Trust that there is a tiger, muscular Tasmanian, and sly, which has never been seen and never will be seen by any human eye. Trust that thirty thousand sword- fish will never near a ship, that far from cameras or cars elephant herds live long elephant lives. Believe that bees by the billions find unidentified flowers on unmapped marshes and mountains. Safe in caves of contentment, bears sleep. Through vast canyons, horses run while slowly snakes stretch beyond their skins in the sun. I must trust all this to be true, though the few birds at my feeder watch the window with small flutters of fear, so like my own. ~Susan Kinsolving “Trust”
It’s like so many other things in life to which you must say no or yes. So you take your car to the new mechanic. Sometimes the best thing to do is trust. The package left with the disreputable-looking clerk, the check gulped by the night deposit, the envelope passed by dozens of strangers— all show up at their intended destinations. The theft that could have happened doesn’t. Wind finally gets where it was going through the snowy trees, and the river, even when frozen, arrives at the right place. And sometimes you sense how faithfully your life is delivered, even though you can’t read the address. ~Thomas Smith “Trust”
When I stand at the window watching the flickers, sparrows, finches, juncos, grosbeaks, chickadees, and red-winged blackbirds come and go from the feeders, I wonder who is watching who.
They remain wary of me, fluttering away quickly if I approach with lens in hand. They fear capture, even within a camera. They have a life to be lived without my witness or participation. So much happens that I never see or know about.
I understand: I fear being captured too. I prefer to remain an enigma.
Even if only for a moment as an image preserved forever, I know it doesn’t represent all I am, all I’ve done, all I feel, all my moments put together. The birds and bees and snakes and horses are, and I am, so much more than one moment.
Only God sees us fully in every moment, witness to our freedom and captivity, our loneliness and grief, our joy and tears, our sleeping and waking, knowing our best and our worst.
And because He knows us so well and knows the address to which we will be delivered – in Him we must trust.
photo by Tomomi Gibson
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More than the fuchsia funnels breaking out of the crabapple tree, more than the neighbor’s almost obscene display of cherry limbs shoving their cotton candy-colored blossoms to the slate sky of Spring rains, it’s the greening of the trees that really gets to me. When all the shock of white and taffy, the world’s baubles and trinkets, leave the pavement strewn with the confetti of aftermath, the leaves come. Patient, plodding, a green skin growing over whatever winter did to us, a return to the strange idea of continuous living despite the mess of us, the hurt, the empty. Fine then, I’ll take it, the tree seems to say, a new slick leaf unfurling like a fist to an open palm, I’ll take it all. ~Ada Limón“Instructions on Not Giving Up”
I thought I was emptied out – hollow and irretrievable – after a long drawn out winter of difficult news, and now these cold rainy spring days forecast even more bad news happening in the world.
Yet here I am ~ here we are ~ still among the living and breathing. I am swept away by what I see greening all around me.
The landscape begins to explode with layers of color and shadow. Standing close, I too am ignited. It is impossible to witness so much unfolding life and light and not be engulfed and heartened and singed around my edges.
It lures me outside where flames of green lap about my ankles as I stroll the fields and each fresh breeze fans the fires until I’ve nothing left of myself but ash and shadow.
Consumed and subsumed.
Combusted and busted.
What a way to go.
I’ll take it. I’ll take it all.
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This post is from April 14, 2025 – about a special mare who still lives in our hearts:
Marlee has gone home this morning, far sooner than we planned. She was only twenty two, born only two months after our daughter’s birth, much too young an age for a Haflinger to die.
But something dire was happening to her over the last two weeks — not eating much, an expanding girth, then shortness of breath, and last week it was confirmed she had untreatable lymphoma.
Her bright eyes were shining to the end so it was very hard to ask the vet to turn the light off. But the time had come.
Marlee M&B came to us as a six month old “runty orphan” baby by the lovely stallion Sterling Silver, but she was suddenly weaned at three days when her mama Melissa died of sepsis.
She never really weaned from her bottle/bucket feeding humans Stefan and Andrea Bundshuh at M&B Farm in Canada. From them she knew people’s behavior, learned their nonverbal language, and understood human subtleties that most horses never learn. This made her quite a handling challenge as a youngster as it also meant there was no natural reserve nor natural respect for people. She had no boundaries taught by a mother, so we tried to teach her the proper social cues.
When turned out with the herd as a youngster, she was completely clueless–she’d approach the dominant alpha mare incorrectly, without proper submission, get herself bitten and kicked and was the bottom of the social heap for years, a lonesome little filly with few friends and very few social skills. She had never learned submission with people either, and had to have many remedial lessons on her training path.
Once she was a mature working mare, her relationship with people markedly improved as there was structure to her work and predictability for her, and after having her own foals, she picked up cues and signals that helped her keep her foal safe, though she had always been one of our most relaxed “do whatever you need to do” mothers when we handled her foals as she simply never learned that she needed to be concerned.
Over the years, as the herd has changed, Marlee became the alpha mare, largely by default and seniority, so I don’t believe she really trusted her position as “real”. She tended to bully, and react too quickly out of her own insecurity about her inherited position. She was very skilled with her ears but she was also a master at the tail “whip” and the tensed upper lip–no teeth, just a slight wrinkling of the lip. The herd scattered when they saw her face change. The irony of it all is that when she was “on top” of the herd hierarchy, she was more lonely than when she was at the bottom and I think a whole lot less happy as she had few grooming partners any more.
She accompanied us to the fair for a week of display of our Haflingers year after year after year — she could be always counted on to greet the public and enjoy days of braiding and petting and kids sitting on her back.
The day she started formal under saddle training under Val Bash was when the light bulb went off in her head–this was a job she could do! This was constant communication and interaction with a human being, which she craved! This was what she was meant for! And she thrived under saddle, advancing quickly in her skills, almost too fast, as she wanted so much to please her trainer.
She had, at the time, an unequaled record among North American Haflingers. She was not only regional champion in her beginner novice division of eventing as a pregnant 5 year old, but also received USDF Horse of the Year awards in First and Second Level dressage that year as the highest scoring Haflinger.
With Jessica Heidemann she did a “bridleless” ride display in front of hundreds of people at the annual Haflinger event, and with Garyn Heidemann as instructor, she became an eventing pony for a young rider whose blonde hair matched Marlee’s. She galloped with abandon in the field on bareback rides with Emily Vander Haak and became our daughter Lea’s special riding horse over the last few years.
She had a career of mothering along with intermittent riding work, with 5 foals –Winterstraum, Marquisse, Myst, Wintermond, and Nordstrom—each from different stallions, and each very different from one another.
This mare had such a remarkable work ethic, was “fine-tuned” so perfectly with a sensitivity to cues–that our daughter said: “Mom, it’s going to make me such a better rider because I know she pays attention to everything I do with my body–whether my heels are down, whether I’m sitting up straight or not.”
Marlee was, to put it simply, trained to train her riders.
We will miss her high pitched whinny from the barn whenever she heard the back door to the house open. We will miss her pushy head butt on the stall door when it was time to close it up for the night. We will miss that beautiful unforgettable face and those large deep brown eyes where the light was on.
What a ride she had for twenty two years, that dear little orphan. What a ride she gave to many who trained her and who she trained over the years. Though I never climbed on her back, what joy she gave me, the surrogate mom who loved and fed her, unable to resist those bright eyes, which are now closed in peace.
Photo Montage by Emily Vander Haak
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When they found him on the other side of the lake, they asked him, “Rabbi, when did you get here?”
Jesus answered, “Very truly I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw the signs I performed but because you ate the loaves and had your fill.Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For on him God the Father has placed his seal of approval.”
Then they asked him, “What must we do to do the works God requires?”
Jesus answered, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.”
So they asked him, “What sign then will you give that we may see it and believe you? What will you do? Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written: ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’”
Jesus said to them, “Very truly I tell you, it is not Moses who has given you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven.For the bread of God is the bread that comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”
“Sir,” they said, “always give us this bread.” John 6: 22-34
The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things — the beauty, the memory of our own past — are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshipers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never visited. ~C.S. Lewis from “Reflections”
At present we are on the outside of the world, the wrong side of the door. We discern the freshness and purity of morning, but they do not make us fresh and pure. We cannot mingle with the splendours we see. But all the leaves of the New Testament are rustling with the rumour that it will not always be so. Some day, God willing, we shall get in. When human souls have become as perfect in voluntary obedience as the inanimate creation is in its lifeless obedience, then they will put on its or rather that greater glory of which Nature is only the first sketch. ~C.S. Lewis from The Weight of Glory
I know this hunger the disciples express… Even when I am fully sated, still I ask for more.
By loving and longing for more, I am looking for what is always there, but settle for a reflection rather than the thing itself. Lord, help me wait at your door.
The beauty of anticipation, confident of fulfillment to come my thirstiness slaked my hunger satisfied.
I am reading slowly through the words in the Book of John over the next year alongside my church family. Once a week, I will invite you to “come and see” what those words might mean as we explore His promises together.
Maybe it ruins the story to say at the start that no one was hurt the day Scotty Forester swung open the door of the family car, climbed up, put one hand on the wheel and, then, while pushing and pulling on buttons and knobs, he found and released
the brake, and it started, the silver-blue Mercury, to roll down Robin Street, best street in the neighborhood for sledding, for coasting on a bike with arms waving above your head, Scotty gaining speed on the long sweep of that block, heading
toward the intersection, then into it, then speeding through, the car beginning to slow as the street leveled out, although, toward the end, Scotty going fast enough to jump the curb before stopping, three feet from a gas pump.
Maybe knowing the ending ruins this story, but sometimes we need a break from dread. We need to know that the car did not crash, the child did not die. We need to briefly forget that we live in a world where a car is gaining speed, and
no one seems to be at the wheel. We need to be more like the dog Scotty drives past, who barks, and runs in circles as he barks some more, driven by some circuitry we have lost for loving this dangerous life, living it. ~Suzanne Cleary “Mercury”
A certain day became a presence to me; there it was, confronting me — a sky, air, light: a being. And before it started to descend from the height of noon, it leaned over and struck my shoulder as if with the flat of a sword, granting me honor and a task. The day’s blow rang out, metallic — or it was I, a bell awakened, and what I heard was my whole self saying and singing what it knew: I can. ~Denise Levertov “Variation on a Theme By Rilke”
Faith is not the clinging to a shrine but an endless pilgrimage of the heart. Audacious longings, burning songs, daring thoughts, an impulse overwhelming the heart, usurping the mind- these are all a drive towards serving Him who rings our hearts like a bell. It is as if He were waiting to enter our empty, perishing lives. ~Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel from Man Is Not Alone: A Philosophy of Religion
In the end, coming to faith remains for all a sense of homecoming, of picking up the threads of a lost life, of responding to a bell that had long been ringing, of taking a place at a table that had long been vacant. ~Malcolm Muggeridge
I saw the tree with lights in it. I saw the backyard cedar where the mourning doves roost charged and transfigured, each cell buzzing with flame. I stood on the grass with the lights in it, grass that was wholly fire, utterly focused and utterly dreamed.
It was less like seeing than like being for the first time seen, knocked breathless by a powerful glance.
I had been my whole life a bell, and never knew it until at that moment I was lifted and struck. ~Annie Dillardfrom Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
Too much of the time, I worry. I fixate on what I believe I can control in life as I’m barreling down the hill in this runaway car to an unknown fate.
It seems to me no one is at the wheel, but I am wrong.
The end of my story is clear to God so I can hand over my fear and dread to His merciful care.
How might I appear to my Maker each day? -my utter astonishment at waking up, -my breathless gratitude despite each out-of-control moment, -my pealing resonance as like a bell, I’m struck senseless by life.
Lyrics My father could use a little mercy now The fruits of his labor Fall and rot slowly on the ground His work is almost over It won’t be long and he won’t be around I love my father, and he could use some mercy now
My brother could use a little mercy now He’s a stranger to freedom He’s shackled to his fears and doubts The pain that he lives in is Almost more than living will allow I love my brother, and he could use some mercy now
My Church and my Country could use a little mercy now As they sink into a poisoned pit That’s going to take forever to climb out They carry the weight of the faithful Who follow ‘em down I love my Church and Country and they could use some mercy now
Every living thing could use a little mercy now Only the hand of grace can end the race Towards another mushroom cloud People in power, well They’ll do anything to keep their crown I love life, and life itself could use some mercy now
Yea, we all could use a little mercy now I know we don’t deserve it But we need it anyhow We hang in the balance Dangle ‘tween hell and hallowed ground Every single one of us could use some mercy now Every single one of us could use some mercy now Every single one of us could use some mercy now
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For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. 2 Corinthians 4:6
…there must take place that struggle no human presumes to picture: living, dying, descending to rescue the just from shadow, were lesser travails than this: to break through earth and stone of the faithless world back to the cold sepulchre, tearstained stifling shroud; to break from them back into breath and heartbeat, and walk the world again, closed into days and weeks again, wounds of His anguish open, and Spirit streaming through every cell of flesh so that if mortal sight could bear to perceive it, it would be seen His mortal flesh was lit from within, now, and aching for home. He must return, first, in Divine patience, and know hunger again, and give to humble friends the joy of giving Him food—fish and a honeycomb. ~Denise Levertov from “Ikon: The Harrowing of Hell”
People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within. ~ Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
Christ forced open a door that has been locked since the death of the first man. He has met, fought and beaten the king of death. Everything is different because he has done so. ~C.S. Lewis from Miracles
In my clinical work over four decades, I met people living with dark times. It is rare for a patient to come to clinic because all is well.
They come because they are beaten down, struggling to keep going, running out of fuel, hungry for calm as they are blown about by the storms of life.
It was my challenge to stoke and feed the inner light hidden deep within each person, fighting back the darkness as I sorted out how to mend their unwellness.
I’m reminded Christ came back from the harrowing darkness of hell to be joyfully met by His disciples, who fed His hunger. Then He cooked breakfast for them, forever offering Himself as sanctuary from the darkness He had known.
So too, we are fed, bathing in His glow.
Lyrics Jesus Christ, inner light, let not our own darkness conquer us. Jesus Christ, inner light, enable us to welcome your love. Jesus Christ, in our search for you, Bring us into the warmth of your light. Jesus Christ, inner light, enable us to welcome your love.
Lyrics: Through love to light! Oh, wonderful the way That leads from darkness to the perfect day! From darkness and from sorrow of the night To morning that comes singing o’er the sea. Through love to light! Through light, O God, to thee, Who art the love of love, the eternal light of light!
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All day I try to say nothing but thank you, breathe the syllables in and out with every step I take through the rooms of my house and outside into a profusion of shaggy-headed dandelions in the garden where the tulips’ black stamens shake in their crimson cups.
I am saying thank you, yes, to this burgeoning spring and to the cold wind of its changes. Gratitude comes easy after a hot shower, when my loosened muscles work, when eyes and mind begin to clear and even unruly hair combs into place.
Dialogue with the invisible can go on every minute, and with surprising gaiety I am saying thank you as I remember who I am, a woman learning to praise something as small as dandelion petals floating on the steaming surface of this bowl of vegetable soup, my happy, savoring tongue. ~Jeanne Lohmann “To Say Nothing But Thank You”
Returned from long travel, I sit in the familiar, sun-streaked pew, waiting for the bread and wine of holy Communion. The old comfort does not rise in me, only apathy and bafflement.
Let the light of late afternoon shine through chinks in the barn, moving up the bales as the sun moves down.
Let the cricket take up chafing as a woman takes up her needles and her yarn. Let evening come.
Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned in long grass. Let the stars appear and the moon disclose her silver horn.
Let the fox go back to its sandy den. Let the wind die down. Let the shed go black inside. Let evening come.
To the bottle in the ditch, to the scoop in the oats, to air in the lung let evening come.
Let it come, as it will, and don’t be afraid. God does not leave us comfortless, so let evening come. ~Jane Kenyon “Let Evening Come”
We resist nightfall in our lives.
We fear the dark of violence and threats of war, the suffering of innocent people who are harmed directly, and those harmed by lack of resources which go to bomb-making and dropping.
I wish I could remain forever sunshiny, vital and irreplaceable, living each moment with the energy I feel at dawn.
Yet I know that the forward momentum of time inevitably winds me down to twilight.
We are not alone in our need to catch our breath, to be still and grateful for each little thing – each petal, each taste, each sun ray illuminating the dark.
What shall we do about this? we ask our God.
We savor what we will, with gratitude, as evening comes. There is no stopping it as our lungs fill with the breath of God, our Creator.
We are not left comfortless.
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And God held in his hand A small globe. Look, he said. The son looked. Far off, As through water, he saw A scorched land of fierce Colour. The light burned There; crusted buildings Cast their shadows; a bright Serpent, a river Uncoiled itself, radiant With slime. On a bare Hill a bare tree saddened The sky. Many people Held out their thin arms To it, as though waiting For a vanished April To return to its crossed Boughs. The son watched Them. Let me go there, he said. ~R.S. Thomas “The Coming”
…for each of us has known the pleasure of spring, the way it feels for something closed
to open: the soft, heavenly weather of arrival. ~Faith Shearin from “Geese” from Moving the Piano
Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, Or what’s a heaven for? ~Robert Browning from “Andrea del Sarto”
“Let me go there” And You did. Knowing what awaited You.
Your arms out wide to embrace us who try to grasp a heaven which eludes us.
This heaven, Your heaven You brought down to us, knowing our terrible need.
You wanted to come here, knowing all this.
Holding us firmly within your wounded grip, You the Son handed us back to heaven.
A sorrowful holy season of opening and emptying: from cloistered tight to reaching beyond our grasp. Or what’s a heaven for?
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…by Easter Tuesday, we often find ourselves back in the shadows.
The cancer is still there. That financial struggle is not resolved. The depression returns. That relationship is still broken. We might ask, “If Christ is risen, why does the world still feel so broken?” This is not a lack of faith; it’s the honest lament of believers who are learning to walk in the tension of the now and the notyet.
This sacred tension calls us to rejoice and weep on Easter Tuesday.
Rejoice that Jesus is risen. We have a living hope. We are promised an eternal inheritance, which is being kept for us by the one who purchased it with his own life. But embrace the grief too. Sadness is the healing emotion of the soul. Sorrow is a gift from God that allows our souls to breathe and cope in a world that aches, longing for restoration. ~Brian Croft from “Embracing a Sacred Tension”
For you are not a God who delights in wickedness; evil may not dwell with you. 5 The boastful shall not stand before your eyes; you hate all evildoers. 6 You destroy those who speak lies; the Lord abhors the bloodthirsty and deceitful man. Psalm 5: 4-6
To invite Jesus to cleanse the temple of our hearts is not to ask for guilt and shame. It is to ask for healing. The same Lord who overturned tables did so not to destroy and humiliate, but to reclaim and restore. He interrupts only that which obstructs. He removes only that which hinders life and worship. His cleansing is never punitive; it is always redemptive. ~Scott Sauls from “What Would Jesus Overturn in Your Life?”
To live coram Deo is to live one’s entire life in the presence of God, under the authority of God, to the glory of God. To live in the presence of God is to understand that whatever we are doing and wherever we are doing it, we are acting under the gaze of God.
There is no place so remote that we can escape His penetrating gaze. To live all of life coram Deo is to live a life of integrity. It is a life of wholeness that finds its unity and coherency in the majesty of God.
Our lives are to be living sacrifices, oblations offered in a spirit of adoration and gratitude.
A fragmented life is a life of disintegration. It is marked by inconsistency, disharmony, confusion, conflict, contradiction, and chaos. Coram Deo … before the face of God. …a life that is open before God. …a life in which all that is done is done as to the Lord. …a life lived by principle, not expediency; by humility before God, not defiance. ~R.C. Sproulfrom “What Does “coram Deo” mean?”
On this Easter Tuesday, we cannot escape His gaze… all of us, all colors, shapes and size, even the leadership of our nation. We are created in His image, imago dei, so He looks at us as His reflections in the mirror of this troubled world.
What we do, how we speak and write, how we treat others – reflects the face of God.
Jesus is the embodied temple who brought His sacrifice to the people, rather than people coming to the temple with their sacrifices.
I cringe to think how hard we try to hide from His gaze.
Yet some don’t make a pretense of hiding – they make it quite public: our elected leader chooses Easter to publish a vile message filled with profanity, name-calling and threats, then gives a fragmented and disintegrated Easter speech, to celebrating families with children, with inconsistency, dishonesty, disharmony, confusion,conflict, contradiction, and chaos.
We drown together in the mud of our mutual guilt and lack of humility. All that we do to others, we do to God Himself.
We must be on our knees asking for cleansing, for the temples of our hearts to be overturned, our corruption scattered, our sorrows lifted.
Jesus comes to cleanse, repair, reclaim and restore – His mission to save us from ourselves.
Kind of takes one’s breath away.
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