The power of the Spoken Word

"Great is our Lord and mighty in power.  His understanding has no limit.  The Lord sustains the humble!"  (Psalm 147:5-6) pours from my lips as I open the broad, weathered wooden barn door to let in the morning sun.  In the barn where the laying flock winters, hens look up expectantly, voicing that growling query that means they want me to toss them kitchen scraps.  I break into pieces and toss a failed loaf of raisin wheat bread, that I just didn't put enough oomph into kneading one tired afternoon after WalMart shopping with my daughter.  The hens surge into action, running pell-mell, flapping as they go, racing each other to get to the sweet bread this zero degree F morning.  Brilliant beams from the rising sun stream through the doorway; the hens gratefully gobble, and I gather eggs, fill the feeder, check the waterer.  The air in the barn feels warmer than the brittle cold outside like a welcoming hug.  

I never articulated aloud the Psalms and other memory verses until I moved to the country and got animals to tend.  What is the power of declaring, "I sought the Lord and he answered me.  He delivered me from all my fears.  Those who look to him are radiant.  Their faces are never covered in shame." (Psalm 34:4-5)?  I find it chases away anxieties and reminds me to keep my face radiantly turned towards the positive and hopeful. 

As I walk the farm making such declarations, I can understand the ancient practice of uttering incantations.  Sacred words spoken aloud in the fresh morning air crystallize the moment, the intent of the speaker, my sense of purpose as I simply toss chunks of raisin bread to chickens or walk the pasture with my dog for morning exercise.

 In the growing season, as I haul a heavy garden cart up Hawk's Hill at the end of the work day, I find myself reaching for the old standby, "But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run and not grow weary; and they shall walk and not faint." (Isaiah 40:31)  I would like to tell you that I haul effortlessly after announcing such intent to the world.  But, the effect on me is more subtle.  I suppose the boon I feel from speaking aloud of waiting upon the Lord lies in the reminder to consider greater truths than my heaving breath, to think outside myself and my immediate situation.  And, I feel the gentle sense of kinship with other laborers down the ages deep into humanity's history, ancient people who, like me, labored for their food, and must have felt the same fatigue and struggle to push on to finish one last task as the sun swam in ruby, peach and tangerine on the verdant horizon.

When I hoe beans or potatoes, one of those long jobs down endless rows, I particularly enjoy picturing other gardeners I have admired from the past:  artist and author Tasha Tudor, my mother-in-law Anna who grew up on a Virginia peanut farm, Laura Ingalls Wilder, and ancestors of my own whom I never knew, like my dairy-farming great grandparents.  The image of hard-working farm women toiling alongside me raises my pluck and helps me to feel the value of what I am doing for my farm and family.  

And there it is, the shadow that these incantations fight:  the sense that I am not doing enough or doing well enough to be worthy.  The word of the Lord reminds me that, "God resisteth the proud but giveth grace unto the humble." (James 4:6)   And so, my goal becomes working steadily, faithfully, in small ways on my mothering, my tending of those I love, my writing, my farm work.  

May you find power in intentional words spoken today; may they lift you above the mundane and allow you to receive wisdom, pluck, joy.
Betsy