Life in the field

This morning I woke up to the sound of Coyotes howling and yipping and yapping and carrying on for about five minutes. It sounded like it was happening right outside my window but I was in no mood to get up and see, though I probably should have. They woke me up five minutes before my alarm went off. It's early morning prayer this morning, so I got up and got to the church and started the coffee.

These days the field people are all about seeding. It was interesting to watch them through April, getting their equipment tuned and running like it should be, getting an excited twitch in their right eye, looking excited as kids on Christmas morning, then they shoot out of the gate for three or four weeks to get the crop in. It's infectious to watch their excitement and this sense of a community together in a common cause. In simple ways it reminds me of when we lived in Winnipeg during the flood of 97. The sense of community, the hard work, sandbagging by 6 am and long after dark in the night. There is a similar sense of common effort and community, and you know that if one farmer is having difficulty with his equipment or his personal life, everyone in the community steps up and comes alongside to help. I can see why they love this time of year.

And as for me, I'm concluding that I am still too much of a city pastor to do a lot of rural good. But at least I know that, and I'm challenging that in myself and pressing in to the changes that need to happen in how I do what I do. Twenty years of doing things in certain ways, needs to be shifted a bit. So I am working at change.

It's good to be here, among these people of the field, or as one of the readers of this space called them, the Field People. Last Sunday while we were down in Surrey BC, with it's beautiful weather and Krispy Kreme donuts and amazing Stanley Park, and wonderful seafood, I really enjoyed all those things, but I missed the people from here. I thought it was interesting that they had found a place in my heart already. Not so much the land or the house or the work, but indeed the people were what I was missing. That's hopeful to me, that these people of the field already have a place in my story. Maybe it is more about community than it is about where you live or what you do. But we already knew that, didn't we?