Thank you for visiting this page often, with your heart open to the ever-changing seasons. Your encouragement keeps me looking for beauty in words and images to share each day.
Here’s to another year passed by and yet another to come, full of blessings yet to be discovered…
Previous collections of “Best of Barnstorming” photos:
Whatever harm I may have done In all my life in all your wide creation If I cannot repair it I beg you to repair it,
And then there are all the wounded The poor the deaf the lonely and the old Whom I have roughly dismissed As if I were not one of them. Where I have wronged them by it And cannot make amends I ask you To comfort them to overflowing,
And where there are lives I may have withered around me, Or lives of strangers far or near That I’ve destroyed in blind complicity, And if I cannot find them Or have no way to serve them,
Remember them. I beg you to remember them
When winter is over And all your unimaginable promises Burst into song on death’s bare branches. ~Anne Porter “A Short Testament” from Living Things.
While this end of the year’s darkness lingers, beginning too early and lasting too late, I find myself hiding in my own wintry soul, knowing I have too often failed to do what is needed when it is needed.
I tend to look inward when I need to focus outside myself. I muffle my ears to unhear supplicating voices. I turn away rather than meet a stranger’s gaze.
I appeal to God who knows my darkness needs His Light, who unimaginably promises buds of hope and warmth and color and fruit will arise from my barest branches.
He brings me forth out of hiding, to be impossibly transformed.
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About suffering they were never wrong, The old Masters: how well they understood Its human position: how it takes place While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along; How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting For the miraculous birth, there always must be Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating On a pond at the edge of the wood: They never forgot That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer’s horse Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry, But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green Water, and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky, Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on. ~W.H. Auden “Musée des Beaux Arts”
Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, c.1555 (oil on canvas) by Bruegel, Pieter the Elder (c.1525-69); Musees Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Brussels, Belgium; “Census in Bethlehem” by Pieter Bruegel -Musees Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Brussels, Belgium; “Massacre of the Innocents” by Pieter Bruegel
…as you sit beneath your beautifully decorated tree, eat the rich food of celebration, and laugh with your loved ones, you must not let yourself forget the horror and violence at the beginning and end of the Christmas story. The story begins with the horrible slaughter of children and ends with the violent murder of the Son of God. The slaughter depicts how much the earth needs grace. The murder is the moment when that grace is given.
Look into that manger representing a new life and see the One who came to die. Hear the angels’ celebratory song and remember that sad death would be the only way that peace would be given. Look at your tree and remember another tree – one not decorated with shining ornaments, but stained with the blood of God.
As you celebrate, remember that the pathway to your celebration was the death of the One you celebrate, and be thankful. ~Paul Tripp
God weeps when tragedy and suffering happens.
Such evil comes not from God yet humankind expects it, walking dully past, barely noticing. It is simply part of existence – easier to not stop and feel the pain or get involved.
But God does not walk past our hurt and trouble, does not ignore, nor pretend to not see or hear our cries.
Only God glues together what evil has shattered. Only God could become the Man who loves us enough to take our suffering upon His own shoulders — becoming forsaken so that we are not.
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I want to be a passenger in your car again and shut my eyes while you sit at the wheel,
awake and assured in your own private world, seeing all the lines on the road ahead,
down a long stretch of empty highway without any other faces in sight.
I want to be a passenger in your car again and put my life back in your hands. ~Michael Miller “December”
Up north, the dashboard lights of the family car gleam in memory, the radio plays to itself as I drive my father plied the highways while my mother talked, she tried to hide that low lilt, that Finnish brogue, in the back seat, my sisters and I our eyes always tied to the Big Dipper I watch it still on summer evenings, as the fireflies stream above the ditches and moths smack into the windshield and the wildlife’s red eyes bore out from the dark forests we flew by, then scattered like the last bit of star light years before. It’s like a different country, the past we made wishes on unnamed falling stars that I’ve forgotten, that maybe were granted because I wished for love. ~Sheila Packa “Driving At Night” from The Mother Tongue
The moon was like a full cup tonight, too heavy, and sank in the mist soon after dark, leaving for light
faint stars and the silver leaves of milkweed beside the road, gleaming before my car.
Yet I like driving at night… the brown road through the mist
of mountain-dark, among farms so quiet, and the roadside willows opening out where I saw
the cows. Always a shock to remember them there, those great breathings close in the dark. ~Hayden Carruth from “The Cows at Night”
Some of my most comfortable childhood memories come from the long ride home in the car at night from holiday gatherings. My father always drove, my mother humming “I See the Moon” in the front passenger seat, and we three kids sat in the back seat, drowsy and full of feasting. The night world hypnotically passed by outside the car window. I wondered whether the rest of the world was as safe and content as I felt at that moment.
On clear nights, the moon followed us down the highway, shining a light on the road.
Now as a driver at night, transporting grandchildren from a family gathering, I want them to feel the same peaceful contentment that I did as a child. As an older driver, I don’t enjoy driving at night, especially dark rural roads in pouring rain. I understand the enormous responsibility I bear, transporting those whom I dearly love and want to keep safe.
In truth, I long to be a passenger again, with no worries or pressures – just along for the ride, watching the moon and the world drift by, knowing I’m well-cared for.
Despite my fretting about the immense burden I feel to make things right in a troubled world, I do realize: I am a passenger on a planet that has a driver Who feels great responsibility and care for all He transports through the black night of the universe. He loves me and I can rest content in the knowledge that I am safe in His vigilant hands. I am not the driver – He knows how to safely bring me` home.
I see the moon, it’s shining from far away, Beckoning with ev‘ry beam. And though all the start above cast down their light, Still the moon is all that I see And it’s calling out, “Come run a way! And we’ll sail with the clouds for our sea, And we’ll travel on through the black of the night, ‘til we float back home on a dream!” The moon approaches my window pane, stretching itself to the ground. The moon sings softly and laughs and smiles, and yet never makes a sound! I see the moon! I see the moon! Part A And it’s calling out, “Come run a way! And we’ll sail with the clouds for our sea, And we’ll travel on through the black of the night, ‘til we float back home on a dream!” Part B I see the moon, it’s shining from far away, Beckoning with ev‘ry beam. And though all the stars above cast down their light, Still the moon is all that I see ~Douglas Beam
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One life, George learns, touches so many other lives. Far from a failure, his life was the glue that held together his family, his business, and his community. In the end, George embraces life, and the people of Bedford Falls gather around him in love, donating the money to restore the Building and Loan that had helped them to achieve their own simple dreams of freedom, independence, and dignity.
George Bailey neither does that which feels good nor asserts his own narrow vision of himself and his role in society. He accepts the responsibility that is placed upon his shoulders and allows himself to be shaped and defined by the needs of others around him. Rather than change the world to suit his own self-centered desires, he changes himself to adapt to the true calling that is upon him.
George Bailey does more than delay gratification. He embraces his true and essential identity and purpose and is strengthened to perform the work for which he was created. ~Louis Markos “Christmas With Capra: Classic Films for Our Troubled Times”
“ZuZu’s Petals” ~Lessons from “It’s a Wonderful Life”~
Our children had to be convinced Watching black and white holiday movies Was worthwhile~ This old tale and its characters Caught them up right away From steadfast George Bailey to evil Mr. Potter- They resonate in our hearts.
What surprised me most Was our sons’ response to Donna Reed’s Mary: ~how can we find one like her? (and they both did!) Her loyalty and love unequaled, Never wavering…
I want to be like her for you. When things go sour I won’t forget what brought us together In the first place. I’m warmth in the middle-of-the-night storm When you need shelter. I’m ZuZu’s petals in your pocket When you are trying to find your way back home.
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There’s nothing romantic about the Christmas story. If anything, it offers a slice of a brutal world in which a child is born on the street, so to speak, with next to nothing in the way of rights and security, and not even a home.
He whose birthday we celebrate at Christmas said, even as a grown man, “I have nothing. I am nowhere at home. Even at night, I have no place to rest or lay my head”.…But now this man from Nazareth comes to us and invites us to mirror God’s image, and shows us how. He says: you too can become light, as God is light. Because what is all around you is not hell, but rather a world waiting to be filled with hope and faith. ~Jörg Zink, from Türen zum Fest.
The Christmas Feast is already a fading memory, And already the mind begins to be vaguely aware Of an unpleasant whiff of apprehension at the thought Of Lent and Good Friday which cannot, after all, now Be very far off. But, for the time being, here we all are… ~W.H.Auden from “For the Time Being: A Christmas Oratorio”
As we drove down the freeway through Seattle yesterday for a Christmas gathering of far-flung family members, I couldn’t help but flinch seeing the stark reality of ramshackle shelters and tents perched in the most precarious places along the roadside. This has been a week of freezing rain and ice, wind and snow for most of our country; here are people trying to survive in the lowliest of places through the worst of conditions. Surely, if this is not hell on earth, it is close to it. A merry Christmas indeed.
Suffering is never far off from where we are, whether we are confronted with homelessness, or it finds its way into our own lives, unbidden and overwhelming. In few weeks we begin the observance of Lent to remember the sacrifice and suffering of the Man born as a homeless baby into loving arms, having come from Loving Arms to rescue the lost.
So recently filled with Christmas feasting and cheer, I’m reminded of the struggle to find home, warmth, love and nurture in a world that can be so cruel, dark and cold.
The Babe has come to quake the gates of hell – here we all are, feeling the ground shaking…
This little Babe so few days old
is come to rifle Satan's fold;
all hell doth at his presence quake
though he himself for cold do shake;
for in this weak unarmèd wise
the gates of hell he will surprise.
With tears he fights and wins the field,
his naked breast stands for a shield;
his battering shot are babish cries,
his arrows looks of weeping eyes,
his martial ensigns Cold and Need
and feeble Flesh his warrior's steed.
His camp is pitchèd in a stall,
his bulwark but a broken wall;
the crib his trench, haystacks his stakes;
of shepherds he his muster makes;
and thus, as sure his foe to wound,
the angels' trump alarum sound.
My soul, with Christ join thou in fight,
stick to the tents that he hath pight.
Within his crib is surest ward,
this little Babe will be thy guard.
If thou wilt foil thy foes with joy,
then flit not from this heavenly Boy.
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Some candle clear burns somewhere I come by. I muse at how its being puts blissful back With yellowy moisture mild night’s blear-all black, Or to-fro tender trambeams truckle at the eye. By that window what task what fingers ply, I plod wondering, a-wanting, just for lack Of answer the eagerer a-wanting Jessy or Jack There God to aggrándise, God to glorify.—
Come you indoors, come home; your fading fire Mend first and vital candle in close heart’s vault: You there are master, do your own desire; What hinders? Are you beam-blind, yet to a fault In a neighbour deft-handed? Are you that liar And, cast by conscience out, spendsavour salt? ~Gerard Manley Hopkins “The Candle Indoors”
Sometimes a lantern moves along the night, That interests our eyes. And who goes there? I think; where from and bound, I wonder, where, With, all down darkness wide, his wading light?
Men go by me whom either beauty bright In mould or mind or what not else makes rare: They rain against our much-thick and marsh air Rich beams, till death or distance buys them quite.
Death or distance soon consumes them: wind What most I may eye after, be in at the end I cannot, and out of sight is out of mind.
Christ minds: Christ’s interest, what to avow or amend There, éyes them, heart wánts, care haúnts, foot fóllows kínd, Their ránsom, théir rescue, ánd first, fást, last friénd. ~Gerard Manley Hopkins “The Lantern Out of Doors“
Now burn, new born to the world, Doubled-naturèd name, The heaven-flung, heart-fleshed, maiden-furled Miracle-in-Mary-of-flame, Mid-numbered he in three of the thunder-throne!
Not a dooms-day dazzle in his coming nor dark as he came; Kind, but royally reclaiming his own; A released shower, let flash to the shire, not a lightning of fíre hard-hurled.
Let him easter in us, be a dayspring to the dimness of us, be a crimson-cresseted east… ~Gerard Manley Hopkins from “The Wreck of the Deutschland”
In three days, we have gone from a sub-zero wind chill ice storm from the north to a balmy 60 degree storm from the south, both winds taking out our power and plunging us into a deeper darker night.
Rather than resort to generator power immediately, I break the darkness with candle light. It is only a brief respite as candles burn down, batteries die, and we’re back in darkness again until the power lines are patched and the transformers restored.
Sometimes the Advent and Christmas season can feel like that: a recharge for my faith that has gone dark and cold, a fire lit under me to banish creeping doubt and discouragement. I need more than Advent rituals and Christmas traditions to keep the darkness in its place beyond today.
God doesn’t need beeswax or batteries to keep His Light on. He just needs us: our trust, our love, our desire for understanding, our need for Him.
We are the candles that shine forth in the world to light the way for those around us who are floundering in the dark.
And that, Charlie Brown, is what Christmas is all about…
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And in despair I bowed my head “There is no peace on earth,” I said, “For hate is strong and mocks the song Of peace on earth, good will to men.”
Then pealed the bells more loud and deep: “God is not dead, nor doth He sleep; The wrong shall fail, the right prevail With peace on earth, good will to men.” ~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow from “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day”
You, who are beyond our understanding, have made yourself understandable to us in Jesus Christ. You, who are the uncreated God, have made yourself a creature for us. You, who are the untouchable One, have made yourself touchable to us. You, who are most high, make us capable of understanding your amazing love and the wonderful things you have done for us. Make us able to understand the mystery of your incarnation, the mystery of your life, example and doctrine, the mystery of your cross and passion, the mystery of your resurrection and ascension. ~Angela of Foligno (1248-1309)– prayer
To all of you who come to this page each day to read words, hear music, see images of our farm life: may your sore heart be blessed, your troubled soul encouraged as we explore together the mystery of who was born today.
He does not sleep, so our eyes can rest. He came to die and rise again so we might live. He is the beauty and truth we seek for peace on earth.
Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock. “Now they are all on their knees,” An elder said as we sat in a flock By the embers in hearthside ease. We pictured the meek mild creatures where They dwelt in their strawy pen, Nor did it occur to one of us there To doubt they were kneeling then.
So fair a fancy few would weave In these years! Yet, I feel, If someone said on Christmas Eve, “Come; see the oxen kneel, “In the lonely barton by yonder coomb Our childhood used to know,” I should go with him in the gloom, Hoping it might be so. ~Thomas Hardy “The Oxen”
Says a country legend told every year: Go to the barn on Christmas Eve and see what the creatures do as that long night tips over. Down on their knees they will go, the fire of an old memory whistling through their minds!
So I went. Wrapped to my eyes against the cold I creaked back the barn door and peered in. From town the church bells spilled their midnight music, and the beasts listened – yet they lay in their stalls like stone.
Oh the heretics! Not to remember Bethlehem, or the star as bright as a sun, or the child born on a bed of straw! To know only of the dissolving Now!
Still they drowsed on – citizens of the pure, the physical world, they loomed in the dark: powerful of body, peaceful of mind, innocent of history.
Brothers! I whispered. It is Christmas! And you are no heretics, but a miracle, immaculate still as when you thundered forth on the morning of creation! As for Bethlehem, that blazing star still sailed the dark, but only looked for me. Caught in its light, listening again to its story, I curled against some sleepy beast, who nuzzled my hair as though I were a child, and warmed me the best it could all night. ~Mary Oliver“Christmas Poem” from Goodness and Light
The winds were scornful, Passing by; And gathering Angels Wondered why
A burdened Mother Did not mind That only animals Were kind.
For who in all the world Could guess That God would search out Loneliness. ~Sr. M. Chrysostom, O.S.B. “The Stable”
Growing up on my childhood farm, remembering the magic of Christmas eve night, I bundled myself up to stay warm in our barn, to witness an unbelievable sight.
At midnight we knew the animals knelt down, speaking words we could all understand, to worship a Child born in Bethlehem town, in a barn, long ago in a far away land.
They were there that night, to see and to hear, the blessings that came from the sky. They patiently stood watch at the manger near, in a barn, while shepherds and kings stopped by.
My trips to the barn were always too late, our cows would be chewing, our chickens asleep, our horses breathing softly, cats climbing the gate, in our barn, there was never a neigh, moo or peep.
But I knew they had done it, I just missed it again! They were plainly so calm, well-fed and at peace in the sweet smelling straw, all snug in their pens, in a barn, a mystery, once more, took place.
Even now, I still bundle to go out Christmas eve, in the hope I’ll catch them just once more this time. Though I’m older and grayer, I still firmly believe in the barn, a Birth happened amid cobwebs and grime.
Our horses sigh low as they hear me come near, that tells me the time I hope for is now, they will drop to their knees without any fear in our barn, as worship, all living things bow.
I wonder anew at God’s immense trust for His creatures so sheltered that darkening night – the mystery of why of all places, His Son must begin life in a barn: a welcoming most holy and right. ~ “In the Barn” (written Christmas Eve 1999)
Latin text O magnum mysterium, et admirabile sacramentum, ut animalia viderent Dominum natum, iacentem in praesepio! Beata Virgo, cujus viscera meruerunt portare Dominum Iesum Christum. Alleluia!
English translation O great mystery, and wonderful sacrament, that animals should see the newborn Lord, lying in a manger! Blessed is the virgin whose womb was worthy to bear the Lord, Jesus Christ. Alleluia!
Jesus our brother, strong and good Was humbly born in a stable rude And the friendly beasts around him stood Jesus our brother, strong and good “I, ” said the donkey, shaggy and brown “I carried his mother up hill and down I carried his mother to Bethlehem town” “I, ” said the donkey, shaggy and brown “I, ” said the cow, all white and red “I gave him my manger for his bed I gave him my hay to pillow his head” “I, ” said the cow, all white and red “I, ” said the sheep with curly horn “I gave him my wool for his blanket warm He wore my coat on Christmas morn” “I, ” said the sheep with curly horn “I, ” said the dove from the rafters high “I cooed him to sleep so he would not cry We cooed him to sleep, my mate and I” “I, ” said the dove from rafters high Thus every beast by some good spell In the stable dark was glad to tell Of the gifts they gave Emmanuel Of the gifts they gave Emmanuel
The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit. John 3:8
To look at the last great self-portraits of Rembrandt or to read Pascal or hear Bach’s B-minor Mass is to know beyond the need for further evidence that if God is anywhere, he is with them, as he is also with the man behind the meat counter, the woman who scrubs floors at Roosevelt Memorial, the high-school math teacher who explains fractions to the bewildered child. And the step from “God with them” to Emmanuel, “God with us,” may not be as great as it seems.
What keeps the wild hope of Christmas alive year after year in a world notorious for dashing all hopes is the haunting dream that the child who was born that day may yet be born again even in us and our own snowbound, snowblind longing for him. ~Frederick Buechner from A Room Called Remember
God gave us all a garden once and walked with us at eve that we might know him face to face with no need to believe.
But we denied and hid from Him, concealing our own shame, yet still He came and looked for us, and called us each by name.
He found us when we hid from Him, He clothed us with His grace. But still we turned our backs on Him and would not see His face.
So now, He comes to us again, not as a Lord most high, but weak and helpless as we are, that we might hear Him cry.
And He who clothed us in our need, lies naked in the straw, that we might wrap Him in our rags when once we fled in awe.
The strongest comes in weakness now, a stranger to our door, the King forsakes His palaces and dwells among the poor.
And where we hurt, He hurts with us, and when we weep, He cries. He knows the heart of all our hurts, the inside of our sighs.
He does not look down from up above, but gazes up at us, that we might take Him in our arms, He always cradles us.
And if we welcome Him again, with open hands and heart, He’ll plant His garden deep in us, the end from which we start.
And in that garden, there’s a tomb, whose stone is rolled away, where we and everything we’ve loved are lowered in the clay.
But lo! the tomb is empty now, and clothed in living light, His ransomed people walk with One who came on Christmas night.
So come, Lord Jesus, find in me the child you came to save, stoop tenderly with wounded hands and lift me from my grave.
Be with us all, Emmanuel, and keep us close and true, be with us till that kingdom comes where we will be with You. ~Malcolm Guite — “A Tale of Two Gardens”
Heaven could not hold God.
Even though He is worshiped by angels, it is enough for Him to be held in His mother’s arms, His face kissed, His tummy full, to be bedded in a manger in lantern light.
It is enough for Him, as He is enough for us — even born as one of us, poor as we are — snowbound and ice-locked in our longing for something – anything – more. Our empty hearts fill with Him who came down when heaven could not hold Him any longer.
Imagine that. It is enough to melt us to readiness.
This year’s Advent theme “Dawn on our Darkness” is taken from this 19th century Christmas hymn:
Brightest and best of the sons of the morning, dawn on our darkness and lend us your aid. Star of the east, the horizon adorning, guide where our infant Redeemer is laid. ~Reginald Heber -from “Brightest and Best”
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