This summer, I changed my byline. Our ewes and ram went to another farmer in April, and the last lambs went to market the first week of June. I still had pasture to clip and thistles to cut down in the paddock, and I baled six acres of hay, but with that minimal field work, I didn't feel like a farmer anymore. I identified myself as living near Walters Falls.

That is about to change, which has me thinking about the way we identify who we are. What am I going to say about myself next week?

People say "once a farmer always a farmer." But bits of hay and grain don't get tracked into the house anymore. Boots that have been in the stable don't walk through the kitchen. We go feed the barn cats, but the only outside work is maintenance on the buildings and lawn along with work in the garden.

But I still watch the weather like a farmer. I drive past fields of ripe beans in the rain. I see combines and grain wagons parked and ready. I can feel the tension. Beans can't be harvested in the rain. Back in September, I crossed my fingers with every person who tried to get hay dried. I knew how thin the early cuts were, so it was needed. But I also knew how hard it was to get hay dry in the humid weather and shorter days. I watched people take the hay as haylage. I guess I qualify for "retired farmer" status.

That's the only job I've retired from though. If I said "retired farmer, minister, and writer," it would sound like I had quit all the jobs. I could go with almost the same byline and say "minister, writer, and retired farmer" but that puts minister as the first part of my identity and that doesn't feel right.

There are a couple reasons for that. First, I have never defined myself as my job. My identity has always been more than the work I do.

But second, my job is only one of the places where I work at a vision of justice and wholeness, the task of living compassion, the work of following the path of Jesus. I think about justice in my politics and in my writing. I try to live compassion with strangers I meet. Working as a minister is only part of the work of walking in the footsteps of Jesus.

Knowing that I could work at the vision I hold in other places helped me serve the vision of each congregation. I could focus on their priorities, because there were other places to work at my own.

Keeping my ego out of my job, to some extent at least, helped me remember that I could prove myself to be organized, strong, smart in other work, like running a good farm. My hope was that people would point at the church and the church people and say "Aren't they great" rather than pointing at me.

What about putting writer up front? Somehow that would feel like I was making too big a claim. I do write this column, sermons, fiction, but making that top in the byline would sound as if I am claiming to be a recognized author.

I'm still learning to write. More important, I want to remember that I write first of all for myself. Sermons always have the particular audience in mind, so they are written for others, but they are first of all mine as I work out a specific idea. It is important that the thoughts, in sermons and this column, are mine, offered for people to think about, to raise questions for them, to disagree with if they wish.

So out goes "Cathy Hird is a farmer, minister, and writer living near Walters Falls." Soon, "Cathy Hird lives near Walters Falls" will be done too. What is coming? I am aware how place affects who we are. Things will change for me as we move off the land that has grounded me for the last thirty plus years. I wonder what will shift when I don't hear spring peepers but listen instead to the rhythm of waves?

Cathy Hird lives near Walters Falls, for now.