“Assured of your salvation by the unique grace of our Lord Jesus Christ” is the heartbeat of the gospel, joyful liberation from fear of the Final Outcome, a summons to self-acceptance, and freedom for a life of compassion toward others.”
~Brennan Manning (April 27, 1934-April 12, 2013) from The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up and Burnt Out
Frogs plutter and squidge—and frogs beat the air with a recurring thin steel sliver of melody.
Crows go in fives and tens; they march their black feathers past a blue pool; they celebrate an old festival.
A spider is trying his webs, a pink bug sits on my hand washing his forelegs.
I might ask: Who are these people?
~Carl Sandburg from “Just Before April Came”
The roofs are shining from the rain,
The sparrows twitter as they fly,
And with a windy April grace
The little clouds go by.
Yet the back yards are bare and brown
With only one unchanging tree–
I could not be so sure of Spring
Save that it sings in me.
– Sara Teasdale, April
Here we are, closing in on mid-April and it has been a week of heavily drifting snowstorms in the plains, tornado weather in the south, and blustering wind and rain in the northwest. I am not so sure of Spring nor is anyone else.
Yet it sings in me. Yes it sings.
The calendar does not lie, nor does my nose. The pollen counts are rising despite the rains and as I step outside in early dawn, I can catch the slightest fragrance of just-opening cherry and apple blossoms in the orchard. Within a week there will be sweet perfume in the air everywhere and the fruit trees become clothed in white puffy clouds of blossom before bursting full into green.
In defiance of the calendar, our oak trees cling stubbornly to their brown bedraggled fall leaves as if ashamed to ever appear naked, even for a week. In May they will go straight from brown to green without a moment of bare knobby branches.
Even so, it sings in me. Yes it sings.
A morning bird symphony tunes up ever earlier including the “scree” and chatter from bald eagles high up in the fir trees surrounding our house. Nesting has begun despite the wet and cold and wind because their nest is the secure home that calls them back, again and again, year after year.
Like them, it sings in me. Yes it sings.
I rise opening like a bud, I dress my nakedness to cover up my knobbiness, I wander about outside exulting in the free concert, I manage to do chores despite the distractions — this routine of mine which is so unchanging through the calendar days becomes glorious gift and privilege.
Hopefulness sings in me in Spring. Yes it sings.
The poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.
G.K.Chesterton
Until now, that is…
It may be gouda for us to know
that cheddar is better
It would take a swiss kick to the asiago
to dubliner our efforts to string the praises of gorgonzola
It could be a muenster of a havarti
to provolone the colby truth
Edam, what a mozzarella we’ve made for ourselves
ever since we got caught leyden and didn’t know jack
But it is all up to quark-y feta; ask for parmesan
and it may gruyere on me
Ricotta go now~a farmer is waiting for me
Skin was earth; it was soil. I could see, even on my own skin, the joined trapezoids of dust specks God had wetted and stuck with his spit the morning he made Adam from dirt. Now, all these generations later, we people could still see on our skin the inherited prints of the dust specks of Eden.
~Annie Dillard from An American Childhood
A goodly portion of every clinic day is spent looking at my patients’ skin. Most of the time, it is a quick assessment of color, moisture and texture before I go on to concentrate on the chief complaint that brought the patient in. However, skin concerns frequently are the chief complaint — perhaps as straight forward as an abrasion or laceration, or a puzzling bump, an oozing sore, a total body itch, or an ominous pigmented lesion.
I feel like Sherlock Holmes when I focus on a patient’s outer covering in magnified detail. I assume the identity of detective, inspector and archeologist all at once, trying to discern what is taking place on or beneath a piece of dermatologic geography.
No matter what the diagnosis or the treatment plan, I’m continually awestruck by the topography of skin. This supple landscape is made up of trapezoidal specks connected one to another, just like the soil upon which I tread. Skin cells are in a state of constant renewal, the dead and discarded falling off to rejoin the dust from which it came.
This elaborate matrix of collagen and keratin is the foundation for our scaffolding and our shroud.
His spit provides the superglue: the rivets, the bolts and the nails that bind us together for a lifetime.
We are created to be far more than a mere pile of random dust specks.
1. A MILKWEED
Are we to look at cherry blossoms only in full bloom,
the moon only when it is cloudless?
To long for the moon while looking on the rain,
to lower the blinds and be unaware
of the passing of the spring –
these are even more deeply moving.
Branches about to blossom
or gardens strewn with flowers
are worthier of our admiration.
~Yoshida Kenko
I know this longing as I know my own back yard~
waiting for a view of the mountain from my kitchen window
There are more days its snowy peak is hidden
than days it is blossom-stark floating cloud-like above the horizon of our barn roof
Visitors to the farm are too often told “the mountain is right there”
as I point to a bank of nondescript gray clouds
My loving and longing for it, my knowing it is always there, in hiding,
moves me more than the days it is simply given to me.
The beauty of anticipation,
confident of fulfillment to come
my thirstiness
to be slaked
my hunger to be
satisfied.
Let the rain kiss you
Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops
Let the rain sing you a lullaby
The rain makes still pools on the sidewalk
The rain makes running pools in the gutter
The rain plays a little sleep song on our roof at night
And I love the rain.
Barnstorming 