Marcus followed the older man down the path, wading through the rich grass. They reached the gate. The older man unchained it, the chain falling to clang against the red gate metal.
All over the pasture, cattle heads came up. The farmer whistled, and a wave of cattle rolled slowly toward him. He turned then and walked back the way he came, the black and white border collie trotting at his heels. Birds whistled and bobbed in the hedgerows, and a rabbit hopped out onto the path, its nose twitching, before dashing back into cover at the approaching men and dog.
The younger man paused, taking a deep breath as if to inhale the peace of the place. Turning, he saw the long line of cattle strung out behind them, heads bobbing as they followed one another.
“How did you do that?” he asked. “Get them to follow you like that? I’ve been on so many farms where they need dogs or ATVs to round them up, and it turns into a huge rodeo.”
The old man chuckled. “I used to do all that. I was the worst. Slamming animals around . . . and more.”
“The worst?”
“Yup, had a temper you wouldn’t believe.”
“You?”
The older man chuckled, his blue eyes twinkling.
“Like . . . what?”
“Well, I remember one time . . .” He paused and shook his head.
“What?”
“I’m not all that fond of telling this story, but . . . well, let me think about it.”
The two walked on in companionable silence, pausing to watch a group of red-winged blackbirds settle into a tree, talking contentedly among themselves. A couple of local wood ducks whooshed overhead, cupped their wings, and settled onto the pond below.
They reached the upper gate, and the farmer opened it, standing to one side while the cattle, heads bobbing and shoulders bulging, lumped past them. As the last one passed, the two men stepped through, and the farmer chained the gate.
“Let’s step over and see the bees,” said the farmer. He slipped through a hole in the hedge and dropped into a little hedge-lined meadow. A dozen white Langstroth hives stood, most with honey supers, along one hedge, bees buzzing around them in the drowsy warm air.
The two men seated themselves on a little bench, watching the swirling cloud of bees.
“So tell me,” Marcus said. “You started to say earlier you were ‘the worst.’ What do you mean by that?”
“I was young, in debt and overworked and,” he shrugged, “overstressed. One day I was just about spent. Nothing was working. I was tired. I didn’t feel like I could make ends meet.
“I had this cow that was famous for just acting stupid. Diving this way and that. Going everywhere but where I told it to go. One day, when she was doing that, and I was chasing her, I slipped on a bit of manure and fell, hitting my face against a pipe gate. It hurt, and I saw stars. My, did it hurt! When my vision cleared, I saw that old cow standing there smirking at me, at least it looked that way. I just lost it. I grabbed a pitchfork leaning against the wall and just tore into her.”
“You stabbed her?”
“A time or two. I think, even in my crazed state, I knew I might kill her like that, so I just took to hitting her, tines up, as hard as I could. On her back, shoulders, head, and face. I was just winding up to clout her over the face again when I looked past her and saw my 20-month-old daughter standing in the door. She was wearing a little white cotton dress and the most horrified expression I’d ever seen on anybody’s face. That snapped me out of it. I dropped the fork and started toward her. She took one look at me, and her little face just crumpled up, and she let out a horrified wail and began running away from me as fast as her little toddler legs could go.
“I went after her. She stumbled right into this big mud puddle and fell. I can still see her sitting there, her tiny face blanched in terror, half rising then falling again, trying to get away from me. I picked her up, dripping brown in her little dress, and carried her in, but she was all twisted away from me, trying to get away.
“I couldn’t figure it out. At first, I thought it was the cow that was making her so scared. But it was obviously me she was afraid of. Me, who she’d come toddling out to meet when I came in, her face lit up and cooing. Me, her daddy, who rocked her to sleep at night. It shook me.
“I realized she’d seen me beating that cow and that made her afraid of me. I tried all the normal rationalizations. That, ‘it doesn’t matter because I don’t treat humans that way.’ That, ‘I don’t believe in animal rights.’ That, ‘we have to have dominion over creation.’ That, ‘you have to keep animals in their place.’
“Nothing worked because I wasn’t arguing with another adult. I was arguing with the memory of her terrified face looking up at me from the mud puddle. Muddy water dripping from her horrified face as she stared up at me. I couldn’t shake it. I couldn’t sleep.
“Late that night, I was out just walking in the lane looking at the moon and I sat down on a big rock—I can still feel its cold surface under me—and I admitted to myself what I’d known all along.
“The reason she was horrified by seeing me act that way was because it was cruel. Not that the action was cruel, but that I was cruel.
“It was a total mind shift for her. It was as if you saw your bishop, who was always a model of thoughtfulness and kindness, screaming in outrage at a terrified young waitress, unaware that you were watching.
“It would rip the veil from your eyes, and you’d see the whole world differently. More sinister, less reliable, dark, evil. It’s not something you could get over by going to church that Sunday and seeing him sitting up on the preacher’s bench with a gentle smile on his face as always. Your whole world has shifted.
“My daughter’s spirit, so pure, white and innocent, was now stained like her dress had been in the puddle.
“She had seen a side of me that was only possible to see because it existed. And it shattered her little world.
“There is no reasoning with a 20-month-old, and that, I think, is what saved me.
“I had to face the fact I’d reserved part of my nature, my essential beinghood, for cruelty. It was there. Part of me. As real as any other part of me.
“I sat there for a long time that night while the stars rotated slowly over me. With all my denials exhausted, I was just me. Me and who I’d chosen to become. Most people saw me as a good man. An upstanding church member. A good dad. But here in the midst of all that was this cruel, angry person. A cruel, angry part as real as the upstanding church member, good dad part.”
“So that was the night everything changed?” Marcus asked.
“That was the night everything began to change. I stayed there on that rock and thought of Jesus. His healing touch. How everything He came into contact with went away healed, restored, renewed.
“I wanted that. To be done with the other. And I promised God I’d spend the rest of my life becoming a healer. A restorer. To become a man after Christ’s heart. And to do so until everything I touched could feel that.
“The next morning, I got up early, on little sleep, and just walked through the barn, noticing how the animals shied away from me. Even the feed room cat slipped back into the shadows to watch me pass, her big green eyes luminous in the early light. I walked until I got to the end of the barn and stood looking out into the calf pen. The calves were standing in knee-deep mud and manure, so they couldn’t even lie down. I hadn’t ‘found time’ to get them out to pasture.
“As I stood there, staring at those calves standing there in knee-deep semiliquid muck, I was suddenly attracted to their eyes. Their eyes were deep pools of misery. The same thing you see staring out at you from photos of trauma survivors.
“I was startled and just stood there staring. I’d never seen it before. I realized in that moment I’d never even seen them before. Up until this moment, they were not even living beings. Just so many units of input for so many units of output. Mere commodities to be raised as cheaply as possible and sold as high as possible. Mere ledger items in accounts, not living beings fresh from the hand of an infinitely wise Creator who had created them with such care and pleasure.”
The old man looked at Marcus intently, skewering him with his stare. “I realized in that moment that I was not only seeing the world incorrectly. But for the most part wasn’t even seeing the world at all. Everything around me, and I mean everything, had been converted at some level to profit-and-loss numbers. Given a personal gratification score. All the color, the wonder, the life had been drained out of everything. I was seeing the entire world on a black and white one-dimensional financial plane.
“Have you ever been . . .?” He paused as if unsure of wanting to use the example. “Have you ever been to town with someone, maybe a driver, who looks at every woman merely as a walking body? Who grades every passing lady on his own personal pleasure scale as if each had no value except for his own personal gratification?”
Marcus nodded, remembering one such experience. How the driver, as he had eased through town, had kept up a running commentary on each woman he saw on the sidewalks, front lawns, and in surrounding vehicles, forcing him to see the world through his own sick twisted eyes. He had come home feeling sick and like his soul needed a bath. Then he remembered sitting at home while his faithful mom brought out the pancakes, a gentle smile on her work-lined face. Seeing his sisters slipping into their chairs, and suddenly Marcus could hear the driver’s rough smoker’s voice in his head, grading them all with off-color derogatory remarks. The lewd appreciative chuckle. Knowing what he’d say about Marcus’s mother’s work-stooped body, worn from serving others, and realizing with revulsion that this was all the driver would see. He would not see the love in those calloused hands that stayed up all night cradling a child or putting cool rags on a feverish forehead. He saw nothing. No character, no personality, no backstory. Not even a person or fellow human. Just a simple objective body and one to be sneered at. It made Marcus sick, and he had never, ever used that driver again. One such shift in perspective was enough for four lifetimes.
The old farmer glanced at Marcus and saw from the look of sick revulsion on his face that he did understand, and when Marcus nodded, he continued. “Just like some men do that to women, turning them into nothing but objects. Operating purely on base, selfish instinct. Not seeing them as people with struggles and fears, joys, and sorrows. With dreams and aspirations. Just a walking object of his potential warped satisfaction. Well,” he paused, “I was doing the same thing. Not with women but with everything else. I couldn’t see anything but a simple one-dimensional accounting ledger. Each calf, each cow, each acre representing not a living thing with needs and wants but just so many units for my financial pleasure. It had been months, maybe years, since I’d even seen my farm. I’d grown so blind through the exercise of my base instincts that I had no idea what was out there as a divinely created living thing. I realized in that moment, staring at those calves in their manure caked misery, that if I was a Father Creator who had lovingly created all this beauty, and I had a son, a son whom I loved, who could only see in it what I saw in it, I’d be deeply disappointed, even grieved, with what a small twisted dark being he’d become inside.
“I felt like I’d been kicked in the stomach. I couldn’t breathe. I just stood there holding onto the filthy iron rails of the calf pen. I can still feel the steel biting into my hand. I realized many things I’d never even considered. I’d never had the ability to see before. I really did see everything that way. My land, my animals, everything had been stripped to its most base, selfish level.
“And I realized it wasn’t only animals. Even people,” he said slowly. “Even my workers. Somewhere I’d stopped having the depth of vision into their lives as whole people. I saw them as ‘the one who gets here late’ and ‘the one who is rough on equipment.’ What did I know about their lives, their backstories, their hopes, wants, and dreams? Almost nothing,” he whispered, “almost nothing. Even . . .” Here he paused and twisted his calloused hands together as if re-experiencing the anguish, remembering. “Even my wife,” he whispered. “Even her I had, to some degree, reduced to her strengths and weaknesses. What she could do for me versus what I had to do myself, hire somebody else to do it, or do without. She’s not keeping up with paying the household bills anymore? Well, I’ll have to get my accountant to do it or do it myself at whatever my time is worth. Up until that moment, I would have stoutly denied I saw my wife that way. I would have darkly commented that anybody who even suggested it was crazy, even perverted. But in that moment, staring at those calves, I knew it was true. I didn’t even have any arguments left against it. What did I know, actually know, about her fears, dreams, desires, and inner world? Precious little. How long had it been since I’d even really tried? I couldn’t remember.”
The old man was silent for a long moment, hands gripped together, staring down at a wildflower growing by his boot. Finally, he reached down and turned the small nodding flower head toward him, staring into its silky depth, thinking. Finally, he let it go without picking it, the delicate flower head nodding again in the warm breeze.
“I knew something had to change,” he said. “Had to. I saw, clearly saw, looking at those calves, my moral character had become something sick and twisted. Perverted and detrimental. And once I saw it that way, I couldn’t unsee it. It had tainted everything I looked at, but for the first time, I could see it myself.
“I knew in that moment I could not go to stand before the Creator of all this,” he gave a sweeping motion with his hand, “the God of the universe, as the tainted sick being I’d become inside. Sure, I was a good man on the outside. An upright, Sunday school teaching, man of God. That was how people saw me, I think. I even believed it myself. But I realized none of that mattered. Who cares what people think? I simply could not continue to see the world through the lens of financial profit and loss. When money becomes our motivator, it’s not that we might be dishonest or even just get a touch sharp in our business dealings. Even if we are careful to never do those things, our perspective, our view of the world is still a false, flat, financially motivated perversion. And the way we are inside is how we will view the world, and how we view the world will shape and reshape our innermost being. I simply could not go to stand before the good Creator God as the sick, perverted thing I’d become. My inner being was corrupt, regardless of what anybody else thought, and the truly scary thing was, up until that moment I had no idea.”
He sat staring at Marcus for a long moment until the younger man looked away.
“So . . . how . . . how do you know?” Marcus asked.
“We need to ask God to reveal our motivations to us. He’s faithful and He will. Also, look at how other created beings relate to you. It seems, at least to some degree, that other living things can sense our real inner being. I don’t think that’s the first thing to look for because we can turn others toward us for some kind of personal profit or benefit, but in broad strokes, it does still serve as an indicator.”
“So, what do you do? How did you go from that to this?” Marcus gave a sweeping motion to the little farm thriving with life. From the birds building nests in the hedgerows to the fat earthworm crawling out where his heel had scuffed into the rich ground.
“Well, it didn’t happen overnight.” He smiled. “We need to realize that. Standing there that morning staring at those calves, seeing myself, my true being for the first time, I realized I simply couldn’t fix it all. I was too broke. Too far in debt. Too locked into the present system to change everything that needed changing. It felt impossible, even overwhelming. I simply didn’t have the resources to fix everything that needed fixing.”
“So, what did you do?”
He smiled. “I started. I just did the next right thing. You see, once you realize that your relationship with the rest of the created world is both a reflection of and a shaper of your innermost being, the same being that is going to stand before God, it changes your complete view of your relationship toward the world. Once you see that, you just start making different decisions. Intentionally, thoughtfully changing what can be changed today and leaving what yet cannot be changed for tomorrow. It’s the same way God works with us. A little here, a little there, something bigger tomorrow, thoughtfully crafting something beautiful out of what was once a sterile wasteland.”
For a moment, Marcus wondered whether the older man meant God’s work in his life or his own work on the farm. Then he realized the older man was making no distinction between them.
He was watching Marcus intently and seemed to read his thoughts. “That’s right,” he said. “It’s the same thing. The world we create around us reflects our real nature. Our Anabaptist forefathers were known internationally as healers of the land. They weren’t just ‘good farmers’ who got a lot of outputs. They healed the land. They did so because they were healers. They were so in tune with God’s healing, restoring presence in their lives that it permeated all their day-to-day decisions. And their day-to-day decisions healed everything they touched, even the ground.
“It’s everything. It’s in the houses we build, the gardens we tend. Everything.”
Marcus nodded wordlessly and leaned back, letting his eyes follow a meadowlark trilling high above, its lovely notes floating down to them.
“What you’ve done here is amazing.”
The old man smiled gently. “My neighbors think I’m crazy. I’ve passed up so many ‘opportunities for growth.’ Made so many sacrifices for my ‘crazy ideas.’”
“Sacrifices?” Marcus said, looking around at the beauty of the place, feeling its serenity soaking into him. “But what sacrifices?”
“By their standards, there have been plenty. While everyone around us was expanding, gobbling up the little farms, getting newer, bigger machines and building ever bigger houses and barns, I’ve been ‘stuck here’ with this little old house and barn and don’t create enough capital to expand even if I wanted to . . . which I don’t,” he smiled. “Sure, I’ve got a few more rabbits living in my hedgerows, a few more meadowlarks in my meadows, but it’s hard to put them on a ledger somewhere.”
“And that’s just the point,” Marcus said quietly.
“And that’s just the point,” he nodded. “You see, regardless of what happens to this farm someday, it was the avenue to something greater I was working on. The farm was never the end goal; it is merely a secondary creation that was part of and an extension of what I was really trying, by the grace of God, to build.
“You see,” he said, turning, “those farms the Anabaptists restored may all be gone now. Buried under a parking lot somewhere. But the characters they built while they were restoring those farms . . . that’s forever.
“They’re still out there,” he nodded toward the deep blue of the far horizon. “Still out there,” he repeated, “reaping the rewards of who they became while they were here.
“What I’ve come to realize is that every nail we drive, every furrow we plow, every seed we plant is either done to create profit or to create flourishing bounty and beauty both in the natural world and, more importantly, in our own hearts. You see, we either drive that nail, plow that furrow, plant that seed out of love for God . . . or money. And it matters . . . a lot.”
He sat a moment, then added quietly, “Sometimes I think it is about the only thing that does matter.”
“A righteous man regardeth the life of his beast: but the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel.” Proverbs 12
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Darryl Derstine lives in Holmes County Ohio with his wife and
7 children. If you have questions about stewardship and gifting,
or to request a copy of this article, you can reach Darryl or one
of the CAM Foundation team at bss@camoh.org or 330-893-4915.
Read more articles on our website at www.camf.org.
