January 2014 – Page 3

Letting Time Take Me

January 11, 2014 barnstormingblog2 Comments

…there is something illicit, it seems,
about wasted time,
the empty hours of contemplation when a thought unfurls,
figures of speech budding and blossoming,
articulation drifting like spent petals
onto the dark table we all once gathered around to talk and talk,
letting time get the better of us.
_Just taking our time_, as we say.
That is, letting time take us.
~Patricia Hampl from “A Search for the Sublime”

I don’t “let” time do anything.
It allows me to be swept along,
unfurling, budding and blossoming,
but today drifting wholly spent.

So time takes me where it wishes,
and even gets the better of me
and so it shall ever be.

Partly Tuber

January 10, 2014 barnstormingblog2 Comments

Some of us . . . are darkness-lovers.
We do not dislike the early and late daylight of June,
but we cherish the gradually increasing dark of November,
which we wrap around ourselves in the prosperous warmth
of woodstove, oil, electric blanket, storm window, and insulation.

We are partly tuber, partly bear.
Inside our warmth we fold ourselves
in the dark and its cold –
around us, outside us,
safely away from us;
we tuck ourselves up
in the long sleep
and comfort of cold’s opposite,
warming ourselves
by thought of the cold,
lighting ourselves by darkness’s idea.
~Donald Hall from “Season at Eagle Pond”

I confess
loving the dark as much as light.
Drawn without alarm clock
away from my pillow,
I awake early
covered in inky blackness
of unlit January mornings.

An uncharted day
before sunrise,
so raw with ripening,
belongs to no one else.
Only in darkness do I
sprout so boldly.

Shade of His Hand

January 9, 2014 barnstormingblog1 Comment

Is my gloom, after all,
Shade of His hand,
outstretched caressingly?
~Francis Thompson from “The Hound of Heaven”

When I’m down, discouraged, overwhelmed,
I focus inward,not out and beyond my own troubles.

If I were to look outside myself
I would see there is a reasoning
for my darkness.

His hand hovers over ready
to hold me when I fail and fall
so I’m unable to see past
to the broad expense of light
that is the rest of His glory,
not hidden, just invisible to me

at this moment.

Freefall

January 8, 2014January 8, 2014 barnstormingblog2 Comments

As swimmers dare
to lie face to the sky
and water bears them,

as hawks rest upon air
and air sustains them,

so would I learn to attain
freefall, and float
into Creator Spirit’s deep embrace,

knowing no effort earns
that all-surrounding grace.
~Denise Levertov

This week three local families find themselves in freefall,
losing a child to mangled metal,
one moment so much alive,
the next irretrievably gone.

It must feel like solid ground has dropped away
like those dreams of falling
when wakened by startled thud
upon a pillow.

May God’s embrace
cushion their hard landing,
His unearned grace sufficient
to keep them afloat in a vast ocean of tears.

Not a Single Inch

January 7, 2014January 7, 2014 barnstormingblog7 Comments

Nobody in the hospital
Could tell the age
Of the old woman who
Was called Susanna

Because she had no visitors
I would stop by to see her
But she was always sleeping

One day I was beside her
When she woke up
Opening small dark eyes
Of a surprising clearness

She looked at me and said
You want to know the truth?
I answered Yes

She said it’s something that
My mother told me

There’s not a single inch
Of our whole body
That the Lord does not love

She then went back to sleep.
~Anne Porter from “Susanna”

We tend to forget who made us,
including the funny looking feet,
the crooked teeth, the wrinkles, the scars, the split ends —
We see only imperfection
when our Creator sees dust made manifest
in His image.

He loves us even when we do not love ourselves,
hiding our nakedess.
He loves us even when we cover up with gloss
of polish, perms, plucking and plastic surgery,
hiding beneath our cosmetic masks.

He loves every inch
because we are His opus, a masterpiece.
He knew what He was doing.

Swaddling Shroud

January 6, 2014January 6, 2014 barnstormingblog2 Comments

…the scent of frankincense
and myrrh
arrives on the wind,
and I long
to breathe deeply,
to divine its trail.
But I know their uses
and cannot bring myself
to breathe deeply enough
to know
whether what comes
is the fragrant welcoming
of birth
or simply covers the stench of death.
These hands
coming toward me,
is it swaddling they carry
or shroud?

And yet you remind us
that the wisdom
of the womb
points toward the truth
of the tomb:
that what contains us
for a moment
or a season
with your touch
will finally give way
to freedom.
~Jan Richardson from Night Visions –searching the shadows of Advent and Christmas

The Christmas season is a wrap, put away for another year.
However, our hearts are not so easily boxed up and stored as the decorations and ornaments of the season.
Our troubles and concerns go on; our frailty a daily reality.
We can be distracted with holidays for a few weeks, but our time here slips away ever more quickly.

The Christmas story is not just about light and birth and joy to the world.
It is about how swaddling clothes became a shroud that wrapped Him tight.
There is not one without the other.
God came to be with us; delivered so He could deliver.
Born so He could die in our place
To leave the linen strips behind, neatly folded.

Christmas: the unwrapping that frees us forever.

January 5, 1993

January 5, 2014January 5, 2014 barnstormingblogLeave a comment

I embarrass our daughter annually on January 5 with her birthday story because it was so dramatic (for us!) and though she was the main character in the drama, it is all myth to her. Lea is 21 today! Inconceivable! Yet it is so and we celebrate the Author of the drama that ensured she would have many birthdays to come. Happiest of birthdays to you, Lea!

Barnstorming

I couldn’t sleep that snowy stormy night even though I was not in earnest labor, and safely tucked into a hospital bed on the Labor and Delivery unit, my husband sleeping soundly in the other bed in the room. It had been plenty harrowing just getting to the hospital in a northeaster, getting stuck in a snow drift, and being dug out by a bulldozer. I knew our long-awaited third baby, over a week overdue, would be born the next day, blizzard or no blizzard, and then as soon as I could stand up and walk, we would head right back to the farm to our sons, where our neighbors were staying with them. At least that’s what I had planned.

It didn’t work out that way. Not even close.

This baby wasn’t going to enter the world without a little more drama. Instead of stoically agreeing along with me…

View original post 101 more words

Our Tired Earthliness

January 4, 2014January 4, 2014 barnstormingblog3 Comments

Immortal brilliance of presage
In any dark day’s iron age
May come to lift the hair and bless
Even our tired earthliness,

And sundown bring an age of gold,
Forged in faerie, far and old,
An elsewhere, and an elfin light,
And kings rise eastward in the night.
~Robert Fitzgerald “For Epiphany”

The night sky was still dim and pale.
There, peeping among the cloud wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains,
Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while.
The beauty of it smote his heart,
as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him.
For like a shaft, clear and cold,
the thought pierced him that in the end
the Shadow was only a small and passing thing:
there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.
~J.R.R. Tolikien, The Return of the King

The star represented a hope
too long elusive;
so weary and with so much need
they headed out for unknown lands
to follow a light seemingly
beyond their reach.

Yet they found its source;
they could touch His earthliness.
No shadow cast of darkness,
and no iron nails
could quell the beauty
of its brilliance.

A Bell is Rung

January 3, 2014 barnstormingblog1 Comment

“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 was still ringing. I had been my whole life a bell, and never knew it until at that moment I was lifted and struck.”
~Annie Dillard from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

When that sense of belonging takes place,
when our eyes and heart have opened
and we know we have found home,
our joyful ringing never ceases.

We have been lifted and struck by coming to faith.

Blossoming for Him

January 2, 2014 barnstormingblog4 Comments

He who has come to men
dwells where we cannot tell
nor sight reveal him,
until the hour has struck
when the small heart does break
with hunger for him;

those who do merit least,
those whom no tongue does praise
the first to know him,
and on the face of the earth
the poorest village street
blossoming for him.
~Jane Tyson Clement “With Hunger for Him”

In the somber dark of a new year’s winter morning,
when there seems no hope for sun or warmth,
I hunger for the comfort
only He can bring.
He calls me forth from where I have hidden,
buried face down in my troubles,
committed only to complain.

If I grab hold, He lifts me
from the frozen ground
into the light,
breaking through to
burst with gratitude
into blossom.

I come from Pacific Northwest farmers going back four generations: the daughter of teachers, married to a son of farmers. We have raised three children who are making a difference in the world in their professional lives and as people of faith.

While keeping my eyes and heart open to the extraordinary things around me, I have worked over forty years as a family physician as well as a steward of the small farm we call home.

What I harvest in words or pictures finds its way here.
I welcome your messages and comments sent to emilypgibson@gmail.com

…whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. … And the God of peace will be with you. Philippians 4: 8 -9

What is my only comfort in life and in death? That I am not my own, but belong—body and soul, in life and in death—to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ.
~Heidelberg Catechism

Instructions for living a life:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.
~Mary Oliver

To do the useful thing, to say the courageous thing, to contemplate the beautiful thing: that is enough for one man’s life.
~ T.S. Eliot

A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.
~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

To live is so startling, it leaves little room for other occupations.
~Emily Dickinson

I believe in God 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

Remember this. When people choose to withdraw far from a fire, the fire continues to give warmth, but they grow cold. When people choose to withdraw far from light, the light continues to be bright in itself but they are in darkness. This is also the case when people withdraw from God.
~ Augustine

Hello, sun in my face. Hello you who made the morning and spread it over the fields…Watch, now, how I start the day in happiness, in kindness.
~ Mary Oliver

The seed is in the ground. Now may we rest in hope while darkness does its work.
~ Wendell Berry

Nothing will sustain you more potently than the power to recognize in your humdrum routine the true poetry of life.~ Sir William Osler

But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts, and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.
~George Eliot’s final sentence in Middlemarch

If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.
~ E.B. White

Geese appear high over us, pass, and the sky closes. Abandon, as in love or sleep, holds them to their way, clear, in the ancient faith: what we need is here. And we pray, not for new earth or heaven, but to be quiet in heart, and in eye clear. What we need is here.~~ “The Wild Geese” Wendell Berry

Let it come, as it will, and don’t be afraid. God does not leave us comfortless, so let evening come.
~ Jane Kenyon from “Let Evening Come”

You can only come to the morning through the shadows.~ J.R.R. Tolkien

Look for what you notice but no one else sees. ~Rick Rubin

If you want to identify me, ask me not where I live, or what I like to eat, or how I comb my hair, but ask me what I am living for, in detail, ask me what I think is keeping me from living fully for the thing I want to live for. ~ Thomas Merton

This life therefore is not righteousness,
but growth in righteousness,
not health but healing,
not being but becoming,
not rest but exercise.
We are not yet
what we shall be,
but we are growing toward it.
The process is not finished
but it is going on.
This is not the end
but it is the road.
~Martin Luther

Ten times a day something happens to me like this – some strengthening throb of amazement – some good sweet empathic ping and swell. This is the first, the wildest and the wisest thing I know: that the soul exists and is built entirely out of attentiveness.
~ Mary Oliver

It is not your love that sustains the marriage —
but from now on, the marriage that sustains your love.
~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer

She has done what she could…
~Mark 14:8

What do you mean? Do you wish me a good morning, or mean that it is a good morning whether I want it or not; or that you feel good on this morning; or that it is a morning to be good on?~ J. R. R. Tolkien from The Hobbit

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