Spring Cleaning, Mules and other things:

I was recently sorting through some old boxes of papers and things because my wife has gotten on a serious ecological and de-cluttering kick.  I am not much of one for stuff, except books and academic relics like my old notebooks and papers.  I confess; I have Old Testament notes from seminary and even Blue Book exams from Freshman English. 

While sorting, I ran across a copy of a Duke Divinity School publication.  It was a collection of student essays and poems and a few sermons.  In it I found my first (sort of) published work; a sermon on Balaam's Ass.  (whether this was Freudian or prophetic I don't know).

In it I told a story I heard from my daddy's best friend, a farmer named Ben.  Ben said that when he was a little boy he was given the job of hauling the harvested tobacco from the field to the curing barn using a mule-drawn sled.  One day, Ben tried to take a short-cut across a field and through a creek rather than following the dirt road.

The mule was fine with going across the grassy field, but seriously balked at going through the creek.  She stiffened her front legs, sat down on her back haunches and refused to move.  Ben was in big trouble.  He had to keep the full and empty sleds moving or the whole harvesting operation would grind to a halt.  He pulled the mule, he beat her with the reins and a stick, he yelled at her, he stood across the creek from her and tried to lure her across with an apple and some fresh grass.  Nothing worked.

After a while, Ben's grandfather came along, surveyed the situation and asked Ben for his assessment of the trouble.  Ben poured out his anger at that old stubborn mule.  Grandpa smiled, unhitched the mule and hooked her up to the other end of the sled and started her back across the field to the dirt road.  Then he turned to Ben and said, "Son, it ain't always the mule.  She was too smart to get into that creek because she knew she couldn't get that sled across that water and those rocks and up the other side."

"It ain't always the mule," became young Ben's new philosphy and it helped him all through his life.  Whenever he found himself in a difficult situation of conflict with others, he took a few minutes to think about his own complicity in creating a difficult situation and also made a real effort to look at things from the other person's perspective. 

"It ain't always the mule," is in the spirit of the confession, forgiveness and repentance that belong to the season of Lent.  We are called to look at ourselves and our lives and to refrain from pointing fingers and making accusations. We are called to obey Luther's good advice on the Eighth Commandment in the Small Catechism, ". . .we are to come to (our neighbors') defense, speak well of them, and interpret everything they do in the best possible light."  And remmember, "it ain't always the mule."

Delmer Chilton