Changes

Some might say I did not plan for retirement.  I did not plan any great things to accomplish like writing a book, or visiting all the national parks, or starting a furniture making business.  I just moved to a farm where there were  hay fields to manage, pecan trees to tend, gardens to hoe, and cows to feed.  While all those farm things do have a way of keeping a guy busy, they do not demand things on a schedule like churches have a way of doing.  Life is slower.  It lends itself to a different pace.  It creates time for thinking, or ruminating, a term I learned from watching the cows.     

What I did not count on was the way the slower lifestyle would cause major shifts in the theological foundation upon which I had walked for a life time.  Of course, it was not just the change in lifestyle, but also the experience of being immersed daily in the creation.  Doing thinking with creation speaking softly in every moment has a way of wearing down things which had been poured in concrete.  Experiencing God which had always been somewhat relative to the life and ministry of the church was replaced by an awareness that experiencing holy presence is only as far away as the next step and as close as the breath of wind which comes neath the branches of the trees.    

God is not everything.  God is not the trees or the growing grass that feeds the cow.  But, it is also true that God is in everything around us.  This is a way of saying that there is no where to go and there is nothing to see which does not hold within it the possibility of a moment of divine epiphany.  Signs of the Almighty abound and the holy Voice is constantly whispering through the things which have passed first through His creating hands.  All that is left for us to do is to seek the teaching Spirit who is eager to help us learn to see, to listen, and to know.