We want to reach the kingdom of God,
but we don’t want to travel by way of death.
And yet there stands Necessity saying:
‘This way, please.’
Do not hesitate to go this way,
when this is the way that God came to you.
~ Augustine
We too easily forget;
we are not asked to bear more
than God endured for us.
We follow a well-worn path
bearing the footprints of Him
who has come to lead us home.
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 perceive from where we stand:
it takes great strength and determination to climb the peak,
and look down upon the valley left far below
where even mountains seem diminished.
Yet what gives life meaning,
what encourages our faith,
and instills hope
is how we thrive while dwelling
deep in the darkest of valleys while
gazing up at the dream-like peaks.
For some reason we like to see days pass,
even though most of us claim we don’t want to reach our last one for a long time.
We examine each day before us with barely a glance and say,
no, this isn’t one I’ve been looking for,
and wait in a bored sort of way for the next, when we are convinced,
our lives will start for real.
Meanwhile, this day is going by perfectly well-adjusted, as some days are,
with the right amounts of sunlight and shade,
and a light breeze scented with a perfume made from the mixture of fallen apples,
corn stubble, dry oak leaves, and the faint odor of last night’s meandering skunk.
~Tom Hennen from “The Life of a Day”
I am ashamed to admit I squander time shamelessly,
waiting for that particular day I always hoped for,
tossing off these mundane but precious hours
as somehow not measuring up or special enough.
The shock is:
there have been over thirty years
of such days on this farm,
one passing by after another,
emerging fresh each morning from the duff and stuff of life,
and every single one has ended up being exactly what I’m looking for.
As through a long-abandoned half-standing house
only someone lost could find,
which, with its paneless windows and sagging crossbeams,
its hundred crevices in which a hundred creatures hoard and nest,
seems both ghost of the life that happened there
and living spirit of this wasted place,
wind seeks and sings every wound in the wood
that is open enough to receive it,
shatter me God into my thousand sounds.
~Christian Wiman “Small Prayer in a Hard Wind”
May I,
though sagging and graying,
leaning perilously,
be porous enough
to allow life’s daily gusts
blow through me
without being pushed over
in a heap.
Then the wind,
filling my every crack
and defect,
may cause me to sing.
Someday when I shatter,
collapsing into pieces,
it will be amidst
a mosaic of praises.
For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers. I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves.
And even more I revere them when they stand alone. They are like lonely persons.
Nothing is holier, nothing is more exemplary than a beautiful, strong tree. When a tree is cut down and reveals its naked death-wound to the sun, one can read its whole history in the luminous, inscribed disk of its trunk:
in the rings of its years,
its scars,
all the struggle,
all the suffering,
all the sickness,
all the happiness and prosperity stand truly written,
the narrow years and the luxurious years,
the attacks withstood,
the storms endured.
And every young farmboy knows that the hardest and noblest wood has the narrowest rings, that high on the mountains and in continuing danger the most indestructible, the strongest, the ideal trees grow.
Trees have long thoughts, long-breathing and restful, just as they have longer lives than ours. They are wiser than we are, as long as we do not listen to them. But when we have learned how to listen to trees, then the brevity and the quickness and the childlike hastiness of our thoughts achieve an incomparable joy. Whoever has learned how to listen to trees no longer wants to be a tree. He wants to be nothing except what he is.
That is home. That is happiness.
~ Hermann Hesse, Bäume. Betrachtungen und Gedichte
Solitary trees, if they grow at all, grow strong.
~Winston Churchill
A wind has blown the rain away
and blown the sky away
and all the leaves away,
and the trees stand.
I think, I too, have known autumn too long.
~e.e. cummings
Trees are Earth’s endless effort to speak to the listening heaven.
~Rabindranath Tagore
Why are there trees I never walk under but large and melodious thoughts descend upon me?
~Walt Whitman
I don’t know why, of all the trees that peppered this hill over a century ago, this one was spared. Perhaps she was the tallest at the time, or the straightest, or just didn’t yield to the ax as the others did.
She has become the sentinel on our farm, a focal point:
the marker by which all else is measured.
She is unchanging as the backdrop of clouds and seasons, color and light shift and swirl.
Visitors climb the hill to her first before seeing anything else on the farm, to see the expanse that she surveys. Her branches oversee gatherings of early Easter morning worship, summer evening church services, winter sledding parties, and Fourth of July celebrations.
This one special tree stands alone, apart from the others, but is never lonely – not really. She shares her top with the eagles and hawks, her shadow with humans and other critters in her century-long vigil with people all around the globe in these photos.
Never lonely — no, never.
This is her home. This is happiness.
No matter
No matter what happens between the sunrise and the sunset
No matter what happens between the sunset and the sunrise
It doesn’t matter.
What matters:
the rise and the set
the set and the rise
keep coming
through troubles
and sickness
joy and heartbreak
birth and death
loss and gain
keep coming
the earth continues
to turn
to grant
a new start
a new day
then settles
serenely
to offer
a peaceful sleep
a quiet night
which matters so much
more than anything in between
so much more
so much
so
The day is cold, and dark, and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
The vine still clings to the mouldering wall,
But at every gust the dead leaves fall,
And the day is dark and dreary.
My life is cold, and dark, and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
My thoughts still cling to the mouldering Past,
But the hopes of youth fall thick in the blast,
And the days are dark and dreary.
Be still, sad heart! and cease repining;
Behind the clouds is the sun still shining;
Thy fate is the common fate of all,
Into each life some rain must fall,
Some days must be dark and dreary.
~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s “The Rainy Day”
One thing I notice about raindrops
(in a lifetime of paying attention)
~each holds within an inner light carried to earth from the heavens~
from remembered Sun above the clouds.
The Sun is still up there somewhere
and I just was sprinkled with it.
Drenched in fact.
Barnstorming 