The most important person in any picture is the light.
~Edward Manet
Not exactly dark, but without shade,
the sharp purity of morning has been
diminished. I read somewhere that
“only full light reveals shadow.”
Moving through fog, living
is a blindness, a yielding
of my layered ignorance to the mist.
~Luci Shaw from “Without a Shadow”
Ice burns, and it is hard to the warm-skinned to distinguish one
sensation, fire, from the other, frost.
~A. S. Byatt from Elementals: Stories of Fire and Ice
Compared to the rest of the country, our winter has been quite moderate — no heavy snows, no days of sub-zero temperatures, no ice storms.
Yet 10 days of northeast arctic winds have begun to take a toll: my face and hands are reddened just as if I’ve been in the sun too long.
Whether we are consumed by flames or frozen, resulting in ashes or ice — how it will feel is the same.
Yet ashes remain ashes, only and forever after, mere dust.
If, encased in ice, a thaw may restore,
then frozen memory sears like sculpture
meant to melt, ceasing to imprison.
Mt. Baker sunrise
One sees great things from the valley, only small things from the peak.
— G. K. Chesterton
It is all a matter of perspective and what we see from where we stand:
it takes great strength and determination to climb out of the valley.
Yet much of what gives life meaning and instills hope
is how we live when we find ourselves at a low point.
from top of Mt Baker at sunrise by Josh Scholten
“We live in a world of theophanies.
Holiness comes wrapped in the ordinary.
There are burning bushes all around you.
Every tree is full of angels.
Hidden beauty is waiting in every crumb.
Life wants to lead you from crumbs to angels,
but this can happen only if you are willing
to unwrap the ordinary by staying with it long enough
to harvest its treasure.”
~Macrina Wiederkehr from “A Tree Full of Angels”
I’m following the crumb trail most days;
my problem, like so many others I know,
is to realize the crumbs satisfy more than a seven course meal.
It may take longer to get full, but I need the exercise,
and the hungrier I get, the better the crumbs taste.
If I feast on crumbs,I will become wholly ordinary wrapped in holy.
Within hours of yet another celebrity dying too soon and too young from an overdose of drugs, actor Jim Carrey tweeted:
“Dear Philip, a beautiful beautiful soul.
For the most sensitive among us the noise can be too much.
Bless your heart.”
What struck me was not how only a few syllables can be eloquent and meaningful, so personal yet universal,
but that it contained a blessing.
A blessing. Imagine that. So old fashioned and unexpected.
Imagine how much difference something so simple can make in a life, within a sorrowing and empty heart.
We have closed our hearts to receiving blessing and we have closed our mouths to giving blessing.
We ignore the sacred life we have been given; we abuse the temples of our bodies in which we dwell.
We turn away from Him who made our hearts beat to begin with.
If there is no blessing in our lives from a power greater than us, from our Father to His children, from one hurting person to another, then our hearts remain hollow.
We fill those vacant spaces with whatever seems handy at the moment, and for too too many, the fastest is a chemical filling. It feels so right — for a moment or two.
And then it is gone, and too often, so are we.
But blessings from a heart, to a heart:
everlasting, self perpetuating,
filling and pulsing out to refill again.
Eventually when hearts are stilled,
they will not cease to be
emptied of blessing.
I prefer winter and fall,
when you feel the bone structure of the landscape–
the loneliness of it,
the dead feeling of winter.
Something waits beneath it,
the whole story doesn’t show.
~Andrew Wyeth
This time of year I am,
like the trees,
reduced to bare bones,
stark and vulnerable.
The cold wind of winter
buffets with bitter fingers.
Yet hope courses like sap
moving inside wooden veins,chilled and sluggish.
Waiting to waken, budding,
tips of naked limbs,
it hints at a story
yet to reach fruition.
Every happening, great and small,
is a parable whereby God speaks to us,
and the art of life is to get the message.
~Malcolm Muggeridge
Every day is filled with stories told
and I feel too rushed to listen,
to take time for transformation
by what I see or feel or hear,
no matter how seemingly
small and insignificant.
When I pause
for the parable,
it makes all the difference:
A steaming manure pile
becomes the crucible for my failings
transformed into something useful,
a fertilizer to be spread
to grow what it touches.
An iced-over water barrel
reflects distant clouds
above me as I peer inside,
its frozen blue eye focused
past my brokenness
to mirror a beauty
far beyond.
An old barn roof awaiting repair
has gaps torn of fierce winds,
allowing rain and snow
and invading vines inside
what once was safe and secure,
a sanctuary exposed to storms.
I am looking.
I am listening.
Feeling in need of repair.
To be changed, forever changed.
Barnstorming 