s one reason I wanted these heritage chickens: to eliminate, from now on, this almost yearly tragedy.

Getting baby chicks by mail or at the feed store is delightful fun, but far too often it has this sad side note. Suppliers even anticipate it by including an extra few babies—in this case three, just enough to even out our loss, supposedly—but there’s more to loss than numbers. It’s still so sad to see their amazing energy turn to lethargy, then further droop and final collapse.

Incubator loss is even worse. Way worse. Often 50 percent.

“Did we ever lose any with a hen doing the brooding?” I asked.

He couldn’t think of any instances.

But streamlined ways—and breeds—make for higher egg output, or more breast meat. And production speed. Of course, speed. Everything faster is better, right? And man knows all kinds of ways to improve on God’s designs.

So we had bought the lie, and got into the practice (till now) of ordering the latest designer big-layer for eggs, and for meat the fastest growing freak…

And freaks they are: Bred for lots of that breast meat, fast growth, and innate gluttony to get them there. And if they don’t become barbeque they die just from inability to get around. They grow so top heavy and excessively fat, it’s no kindness to prolong their lives.

This, dear friend, is probably the chicken you bring home from the supermarket or take-out, or dine on in the restaurant.

Commercial raisers have to compete in productivity.

But a little “backyard” venture? I don’t think so, not anymore. The more informed I got, the more I thought we needed to make some changes.

Not just for chicken benefit, but for mine, too. Spring and summer get too overloaded around here as it is, and having to race their high-speed growth, to prepare chicken meat for the freezer and hold it in the fridge the couple days it should “age,” right when family and friends arrive for their yearly weekend visits is always problematic, and I’m no spring chicken myself anymore. (And, psst, the job really isn’t much fun.)

Even chick arrival often makes for stress. Like last week. Because just when they come, so, oftentimes, do spring storms, and if the power dies, so do they, from cold. And the coop is way up the dark wet stormy hill, and at some point shortly after their arrival, I have to tend them alone, myself.

That’s why we cozied them down in the basement last week: to be near at hand. But as the storms approached and roared through, how I prayed for God to keep the power from going out! Who wants to go out in pitch dark alone with a wee flashlight and try to start the generator (which requires both my hands)? How to aim the flashlight? How to see what I’m doing? And meanwhile rain may be pouring down my neck, lightning flashing around me, and some unseen whirlwind racing down the hill.)

No thanks from now on. Please, God. Let this happen naturally. Mama hen does a better job, just as You designed her to.

And besides, there’s the wonder… The incredible, delightful wonder of how the Mama-hen-and-baby-chicks thing works… I never stop being amazed…

But I’ve used up my six hundred blog-post words. So I guess I’ll have to tell you about that next time.

*****

Q: What, in your life, might be better done by God’s wisely designed way, rather than by man’s “new, improved” ideas?