Grace
Grace
Life here on We Are One Farm has been continuously full and active since summer, and since my last entry at the Autumnal Equinox. Poor Gimpy, the injured Barred Rock rooster, finally had to be put down, his good leg having frozen in the opposite direction to the first injured one so that he looked like he was doing the splits. He could no longer move nor feed himself. Poor chicken, it was a sad loss, even though we are in fact raising some chickens for food. As I had written before, he had been a calm and strong presence in his infirmity, a quiet companion and support to a couple of other chickens who’d fallen ill, and an outlet for mothering for me which I seem to need. Gifts come in strange packages indeed. We still have six hens, five who are laying, and nine roosters, two of whom will survive winter unless we keep putting off the difficult task of doing them in.
In the garden, only some of the lavender rows eventually got covered with sandy gravel mulch after liming and weed-matting the rest of the 320 new plants. I had trouble keeping up by late summer. Weeds were running rampant, perennials had to be cut back, the veggie garden uprooted after we had gleaned as much as we could. There are so many jobs to prepare for winter.
Edward completed the woodshed construction, at least enough to use it. It currently has a tarp over the plywood on the roof where shingles will go next summer, and the vertical boards need to be overlapped with the battens, but it will do for now. Having a proper farm tractor allowed Edward to haul fallen trees from near the driveway, “junk” them up, as they say in these parts, with the chainsaw, then rent a woodsplitter and put up about four and a half cords for the winter. I love having a guy who was raised on a farm where there was no electricity! Talk about self-sufficient and a real can-do attitude. He is an inspiration to me. It all has to get done and he just does it, with ease and grace, no resistance or complaint.
Chores took a backseat for a week while we went off to Alberta to visit Edward’s family, both ancestors and descendants. And some “laterals” too I guess. We could really have used a vacation after the work of the season but perhaps we can find a reprieve in the winter. Family visits can be both rewarding and challenging, depending upon what you have taken with you on your journey from your family of origin and what changes you bring back with you when you return.
Navigating relationships of any kind, especially long ones of many years or decades, is another test of your ability to find the grace in a given situation. Sometimes you have learned all sorts of lessons, usually the hard way, and transformed yourself to some degree. Or the opposite, you haven’t perceived your life challenges as lessons at all and become even more entrenched in the way you always were. Sometimes one of you has changed and other hasn’t.
Grace, the guiding hand of Spirit or Universal Consciousness plays an interesting role. Originally it was thought of as “unmerited pardon” or forgiveness from God. That works maybe if you think of God as a singular being meting out rewards and punsihments, which is not my perception. I think of grace as more that moment of Divine insight or awareness of the inherent goodness in life, that spark of finding just the right answer when you need it, the unexpected gift in a situation where you can’t imagine there is a gift. Being “gracious” has that element of gratitude in it, accepting the gift of compliments perhaps, accepting what life is handing you with appreciation. Being graced with talent again suggests a gift of talent. Being graceful is expressing beauty, the beauty inherent in all life, being conscious and appreciative of the gift that is your body.
In our challenging relationships, grace says, “You know, we are all one in this together, despite our differences or perceived differences. We are all here to learn, to grow and ultimately to love. And to know that you are loved.” Finding the grace in each moment when faced with tests of our patience or our understanding of each other, and even finding the love for ourselves, is a gift.
Weather-wise we’ve enjoyed a long and benign autumn season although it is only two-thirds over, but it seems today winter has arrived with a bang. Just when I thought it was safe to have a pre-Christmas open house event in November instead of December this year, for my gallery and for Edward’s clients, a social drop-in for friends, art buyers and colleagues alike, our first snowstorm squelched the best-laid plans.
I had spent weeks getting ready, preparing some reprints of favourite hand-coloured images, making more notecards, sewing dream pillows, sachets and eye pillows for my collection of lavender products, then the past week baking cookies, house-cleaning, shopping for cider and wine & cheese. Our hours by invitation to a fairly extensive list of folks were to be Friday evening from 5-9, and Saturday & Sunday noon until 5.
Then the forecast came out, “Major winter storm coming to Nova Scotia Friday night,” to start snowing around midnight. Well, we thought, that means, if it does indeed happen as forecast (which, based on the past summer’s forecast record seemed questionable at least), that people will be more likely to show up Friday night as they’ll expect to be digging out and snowbound on Saturday and even Sunday, depending how long the snow flies.
So we got extra provisions in for Friday, finished decorating and awaited the crowd. “I think it’s going to be a good night”, I said. “Me too,” said Edward. Around 5:20 a couple of Edward’s clients arrived, a man and wife originally from Switzerland. “Are we the first?” they asked, looking around the room. Yes, we told told them, hoping that a few more would arrive soon to create a sense of festivity. After a visit and chat, some hot cider and a few purchases from the lavender table, they departed for another event. They were also the last visitors of the evening.
“I should have known”, I said, “from the way things were at the supermarket this afternoon.You know how crazy people get around here when there’s a winter storm warning, they expect to be stranded for days so everyone panics and floods the Superstore all at once the minute such a forecast comes out! Don’t people keep two or three day’s worth of food at home??”
So I surmised that even though the snow was not expected to start until around midnight, that everyone was hunkering down, expecting the worst. I was frustrated and disappointed. I had worked so hard. "What’s wrong with them", I wondered, "they could have come and gone easily before the snow started". As it turned out, the snow started closer to 10 or 10:30 at our place.
Feeling disappointed and somewhat sorry for myself, I opened my box of Denise Linn’s Soul Coaching Oracle Cards, shuffled and spread them out in a fan on the desk. I felt for energy coming off a card, asking the question, “What do I need to know from this?” The card I pulled was “Grace”. I knew immediately that it was indeed apropos. The guidebook with the card deck said, among other things, “Be gracious and understanding with yourself. [....] Kindly honour the reality of others.” Thanks Denise, right on point as always!
It’s the morning after now and it has dawned bright and clear and absolutely beautiful here with the snow blanket on the ground. There’s hope for the last chance at the open house now with the roads and driveway cleared thanks to Edward’s all-day efforts on the tractor yesterday. And I have had a few more revelations that bring me back to the idea of grace working in my life.
The past three weeks we have been adapting to having a new member of the family, a dog from the shelter whom we’ve named Angus. He's a German shepherd/collie cross according to the best guess of his origin, although sometimes it seems beagle might be more likely than collie, similar colouring but with a nose that knows no bounds, not to mention that soulful way of looking at you that only a hound dog can do.
We have felt slightly challenged with the new obligation to get up a little earlier every morning, earlier than the chickens need us, to take Angus out to relieve himself. And since we are fairly early-to-bed, we are also out somewhat later at night for this task than we’d like to be. With his super-smeller, living here surrounded by deer and other wildlife, Angus is not ready to be let off the leash, especially at night. There are too many stories of friends’ and neighbours’ dogs who’ve run off after a smell, gone for days sometimes, in one case getting caught in a snare.
So as I have been adapting and bemoaning the intrusion into my normal sleep schedule, I have also been presented with those “moments of grace” that remind me of the gifts that love and kindness, like adopting a shelter dog, can bring in unexpected ways, that is, beyond the affection an animal shows for it’s owner and the affection it is capable of eliciting from them.
Two nights ago, before the snow storm, I took Angus for his before-bed pee run. I had to bundle up in my boots, hat and warm coat, get the leash on and trundle across the lawn when I really wanted to crawl into bed. But as I grumbled gently to myself as Angus nosed around for the right spot, I looked up, and the starlit sky remined me that this was November, the time of the Leonid meteor showers. Maybe I would see a shooting star.
I just kept looking up, surrounded by quiet, and I asked the question, “Will I be a good soul coach, counselor and writer?” And a small shooting star silently moved across the sky, not with any drama, but it appeared when I asked. I know the Leonids can shower even more than 100 of these per hour, but I didn’t care, that star was for me.
And yesterday, as I again grumbled quietly about having to leave our cosy bed too soon and go out into that first snowfall that I was protesting for ruining my open house, I was once more given that gift of grace upon witnessing Angus’s unfettered glee as he bounded and dove through the drifts, tossing the flakes up off his nose, springing in spirals like Tigger from Winnie-the-Pooh. What joy, what sweetness, what a gift to be out there with that great dog!
And once more this morning, although Edward pulled dog duty to let me sleep in a bit, it was futile. Charlie the cat started howling to be let out, Coco the Siamese started barfing something that disagreed with her sensitive tummy, and then one of them knocked something off the kitchen counter. “No rest for the weary here,” I muttered to myself as I padded down the stairs to view the chaos.
What I was given instead was another opportunity to experience the joy of being up early with pets, not the cleaning up of the cat barf, mind you, but the chance to look out the window and see Angus once again plowing into the snowbanks with delight as Edward tossed the leather bone toy to him again and again.
And from the guy who also, moments earlier, had complained to himself about having to go out in the cold so early, another beautiful gift: the look of childlike happiness and innocence on my husband’s face as he played with Angus, taking him back in memory, perhaps, to his own childhood dog who was not unlike Angus in appearance.
Recognizing these moments, these gifts of the spirit, that manifest in the heart, when you start to doubt that you are blessed; to get the message when you need it, in unexpected ways; to appreciate the needs and differences of others when you feel things aren’t quite going your way; and to learn to be gentle on yourself in the process. For me this is grace, in its various permutations. It is a gift, and we must stay open to receive it at all times.
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