Counter-Cultural

Early this Sunday morning, after mixing some batter for quick bread and sorting through the last week's stack of mail and school papers, I ventured down into the basement to retrieve our Advent wreath. Today marks the first Sunday of Advent, a period -- not of 25 days -- but of four weeks before Christmas, a time intended to be set aside for reflection and good works. My intentions were to take out the entire box of Advent decorations; each season, the first things I put up are our Nativity set and collection of angel statues. But as I first walked through the rooms of the Allison, still decorated for Thanksgiving, I couldn't quite make myself take down all the pumpkins and turkeys to segue into the Christmas season -- yet.

I realize how counter-cultural I am in this; many of my friends have already said goodbye to autumn and hello to the season of wreaths and tinsel, gift-buying and carol-singing. And as much as I love that season, I'm not ready to enter into it. I spent Black Friday - a day of frenzied shopping -- here at the ranch, taking pictures of some horses we have for sale and mixing up a batch of my grandma's monkey-face cookies, because I hadn't had a chance all fall to taste them. Yesterday, I did travel into town to do some shopping, but it was a lovely, leisurely afternoon: I dropped my kids off at the salon for haircuts in preparation for Christmas programs and concerts, then walked through the downtown, buying just three gifts at our local toy store, and two kuchen from a food shop specializing in authentic German cuisine.  The toys are for our three youngest; the kuchen are for me, for my birthday supper this evening.

Perhaps it is because my birthday falls at the end of November that I am reluctant every year to let go of the season of the harvest. Throughout my life, harvest has symbolized fullness, abundance, completion; these are the spiritual gifts I want to reflect on as I turn another year older. It is more than that, however: before I begin buying and decorating, feeling that there is never enough time or money, I want to spend one last weekend remembering that, in the words of author Sarah Ban Breathnach, "all we have is all we need." Truthfully, despite some great deals on Black Friday, my kids don't need another thing. Neither do I.  What I do need, and really want, is a sense of purpose and gratitude, a realization that my life is so full that I am one of the luckiest women in the world.

Being counter-cultural comes fairly natural to me: at nearly 41, I don't own a home, don't have an impressive investment portfolio (though I do have investments and savings -- I'm not that naive). I have six kids; that fact alone marks me as unusual in a world where raising more than three children seems a badge of honor, or insanity, depending on who you talk to. I live in a renovated 100-year-old house where strange noises and creaks still wake me up at night, and where I have to be careful about how many showers are taken in a row, or how many appliances are plugged into the upstairs outlets. I spend my free time -- when I have it -- tromping through the pastures with my dogs or trying to capture profundity here at the computer. My husband isn't the "Marlboro Man"; he is a simple cowboy who smells like horses and diesel fuel, and who doesn't own a suit.

My life, however, feels so right to me.  I struggle sometimes, trying to keep current professionally and socially, while still living on a ranch that hasn't changed much in 100 years. Since I started this blog, I've acquired a Facebook page and a Google reader account. I carry a cell phone, use the computer the way my husband uses a lariat, and travel to conferences and meetings where I am considered a valued colleague. My children are active in the local schools, and I spend many, many hours behind the wheel of my car, traveling to work, basketball games and concerts. In many ways, my life is not that different from that of an woman in any city, striving to work and raise a family the best way she can.

But this morning on my tromp with the dogs, a bald eagle watched me from the nude branches of a cottonwood tree by the river. The hired man's pup sniffed at a carcass of a deer, drug up from the river bank by coyotes, picked clean by that same eagle, no doubt. That eagle, that carcass, those coyotes -- they could have been here 100 years ago, could have been here long before humans parceled off this place, named it the Allison, and began to raise cattle and sheep. This morning, away from phones and computers, down by the river, I could have been a true pioneer woman, a Native woman, any woman. Allison reminds me nearly every day that despite my rushing and trying to stay connected to a world that just goes faster and faster, my true connections are here, to the land, the animals, and the people I share this place with. These are the connections that color my world this Thanksgiving weekend.

And so, I returned from the basement with only the Advent wreath. For now, its purple and pink candles nestle incongruously with the orange and russet decorations. Tonight, we'll light just one candle, reminding ourselves that, although salvation, and Chrismas, are on their way, they aren't here just yet. For now, pumpkin pecan bread in the oven and bald eagles in the pasture are enough to keep us satisfied; for now, our thankfulness is all we need.