kedging off

Well, last night at St. George we finished a five session, five week study of chapter one of the Gospel of Mark.

I don't know how many times over the years I have read this book of the bible, more than a dozen, for sure, yet in all those readings I have never appreciated how artfully structured and how full of the good news that first chapter is.

I guess that this is at the heart of learning: new realizations, new understandings, new pathways into the future.

Mark remains my favorite New Testament book and I am happy to be able to say that I read it with more pleasure now than I did when it was my favorite six weeks ago.

The farm is teaching me new lessons also. The joy of filling holes and low spots in the fields over the past month has changed to a daily struggle to get material from the dirt stockpile to the field without bogging down the gator, and then divesting myself of equanimity and dignity in my struggles with slick sloppy mud as I, all to frequently, practice my retrieval techniques.

That would be OK if it were the extent of my mud troubles. It is remarkable just how much of a mess I was able to make while digging an excavator out of a field that I knew going into I shouldn't. When I used to sail we called the technique, kedging. Dig a hole then bury the anchor (with an excavator, the bucket) and laboriously drag yourself out. Big disturbances of the field, the dike and the serenity that is most often my companion in my work. That would be something of a metaphor for life, I guess...

Enough of this, its time to go and fall into a good book.