How to Respond to the Chaos or Not

A Rif on Martin's Shaw 'Merrie' post

Sunday, April 27

While I listened to Martin Shaw’s essay “The Merrie, a Reliquary for Saints Yet To Come ” I poured water into the buckets, making sure the end of the hose was buried in the water so I could hear what he said.

Martin Shaw is relatively new convert to Orthodoxy and well versed in folklore and mythology. His House of Beasts and Vines storytelling pours into my soul like hot, English tea. He has also started a You Tube channel called Jawbone, which is also published in podcast form if you prefer to listen. Early in our marriage Bruce and I loved going to local storytelling festivals. One storyteller I met, arranged for me to read my newly published poems at Silver Bay, Lake George in New York state, so I have fond memories of the magic and generosity of storytellers.

I look forward to his House of Beasts and Vines talk Sunday mornings when I do chores. I have been commenting about what I’m doing when I listen, every week, so I thought I’d share an expanded example of my comments under The Merrie.

I haul the water over to the barn. Mrs. Horse, whose real name is DF Paske Morgen stands in the doorway she’s opened overnight. Sometimes she opens it by 2 am. Perhaps she is seeking fresh air and the chance to wander around the paddock. I pick up a bucket, one by one and haul them to the wall and manger where we hang the big blue buckets. I carry each bucket to the paddock and slosh it out, then rehang it and dump in the water I’ve just drawn.

Shaw says, “These are mad times. Disorientating. Madder than usual, and that’s saying something. With religion so frequently politicized, with our screens issuing peril and deadening opportunities for distraction the Merrie could be easily dismissed as a dream, but it’s one with a spade attached. And it’s not a solo slog, it bangs along with others. It reaches out towards the textures of God’s earth. I think of Gerard Manley Hopkins: It’s not only prayer that gives God glory but work. Smiting on an anvil, sawing a beam, whitewashing a wall, driving horses…to lift up the hands in prayer gives God glory, but the man with a dung fork in his hand, a woman with a slop pail, give him glory too.”

The beams and whitewash paneling and windows in the cow side of the barn catch all kinds of light when the sunsets and the door is open. I look at the beams, with cross beams lifted in praise. The whitewash has crumbled off making the walls look piebald. Barn swallows nest in the rafters, completely safe from the cats.

I pull the purple manure pick, shovel and broom and step into Morgen’s stall. I sweep the mat where I will drop hay in the evening. I sweep urine-soaked shavings into a pile and push it onto the shovel. I dump it into the muck wagon. Then go to our feed room to scoop up powder that deodorizes the stall. I fling it on the wet spots, the powder soft and white in my hand.

I can’t take my eyes off these mad times. I’m not sure I’m supposed to. I was literally part of evangelicalism being politicized back in the early 80’s. (You can read about it in my novel The River Caught Sunlight.)

I’m not sure whether I should speak to the madness or be still. I’m not sure I want to pay the price. I take wisdom from the mare standing outside the door: To stay quiet, calm and relaxed. To lower my voice. Breathe. I have learned not to argue with strangers on the internet or with my friends. I say there is so much more to our friendship than politics.

At times the chaos feels so intricate, with lies and truth swirled together, incomprehensibly, that it’s best not to bother looking.

Shaw says, “Because you don’t need to keep hearing that everything is broken. Maybe everything’s always felt broken. Maybe that’s the low, depressed note required for green shoots to counter. But in testing the spirits of our age we discern what we choose to listen to and what we choose to put down. A peaceful heart is not an indulgence, it’s a requirement.”

He’s right, it is possible to maintain our peace in the middle of this chaos. My walks where I practice still prayer centered around “thank you” and the things I see—the baby leaves erupting, white, delicate Apple blossoms, the tilled ground. The Jesus prayer: “Lord Jesus Christ, son of the Living God, have mercy on me a sinner” are practices that bring that peace.

Taking Facebook off my phone, which is a crazy making machine, has helped. One day I jumped on to wish people happy birthday. First thing I saw was a dead horse with the owner curled up next to him. A few things down the scroll someone was ranting about politics, the kind of rant where I want to say, hey wait a minute, what about this?

I’ve wearied of Facebook doing the thinking for me. I’ve returned to saying Morning Prayer with Mission St. Clare. Knowing thousands, maybe millions of people are praying these prayers, prayers that I don’t have words for, is great reassurance, because they are as powerful as the censer the apocalyptic angel throws down, sparking thunder and lightning in the heavens (Rev 8: 1 - 4).

This prayer brings God right into the chaos. “Eternal God, in whose perfect kingdom no sword is drawn but the sword of righteousness, no strength known but the strength of love: so mightily spread abroad your Spirit, that all peoples may be gathered under the banner of the Prince of Peace as the children of one Father; to whom be dominion and glory, now and forever.”

Mrs. Horse stands at the door watching me listen, Shaw’s voice more like wood cracking than a river. I pick up enough hay to fill my arm up to my shoulder and find her feed tubs. The wind is blowing so hard I drop the hay in and pick up each tub, bring them close to the barn, so it doesn’t blow away. We are down to enough hay to get to June. Who knows whether the weather will let us harvest it before we run out. This winter I’ve sent too many bales with mold to the burn pile. I have not helped my lungs, when I sniffed them to see if I can feed them. Mrs. Horse’s lungs aren’t so great either. Neither one us does well with farm chemicals and dust.

Mrs. Horse follows me. I look to the west and see the sign warning drivers to slow down for the stop sign. It is glowing and gold in the sunlight. There’s a bit of vision about this glowing light off in the distance.

Shaw says, “The Merrie has two very particular elements talking to each other: the archaic Christian attention to the fast and wilderness solitude, and the everywhere notion of the feast, the village and conviviality. As an old desert story states, silence and honey cakes can both be friends. They are different teachers at different times.”

Yes, yes, yes. I like my honey cakes, and the solitude of the farm. It’s lovely to hear those things affirmed.

I haul the muck wagon across the paddock to pick up Mrs Horse’s manure. Then haul it to the manure pile. I close the gate behind me. She has been known to sneak out behind me, especially if her hay is boring. The manure smells rich, well aged. Sometimes it steams from the heat inside. I’ve heard you can bury a carcass there and it will be completely gone in a few months. Rats have burrowed inside for the warmth in the winter. Coyotes have dug for the rats. I up end the wagon to dump it and haul it back through the fence.

Shaw says, “A Raven is not doing cartwheels for the applause of the market square. It has eaten darkness and located its dark-night sustenance. It understands the margins, exposure to the fallen, the sobriety of consequence. And as the Bible shows us, Raven is a messenger of God. In this time of renewal, I would suggest we walked a mile with Raven. They help us both to grieve and to get real about our blind spots. We can’t be talking about doves the whole time.”

A raven, we call them crows, visited us the other day. He was sleek and black. It seemed odd he was walking and not flying. I wondered what brought him here. Next thing I knew Bruce was outside shooing him away. Why? “Because they attack songbird nests,” he said. I found a whole robin’s egg in the grass, so maybe the raven, uh, crow, knocked it out. Though I looked up and saw no robin’s nest in the oak branches above. Right around the same time, I saw a dead oak full of buzzards, perched on branches.

I am in search of a story, a name, a white stone that grounds me. Maybe I'm a raven, because what Shaw says seems to fit: I believe in being hidden. I am no longer interested in being well known or well published. God has called me to this in the midst of his call for me to write a vision of glory. I have eaten darkness so bleak, I used to say, “Life’s a bitch and then you die.” I’ve walked some dreadfully dark places. As a girl living on the farm in New York, I used to walk the mile long road at midnight, the barn cats following all the way out. Sometimes I’d give the mama cat a ride on the back of my coat, supporting her with my arm. Sometimes the night frightened me. Sometimes not. When I have stumbled into a person’s blindspot, it was like swatting a wasp nest I didn’t know was there, but I am not sorry. Sometimes I think I’ve been called to be a prophet. Sometimes I think not.

Am I a raven, ah, a crow? Maybe. Maybe not.

The Kildeer trot ahead of me when I walk. The redwing blackbirds watch me from the top of a power pole. Even behind the clouds, the sun blinds me, like a hand on my shoulder pushing back. It’s hard to walk into the sun. When I turn at the neighbor’s fence, marking a half mile, I am relieved. Dolly jumps ahead. She wants to head home. And the sky with clouds is a beautiful slate with our house, fields and distant woods alive in the light. The deep blue gray soothes my eyes. I hope for rain. The neighbor’s thirty row planter is deep in the opposite field. It looks like a Tonka toy. It will take him all day to drill that field with soybeans.