Leaving Church:

There’s a picture.  Of me sitting on the well platform. Baby chicks surrounding my baby toes.  Maybe I was 4 years old.  Or 3. I don’t remember sitting on the well platform but I remember the chicks.  I remember the softness of their feathers.  Their little chirps.  Their orientation toward the any scrap of food. And I remember the dirt between my toes.  The dry coolness of it.  I learned over the years where every sandbur patch was. How to avoid them and eventually walk through them.  Developing callouses was the trick.  Coupled with walking lightly, I could go anyway. And I did.  Through the yard, past the garden, to the silage pile and beyond where the edge of the cornfield met the fence line.  All the way up the hill to the alfalfa field. Stopping at the well on the way, resting on the platform. Filling myself with ice cold water from far below that dirt on which I walked, barefoot.

The need for walking through sandbur patches prepared me for life in the church. The callouses protected me from the sharpest jabs and pokes over 20 years of navigating the church’s back forty. But I grew weary of being hard. I wanted that water on my lips and that dirt between my toes.  I wanted the softness of those chicks, again.