PREPPING…

The parking lot is full and this old man comes shuffling out of the store with a lanky teen walking next to him.  Our town is filled with cold purpose.  Everyone is gearing up and battening down, ensuring they have enough essentials to survive the impending storm.  Two feet of snow and howling winds, the media has peered into it’s crystal ball and shouted "Blizzard! The end is near!"

Shelves at the Walmart are bare of bread and minus milk. The toilet paper isle is spare with perhaps no square to spare.  I sit in the truck, watching people, surmising what they deem essential for survival as my husband waits in line to purchase feed for our chickens, goats and sheep. 

I'm too vain to leave the truck when I still have my pajama flannels on underneath the dark brown Carhart coveralls and coat that I affectionately call the turd suit (because that is how I look). 

The old man shuffles towards his truck.  The teen is patient with his friend’s effort.  Their snail-like cart is obviously loaded to capacity, but I can’t see the contents.   I only see the inching of their torsos above the hoods of parked cars.

It seems most of town is wearing camo and hats.  Are we all going hunting?  Elmer Fudd comes to mind and now I'm involuntarily humming "kill the wabbit, kill the wabbit".  

 I look into the carts of strangers and gather clues about who these people are by the contents.  What is essential?  

One ample woman in a tired, limp coat and matching fur lined hat gets into an ancient mercedes.  She looks like she hasn’t showered in a while, and yet she is wearing a skirt and has nylons on.  Nylons are an effort!!  Kudos lady!  She throws her bagged purchase haphazardly into the back seat, then opens the driver side door, points her backside towards the seat and lets her entire mass give over to gravity as she flops down onto that seat.  She then pivots her suspended barely covered legs into the car and slams the door shut.  

This is when I see that the window is covered in yellowed tattered plastic.  It's possible that she is on her own, and my stomach knots uncomfortably because she is unreachable.  One old woman in a beat up car going who knows where, and it’s not wise to knock on her thin holey window to ask,"Are you alone?  Do you need help in this storm?”  I watch her drive away and wonder how cold it must be to drive with a partially exposed window while wearing a skirt and nylons.

Praying feels like a copout, but I pray for her anyway, that someone who is close can reach out and provide assistance or at least get some new plastic on that window, and maybe bring her some warm socks or a coat that hasn't lost all of its stuffing.

The old shuffling man and his teen load the back of his rusted sun faded green pickup.  The cab shakes as each load is dropped.  The engine sputters, then pushes white smoke from the tail pipe.  He puts it creakily into gear, pulls forward passed me, and I nosily peek into the truck bed to see what brought him here to put forth so much effort right before a blizzard.  

The truck bed was filled with at least 8 large bags.  My first thought was cows.  Cows might need 8 bags of feed during the 3 days we were predicted to be snowbound.  But then I scanned a bag and saw pictures of birds and sunflowers. Instantly this wave of awe overcame me.  Birdseed was his essential thing.  Not bread and milk and toilet paper but birdseed.  The least of these, he's taking care of the least of these.  Creatures who don’t belong to anyone are his priority. 

No news anchor will interview him and point out this extreme kindness. The shortage of bread, milk, and bottled water is the newsworthy footage.  Not many will know of the goodness of this aged man and his helpful teen.  The birds will know.  I know.  Now you know. 

There is kindness.  Maybe it takes nosiness to find it.  

Hum it with me.  "Feed the birds. Tuppence a bag."

WAIT

The belated Christmas Confession. It was all the Chickens’ fault.

Starlings fly over me.  A flock flittering right over me, and I feel them. 

No really,

I could feel the very life of them.  They circle back as if they sense my doubt and prove it again.  Head to toe, I feel them all, electric and humming. 

One dandelion pushes up stumpy in the December grass, smiling through this season's attempt at winter.  Me in short sleeves, arms bare to the feathering of a gentle wind, and it's Dec 12th. 

I wait for the teenaged chickens to finally go to bed.  They are as unwilling as human teens, circling the barn door then following a new whim. Defying the creeping darknes.  Rebellious.  Plain rebellious, and I love them like my exhales depend on their soft clucking. 

On inhales I pray that God protect them from stupidity.  The same deep call I repeat for human teens.  The same prayer encoded in some base pair twisting in the nuclei of each beings' cells.

Unmoving, I soak up this 10 minutes of non-rushing, non-flapping and non-flittering. Entirely glad for the inconvenience of waiting for birds to tidily go to bed. 

The skies fall darker each minute, pressing the chicks toward the door.  Finally they flow in, and the waiting is sadly over. Busy-ness once again presses hard.  Close the door, fill the feeders, check the water, and walk briskly back to the house where chores have surely multiplied in my absence. 

Christmas seems to have turned into a feat of plate spinning by a naughty cat in the hat. “No I do not like this not one little bit.” Yet, I am trapped in the going, doing, buying, and selling of my soul. Trapped by a seasonal job at a call center where selling to the desperate-busy seems like taking advantage.  Like selling snake oil. Like promising them a sacred Christmas space walled in by purchased items made cheaply in far away factories. 

I count the advent days today, but not in anticipation of celebrating the birthing of God who came to save us, came to get us, came to love us out of our traps. No, as if to prove that He came for a wretch like me, I count the days until it’s OVER!

I wait for the days when it's all simplified and tidy.  

Maybe I am hoping for the right thing.  Maybe I know deeply that only He can give me the gifts I need like flocks of birds to soothe or chickens come to keep me still and silent and peacefilled.  Maybe that's just Him come to save me.  

That’s what Jesus translates to, “God Saves.”  And I would add "Me" to that.  He saves Me from walls made of plastic and leads me to the "real" electricity of creatures and the hum of clucking and the presence of this electric current in Everyone.  

Ann Voskamp (www.aholyexperience.com) writes that Peace is not a place, peace is a person.  We sing of Jesus, prince of peace, and I want peace, am hungry-desperate for peace.  There is peace in chickens and flocks and women and men desperate for the right gift. 

If you can stare into space a bit and breathe with intention and let your other senses loose, it might be clearer.  It might come as a gift, wrapped or not, being so weighted in the present.

Now, He is here for me, and He is coming for me, and He is peace in each exhale and flap of chaos. THIS Peace loves us. 

I feel it!