Transition leads to growth

Endings can be unpleasant business. It doesn’t matter if we’re ending a relationship, saying goodbye to a loved one, leaving a job or moving away from home, the fact that we’re turning away from the familiar and moving toward the unknown leaves us disquieted. We are apt to avoid endings for this reason. This might be why so many of us botch our endings; we don’t practice them often enough.

Yet though endings are difficult, they are important because they beget new beginnings. If you think back on your life to all the endings you’ve experienced, you will recognize how endings, even those you hadn’t chosen for yourself, led you to someplace new, and hopefully, someplace better. Some call the ending-new beginning cycle growth.

If you reflect deeply enough about endings, soon or later you’ll find yourself contemplating death, for what is death but life's natural ending. I think it’s good to contemplate our final ending for a couple reasons. First, if we reflect on how we’ve spent our lives thus far and find areas we haven’t yet perfected, we still have time to improve: We can tell people we love them before we leave, so they never have to wonder; we can try a hobby we dreamed of trying but didn’t because we couldn’t find time; we can examine how we use our time and redirect energy into making a difference for others.

It’s also worth contemplating how our ending affects us. This exercise is made easier when belief in an after life, which assumes the existence of God, is part of your composition. By reflecting on all the descriptions of Heaven you’ve ever heard or read and on all the advice you’ve ever been offered on how to gain access, it becomes easier to examine life – our years of action or inaction – and bring to an end some of the activities that lead us away from eternal happiness.

On the night my sister-in-law Lynn passed away, I got a few minutes with her. I sat at the edge of her bed, took her hand and kissed her cheek. She looked at me and both of us knew it was time to say goodbye. Then she said two things: "It's so hard," and "I'm not afraid."

“It’s so hard,” refers to the stage in her transition called ending. It was hard for her to say goodbye to all of us, hard to let go.

“I’m not afraid,” refers to the stage of transition called a new beginning. Lynn knew a better existence waited for her beyond the walls of her hospital room and wasn’t afraid to embrace it.

It’s been said we gain the gift of clarity as we age – or as we approach our ending. I think Lynn captured perfectly the trouble most of us have with endings: the unpleasantness in endings blinds us to the potential that lies in our new beginnings. Endings are hard; new beginnings are nothing to be afraid of.

Free ranging chickens

We’ve been building a chicken coop. Well, we’ve been thinking about building a chicken coop. The plan is to convert an unused shed and then build a ten foot by eight foot cage connected to the coop to allow our chickens the chance to be “free range.”

Eighty square feet of ground might not be what everyone considers free range, I admit. When first thinking about adding chickens to the farm, I envisioned the little guys wandering the property, pecking at whatever ground interested them. I want to be fair to my chickens but I also need to protect my investment in them and protect them from predators, like the hawk that swooped down from the sky on Monday to take out a very large rabbit.

In some countries, including the U.S., the recommended space allowance for laying hens is sixty- to eighty-square inches per hen, barely enough for the hen to turn around and not enough space to allow for comfort movements, such as preening, dust and water bathing, wing flapping and feather ruffling – important to keep the plumage in good condition. Many hens, however, are allowed less space than that. Some large scale egg producers use commercial battery cages for laying hens, the most movement-restrictive production system in use. This is about as far from free range as you can get, but it allows consumers who are price sensitive access to cheap eggs.

I first heard the term “free range” about a decade ago after I stopped into one of those pricey eateries that populate southwest Minneapolis. This one place offered free range chicken in a sandwich. The sandwich cost about two dollars more than the organic peanut butter and jelly or the albacore tuna. (Tuna are naturally free range, I suppose). Anyway, if you had enough money, and you were concerned about the life lived by your lunch before it became lunch, you could enjoy delicious free range chicken sandwiches made fresh daily.

At the time, I didn't give much thought to free range, battery cages, ethics, or the natural food chain. That’s all changed.

In the context of farming, sustainability defines agricultural practices that are ethical, environmentally responsible yet still recognize and allow for the need to turn a profit. In the twenty-first century, sustainability is all the rage. Sustainable farming dictates I give my future chickens room to be chickens, but also recognizes that I have an investment in my chickens that needs to be protected.

So, eighty-square feet of caged range it is. If anyone objects to my use of the term free range for my chickens, so be it. Because when the times comes for one of my chickens to become a meal, it will be me, not the hawk, who enjoys it. And that, dear friends, is sustainable farming.

Powerless can be progress

One of our neighboring communities went without power the other day. It was in the paper. The power was out for twenty minutes in some areas, the article reported; other areas went without power for almost an hour.

Well.

This past August, a storm left us without power for four days. I suppose that outage made headlines, too. I guess I must have missed it. I was too busy feeling my way around in the dark.

Kidding aside, the outage offered me a respite from the busyness that all too easily takes command of my day. It also gave me renewed appreciation for how our ancestors lived. Simply. By the cycle of the sun.

For four days while the clocks stood still, sunrise signaled the start of the day and sunset signaled its end. Evening entertainment hinged on conversation skills or the limits of imagination. If you don't take into account the chainsaw, which is powered by gasoline, the days were quiet ones; the nights, serene. By day four, I'd adjusted to living unplugged and the news that power would soon return arrived with disappointment.

This lifeline we call electric service, which we depend on so greatly that its disappearance radically alters our existence, soon would be restored. By day four, I didn't really want it back.
I had enjoyed my days given over to mother nature, who'd so unexpectedly flipped the switch on us. Frankly, I wouldn't mind if she did it again next summer.

A poem for fall

Can you look at a tree
In autumn and not
be awed by nature
in transition?

Along the highway,
The one I always
find myself on, as
if I were lost, and
maybe, yes I am.
At least you wonder.
The bluff will take flame,
It will be splendor;
Soon, unbridled glory.

But today, it’s just
one tree, just before
leaf drop, standing tall.
Splendor on each branch.
It broke from the crowd,
the do it the same,
monochromatic
crowd that holds fast to
it’s leaves until color
escapes to another tree,
a tree open to change.
You see these along
the highway too. These
you don’t remember.

But color works for
you, and the tree,
because it’s the
way of transition.
There’s loss, then exposure.
You, tree, stand naked,
exposed, bare, and the
ones who don’t turn away
will see how your limbs
reach skyward. They will see
strength. They will know why
those leaves had to go.