She sees a starling legs-up in the gutter. She finds an earthworm limp and pale in a puddle. What’s wrong with them? she says. I tell her they’re dead.
She scowls at me. She stares at her short shadow And makes it dance in the road. She shakes its head. Daddy, you don’t look pretty, she says. I agree.
She stomps on a sewer grid where the slow rain Is vanishing. Do you want to go down there? I tell her no. Neither do I she says.
She picks up a stone. This is an elephant. Because it’s heavy, smooth, slate gray, and hers, I tell her it’s very like an elephant.
We’re back. The starling is gone. Where did it go? She says. I tell her I don’t know, maybe A cat took it away. I think it’s lost.
I tell her I think so too. But can’t you find it? I tell her I don’t think so. Let’s go look. I show her my empty hands, and she takes one. ~David Wagoner “Walking around the Block with a Three-Year Old” from Traveling Light
These days, I spend most of my waking time walking and talking with a very special three year old. As he works in the barn with me, or just exploring the farm, he is helping me readjust how I look at the world, to see it the way he does and to try to figure out why things are the way they are. What seems logical to me doesn’t always make sense to him, so I need to put into words what I tend to take for granted.
Sometimes I just have to say I don’t know the answer to his question, because I really don’t know and I want him to believe in my truthfulness.
Whatever I say to him will get filed away in his memory banks for a lifetime, so I use careful words and respect his justifiable skepticism. I want to teach him to think through life’s puzzles without relying too much on outside opinions. What I hope is that even when I am empty of answers, he will always want to explore his questions while alongside me, trusting me as I hold his hand while we walk and talk together. I’m never empty when I am holding his hand.
I want him to remember that most of all.
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
Thank you for this day made of wind and rain and sun and the scent of old-fashioned lilacs. Thank you
for the pond and the slippery tadpole and the wild iris that opened beside the pond last week, so pale, so nearly purple,
their stems already flagged and bent. Thank you for the yellow morels hiding in the field grass, the ones we can only see when we are already
on our knees. And thank you for the humming that rises out of the morning as if mornings are simply reasons to hum. What a gift,
this being alive, this chance to encounter the world. What a gift, this being a witness to spring— spring in everything. Spring in the way
that we greet each other. Spring in the way the golden eagle takes to the thermals and spirals up to where we can barely see the great span of its wings.
Spring in the words we have known since our births. Like glory. Like celebrate. ~Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer “In Case I Forget to Say It Enough” from All the Honey
Sing to the God who turns our sighs into a song Sing to the One who mends our broken hearts with music. Sing to the One who fills our empty hearts with love. Sing to the One who gives us light to step into the darkest night. Sing to the God who turns our sighs into a song. ~Susan Boersma
Each spring day begins new possibility with a sigh, a deep breath and thankfulness-
even when there are tears, sometimes heartbreak, and flat out fear of what may come next.
Even so, through it all I hum along in celebration, singing a song of praise, an alleluia that reminds me why I am and who I live for.
All is well, it is well with my soul.
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
I love these raw moist dawns with a thousand birds you hear but can’t quite see in the mist. ~Jim Harrison “Another Country”
The heart of a woman goes forth with the dawn, As a lone bird, soft winging, so restlessly on, Afar o’er life’s turrets and vales does it roam In the wake of those echoes the heart calls home. ~Georgia Douglas Johnson from The Heart of a Woman and Other Poems
In those raw moments before dawn when a glow gently tints the inside of the horizon’s eyelids, the black of midnight waxes to merely shadow, the worries of nighttime forgotten amid a joyful chorus of unseen singers.
A gloaming dusk fades into a gleaming dawn, backlit silhouettes stark and still as a drowsing world slowly opens her eyes and greets this new and glorious morn.
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
I thought of happiness, how it is woven Out of the silence in the empty house each day And how it is not sudden and it is not given But is creation itself like the growth of a tree. No one has seen it happen, but inside the bark Another circle is growing in the expanding ring. No one has heard the root go deeper in the dark, But the tree is lifted by this inward work And its plumes shine, and its leaves are glittering.
So happiness is woven out of the peace of hours And strikes its roots deep in the house alone: The old chest in the corner, cool waxed floors, White curtains softly and continually blown As the free air moves quietly about the room; A shelf of books, a table, and the white-washed wall— These are the dear familiar gods of home, And here the work of faith can best be done, The growing tree is green and musical.
For what is happiness but growth in peace, The timeless sense of time when furniture Has stood a life’s span in a single place, And as the air moves, so the old dreams stir The shining leaves of present happiness? No one has heard thought or listened to a mind, But where people have lived in inwardness The air is charged with blessing and does bless; Windows look out on mountains and the walls are kind. ~May Sarton “The Work of Happiness”
Some are eager to travel and roam, experiencing new places and unfamiliar scenery.
I leave home reluctantly now. Having settled in during the COVID years, I find happiness forming concentric rings around the core of this farm with my roots growing deeper in this fertile soil. It is where I belong.
Certainly, I have belonged to other places during my life. Each built a new ring in my history, growing me taller and stronger over the years. As I have moved, I have carried along furniture from my grandparents’ homes – a rocking chair, a round top antique trunk. My great aunt’s baby grand piano followed me through three moves. My parents’ things are scattered throughout this house, storing their memories in the wood and polish and fabric.
There is peace to be found in this inwardness. When I open our windows, I sense in every way how the air is charged with blessing. There is kindness here. There is happiness woven out of time and memory and love.
No matter where I shall roam, I will always find the road home.
Tell me where is the road I can call my own, That I left, that I lost, so long ago. All these years I have wondered, oh when will I know, There’s a way, there’s a road that will lead me home.
After wind, After rain, when the dark is done, As I wake from a dream, in the gold of day, Through the air there’s a calling from far away, There’s a voice I can hear that will lead me home.
Rise up, follow me, come away is the call With (the) love in your heart as the only song There is no such beauty as where you belong Rise up, follow me, I will lead you home. ~Michael Dennis Browne
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
Good things as well as bad, you know are caught by a kind of infection.
If you want to get warm you must stand near the fire: if you want to be wet you must get into the water. If you want joy, power, peace, eternal life, you must get close to, or even into, the thing that has them.
They are not a sort of prize which God could, if He chose, just hand out to anyone. They are a great fountain of energy and beauty spurting up at the very centre of reality. If you are close to it, the spray will wet you: if you are not, you will remain dry.
Once a man is united to God, how could he not live forever? Once a man is separated from God, what can he do but wither and die? ~C.S. Lewis- Mere Christianity
Now looking back over four decades as a working physician, I remember struggling after the observance of rest and worship each Sunday, to return to the sterile world of a busy secular clinic.
Although freshly exposed to the Spirit, immersed in the reality of a loving God, I was restricted from sharing my infection while close to my patients. Each Monday, my responsibility was to prevent contagion, measuring my words and washing my hands thoroughly upon entering each exam room.
At times I failed in my efforts, even as I donned a protective mask and gloves to keep us from spreading our respective infections.
I hope now, with masks and gloves removed, if I’m contagious, may it be because I’m overwhelmed with the Spirit rather than engulfed in the infections of this world.
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
Praise be to the not-nearly-a-girl anymore clerking at our local grocery outlet since junior high. Single mom, moved up after a decade of customer service to manage four well-ordered aisles of hairsprays, lipsticks, and youthful glow in glittering squeeze tubes. Familiar red-headed, brown-eyed, gap-toothed smile. Willing to put aside her boxes of chores to chat with each of us she names by heart.
I forget if she’s Mary or Alice or Jane. Fine, I answer after she asks, How’s your day? And driving my sacks of next week’s meals home, I wonder why she rises from her labors to greet me, why she straightens her smock where it’s pulled up a bit and rides her hips. Tucks in place a loose wisp of curl. When I walk by, what does she want to know, when she asks, How’s your day? I wonder why so seldom I’ve asked it back. ~Lowell Jaeger “Praise Be” from Or Maybe I Drift Off Alone.
Did you find everything you were looking for?Julie, the magenta-haired
checkout girl, asks, and no, I think, I didn’t find inner peace, or answers to
several questions I’ve been mulling, like are we headed for nuclear war and
does the rest of the world think America has gone bonkers and also, by the way,
I could not find the tofu bacon, and the chocolate sorbet shelf was empty
(I did find canned pumpkin in aisle four) but I am silent and smile at Julie who
seems to know what I’m thinking anyway so I hold back and muse on the view
of the bay this morning when we walked the dog and the parsnip soup we’ll
make for dinner and realize that total fulfillment probably jades the senses and
the bagger asks if I’d like help today carrying my groceries out to the car. ~Thomas R. Moore, “Finding Everything” fromRed Stone Fragments
He was a new old man behind the counter, skinny, brown and eager. He greeted me like a long-lost daughter, as if we both came from the same world, someplace warmer and more gracious…
…his face lit up as if I were his prodigal daughter returning, coming back to the freezer bins in front of the register which were still and always filled with the same old Cable Car ice cream sandwiches and cheap frozen greens. Back to the knobs of beef and packages of hotdogs, these familiar shelves strung with potato chips and corn chips…
I lumbered to the case and bought my precious bottled water and he returned my change, beaming as if I were the bright new buds on the just-bursting-open cherry trees, as if I were everything beautiful struggling to grow, and he was blessing me as he handed me my dime over the counter and the plastic tub of red licorice whips. This old man who didn’t speak English beamed out love to me in the iron week after my mother’s death so that when I emerged from his store my whole cock-eyed life – what a beautiful failure ! – glowed gold like a sunset after rain. ~Alison Luterman from “At the Corner Store”
This week as I shopped in one of our local grocery stores, I witnessed a particularly poignant scene. As I waited in the check out line, the older man ahead of me was greeted by the young cashier with the standard “Did you find everything you were looking for?” He responded with: “I looked for world peace on your shelves, but it must have been sold out…”
She stopped scanning and looked directly at him for the first time, trying to discern if she misunderstood him or if he was mocking her or what. “Did you try Aisle 4?” she replied and they both laughed. They continued in light-hearted conversation as she continued scanning and once he had paid for his order and packed up his cart, he looked at her again.
“Thank for so much for coming to work today – I am so grateful for what you do.” He wheeled away his groceries and she stood, stunned, watching him go.
As I came up next, I looked at her watering eyes as she tried to compose herself and I said to her: “I’ll bet you don’t hear that often enough, do you?” She pulled herself together and shook her head, trying to make sense of the gift of words he had bestowed on her.
“No – like never,” she said as she scanned my groceries. “How could he possibly have known that I almost didn’t come to work today because it has been so stressful to be here? People are usually polite, but lately more and more have been so demanding. No one seems to care about how others are feeling any more.”
She brushed away a tear and I paid for my groceries, and told her:
“I hope the rest of your work day is as great as that last customer. You’ve given me everything I was looking for today…”
And I emerged from the store feeling blessed, like I had scored a pot of gold like a sunset after rain.
Today a while it rained I washed the jars And then I lit a flame set the water to start And at the end of the day lined up to cool and seal Twelve pints of spiced peach jam twenty jars of dill beans canned From an old recipe that my mother gave to me Because it’s good to put a little bit by For when the late snows fly All that love so neatly kept By the work of our hands
Lay hands on boards and bricks and loud machines With shovels and rakes and buckets of soup they clean And I believe that we should bless evеry shirt ironed and pressed Salutе the crews out on the roads Those who stock shelves and carry loads Whisper thanks to the brooms and saws the dirty boots and coveralls And bow my head to the waitress and nurse Tip my hat to the farmer and clerk All those saints with skillets and pans And the work of their hands Work of their hands
Laid out on the counter pull up out of hot water The work of our hands so faithful and true I make something barely there music is a little more than air So now every year I’ll put by tomatoes and pears Boil the lids and wipe the lip with a calloused fingertip And I swear by the winter ground We’ll open one and pass the thing around Let the light catch the jar amber gold as a falling star It’s humble and physical it’s only love made visible Yeah now I understand it’s the work of our hands
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
If only those parakeets would settle A little nearer to where I’m sitting, instead of at the tops of far-off trees, this morning Would be so much more remarkable. One could watch the blackbirds, I suppose, peck their ways like Oxford dons across The flagstone paths and lawns, or the swallows, or the sparrows, Or the crows. But those birds are so plain—, so…painfully available. No, only those parakeets will do and they will not do What I want them to. In this, they are like everything else in the world. Every beautiful thing. ~Jay Hopler “Beauty is a Real Thing, I’ve Seen It”from The Abridged History of Rainfall
“Get up,” he says, all of you – all of you! – and the power that is in him is the power to give life not just to the dead…, but to those who are only partly alive, which is to say to people like you and me who much of the time live with our lives closed to the wild beauty and miracle of things, including the wild beauty and miracle of every day we live …and even of ourselves. ~Frederick Buechner -from Secrets in the Dark
May I never just be partly alive, longing for a far-away untouchable beauty rather than noticing what is glorious right in front of me.
This is the package of life: the plain and the mundane, the painfully and wonderfully available, the shadowy and the brilliant.
I want to be fully alive to the wild beauty and miracle of every day, heeding His call to “get up!” no matter how I may want things to be different, no matter how I may want to be different.
And so I believe ~truly believe~ I am called to be fully alive, and gratefully acknowledge the miracle of this and every day.
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
I hope my life was penned in such a way that when time comes to write my epitaph someone might think to say not that I was good so much as kind and that I wrote quite well beyond my means because it was the wind of grace blown down that gave me words and moved my sluggish hands, and that I always sought to know the unseen things and though I loved the breadth of language for my art, my heart always seemed fixed on a day when all the sound and words would fall away, and that I was quite hopeful to the last if anyone would choose one line to inscribe my memory in stone it surely should be the simple supposition I know right: there merely is no synonym for light. ~Margaret Ingraham “Epitaph” from Exploring This Terrain
This world can feel like a fearsome place with endless stories of tragedy and loss, so much pain and suffering, blinding me in darkness so I struggle to see each day’s emerging light.
How to describe a Light transforming all that is bleak?
With these Words:
Be not afraid Come have breakfast Touch and see Follow me Do you love me? Feed my sheep Peace be with you
I am mere breath and bone, a wisp in a moment of time, so His truths anchor my heart and illuminate my soul: I am called forth into a Light which needs no other words.
Lead, kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom, Lead thou me on; The night is dark, and I am far from home, Lead thou me on. Keep thou my feet; I do not ask to see The distant scene; one step enough for me.
Through love to light! Oh, wonderful the way That leads from darkness to the perfect day! From darkness and from sorrow of the night To morning that comes singing o’er the sea. Through love to light! Through light, O God, to thee, Who art the love of love, the eternal light of light!
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
Each one is a gift, no doubt, mysteriously placed in your waking hand or set upon your forehead moments before you open your eyes…
Through the calm eye of the window everything is in its place but so precariously this day might be resting somehow
on the one before it, all the days of the past stacked high like the impossible tower of dishes entertainers used to build on stage.
No wonder you find yourself perched on the top of a tall ladder hoping to add one more. Just another Wednesday
you whisper, then holding your breath, place this cup on yesterday’s saucer without the slightest clink. ~Billy Collins, “Day” from The Art of Drowning
Some days feel like this: teetering at the top of a finite number of minutes and hours, trying to not topple over a life so carefully balanced, even as the wind blows and the fencing sharp and the ladder of time feels rickety.
It is a balancing act – this waking up to try on a new day while juggling everything still in the air from the days before.
To stay on solid ground, while flowing with the river of time, I anchor deep into the calm eye of your unchanging love, reminded, once again, I’m held up from above when everything beneath me feels precarious.
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
White roses, tiny and old, flare among thorns by the barn door. For a hundred years under the June elm, under the gaze of seven generations, they lived briefly like this, in the month of roses, by the fields stout with corn, or with clover and timothy making thick hay, grown over, now, with milkweed, sumac, paintbrush. Old roses survive winter drifts, the melt in April, August parch, and men and women who sniffed roses in spring and called them pretty as we call them now, walking beside the barn on a day that perishes. ~Donald Hall “Old Roses” from The Selected Poems of Donald Hall.
The lily has a smooth stalk, Will never hurt your hand; But the rose upon her brier Is lady of the land.
There’s sweetness in an apple tree, And profit in the corn; But lady of all beauty Is a rose upon a thorn.
When with moss and honey She tips her bending brier, And half unfolds her glowing heart, She sets the world on fire. ~Christina Rossetti “The Rose”
We are continually overflowing toward those who preceded us, toward our origin, and toward those who seemingly come after us. It is our task to imprint this temporary, perishable earth into ourselves so deeply, so painfully and passionately, that its essence can rise again invisibly, inside us. ~Rainer Maria Rilke from The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke
There is a rose bush that still blooms decades later on the farm where my grandparents raised their family, next to the walkway where the house once stood. Overwhelmed with weeds and blackberry vines, it still sets my heart on fire to witness its stubborn persistence, thriving through trauma, abandonment, loneliness and adversity. No one comes to water it in summer drought, and though frozen during ice-covering winters, it thrives again in spring with leaf and bud and blossom.
The vulnerable, perishable, and beloved seed will rise again, imperishable.
…let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God’s sight is very precious. 1Peter 3:4
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
Barnstorming 