Boots
May 26, 2012
I put on a new pair of boots today. Letting the old worn-out boots go isn’t easy. Boots worn on a mostly daily base speak something about the wearer’s life. Boots tell a story about the wearer’s physical life, social life, and spiritual life.
My old boots always go through the same process. I cannot quite throw them away in the trash, but I can’t give them away either because they really are falling to pieces. So instead, they find their way to the back of the closet where they will stay until the new boot relationship is formed and some of the old boot stories have faded.
The boots arches tell a scrap of the physical story. Flatter than a pancake, the arches went away in the first months of wearing. Those non-existent arches speak to flat feet that have never understood why anyone would put a lump of leather, plastic, or cloth underneath a foot—a built up arch support is like having a stone in the bottom of the boot—and think that is good thing!
Socially and spiritually, these boots tell stories of walking with friends two winters ago near the farm. A hard freeze had come on the backside of a light snow. Moving through trail-less brush in below freezing weather there was little more sound that crackling grass. While breath fog formed icy eyebrows and glitter on hoods and hats, those old boots moved through snow and kept those old flat feet dry. Worn-out cracked leather tells of countless journeys of moving irrigation line in the hay field. Cracks speak to summers of working with volunteers re-roofing old homes and placing concrete for new homes. Paint speckled leather tells the story of creating the middle-high school band float during after-school hours with youth who are artists in their own right. Then there is the blood. Blood tells a spiritual realization that if one is going to raise animals for food; it is only right, fair, just, and honorable to be with them in death. To be a meat eater and recognize life is given so another might live, it is only just—relationally and spiritually—to stand beside the chicken or goat or steer as they die so I or others who eat meat from the farm might have life. To do so mean a splattering of holy blood is ingrained in the boots leather grain.
As I put on a new pair of boots this morning and set the old ones off to the side, I know there are a hundred stories also shuffled off with them, soon to be forgotten. The upside, I reckon, is new stories begin today as leather begins to bend and mold.
© David B. Bell 2012
Fluid Repentance Digs Up Wholeness
April 29, 2012
Below is a post made yesterday on the Pacific Northwest United Methodist Church site. You can find the original post at
http://www.pnwumc.org/gc2012/fluid-repentance-digs-up-wholeness/. The site moderator included the image.
A part of Rev. TInker’s presentation is found in a 4 minute Youtube found at
http://www.umc.org/site/c.lwL4KnN1LtH/b.5898953/k.A4B3/Youtube_pop_up.htm?videoId=v-DoOCp5XA0
The Rev. George Tinker helps lead an April 27 “Act of Repentance toward Healing Relationships with Indigenous Peoples” at the 2012 United Methodist General Conference in Tampa, Florida A UMNS photo by Paul Jeffrey.
So, Rev. Tinker calls us to repent and restore balance to the world; does he? A frightening call, for such balance calls for awareness and change and change does not come easily. Tinker’s are hard words, for the Church struggles with interpreted theology that calls for change and bucks the traditional, the historical, and what is perceived as the normal – Think of today’s struggle with accepting marginalized LBGTQ folk into the fold, into leadership, and into having ordain authority to speak of their God created life and theology to us. Hard work, because, as Tinker notes, the Church—the people have to “dig it up, spade the ground” and find what Church and community structure historically and currently conceal from us.
Repentance can only arise and become meaningful through awareness. The importance of Tinker’s thoughts is the challenge that the act of repentance is not a moment in time, but rather an action of ongoing awareness that is fluid. Like a river, as we float around the next bend we experience a new willow or a new rock telling us a story we did not know before. Tinker’s words are a call into unending repentance that comes with each new, but often old, story. It is a call to struggle with our atrocities and the grief we’ve caused to the marginalized, to people of color, to American Tribal people.
We are called to claim history such as Methodist Col. John Chivington’s ordered killing of elderly men, women, and children at Sand Creek in 1864. We are called to become aware and question how Methodist President Grant’s 1870 “Indian Peace Policy” supported the subjugation of American Tribal land and people by way of government-supported Christian Boarding Schools.
If we accept Tinker’s understanding of repentance, then We, the Church, must become conscious that we have a past that has been carefully “concealed” from us, that we must dig through layers of privilege to find “a lot of history to be owned,” and that with each new revelation, we must repent again. For, as Tinker reminds us, it is only through this repetitive act of repentance that we will participate in the restoration of balance. A balance that allows Us—the Church to one day, again, become reconciled with our marginalized sisters and brothers.
Wild Horses of the Yakama Nation
By Tamalyn Kralman
April 27, 2012
Last Saturday the JustLiving Farm and Yakama Mission hosted Spring Horse. Spring Horse brings amateur and professional photographers together to experience the wild horses of the Yakama Reservation and to enhance their gift by developing ongoing relationships. These photographers give us their unique perspective of the landscape.
Spring Horse 2013: April 20
By Roger Lynn
By Roger Lynn
By Doris Steeg
By Roger Lynn
By Tamalyn Kralman
By Roger Lynn
By Roger Lynn
© David B. Bell 2012
Dialect: Life, Community, Landscape
April 24, 2012
Belinda and I will spend much of the day placing irrigation mainline and backfilling trench. That is all of the day except for a few hours this morning.
Not that long ago I read an essay on funerals. The writer compared funeral services he experienced back east to those of the west. He spoke to a belief of eastern funerals having a higher degree of ritual and communal comfort than western funerals. In part, he supported this line of thought saying the ritual of spreading ashes (a western ritual in his estimation) did not provide the community groundedness as, say, occurs when the congregational family comes together and provides food and comfort in the fellowship hall after a burial service. When I finished the essay, I could not help but to think the transplanted eastern writer missed the values and richness of culture—east or west.
Landscapes speak to individuals and communities with their own unique voice. The landscape of forested Arkansas simply speaks a different language than an arid western landscape lying east of the Cascade mountain range. More so, the dialect of the arid eastern rain-shadowed Washington Cascades is different from the twang of the arid eastern rain-shadowed California Sierras.
This morning the twang is apparent. Belinda and I have the afternoon to place irrigation line because there is no My Future after-school today. There is no after-school today because a community member died and school canceled. Instead of school today, the whole community is invited to the school gym for funeral services. For this community, in this landscape, the end of life is so important it is okay, even supported, to close school and businesses so everyone might gather, remember, and grieve together.
So, this afternoon, when Belinda and I gather to place pipe into the earth, there is a fair chance our groundedness is more than standing waist deep in the ground, but also that we have become entrenched in the deep care of our whole community.
© David B. Bell 2012
Chirping Toward Voice
April 3, 2012
JustLiving Farm
Morning feeding sometimes lends itself to a moment of consideration. A few days ago we picked up a few chicks whose lot in life is to become this year’s egg-laying hens. These chicks may not be the image that comes to mind when hearing the word chick. This time of year, in our area, the image that does come to mind is all around us. It is nearly impossible to walk into a feed store, a lumberyard, or even a clothing store and not see chicks about the size of tennis balls chirping next to a feeder under a heat lamp. Something about Easter brings out the sellers and buyers of chicks. However, our chicks are not the size of tennis balls.
Our chicks are two months old and at two months, they have lost their fluff and gained their feathers. They are beginning to look like chickens, but have yet to acquire a chicken voice. At two months, chicks continue to chirp as they did when they were tennis ball size, but there is something more to it. The chirp has something of a hoarseness to it, kind of like the in between, breaking, voice I remember all too well from my teenage days. Soon, though, their true chicken voices will kick in and the days of chick will be long-gone.
Finding voice is different for chicks and chickens than it is for teenagers and adults. Speaking—having the ability to speak or chirp, is natural in most of our lives. But finding voice, finding those thoughts which are uniquely your own, is something different, something that takes a bit of time and a lot of reflection. Such voice might be verbal, but it might also be that which is written or formed by clay or painted on canvas or pencil on paper, or by way of camera. Such voice is not chirping nor childish, but mature with a dash of thoughtfulness—however; such voice may rise up out of a child and be lost to an adult.
Voice does not silence the voice of another, but gives another something to ponder and consider. Voice encourages voice.
I’m not sure why the chirping of two-month-old chicks has me thinking of voice today. I imagine it has something to do with the darkness of Holy Week. A time that calls for attention, consideration, and awareness of the deep and abiding hurt that has far too much presence in our communities. Perhaps it is the riding of a colt and Travon Martin and Mathew Shepard; perhaps it is the selling of doves and John T. Williams; perhaps it is a few days before Passover, some nard and Rosa Parks, Dorothy Day, and Fannie Lou Hamer; perhaps it is Judas and I; perhaps it is a meal in a guest room and Oakland and Oikos University; perhaps it is the casting of lots, sour wine, a torn curtain and us.
Voice does not just happen. Like so much of life, chirping comes first, then listening, then consideration, and then with the help of friends, neighbors, and elders…voice becomes. Perhaps, today, I just begin chirping and live with the hope of voice and resurrection.
© David B. Bell 2012
A Handsaw Winter Sky
January 14, 2012
JustLiving Farm
I can’t get over winter days when I watch the sun rise, Mount Pahto shimmers to the west as if showing off a new coat bought at the last snowfall sale, full moon blessing mountain above its northern shoulder, and winter blue sky unfolding. Such days awaken cold and frozen, but as the day yawns and picks itself up, the thermometer moves above freezing and the day is perfect to get done a few of those chores best left to ungloved hands.
Last spring I didn’t quite get the haystack bulkhead done before we started loading hay against it. Over the holidays, we sold the last bit of the haystack in the uncompleted area. So, for the first time in six months I could finally get back to it!
The nice aspect to this chore is the haystack is a long way from electricity. Well, not so nice when the bulk of the work was going on, but great for this season. For such distance means a handsaw. Sure, I could get the generator out or I could go buy one of those fancy cordless circular saws, but sometimes it is just nice to grab a saw by the handle and enjoy the feel of steel against wood.
Perhaps what I like best about sawing wood on a sunny blue-sky day is remembrance and reflection. I can’t help but think that daddy and his daddy before him each picked up a handsaw, much like the one I am using—hand saws haven’t changed much in a lot of generations, and sawed wood. Daddy was a carpenter in addition to everything else. He crafted the wood toolbox that now sits in the shed out back. This toolbox didn’t sit in the shop, but traveled from one jobsite to the next. What amazed me, growing up, was the toolbox had a tray that slid out from the back holding five handsaws, each for a specific job. As I got some age on me, what then amazed me was the realization some of those saws had been sharpened so many times their blade width got smaller as it moved away from the handle toward the tip.
Any longer, the art of sharpening a handsaw is a lost art. I remember driving to town with daddy to drop off dull saws or pick up sharpened saws. The building was across the road from the train depot and restaurant—there wasn’t a whole lot more to town than that. You had to walk up a set of wooden stairs to a loading platform and then go into the saw shop through a wooden door that slid off to the right. Daddy was a quiet man, best I remember, but I remember having a lot of time looking around the saw shop while he and the man who sharpened saws talked. We would walk out of the shop with sharpened handsaws and saw blades for the old 77 Skill saw. Today there aren’t many folks who sharpen blades of any kind. Few people use handsaws and most circular blades are carbide tipped; when the owner is done with a blade they toss it away and head to town to buy another—our throwaway societal structure doesn’t do much to support the saw blade sharpening industry.
I don’t often take daddy’s handsaws out and use them. I choose to use my own and leave his alone, I guess because they are more of a tool to pull youthful memories to the present rather than to saw wood. And that seems to work well for me, because when I take my own handsaws down off the wall and head out to saw wood where there isn’t electricity, I feel a little more tied to those men who went before me, and a little more tied to the relationship they had with the land, the mountain, the wind, and family.
© David B. Bell 2012
A Solstice Story
December 22, 2011
JustLiving Farm
He was moving right along when I caught up with him. When he trundled by earlier, the night sky was giving it up and the last star fading. I hurried to get my britches on, but when I’m in a hurry the simplest of things go wrong. Day in and day out I but britches on and never have a problem, but the day I’m in a hurry I shove my foot into the pant leg, forget to point my foot, and next thing I know, I’m stuck halfway down the leg. Then I’m on my butt, pulling my leg out, shoving it back in and finally, finally! am able to stand up and pull my britches up. The whole process doesn’t take a lot of time, but I’m red faced and feel as if it took forever
Now running to catch up, the faded morning color said it was but a moment before sunrise. Sure enough, sunlight grazed the ridge top just as I turned at the red oak. Up ahead I saw him out in the wheatgrass.
Mornings have their own frame of time. The final minutes of dark on a cold winter morning last forever, but once the sun rises it seems in such a hurry. Now it appeared as if the sun jumped higher with every step I took. As the sun went higher, its light flowed down the ridge—faster than I could walk to catch up with him. Then, it was just weird…I was maybe thirty feet from him when sunlight hit and then flashed across the valley floor. The grasses, still encased in ice from yesterdays fog grabbed sunlight, multiplied it, and threw it across the valley. For a moment I became sparkle blind. As I came closer, he looked back and walked on. Maybe it was because I was breathless, maybe because of sparkle embedded in my eyes, but in that moment it looked as if he walked on light.
He didn’t say a thing. Arnie seldom does.
Armadillo’s are known for their slow moving being. For the most part they aren’t a chatty bunch. But they are conversive when life matters. This morning there was no talking as he turned and continued.
I didn’t know where he was heading, but Arnie is ancient and I figured something might be up. No one knows how long Arnie’s been around. This is probably because no one knows when he came. For as far back as anyone remembers, even the old folk, Arnie’s been here. You’d think such age would set him aside from others. You know, a respect that moves folk aside when he walks by. But that has never been the case. His name says it all. No title, no last name, just Arnie. Just the same, there has always been something about Arnie. You see, things happen when Arnie is around.
I tried to stay awake last night. The old stories tell about ancients walking about on Solstice morning. They are up and about other mornings, but the morning of the shortest day tweaks creation in such a way, they are easier to see. The stories say when the ancients walk, the trees talk and the fish dance. But it is also said, you must see the ancients before you encounter trees talking and fish dancing. So, I made it my lot in life—yesterday—to stay up and see the ancients today! Problem was, last night, being the second to longest night of the year; well, it went on and on. Sometime, I’m not sure when, but sometime after the big dipper entered the northeastern sky, I fell asleep.
I remember dreaming of springtime. Sun filled blue sky and a hint of warmth. I sat next to a stream watching the ice break up. One Ice chunk after another floated by. When they ran into each other there was a scrapping crunching sound. Rhythm rose up—scrap, scrap; crunch, crunch; scrap, crunch, scrap. Then a large chunk of ice ran into the others, crunch, cruNCH, CRUNCH! I woke up and Arnie walked by—feet crunching frozen grass below. Now following Arnie, I can see the frozen grass laying flat to the ground with each footstep.
I looked down and watched my own feet laying footsteps in the frozen grass and I could kick myself. Dreaming of floating ice and missing the walk of the ancients! Why couldn’t I just stay awake a little longer! Now here I am following Arnie to who knows where? And then, it hits me, there are no armadillo footsteps in front of my own! Dadgumit, I lost Arnie!
I looked around. The place is familiar. The creek, a stone’s throw, is where we picnic Sunday summer afternoons when a respite from the heat allows for a lazy afternoon. Aspens dot the land, some in bunches, others standoffish. I turned round and round again. Sure enough, no Arnie. I walked up to the creek, looked upstream then downstream, and all there was was the dam the beaver has been working on since last spring. Dangit! I turned around, went over to the closest tree and sat down.
Why didn’t I pay attention? First I went to sleep last night, gave up any chance of seeing the ancients, and then followed Arnie to see something different, and I lose him! One would think they could keep up with an old armadillo!
As I sat, the sun crested the tall grasses and settled in around the base of the tree. I closed my eyes, partially from the suns glare, partially from little sleep. With eyes closed, the air warming around me, I settled down.
The water flowing in and through the beaver’s dam raised a tumbling sound into the air. At first it was one sound, but slowly it blossomed. The soprano of the reeds at dam edge folded with the baritone rising from dam center. In their caressing they welcomed the tenor of water playing with stones at the dam’s foot. Soon the melting frost from tree leaves above fell to dammed water bringing an alto to the chorus. The choir played on, the melody flowed, the alto’s slowed and then departed. I’m not sure how long the song played, but when I opened my eyes, the frost, like the alto’s, had left and the Aspen leaves were dry.
Few leaves remained on the trees. Frosty mornings and strong fall winds had bedded the ground with them long ago. But even on winter’s morning there were those who held tight and golden in the sunlight. Lightened from frost, they move as the lightest of breeze travels down creek. They turn, flip, sway, and waddle about. First one, then the next, and again another until leaves from branch scraping creek to top of tree waltz. Every now and again the breeze would spin a leaf and let go—leaf swooping, looping, plunging, floating, light on their stem moving from heaven to earth.
Water, breeze, and leaves filled space and time emptied.
Short days are short days, certainly in a ridged valley. As quick as the sun had entered the valley, it left. Color entered evening sky. The morning’s journey now ancient. I arose from the tree. Walking away, I noticed grass without its ice blanket had risen. Morning footsteps had long disappeared and only a meadow of short and tall grasses communing remained.
As I walked I thought about the stories of the ancients. One day, maybe, I would see the ancients and hear the trees talk and watch fish dance. But until then, a day of water singing and leaves dancing ain’t all that bad.
As I reached the meadows end and turned toward home, I looked back to the tree of song and dance and noticed a shape in the limbs that looked oddly armadilloish. Must be a bunch of mistletoe, I thought as I left the meadow, after all armadillo’s don’t climb trees.
© David B. Bell 2011
Working Toward Vocation OR Is It Playing?
December 9, 2011
If cold fog encased mornings aren’t good for anything else, they lend themselves to getting a little I keep putting this off writing done. If you are receiving this, it means you are subscribed to either JustLiving In This Landscape, the blog of the JustLiving Farm or Ridged Valley Reflections, the Journal of the Yakama Christian Mission. As of today, the tales, stories, reflections, joys, or just the every day complaining of the Mission and the Farm will be posted at Ridged Valley Reflections (http://wp.me/POlE). If you are subscribed to JustLiving In This Landscape and would like to continue receiving posts please go to http://wp.me/POlE and re-subscribe. If you are receiving Ridged Valley Reflections you don’t need to do a thing.
I imagine you might ask why put the two together? Well, there isn’t a lot of difference between the two. Organizations, whether Farm or Mission, are nothing more than a few buildings, an IRS document, and a few incorporation papers. In other words, they really are nothing. What make them something are the people who use their structures to make a difference in the world. Hopefully a difference that does not hurt creation, enhances joy and love, and embodies peace. In other words, it is people living their lives as they were created which make organizations meaningful. It is in that light the two blogs become one.
People can do nothing more than live life. At best, it is the life they were created to live. Therefore, while much of society has done its best to compartmentalize people lives into the likes of work and play, the reality is one simply lives their life, sometimes working and other times playing.
Having two blogs, one for the Farm and one for the Mission, in essence buys into a construct that life can be and should be compartmentalized—there is the mission, the farm and they have nothing to do with one another. It’s kind of like a pastor having a child and never talking about them because they want to separate their home life from their professional life…it might sound good, it might sound feasible, but vocation is lost in favor of being a professional. Combining the blogs is to not only say this is not true, but also impossible, for family life will always inform work life and work life will always inform family life. In time, this blog should make a fair case for this idea. In time, I expect, you will find the soil of the Farm informs the art of the Mission’s after-school program My Future. In similar fashion, you will find the Mission’s commitment to justice clearly informs the artful practices of the Farm.
Much more could be said, but instead, stay connected and see what comes.
© David B. Bell 2011
