Kirkepiscatoid

Between our Old Testament reading today (I Samuel 3:1-10, [11-20]) and an interesting thing that just happened in my pasture, I have been thinking about the value of hearing "that small still voice" that comes from inside us.

Samuel kept hearing his name called. It took him a while to realize that it was God calling him. He kept thinking it was Eli. I got to thinking about the times that "God has called my name" but it took me a while to figure it out. So much of my prayer and study time has learning to "observe."

I'll be honest, I've had one of those "bummer" weekends. I've told you about my friend M.J., who has dementia. I have moments when I realize another chunk of him is gone, and this realization is always sudden. Every now and then it totally catches me off guard. I had experienced another of those moments toward the end of the week, and spent a fair part of the weekend mourning it. The problem with dementia is you can't just mourn once and get it over with. You get to mourn REPEATEDLY. Ugh.

I have let a few of my friends in on the significance of "my sacred spot in the yard" and "my chiminea." (Actually, you blogfriends of mine know more about it than my real life friends.) So, on the suggestion of one of my friends "in the know," I went home after church and cranked up a fire in my chiminea.

(This is how despondent I was...I bagged coffee hour made by the Queen of Coffee Hour!)

So, I am sitting in my yard, bundled up, a heavy coat and a quilt over me, hunkered down next to the fire in my chiminea. I threw on a piece of mesquite to make it smell good. I tossed in a few sticks of incense to boot. I looked like something out of a Jack London story.

I was out there about 45 minutes, just feeling the heat on my front and the freezing wind on my back, smelling the smoke and looking up now and then watching the clouds go this way and that, and the sun peek out and make things just a little blue now and then.

Then the coolest thing happened.

This fox trotted up along the grass in my pasture across the road from me and my chiminea. Beautiful thick red coat and bottle-brush bushy tail. By the size and build, I was guessing she was a full adult "big mama vixen." Not really big enough or bulky enough to be a dog fox. I was admiring her bushy coat and her graceful trot.

She then stopped. Stopped dead in her tracks, sat down and looked at me. Not a fearful glance, but the way my dogs sit and look at me. She even cocked her head. Her dark black eyes met mine and held my gaze. We both sat and looked at each other for a good minute or more. Then she casually got back up and continued to trot down the road.

That was too weird. Foxes usually don't want anywhere NEAR people. But there she was, no more than 50 feet from me. Sitting. Looking. Not afraid.

In that moment, I realized, like Samuel finally did, that God speaks to us in voices we recognize.

I have always been more connected to nature than most people, because I simply enjoy sitting and observing. It dawned on me that God speaks to me indirectly through nature than any other mode. I got to wondering if this might have been a little more, um...direct.

I sat out there a while, straining my brain for the significance of the fox in Native American lore. I decided to go inside and make some coffee to take back out there with me, and did a little Googling while the coffee brewed.

Fox represents cunning, wildness and diplomacy. She also is a warning to keep one’s counsel, when to hold silence and when to break silence by quietly observing situations, then deciding what words to use. Fox, like Owl, is seen as a guide into the Spirit Realm. Fox is known for her ability to travel between dusk and dawn, and her ability to "shape-shift" as she can maneuver very small burrows.

In other words, she can observe and adjust.

There is an Apache legend that Fox killed an evil bear that was terrorizing the people with her cunning, causing him to fall into a fire in the forest, and Fox stuck her tail in the fire and brought it to the Apache people.

So unlike Coyote, who is seen as a trickster, Fox has a more positive bend to her meaning in Native American spirituality.

There I was by MY fire and Fox pays me a visit. In that moment, I realized, "I can observe, and I can adjust, like Fox, like Samuel."