Month: December 2009

Advent Meditation–Dayspring

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It never fails to surprise and amaze: the sunrise seems to come from nowhere.  There is bleak dark, then a hint of light over the foothills in a long thin line, and the appearance of subtle dawn shadows as if the night needs to cling to the ground a little while longer, not wanting to relent and let us go.  Color appears, erasing all doubt: the hills begin to glow orange along their crest, as if a flame is ignited and is spreading down a wick.  Ultimately the explosion occurs, spreading the orange pink palette unto the clouds, climbing high to bathe the glaciers of Mount Baker and onto the peaks of the Twin Sisters.

Dayspring. From dark to light, ordinary to extraordinary. This gift is from the tender mercy of our God, now glowing in the light of the new Day, guiding our feet on the pathway of peace.  We no longer must stumble in the shadows.

Luke 1:78-79

Panning for Gold

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Van Gogh Painting, Oil on Canvas on Panel Nuenen: August, 1885 Kröller-Müller Museum Otterlo, The Netherlands, Europe F: 97, JH: 876

Preparing the feast
Begins months in advance,
The seed catalogs perused,
Order forms sent,
Rattling envelopes arrive in the mail
With ounces of dormant potential within.

The soil is carefully prepared
Once it warms, and clings together just so when picked up,
Dug and turned over and raked and smoothed,
Measured, traced and rowed with pie crust perfection
Ready for seeds patted lovingly in place.

Potatoes halved, quartered, eyes up to the sky
Nestled gently in the valleys and mounded into hills
The greenhouse seedlings hardened then set out in the big world
To fare on their own or die trying.
The brown garden bed undulates, pregnant, expectantly germinating.

Green shoots arrive shortly before the weeds
Or maybe simultaneously in a race to the finish
To see which wins the battle of the plot.
Every root for itself competing for light,
For space, for moisture, for an uncertain future.

Thinning and weeding becomes ruthless,  with healthy plants
Plucked and discarded, becoming compost to the survivors.
Sun, then showers, cloudy days, then sun again,
Forcing blossoms, enticing honeybees, spreading pollen
Deep and wide.

In the heart of summer, there is flourish in the fruiting
Of every plant, an overwhelming plenty for canning and freezing,
Drying, storing and preserving,  later opening summer in gratitude
For a cold winter’s day meal.
Others are waiting, in the chilling ground, for later harvest.

Preparing for the feast means the carrots must be released
From their fast root hold, withered green tops tossed aside
Beets bulging leave soil for pot, coloring water burgundy
Brussel sprouts line stalks like chubby soldiers in formation
Squash is cut open, spilling its seedy stringy inner guts.

Onion layers peel like paper to reach into the flavorful heart
Kale leaves with ruffly edges, multicolored and stiff
Then digging for potatoes, searching the ground for dying vines
Spading cautious, wary of slicing or spearing spuds asleep
Eyes closed tight for winter.

Once a nest of potatoes is found, then reach in deep
With hands only,  panning the dirt for the red, white and gold
Nuggets that materialize like magic out of rivers of brown dust
Running through the fingers, finding large, small and in between
Then placed lovingly in the garden basket

Next to go from soil to sink to pot to plate with
Steaming perfection, a feast of dreams realized
From last winter’s catalogs, after some sun, some rain,
A little muscle and plenty of heart to work the dirt that clings
Unforgotten, brown, and stubborn, under every fingernail.

on a theme of “Brown”

Advent Meditation–Carpenter’s Son

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The Carpenter's Son; Artist: Edward Emerson Simmons 1888-1889.

Born of the Holy Spirit, but raised by a simple man who knew a common trade.  Subjected to derision because he was only a “carpenter’s son” highlights the arrogance and ignorance of his townspeople who resented his bold teaching.  To learn at the hands of a man who could design in his head, then draw out the plan, then put together the materials, and create, construct, frame and finish using only his muscles and innate knowledge:  this was the best education possible for a child meant to teach the people of the world to build His Kingdom on earth.   As a child of a carpenter myself, and knowing scores of carpenters’ children, I share the wonder of watching something be built from an idea, then shaped and formed by expert hands from an amorphous block of wood.   Without the carpenter, I remain undefined, formless, purposeless.  It is time for the cuts to be made, the hammer and nails that connect me to something larger than myself, and finally the sanding and refining that finishes me.

Matthew 13:55

Under a Mother’s Wings

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My mother, Elna Schmitz Polis,   returned home a year ago this morning, gently picked up and carried away by the Lord before dawn. I’ve thought of her every day in the last year, missing her but knowing she is filled with peace now, not worry.  She was just over 88 1/2 years old, and had lived much of her life anticipating the day of her death with some apprehension, having almost been called home at the age of 13 from a ruptured appendix, before antibiotics were an option. That near-miss seemed to haunt her, filling her with worry that it was a mistake that she survived that episode at all. Yet she thrived despite the anxiety, and ended up, much to her surprise, living a long life full of family and faith.

She was born in the isolation of a Palouse wheat and lentil farm in eastern Washington, in a two story white house located down a long lane and nestled in a draw between the undulating hills. It was a lonely childhood which accustomed her to solitude and creative play inside her mind and heart. All her life and especially in her later years, she would prefer the quiet of her own thoughts over the bustle of a room full of activities and conversation.

Her childhood was filled with exploration of the rolling hills, the barns and buildings where her father built and repaired farm equipment, and the chilly cellar where the fresh eggs were stored after she reached under cranky hens to gather them. She sat in the cool breeze of the picketed yard, watching the huge windmill turn and creak next to the house. She helped her weary mother feed farm crews who came for harvest time and then settled in the screened porch listening to the adults talk about lentil prices and bushel production. She woke to the mourning dove call in the mornings and heard the coyote yips and howls at night.

As a young woman, she was ready to leave the farm behind for college, devoting herself to the skills of speech, and the creativity of acting and directing in drama, later teaching rural high school students, including a future Pulitzer Prize winning poet, Carolyn Kizer. She loved words and the power and beauty they wielded.

Marrying my father was a brave and impulsive act, traveling by train to the east coast only a week before he shipped out for almost 3 years to the South Pacific to fight as a Marine in WWII. She must have wondered about the man who returned from war changed and undoubtedly scarred in ways she could not see or touch. They worked it out, as rocky as it must have been at times, and in their reconciliation years later, I could see the devotion and mutual respect of life companions who shared purpose and love.

As a wife and mother, she rediscovered her calling as a steward of the land and a steward of her family, gardening and harvesting fruits, vegetables and children tirelessly. When I think of my mother, I most often think of her tending us children in the middle of the night whenever we were ill; her over-vigilance was undoubtedly due to her worry we might die in childhood as she almost did.

She never did stop worrying until the last few months. As she became more dependent on others in her physical decline, she gave up the control she thought she had to maintain through her “worry energy” and became much more accepting about the control the Lord maintains over all we are and will become.

I know from where my shyness comes, my preference for birdsongs rather than radio music, my preference for naps, and my tendency to be serious and straight laced with a twinkle in my eye. This is my German Palouse side–immersing in the quietness of solitude, thrilling to the sight of the spring wheat flowing like a green ocean wave in the breeze and appreciating the warmth of rich soil held in my hands. From that heritage came my mother and it is the legacy she has left with me. I am forever grateful to her for her unconditional love and her willingness to share the warmth of her nest whenever we felt the need to fly back home and shelter, overprotected at times but safe nonetheless, under her wings.

Grandma Elna meeting her newest greatgrandson Noah Bianchi 5 days before she died

Advent Meditation–Bright and Morning Star

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There are a few moments between the blackness of a long dark night–something we have plenty of this time of year–and the renewal of the sunrise splash of color that spreads across the sky like spilled paint jars of pink and orange.   Illuminated in those few moments is a transitional dawn-light or daybreak rather than the evening transition of twilight, and that is when the morning “stars” of Mercury and Venus become most visible.  They don’t “twinkle” or appear effervescent like the night stars.  They are solid radiant globes heralding the Sun to come.

The “star” that guides and leads, that points to home, that illuminates the birth of God come to earth as man, that presages the New Day to come.  We are witnesses if we arise early enough, peering through the clouds of everyday troubles, and prepare, ready for the dawning to come.

 

Revelation 22:16