Seeing Clearly

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Things said or done long years ago,
Or things I did not do or say
But thought that I might say or do,
Weigh me down, and not a day
But something is recalled,
My conscience or my vanity appalled.
~William Butler Yeats from “Vacillation”

photo by Emily Dieleman

We wanted to confess our sins but there were no takers.
White clouds refused to accept them, and the wind
Was too busy visiting sea after sea.
We did not succeed in interesting the animals.
Dogs, disappointed, expected an order,
A cat, as always immoral, was falling asleep.
A person seemingly very close
Did not care to hear of things long past.
Conversations with friends over vodka or coffee
Ought not be prolonged beyond the first sign of boredom.
It would be humiliating to pay by the hour
A man with a diploma, just for listening.
Churches. Perhaps churches. But to confess there what?
That we used to see ourselves as handsome and noble
Yet later in our place an ugly toad
Half-opens its thick eyelid
And one sees clearly: “That’s me.”
~Czeslaw Milosz “At a Certain Age”

photo by Nate Gibson

I have a brief confession
that I would like to make.
If I don’t get it off my chest
I’m sure my heart will break.

I didn’t do my reading.
I watched TV instead—
while munching cookies, cakes, and chips
and cinnamon raisin bread.

I didn’t wash the dishes.
I didn’t clean the mess.
Now there are roaches eating crumbs—
a million, more or less.

I didn’t turn the TV off.
I didn’t shut the light.
Just think of all the energy
I wasted through the night.

I feel so very guilty.
I did a lousy job.
I hope my students don’t find out
that I am such a slob.
~Bruce Lansky “Confession”

Norman Rockwell’s “Before the Shot”
photo by Barb Hoelle

We all have confessions we could make.
We all want to avoid admitting mistakes and failings.
We all live under the black cloud of knowing our guilt and shame.

I have plenty of opportunity to replay the many moments I’ve regretted what I said or did,
or what I could have said or did….and didn’t.
Recalling remorse is far easier and stickier
than replaying joy that seems so fleeting in my memory.

There are times when I feel both weighed down by memories
and freed at the same time.

It almost always happens while sitting in worship in church,
silently confessing how I have wronged those around me
or turned my face from God.

Yet in the next moment,
I feel the embrace of a Creator who never forgets but still forgives.
It is an overwhelming knowledge that brings me to tears every time.

It is in that moment that my joy no longer is fleeting;
it lives deeply in my cells since I, like all around me,
am created in His image.

And no, we don’t look like a toad.

God saw what He made in His image,
and it was, and still is, good –
though flawed in our own choices.
He made each of us out of love for us,
not out of regret.
We each open our heavy eyelids, see His Face
and can say, “That’s me.”

toad picture by Josh Scholten

Best of Barnstorming Photos: January/June 2026

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Thank you for following along with me
through days, weeks, months, and years ~

of sunrises and sunsets, changes of seasons,
while together, we witness time as it flows unimpeded…

Ask me no more where Jove bestows, 
When June is past, the fading rose; 
For in your beauty’s orient deep 
These flowers as in their causes, sleep. 

Ask me no more whither doth stray
The golden atoms of the day;
For in pure love heaven did prepare
Those powders to enrich your hair.
~Thomas Carew from “A Song: When June is Past”

Previous collections of “Best of Barnstorming” photos:

Summer/Fall 2025

Winter/Spring 2025

Summer/Fall 2024

Winter/Spring 2024

Summer/Fall 2023

Winter/Spring 2023

Summer/Fall 2022

Winter/Spring 2022

Summer/Fall 2021

Winter/Spring 2021

Summer/Fall 2020

Winter/Spring 2020

Summer/Fall 2019

Winter/Spring 2019

Summer/Fall 2018

Winter/Spring 2018

Summer/Fall 2017

Winter/Spring 2017

Summer/Fall 2016

Winter/Spring 2016

Summer/Fall 2015

Winter/Spring 2015

Summer/Fall 2014

Winter/Spring 2014

Best of 2013

Seasons on the Farm:

BriarCroft in Summer, in Autumn, in Winter, 
at Year’s End

A Stone Where the Crust of Time is Thin

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I went by the Druid stone 
   That stands in the garden white and lone,   
And I stopped and looked at the shifting shadows   
   That at some moments there are thrown
   From the tree hard by with a rhythmic swing,   
   And they shaped in my imagining
To the shade that a well-known head and shoulders   
   Threw there when she was gardening.

      I thought her behind my back,
   Yea, her I long had learned to lack,
And I said: “I am sure you are standing behind me,   
   Though how do you get into this old track?”
   And there was no sound but the fall of a leaf   
   As a sad response; and to keep down grief
I would not turn my head to discover
   That there was nothing in my belief.

      Yet I wanted to look and see
   That nobody stood at the back of me;
But I thought once more: “Nay, I’ll not unvision   
   A shape which, somehow, there may be.”
   So I went on softly from the glade,
   And left her behind me throwing her shade,   
As she were indeed an apparition—
   My head unturned lest my dream should fade.
~Thomas Hardy “The Shadow on the Stone”

Scarce images of life,
one here, one there,
Lay vast and edgeways;
like a dismal cirque
Of Druid stones,
upon a forlorn moor…
~John Keats from “Hyperion”

As living stones around a font today,
Rejoice with those who roll the stone away.
~Malcolm Guite from “Baptism”

hole

When Dan discovered this mighty boulder completely underground, near our family’s swing set, he decided it was to be unearthed to create our own standing stone garden close by.

Pulling out the stone took much digging and a strong tractor-pulled chain around its girth, but now here it sits, a Whatcom County sitting stone, where the crust of time is thin…

Big Rock Garden, Bellingham, WA
This dolmen is above the Irish Sea in Northern Ireland
Legananny Dolmen, Northern Ireland

Just as a signpost warns of rockfalls near a cliff-edge,
the standing stones were meant to mark a spot of danger.
A spot where … what?
Where the crust of time was thin?
Where a gate of some sort stood ajar?
~Diana Gabaldon from Outlander

Castlerigg Stone Circle in Cumbria, UK

Within That Grip Until the End of Time

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The severest pain will send you
to your bed, drop you to the floor.

The severest pain will roll you
into a fetal ball, and squeeze.

Within that grip, you might descend
into your long-abandoned core,

where, mid uncommon darkness, you
may find the door, whose opening

avails at last that lacuna
wherein the nous proves yet to be

also more spacious than heaven,
bearing also the Very God,

who is most pleased to meet you there.
~Scott Cairn “The End of Suffering” from Lacunae

Sometimes from sorrow, for no reason,
you sing. For no reason, you accept
the way of being lost, cutting loose
from all else and electing a world
where you go where you want to.

Arbitrary, a sound comes, a reminder
that a steady center is holding
all else. If you listen, that sound
will tell you where it is and you
can slide your way past trouble.

Certain twisted monsters
always bar the path—but that’s when
you get going best, glad to be lost,
learning how real it is
here on earth, again and again.
~William Stafford “Cutting Loose” from Dancing with Joy: 99 Poems

Before my fever broke,
And the pains lessened, I could actually see
Myself, in the exact center of that square.
How still it had become in my absence, & how
Immaculate, windless, sunlit. I could see
The outline of every leaf on the nearest tree,
See it more clearly than ever, more clearly than
I had seen anything before in my whole life:
Against the modest, dark gray, solemn trunk,
The leaves were becoming only what they had to be—
Calm, yellow, things in themselves & nothing
More—& frankly they were nothing in themselves,
Nothing except their little reassurance
Of persisting for a few more days, or returning
The year after, & the year after that, & every
Year following—estranged from us by now—& clear,
So clear not one in a thousand trembled; hushed
And always coming back—steadfast, orderly,
Taciturn, oblivious—until the end of Time.
~Larry Levis from The Widening Spell of the Leaves 

I did not sleep well last night —
my mind would not stop turning over and over,
my blankets twisted in turmoil,
my muscles too tense and tight.  

The worries of the day
needed serious wrestling in the dark
rather than settling forgotten under my pillow.

Yet this morning dawns anew.

I’m comforted by the rhythm
of hours starting fresh, like leaves on the trees
steadfast, orderly,
taciturn, oblivious—until the end of Time…

So today, I’ll get my hands dirty
digging a hole deep enough to hold my worries;
tomorrow I’ll forget where exactly I buried them.

Come and See: Holding On Will Set You Free

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To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples.  Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

They answered him, “We are Abraham’s descendants and have never been slaves of anyone. How can you say that we shall be set free?”

Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, everyone who sins is a slave to sin. Now a slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it forever.  So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.  I know that you are Abraham’s descendants. Yet you are looking for a way to kill me, because you have no room for my word.  I am telling you what I have seen in the Father’s presence, and you are doing what you have heard from your father.”

“Abraham is our father,” they answered.

“If you were Abraham’s children,” said Jesus, “then you would do what Abraham did. As it is, you are looking for a way to kill me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God. Abraham did not do such things. You are doing the works of your own father.”

“We are not illegitimate children,” they protested. “The only Father we have is God himself.”

Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love me, for I have come here from God. I have not come on my own; God sent me. Why is my language not clear to you? Because you are unable to hear what I say. You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies. Yet because I tell the truth, you do not believe me!  Can any of you prove me guilty of sin? If I am telling the truth, why don’t you believe me?  Whoever belongs to God hears what God says. The reason you do not hear is that you do not belong to God.”
John 8:31-47

I threatened to observe the strict decree
Of my deare God with all my power & might.
But I was told by one, it could not be;
Yet I might trust in God to be my light.
Then will I trust, said I, in him alone.
Nay, ev’n to trust in him, was also his:
We must confesse that nothing is our own.
Then I confesse that he my succour is:
But to have nought is ours, not to confesse
That we have nought. I stood amaz’d at this,
Much troubled, till I heard a friend expresse,
That all things were more ours by being his.
What Adam had, and forfeited for all,
Christ keepeth now, who cannot fail or fall.
~George Herbert “The Holdfast”


…if nature abhors a vacuum,
Christ abhors a vagueness.
If God is love,
Christ is love
for this one person,
this one place,
this one time-bound and
time-ravaged self.
~Christian Wiman from My Bright Abyss

no matter
how much
life is lived—

dandelion
pappus flies
~Francis Weeks “Unfinished”

God’s Word is full of paradox:

We do not recognize how being free to act as we wish enslaves us,
preventing the joy of communion with our Father.

We must hold on to the truth of Christ the Son’s divinity
in order to be set free from sin.

We own nothing separate from what is always His,
but in believing, we gain all He offers.

Rooted in truth, attached to the Son, nourished by the Spirit;
with one Holy Breath, we are freed to dwell with Him forever.

There are dandelions on fire everywhere I look.
Like its pappus seed released when jostled
or simply blown aloft at the moment of ripeness,
may I be the unquiet spirit
carrying His Word on fragile wings
to far corners and hidden places;
settling softly, taking root
wherever His breath takes me.

the “holdfasts” of a Virginia Creeper vine

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.

The Melt and Flow of Cut Grass

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Light and wind are running
over the headed grass
as though the hill had 
melted and now flowed.
~Wendell Berry “June Wind” from New Collected Poems

Cut grass lies frail:
Brief is the breath
Mown stalks exhale.
Long, long the death

It dies in the white hours
Of young-leafed June
With chestnut flowers,
With hedges snowlike strewn,

White lilac bowed,
Lost lanes of Queen Anne’s lace,
And that high-builded cloud
Moving at summer’s pace.
~Philip Larkin “Cut Grass” from The Complete Poems

June is the month when grass grows exponentially, taking over all open spaces and every nook and cranny

Light and wind work magic on a field of flowing tall grass. The blades of the mower lay it to the ground in green streams that course up and down the slopes. It lies orderly in stoneless cemetery rows.

Farmer’s fields are lined with rows of mown grass, a precious commodity to be harvested for the livestock to eat the rest of the year. Some of the green is bagged up like big marshmallows for easy storage and some put in silos for later in the winter.

The shorn grass is critical to the life of the animals we raise.

What was once waving and bowing to the wind is cut and crushed:
no longer bending but bent,
no longer flowing but flown,
no longer growing but mown.

At summer’s pace, while the clouds saunter overhead, grasses are stored as fodder for the beasts of the farm on those cold nights when the wind beats at the doors.

It will melt in their mouths. As we watch them chew, we’ll remember overflowing abundance of those summer days in June.

Flare Up Like A Flame

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God speaks to each of us as he makes us,
then walks with us silently out of the night.

These are the words we dimly hear:

You, sent out beyond your recall,
go to the limits of your longing.
Embody me.

Flare up like a flame
and make big shadows I can move in.

Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Don’t let yourself lose me.

Nearby is the country they call life.
You will know it by its seriousness.

Give me your hand.
~Rainer Maria Rilke “Go the the Limits of Your Longing” from Book of Hours

…you mustn’t be frightened …
if a sadness rises in front of you,
larger than any you have ever seen;
if an anxiety, like light and cloud-shadows,
moves over your hands and over everything you do.
You must realize that something is happening to you,
that life has not forgotten you,
that it holds you in its hand and will not let you fall.
Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness,
any misery, any depression, since after all
you don’t know what work these conditions are doing inside you?
~Rainer Maria Rilke from Letters to a Young Poet

We were made for difficult times such as these:
we feel things deeply,
our joys and awe and fears ~
so much so we can feel swept away.

Feelings are not the final say
yet they both motivate and immobilize us.

God has told us to be His Light in the shadows;
we will find Him if we long for Him.

Though we may feel lost,
wandering, uncertain, hopeless
He takes us by the hand and leads us through.

Grab hold and hang on tight.

A Perfect World of Moments

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The evening comes slowly over us,
over the cardinal and the wren still
feeding, over the swallows suddenly
swooping to snatch up mosquitoes

over the marsh where the green
sedge lately has a tawny tinge
over two yearlings bending long
necks to nibble hillock bushes

finally separate from their doe
mother. A late hawk is circling
against the sky streaked lavender.
The breeze has quieted, vanished

into leaves that still stir a bit
like a cat turning round before
sleep. Distantly a car passes
and is gone. Night gradually

unrolls from the east where
the ocean slides up and down
the sand leaving seaweed tassels:
a perfect world for moments.
~Marge Piercy “June 15th, 8pm” from Made in Detroit

So many fleeting moments pass by me,
a shower of raindrops disappearing into a stream —
I can’t capture and hold them.
They run through my fingers like water,
leaving behind a damp residue of remembrance.

Yet each a moment of perfection,
even as I lose my grasp on it.
Perhaps a written word or recorded photo,
elusive as the relentless flow of time itself.

A moment gifted by God,
a moment breathed,
a moment observed,
a moment vanished,
lived fully, yet never to come again.

A Witness to Dawn

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My heart is like a little bird
That sits and sings for very gladness.
Sorrow is some forgotten word,
And so, except in rhyme, is sadness.

The world is very fair to me—
Such azure skies, such golden weather,
I’m like a long caged bird set free,
My heart is lighter than a feather.

I rise rejoicing in my life;
I live with love for God and neighbor;
My days flow on unmarred by strife,
And sweetened by my pleasant labor.

Oh youth! oh spring! oh happy days,
Ye are so passing sweet, and tender,
And while the fleeting season stays,
I’ll revel care-free, in its splendor.
~Ella Wheeler Wilcox “Joy”

Veil after veil of thin dusky gauze is lifted,
and by degrees the forms
and colours of things are restored to them,
and we watch the dawn
remaking the world in its antique pattern.
~Oscar Wilde from The Picture of Dorian Gray

I believe in Christianity
as I believe that the sun has risen:
not only because I see it,
but because by it I see everything else.
~C.S. Lewis from “Is Theology Poetry?” in The Weight of Glory

Tomorrow we’ll discover
What our God in Heaven has in store
One more dawn
One more day
One day more…
~from Les Miserable

I wasn’t the only one watching the light emerging over the foothills this morning. A bird sitting atop our barn’s weathervane greeted this morning’s dawn, a silent witness, along with me.

I thought we might face the new day together, both preparing ourselves for whatever might come our way.

Yet he flew away, leaving me behind to face it on my own.

Morning without you is a dwindled dawn.
~Emily Dickinson in a letter to a friend April 1885

Great Day in the Morning

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All this he saw,
for one moment breathless and intense,
vivid on the morning sky;
and still, as he looked, he lived;
and still, as he lived, he wondered.
~Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows

Beyond Mágdalen and by the Bridge,
on a place called there the Plain,
In Summer, in a burst of summertime
Following falls and falls of rain,
When the air was sweet-and-sour of the flown fineflower of
Those goldnails and their gaylinks that hang along a lime;
. . . . . . . .
The motion of that man’s heart is fine
Whom want could not make píne, píne
That struggling should not sear him, a gift should cheer him
Like that poor pocket of pence, poor pence of mine.
. . . . . . . .
~Gerard Manley Hopkins “Cheery Beggar”

Busy old fool, unruly sun,
Why dost thou thus,
Through windows, and through curtains call on us?

Thy beams, so reverend and strong
Why shouldst thou think?
I could eclipse and cloud them with a wink,
But that I would not lose her sight so long;
If her eyes have not blinded thine,
Look, and tomorrow late…

Thou, sun, art half as happy as we,
In that the world’s contracted thus.
Thine age asks ease, and since thy duties be
To warm the world, that’s done in warming us.
Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere;
This bed thy center is, these walls, thy sphere.
~John Donne from “The Sun Rising”

My father, when he was surprised
or suddenly impressed, would blurt
“Great day in the morning,” as though
a revelation had struck him.
The figure of his speech would seem
to claim some large event appeared
at hand, if not already here;
a mighty day or luminous age
was flinging wide its doors as world
on world revealed their wonders in
the rapturous morning, always new,
beginning as the now took hold.
~Robert Morgan “Great Day in the Morning” from Terroir

Every time I open my eyes
as dawn streams through the window,
as I listen for the voice of yet another morning
while the sun rises to warm the world –

I am reminded how precious is this moment
~this “great day in the morning” ~
how intensely grateful I am
for each breath and each heartbeat
gifted to me, a cheery beggar

We are created to experience this realization:
we are, everyone of us, beloved.

We are meant to wonder breathless at this burst of summer,
to keep watch for each new dawn,
waiting to see what will happen next.