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The Barn Doors Open (continued from last post)
The audience quieted as the knock came on the large, rolling barn door. Joseph was standing in the darkness. The innkeeper appeared in the large doorway, and Joseph, motioning to a pregnant Mary sitting on a donkey close behind him, began to explain their plight: “Please, sir, can you give us a room for the night? My wife is about to deliver, and we have nowhere to stay.” “Can’t you see,” shouted the surly innkeeper as he turned and waved with a sweeping arm across the audience, “we are full tonight.” Ah, we were finally on track. What was to be an experience of remembrance and worship was beginning to take…
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Oh Holy Night?
Where is peace? Where is it hiding, when our world is overwhelmingly disjointed and we feel the need to hold it together? I was feeling the need to hold things together one December in the early 90’s. Using the land for our Bethlehem story had been a vision of my heart for years. It seemed that God had given us land with the story written into its very geography. I was directing the “performance” of our not-named-yet nativity once again. My gifts do not necessarily lie in directing, but I determined to do my best. Judd, the behind-the scenes’ director was loyally helping me. The majority of our cast that…
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The First Nativity
We led the animals down the road, Judd holding the lead ropes to the horse and pony, and I with my bucket of grain for the sheep. The beam from the flashlight Judd held in his free hand lit the way through the darkness. At the bottom of the hill, we turned in to the pole shed area which had become the designated spot for our first nativity program. The pole shed area boasted of nice round bales that were stored in the shed. Those bales and the old shed would be the perfect area for our endeavor. With a concrete slab near the fence and feeding troughs along…
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Memories of the Farm by Michael Kizzee
When invited, along with many others, to write my memories of Well Spring farm on Kitten Creek Road, I found myself at a loss. How does one capture in words the way a piece of land has imprinted one’s spirit? Thinking about the memories makes me want to return again, but I fear the moment has passed and it wouldn’t be the same. Never-the-less, I will try to share the impact this farm had upon me. My first visit to the farm came when Nancy and Judd were rebuilding the barn that was in disrepair. My girlfriend at the time, Alicia, (later my wife of 19 years) invited me to…
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TRANSFORMATIONS by Kay Bascom
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Longing
1 Corinthians 2:9 But, as it is written, “No eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him”— In our daily life on the farm we have been faced with the mundane: a ritual of tasks and chores, mopping up muddy boot tracks across the kitchen floor, pulling off ticks and trying to remember to use bug spray in spring and early summer, dying pets and farm animals, more work to do on buildings that need constant repair. And yet, we continue to search for the sacred in the midst of this mundane existence. We long for the presence of…
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What was and is and is to come.
My thoughts in writing have been very much focused on what was. How did God create a place of worship and community out of an old ramshackle farm? I have marveled in His presence and His gifts and His transformations. Today I am forced to take a deeper look at what is, and perhaps a little of what is to come. The present is heavy upon us, but God is present. The future is behind a curtain, but God is there, also. This past week we lost Charles Bascom, in a sense the “pastor” of our community. His life blessed us in ways that formed much of who we became. …
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TRANSFORMATIONS by Kay Bascom
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TRANSFORMATIONS by Kay Bascom
For those who have not been to the Swihart Farm, it is unusual to describe. Most farms are squarish. This farm is on a quarter mile wide strip that spans a half mile (80 acres east and 80 acres west) on each side with a “belt” in the middle – a fairly straight Kitten Creek Road which roughly follows a very crooked Kitten Creek. When the Swiharts bought the old Fritz farm in l982, there were just a scattering of dilapidated buildings west of the road: a house, barns, and sheds. Transformed now, I picture the geography in terms of a butterfly at rest. Her body is Kitten Creek…
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A Sense of Anticipation: Part Two
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Beside the Still Waters
I would say that Peg and I bonded completely, shepherdess and docile sheep, one frigid and icy New Year’s morning. An ice storm had come in on New Year’s evening. Judd was gone on a retreat of solitude and silence, and Sara and I were holding down the fort. We woke up to at least an inch of ice covering the trees, grass, and road. Despite the frigid weather, chores still had to be done, so I bundled up in my heavy-duty Army jacket and pulled on the black insulated Air Force boots. With a wool hat and warm work gloves, I was prepared, or at least I thought I…
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Wounded by Love
The weeds at the farm proved to be more than my first ewe and her lamb, Priscilla and Aquila, could clean up by themselves. This job was going to require more wooly weed-eaters. So we went back to the wooly weed-eater supplier, Diane, for our next pregnant ewe. We chose Peg to join our little flock. “Peg” was short for peg-leg, a descriptive name already given to this ewe because of her limp. Peg exhibited an independent spirit in her young life. Her shepherdess kept losing this wandering sheep. Not content with the pasture Diane offered, Peg was continually getting out of the sheep fold. One morning while Diane was eating breakfast…
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Fire in Them Thar Hills
A group of thirty to forty of us had gathered in and around the prayer chapel after making our way from the barn, across the pasture, and down into the ravine. Listening to the prayers of thanksgiving and dedication, my mind was drawn back to that fateful day the previous fall. Derrick and I had headed down Anderson on our way home from Kansas State University. The four mile trip home past farms and fields was always refreshing and restorative. Oblivious of the drama going on at the farm, we were enjoying the spectacular fall colors. I had never appreciated the grassy fields and roadsides in the fall before we moved…
