Expletives included

You've been warned.

To quote Incubus, the country sky "resembles a backlit canopy with holes punched in it." A lot of holes, constellations I've never seen, like spilled salt across a black table, converging into warriors, ladles, beasts.

I get the nickname Spiderman because Ryan lets it slip to the Rhodes that, while we were sardine-packed in a Cork bar weeks ago for Patrick's birthday, a dude hits on me and says, "You should've been in Spiderman!" I pretend, as I have done in Dupont Circle, that I have no idea of what he's doing, and proceed to discuss web-slinging with the dude. Graciously, Monnica mentions something about my girlfriend back home, but it does no good. Phil, Ben, and Chris find this hilarious.

Weeks later, Ryan goes to the kitchen at the wrong time. He deposits his plate in the sink and comes back into the living room when he pauses, realizes he's forgotten something, and kind of turns back toward the food room. Phil says, in jolly vulgarity, "C'mon, Fat Fuck, get some more." So Ryan is Fat Fuck, despite his being the slenderest male on the farm apart from Dusty, the greyhound. Of course, all of this vulgarity is done with much good hearted joking and back-and-forth wittiness, so humorous that I think I hear Major––the most ornery of our billygoats––chuckling through his mouthful of hay and goat profanities.

Phil and Chris are incredible. When they lived in England, they took in foster kids, many of whom cried their heavy hearts away into the warm, absorbent coat of a loving wolfhound. When several goats are born––and Anglo Nubian goats can have anywhere from one to five kids––some are kept, some are sold, and several more are donated to an animals-instead-of-cash program similar to the Heifer Project; we watch a Discovery Channel program on Tanzania, and play "Where's Waldo" with the Anglo Nubian goats, seeing if any bear the Rhodes surname (though the one we spot isn't theirs). They are critical of military involvement we all should be critical of, saying "What right did [the US] have to be in Vietnam... The Brits [and UN] to be in Korea... England to be in the Falkland Islands?" Indeed, why did we try to play parent to these areas? Anyone with kids knows that kids don't always do what we want them to do (even when we think it's best for them). And they tend to diverge from some opportunities we set up by virtue of the parent setting it up. To make it worse, the U.S. and U.K. are not the most beloved of parents.

They are incredible because they make us a part of their family and never ask us to do something that they wouldn't do right beside us or in our place. Phil says what he means with a colorful honesty that is both blunt and endearing and, often, hilarious. Hence our admiration when he puts his foot down on bladder cancer and says, "I'm gonna fucking beat it," because the alternative is unlivable. Hence the humility when he says to Ryan, "Usually, when it comes to Christians, I don't give a fuck. But you and Adam, you're okay."

Our ministry is to love people where they are and share our joy, planting seeds and watering them and realizing God is the only one who can make things grow. Too often, we forget in ministry that we are all human, that we have common truths to our common lives. We love, we touch, we hope, we are impassioned... These are the truths of our common lives, which every being can relate to, even if they sound different in the vernacular.

Farrier works on Fred

We're stymied for a moment because Fred is gigantic and no, he's not self-conscious. He's a horse, and this time his invasion of space is purposeful, unlike the time we were looking at two satellites circumnavigating the skies and stuff and he snuck up behind us, hoping we won't notice. I had turned and thought, "That's a gigantic chestnut goat!" But it wasn't. "Get back, Fred, we're coming to finish mucking your stall," I said. "Okay Adam," he said in that slow, goofy tone he always says. For some reason, he always sounds like Eeyore to me.

In the normal world, Fred is standing tripod, tied up his door in the aisle of the goatshed, his free leg angled into the black lap apron of a master farrier, his apprentice drinking coffee with us, watching. Fred takes it well as the farrier batters the shoes to fit on an anvil with a glassbreaking, metallic clang, and as the nails come through the bottom of his hoof and come out the front and sides. The farrier also cuts off excess hoof, and apparently the nails are like driving a pin through the dead end of a fingernail, if ever someone wanted to do that.

The farrier quiets Fred a few times before looking squarely at Bramble, who always sways with a quiet energy while she waits to be milked. "I miss the goat that was here," he said, referencing the castrated male––he pulled a cart for Chris, in addition to being a pet without billygoat stink––who died this year. The farrier continues: "He used to tease and mess with Fred and keep him occupied."

Ryan is awed to witness a master and apprentice team, passing down the blacksmithing trade in much the same way as it was done in the Middle Ages. For me, I'm treated to see the rural farming community which Wendell Berry writes about, that which is sadly in decline in the United States. This is the community where local farmers provide local food, local schools provide local education, and local tradespeople whose livelihoods depend upon meeting the business and personal needs of the community. Wendell Berry laments that, in his old Kentucky town where he grew up, the farms are becoming more mechanized and we are caring for land less, the farmers are moving away, and that the schools, veterinarians, etc. are no longer local and serving just that community, but one of these may be miles away and serve many small towns. There are many other points to bring up about Berry's thoughts on this agricultural mechanization and diaspora, but chief among my issues is, when we don't have community we don't have common history, or, worse, we don't have common jokes!

The farrier, though not always the promptest hand on the clock, jokes with Phil and Chris, gets updates on the kids, and answers their questions about his wife and what they've been up to. Apparently, Chris tells me later, the male goat to which he referred earlier used to nibble on Fred and vice versa, because that's the way the only two dudes in the goatshed scratched their issues.

The billys

The billy goats stink with the smell of a hormonal middle school boy. It’s a terrible smell, that thick smell of musk and something pungent that I can’t name in the goat world; in the middle school boy world is Axe. The only difference between the two worlds is that when goats cast such a scent to the four winds, the lady-goats pay attention, but when the middle school boy coats his pits, arms, and shirts in Axe or Tag, the avalanche of ladies that the commercials promise do not come, though they may see a few while their camp counselor puts them outside while they apply the stuff.

Most of the billys are dear, though I try not to touch them (or anything they’ve touched), lest I smell like them. Mancha and Solomon, who are so small that Phil has to get a stepping-box for them in breeding season, are in the same pen and wait for me, their front legs dangling over their pen, like old friends who don’t mind being close. Monty is big and stands on his pen across from the goatshed braying with what can only be, “Lady! Give me a lady!” Standing where he is, he is framed picturesquely by the Irish countryside.

Major, on the other hand, is a miserable old cuss. He charges at me every time I come into his pen, just to see if he can make me flinch. Phil curses at him. I choose to act like a basketball player who has just ripped someone’s shot: “And what, Major?! And what?!” Major may not be, but I think Monty is impressed.

In other news, Cork city is flooded with the heaviest rain in decades, which caused the River Lee to burst its banks. Businesses and the hospital are flooded, but we are on a hill, and it reminds me of growing up in Florida and barely escaping flood after flood after flood, the backyard filling up with water, hermit crabs, and – if we’re lucky – the American alligator.