The trashing mill came to our farm, when I was a child. It was powered by a big gray whirling belt running between the tractor engine and the trasher. The trasher was at least twice the length of the tractor and it towered over us children. It was made of wood on the outside with a few huge monsters inside to do the trashing.

The local farmers came with the machine and gave their time. Some rode on the machine, feet dangling over the sides with two farmers on the bumper of the tractor. Others rode their bikes and threw them agains the railway wall, as they ran to get the operation going.

The inners of the trasher made a great noise when it was in action, beating the grain out of the oat straw. Voices could be barley heard, as it did its work.  The grain came out in the back side into three bags hanging there. Sonnie Hagerty showed us the grain filling the bags. Lifting a full bag looked like a struggle. The straw was used later for bedding for the cows in the winter months.

The chaff came out on the ground to a depth of about a foot. We loved playing in this chaff, a bonus to us kids, from the work of the day. When the great machine went away down our avenue, a great silence descended, as we dove into the chaff, pale yellow and inviting. 

The following year the tillage was barley. The chaff of this grain was long and was prickly and got into our clothes and itched us. It was October and we had our wool sweaters on. How surprised we were to have to deal with the barley “chaff.” We walked away from it with red faces from the scratchiness of it all. The wind blew the chaff away in the changing windy weather. 

Stories come from my clients and from myself that relate to trashing. My client got a difficult text. All kinds of things fell out in front of her and it took a while before she was able to see the bags of grain of her own worth safely put up again. She got into the drum of her mind and found only her own monsters.

When something difficult like this happened to me I have to get out my binoculars to try and see myself go by and see what is up.

A text can feel like the Babylonians are coming or have come and can swamp me until I come upon the fact that it is all in the great plan of God. I do not want to know when I am the source of interpersonal conflict and I need adjusting. That trashing, what I experience as trashing, is some thing that adjusts me. 

“For I know the plans I have for you, Plans to prosper you and to not harm you, to give you hope and a future.” The difficult thing in my personal plan prospers me. We prefer to think we are right and the other person wrong. We can be especially fearful of being hurt, holding on to defenses that block any Love from expressing itself.

We became a more developed soul, as we wrestle with our minds, putting our monsters back in their place.

Can we maintain our three bags full of the golden grains of Love and Life. Because we looked for the life in the situation, including enduring a good thrashing, we are strengthened.

The difficult things I endure, changes me, so that I can be stewed in the pot of life and that I have a better understanding of how to be a better carrier of the Spirit of Love and have that be firmly in place before I leave this magnificent earth place – having figured out how to Love God and our neighbor as myself. 

When those hands come at night, all night and slap us, then some layers are slapped off of us, so that we let go of what is between us and this beautiful lovingness, this feeling spreading in your chest, coming through the hands, ripe grains, Life, from the Tree of Life, falling into the song bags of our selves. Thoughts beaten off of us so that we can open the Heart.

When I heard the swords of my Babylonians, a twenty four hour time of prayer, singing, exercising, meditating reduced my tension and brought me a dream.

I dreamed I was sitting at a table with my difficult person, who now is very pleasant to me and I am surprised at their sweetness. I had a pile of papers and I am trying to decipher, which are mine and which belong to the other person. That is my work. 

The complex of energy, my personal complex has to be looked into by me. Taking focus off the other person will help. It is not mine to figure out the other person, only in so far as I can say that is not mine. I have to burrow into my psyche to see which thoughts and habits are in me and are less than loving and that holds down the genuine heart love waiting behind the door.

In a later dream the papers are scattered on the floor. I am letting the opportunity to deal with my stuff slip away from me. 

I did a mandala of the dream with the papers on the table and the four people around the table. 

I like the balance and unity. The colors and shape speak of being defended, an interpretation gleaned from reading mandalas, both shape and color, from my MARI training to be a teacher. 

Open my heart to the Face of God, the Love of God, to the Way of God, to the healing of God, to the Plans of God, to the Pillars of God, to a future spanning out beyond the skein of this time on the earth, for learning in the now. 

May all our thrashings come together, strengthening and balancing us. May all our Heart Love mushroom up and bring us an awareness of our grains of Love, having that which feeds us love and that which allows us to give the Bread of the Angels to others. 

Love from Rose Marie