Asaph and Miriam Got Rhythm

Sparrows look alike. I can distinguish male from female due to distinctive markings, but not individuals amongst dozens lining the rafters of a milking parlor.

There are two exceptions. Sparrows are creatures of habit. In this case, the habit is the location where they roost inside the parlor structure. Stretching across the milking parlor pit, about six inches below the ceiling, is a small cable along which slides a tarp used to keep warmth from escaping between twice-daily milking shifts. Slide the tarp open. Wait patiently with occasional glances over the next 20 minutes. There he is. Asaph.

I don’t know where he’s been, but he always shows up, day or night.

If there’s milking going on, Asaph shows. Doesn’t matter who’s milking that shift, he shows. Asaph’s got rhythm.

I call him Asaph because, during a six-hour milking shift, he chirps out birdsong praise that pierces heaven. Yes, I know. Sparrows are worthless (except in the eyes of God). But to me, sparrows are sacred precisely because, to most, they go unnoticed. Yet they splendidly declare the glory of God as individual’s part of something grander like a choir or a symphony. I could think of no one besides David, a name too common for this occasion, more skilled in uttering praise than David’s co-psalter, Asaph.

I started my own little rhythm, a little liturgy. I catch a shadowy movement out of the corner of my eye. Asaph silently glides past to ascend to his roosting/praising perch. I grab the tattered, iodine-stained church bulletin from Sunday’s service out of my back pocket, greet Asaph a good and fine morning, and ask him to join me in reading the Psalm printed in the God Calls Us section. Asaph always nods approvingly, rearranges a few feathers on the black napkin which garbs his upper chest, and interprets my English phrases into bird-praise.

I mentioned there were two exceptions to my sparrow ID limits. After a month of noticing Asaph’s methodical visits to the cable perch, I spotted a female companion joining him. Sparks sizzled between them. I feared this new acquaintance might whisk Asaph away to her perch in another part of the barn, but Asaph remained resolute. His little rhythm of “showing up” was undeterred.

Joining him, with grace and devotion, was this new little tweeter I call Miriam.

Moses’s sister Miriam, you recall, led the women in song and praise with tambourines as the sea closed over Pharaoh’s chariots. Now Miriam, arrayed in a traditional feathered gown, sings forth praises in the same tradition.

Beneath the cable perch is a silver-dollar-sized hole in a rusted tin structure enclosing pipes near the ceiling. Voilà, the perfect entrance for a nest. For over 2 years, during “special sparrow seasons” in both Spring and Fall, I’ve watched Miriam and Asaph’s relationship blossom. Asaph and Miriam got rhythm.

Their procreation instincts make this cowboy blush.

Next, their duel-effort nest construction begins. They masterfully weave wheat straw, abundant in a barn, tiny twigs, and curiously, shreds of royal blue baling-twine strands into a shell. Finally comes the lining of soft, fluffy down plucked from deep places hidden beneath shielding feathers.

Miriam disappears for 12 days to incubate the 4 eggs stashed in the hidden refuge. Sometimes, I see her quickly pop out of the nesting hole and wing-bump Asaph, her tag-team partner. Asaph wriggles his way into the hole to warm the eggs while Miriam quenches her thirst. Once the small, dull-white and brown, mottled eggs hatch, the two of them begin a steady convoy of worm delivery to the triangular beaks eagerly protruding from the hole in the tin.

Let the flourishing begin!

Take a Deep Breath of Remember: We need a rhythm inventory. What rhythms, what habits of remembering can we weave into our schedule to enable us to glorify God and enjoy Him forever? Our rhythms reveal our loves. They shape us. Sometimes unknowingly. Are there rival habits or rhythms competing for our supreme love?

Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in them.  For everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—comes not from the Father but from the world.  The world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will of God lives forever. (1 John 2:15-17, NIV)

Prayer: Lord Jesus, I feel the strong pull toward loves that promise fulfillment but leave me empty. Forgive my wayward heart. Turn me toward You, my supreme love. By your grace, become so beautiful to me that my highest desires burn for You. Amen.

 

 

Half Marlboro Man, Half Monk

I am half Marlboro man, half Monk. That may seem like a paradox, a mixture of oil and water. But I’ve come to know both these guys pretty well over the years. Mostly, Marlboro and Monk get along inside me without much scuffle, though sometimes they question each other’s validity. Here’s a story about these two characters.

Marlboro man was shaped in the crucible of the farm/ranch. The tractor and the saddle toughened him. Baling-twine blisters, dirt, sweat, blood and manure are his badges of glory. He sets the plow deep to rip open the soil and violently turns it upside down. He loves the power he harnesses from the tractor and takes pride in accomplishment. He does his best first, then trusts God for what he can’t control.

Monk man smooths the soil and tends to the plants. He loves the feel of dirt and knows there’s life and power in a seed. He trusts God first, then does his best.

Marlboro man fusses and frets over every calving event and uses chains and a jack to assist if necessary. Marlboro man and Monk man team up to rescue a newborn calf struggling for survival after a downhill slide from the birth canal into the creek. They carry the shivering, muddy, slimy calf to a safe straw-strewn shelter and watch in amazement as the mother-cow instincts kick in gear to lick and warm and feed this dependent critter. They’re amazed every time a newborn calf finds his legs and searches for a nozzle. They laugh every time at the hilarity of it, and are astonished because it always seems to work.

Marlboro man sways in the saddle while Monk man sings “I love to tell the story of unseen things above” just like his dad used to. Marlboro man is a loner. Monk man likes solitude. Marlboro man hates rules and needs wide-open spaces with few boundaries. Monk man hates legalism but finds comfort within structure. Marlboro man is a man of the world with his feet on the ground. Monk man feels set apart to something bigger and beyond what he sees today.

On a tractor or in a saddle, there’s plenty of time to pass. Marlboro man is a thinker and a planner. But, Monk man is a dreamer. In fact, he’s been known to look at a cloud from below, and then take a journey to the backside of the cloud to see what it might look like. Once he even traveled to the farthest star he could see just to look up in the sky and see what the rest of the stars looked like from there.

Marlboro man will work for weeks to fill a barn with hay. Then he joins Monk man, both with their chin held in their hands staring in wonder at the newborn batch of kittens taking refuge in the haystack.

Marlboro man wakes up at 1:30 AM to start the morning milking shift. Monk man rouses a few minutes later and joins the sparrows in the parlor singing praises. A pretty decent choir, actually. He comes to understand the meaning of “give us this day our daily bread,” as he sees the sparrows descend from the rafters to feast on spilled barley.

It hasn’t always been easy for Marlboro and Monk to live with each other, but they’ve learned to get along by appreciating each other’s differences and strengths, even covering for each other’s weaknesses.

I read a quote by a Celtic Monk from the 12^th century:

I can hear Marlboro man speaking as he says “Get in your boat, cast off and seek Christ.”

Then I hear Monk man chime in, “But don’t expect to find Him if He doesn’t accompany you on the way.”

Deep Breath of Remember – Barnyard Liturgy (Part 3)

Core Identity

My heart is an idol factory.  I am blissfully blind to them, for the most part, because idols are usually good things that I bank on to satisfy my deepest needs and hopes.  My idol worship pursues “counterfeit gods” because they promise me safety, peace, and happiness if only I base my life on them. I say in my heart of hearts, “If I have that, then I’ll feel my life has meaning, then I’ll know I have value, then I’ll feel significant and secure.”  Having that kind of relationship to something is best called worship.[1]

I don’t want my identity to be shaped by my worship of counterfeit gods.  By God’s mercy, the core identity that comes from God and God alone is made attractive and possible to me inside the encounter with Him during Liturgy.  His light exposes the destructive disappointment I feel as my counterfeit gods let me down.  He’s a jealous God!  Warning!  Inside God’s Liturgy you can expect bombshells and bloodshed.   He calls us to worship Him.  Him Alone!

That’s easy for me on Sunday.  In Barnyard Liturgy, all hell can break loose.  The Trinity comes “locked and loaded” to shape me; to create the identity I glimpsed on Sunday and said, “I long for that.”  The Trinity comes with fire and a hammer.  When I say God’s Liturgy is something done to you, it’s because we love our counterfeit gods too much to relinquish them without supernatural, gospel-beauty, will-breaking intervention.  God is out to save us to the uttermost.  Save us from our counterfeit gods.  Sometimes that feels like a dance.  Sometimes it feels like a trip to the woodshed.

Sparrows in the Milking Parlor

The milking parlor at the dairy I work at is big enough to allow 16 cows to be milked at a time.  The stanchions are located 8 per side along a 3 foot deep pit.  This arrangement brings me eyeball-to-udder.  Very efficient for the mundane, extremely repetitive actions I must perform to sanitize and clean each teat, attach a milking head, and finally dip with a solution of skin conditioners and iodine.  As the 8 cows on one side are finished, I open an air-gate so they can meander their way back to the loafing shed to eat, rest in a free-stall, or rehydrate at the water trough.  On average, each cow has given 30-40 pounds of milk and will do it all over in 12 hours.  That’s 60-80 pounds of milk a day.  They’re thirsty.  They’re hungry.

The efficiency of being in a pit has its downside.  Milk is not the only thing that comes out of a cow.  I will delicately call this cow pies-a ’plenty.  During a milking shift of 6 hours shuffling 250 cows through the parlor, I get splattered-a ‘plenty.  About a decade ago, I scanned the want ads; “Don’t mind getting dirty?  Come milk cows.”  I’ve always loved cows.  I’m good at getting dirty.

I’ve had a variety of career pursuits and they’ve all involved animals, both wild and domestic, to some degree.  But I never aspired to work at a dairy, in a 3-foot deep pit.  At age 17, I wanted to be a large animal Veterinarian.  Seven years and 3 Veterinary College failed interviews later, the dream died.  Inadequate grades?  Or thwarted by God?  I raised my fist to the heavens.

Next, I hired on as cowboy on a beef ranch for 3 years, then, ironically got hired at the research branch of the Veterinary College I’d been rejected by.  I excelled, climbed academic ladders, won student research awards, and obtained advanced degrees.  The crescendo of a 25-year career led to the apex of a research/teaching position in Montana. Upward mobility.  I had two years to prove myself and secure my own grant funding.  The result, “Don’t mind getting dirty?  Come milk cows.”

Flashback to a week after I answered that ad, it’s 3 A.M.  I’ve milked enough cows in the past hour to get splattered-a ‘plenty.  I’d also been kicked a’ plenty by cows not used to the ‘new guys’ touch.  I was frustrated and keenly aware of another one of God’s thwarting’s.  Downward mobility.  In the pit stood a disappointed, empty, broken, scared, angry man with my fist raised to the heavens.

And then, it happened.  Epiphany!

Turns out, when you’re in a pit, it’s a good thing to look up.  I watched a sparrow, feathers preened out to make him look twice as big as he really was to insulate against the cold, chirp out a bird song that sounded a lot like praise.  Then, he fluttered down to the parlor runway where cows returning from their milking left the gift of cow pies-a’ plenty.  He deftly plucked out a kernel of barley from the muck, ascended back to the rafters, and resumed his praise chirp.  I witnessed a creature deemed worthless, descend into the realities of a wilderness to gather his daily bread, then soar heavenward to offer his provider thanksgiving with praise.  My fist loosened and dropped to my side.  I felt the hot tears of repentance and deep joy trace down my cheeks.

My brain, my heart, my gut, all my deep places were flooded with the revelation of a creature remembered by God.  A creature cared for, loved, accepted and valued by God.  For a moment, I knew that I too was remembered, cared for, loved, accepted and valued by my Creator.  For a moment, I tasted my core identity.

I added my pitiful, squeaky praises to the community of birdsong wafting like incense to heaven.  I was doing worship.  Or rather, Barnyard Liturgy was doing me.

[1] Adapted from Timothy Keller, Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex and Power, and the Only Hope That Matters. 2009.