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!