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The whole idea of it makes me feel
like I’m coming down with something,
something worse than any stomach ache
or the headaches I get from reading in bad light-
a kind of measles of the spirit,
a mumps of the psyche,
a disfiguring chicken pox of the soul.
You tell me it is too early to be looking back,
but that is because you have forgotten
the perfect simplicity of being one
and the beautiful complexity introduced by two.
But I can lie on my bed and remember every digit.
At four I was an Arabian wizard.
I could make myself invisible
by drinking a glass of milk a certain way.
At seven I was a soldier, at nine a prince.
But now I am mostly at the window
watching the late afternoon light.
Back then it never fell so solemnly
against the side of my tree house,
and my bicycle never leaned against the garage
as it does today,
all the dark blue speed drained out of it.
This is the beginning of sadness, I say to myself,
as I walk through the universe in my sneakers.
It is time to say good-bye to my imaginary friends,
time to turn the first big number.
It seems only yesterday I used to believe
there was nothing under my skin but light.
If you cut me I could shine.
But now when I fall upon the sidewalks of life,
I skin my knees. I bleed.
~Billy Collins “On Turning Ten”
No matter how hard you try to be what you once were, you can only be what you are here and now. Time hypnotizes. When you’re nine, you think you’ve always been nine years old and will always be. When you’re thirty, it seems you’ve always been balanced there on that bright rim of middle life. And then when you turn seventy, you are always and forever seventy. You’re in the present, you’re trapped in a young now or an old now, but there is no other now to be seen.
~ Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine
Some people turn sad awfully young. No special reason, it seems, but they seem almost to be born that way. They bruise easier, tire faster, cry quicker, remember longer and, as I say, get sadder younger than anyone else in the world. I know, for I’m one of them.
~Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine
Some reflections on moving from one decade of life to the next:
Turning ten is a big deal, no going back to single digits.
Turning twenty is a bid goodbye to a fleeting childhood.
Turning thirty is down to business of family, job and debt.
Turning forty is a mid-life muddle, a surging forth into the second half.
Turning fifty is settling in while finding the nest emptying.
Turning sixty is grateful hope for a fruitful third life trimester.
Turning seventy is just around the corner – there is no other now.
Turning eighty, ninety or hundred would be pure gift of grace.
I hope once again, as when I was nine,
I might only bleed out rays of light when cut –
I pray these final decades shine bright with meaning and purpose.
I like to cry. After I cry hard it’s like it’s morning again and I’m starting the day over.
~Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine
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My fuchsia is a middle-aged woman
who’s had fourteen children, and though
she could do it again, she’s rather tired.
All through the summer, new blooms.
I’m amazed. Yet the purple and crimson
have paled. Some leaves are yellowed or withering.
The new buds look weaker and smaller,
like menopause babies. But still
she’s a gallant fine creature performing her function.
– That’s how they talk about women,
and I heard myself using the same sort of language.
Then I understood my love for August:
its exhausted fertility
after glut and harvest.
Out in the garden, playing
at being a peasant forced
to slave until dark with a child on my back
another at the breast and probably
pregnant, I remember
wondering if I’d ever manage
the rites of passage from girl
to woman: fear and fascination
hard to choose between.
Thirty years later, I pick the crumpled flowers
off the fuchsia plant and water it
as if before the shrine
of two unknown grandmothers –
and my mother, who was a fourteenth child.
~Ruth Fainlight “My Fuschia”
Flower in the crannied wall,
I pluck you out of the crannies,
I hold you here, root and all, in my hand,
Little flower – but if I could understand what you are,
root and all in all, I should know what God and man is.
~ Alfred Lord Tennyson “Flower in the Crannied Wall”
Each fuchsia flower a reminder
of the fear and fascination of
growing up female
Am I root, or am I bud?
Am I stem or am I leaf?
Am I dancing bloom or frail flower?
Am I fruit about to bear seed myself?
Am I still girl, or mother, or graying grandma?
All in all, throughout my life,
I hoped to be a mere reflection
of the Garden’s intended fertile glory;
Like a bulging fuchsia bud,
breaking open into full blossom,
withering on the stem to seed,
and being readied for the fall…
So much fear and fascination
found in fecundity-
to root and bud and bloom again.
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The Old Church leans nearby a well worn road
upon a hill that has no grass or tree
The winds from off the prairie now unload
the dust they bring around it fitfully
The path that leads up to the open door
is worn and grayed by many toiling feet
of us who listen to the Bible lore
and once again the old time hymns repeat.
And every Sabbath Morning we are still
returning to the altar standing there;
a hush, a prayer, a pause, and voices
fill the Master’s House with a triumphant air.
The old church leans awry and looks quite odd,
But it is beautiful to us, and God.
~Della Vik “The Old Church”
(adapted in song by Stephen Paulus, linked below
…when I experienced the warm, unpretentious reception of those who have nothing to boast about, and experienced a loving embrace from people who didn’t ask any questions, I began to discover that a true spiritual homecoming means a return to the poor in spirit to whom the kingdom of heaven belongs.
~Henri Nouwen from The Return of the Prodigal Son
Our family had driven past the boxy building countless times hurrying on our way to other places, barely giving it a second glance. It had a classic design, but showed its age with peeling paint, a few missing shingles, an old fashioned square flat roofed belfry, and arched windows. The hand lettered sign spelling out “Wiser Lake Chapel” by the road constituted a humble invitation of sorts, simply by listing the times of the services.
On a blustery December Sunday evening in 1990, we had no place else to be for a change. Instead of driving past, we stopped, welcomed by the yellow glow pouring from the windows and an almost full parking lot. Our young family climbed the steps to the big double doors, and inside were immediately greeted by a large balding man with a huge grin and encompassing handshake. He pointed us to one of the few open spots still available in the old wooden pews.
The sanctuary was a warm and open space with a high lofted ceiling, dark wood trim accents matching the ancient pews, and a plain wooden cross above the pulpit in front. There was a pungent smell from fir bough garlands strung along high wainscoting, and a circle of candles standing lit on a small altar table. Apple pie was baking in the kitchen oven, blending with the aroma of good coffee and hot cocoa.
The service was a Sunday School Christmas program, with thirty some children of all ages and skin colors standing up front in bathrobes and white sheet angel gowns, wearing gold foil halos, tinfoil crowns and dish towels wrapped with string around their heads. They were prompted by their teachers through carols and readings of the Christmas story. The final song was Silent Night, sung by candle light, with each child and member of the congregation holding a lit candle. There was a moment of excitement when one girl’s long hair briefly caught fire, but after that was quickly extinguished, the evening ended in darkness, with the soft glow of candlelight illuminating faces of the young and old, some in tears streaming over their smiles.
It felt like home. We had found our church.
We’ve never left; every Sabbath day finds us back there. Even through the hard months of COVID shut-down, our Chapel first met online, then moved to outside services, and then together again in our beloved sanctuary.
Over the past 107 years, this old building has seen a few thousand people come and go, has had peeling paint and missing shingles, a basement that floods when the rain comes down hard, toilets that doesn’t always flush, and though it smells heavenly on potluck days, there are times when it can be just a bit out of sorts and musty. It really isn’t anything to boast about.
Like our pastors over the decades – Bruce Hemple, Stephen Tamminga, Albert Hitchcock and now Nathan Chambers – our chapel is humble and unpretentious yet envelops its people in a loving embrace of God’s Word, with warmth, character, grace and a uniqueness that is unforgettable.
It really is not so different from the all the flawed folks who have gathered there over the years, once lost but now found.
We know we belong,
such as we are,
just as we are,
blessed by God with this place to join together.
Perhaps you belong at this old church too…
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The squirrel sticks its head from the tree’s knot,
shrieking directions, a village gossip with a huge
plumed tail. It moves down the scalloped bark, swaying
on tiny nails, and stops, eye-level with my swollen belly.
A black blur of bird swoops, the velvet of its wing
against my cheek. It nests among a ruckus of robins,
less interested in being fed than being heard. Around
the curve of the road, I near the farmer’s fence. His
mare lowers her fan of lashes. In the pond, a fish flips,
exposing its silver stomach.
~Tina Barry, “The Animals Know” from Beautiful Raft
It has been over thirty years since I carried a child in my belly. Each time, I remember having the feeling our farm animals knew I was “expecting” even before it became obvious. Maybe it was because I was so overjoyed, I carried myself differently. After experiencing a miscarriage and two years of infertility workups, it felt almost magical being pregnant. It seemed as if our invisibly growing baby was already welcomed by all the creatures on our farm and were celebrating the anticipation along with us.
While I was pregnant with our first son, after such a long wait for parenthood, we bought a new dog, Tango and moved to a farm from the city. She was a year old and had never been around babies, so we weren’t sure how she would adapt to both new surroundings and new owners. As we drove six hours to her bring her to her new home, she happily settled in for the trip lying on my bulging tummy, pummeled by kicks from a baby she would soon meet face to face.
She loved him as soon as she saw him.
She had known him and understood him as he grew inside.
Now, decades later, our family’s next generation is fulfilling their own hopes for the future: we have four cherished grandchildren in addition to the two we are now waiting to meet — one will be any day now.
The expectation of new life is so sweet. All that lives and breathes anticipates this new soul budding and about to bloom.
Somehow, they just know…
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Back then, what did I know?
The names of subway lines, busses.
How long it took to walk 20 blocks.
Uptown and downtown.
Not north, not south, not you.
When I saw you, later, seaweed reefed in the air,
you were grey-green, incomprehensible, old.
What you clung to, hung from: old.
Trees looking half-dead, stones.
Marriage of fungi and algae,
chemists of air,
changers of nitrogen-unusable into nitrogen-usable.
Like those nameless ones
who kept painting, shaping, engraving,
unseen, unread, unremembered.
Not caring if they were no good, if they were past it.
Rock wools, water fans, earth scale, mouse ears, dust,
ash-of-the-woods.
Transformers unvalued, uncounted.
Cell by cell, word by word, making a world they could live in.
~Jane Hirshfield “For the Lobaria, Usnea, Witches Hair, Map Lichen, Beard Lichen, Ground Lichen, Shield Lichen“
It is a lichen day.
Not a bit of rotten wood lies on the dead leaves,
but it is covered with fresh, green cup lichens…
All the world seems a great lichen and to grow like one.
Nature doth thus kindly heal every wound.
By the mediation of a thousand little mosses and fungi,
the most unsightly objects become radiant of beauty.
There seem to be two sides of this world,
presented us at different times,
as we see things in growth or dissolution, in life or death.
And seen with the eye of the poet,
as God sees them,
all things are alive and beautiful
~Henry David Thoreau from his journal
The truth is-
I’m a bit of a lichen myself –
not easily defined,
somewhat an opportunist,
thriving in gray drizzle,
sometimes colorful but most often not,
attempting to cover and heal unseen wounds.
Mostly I hang on, clinging tightly,
persevering,
at times obnoxiously tenacious
and not always appreciated,
yet…unique in an other worldly way.
A dreamer of fairy tale kingdoms
while living this simple peasant’s life
in plain sight.
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It was dragging my hands along its belly,
loosing the bit and wiping the spit
from its mouth that made me
a snatch of grass in the thing’s maw,
a fly tasting its ear. It was
touching my nose to his that made me know
the clover’s bloom, my wet eye to his that
made me know the long field’s secrets.
But it was putting my heart to the horse’s that made me know
the sorrow of horses. Made me
forsake my thumbs for the sheen of unshod hooves.
And in this way drop my torches.
And in this way drop my knives.
Feel the small song in my chest
swell and my coat glisten and twitch.
And my face grow long.
And these words cast off, at last,
for the slow honest tongue of horses.
~Ross Gay “Becoming A Horse”
Living the dream of nearly every young girl, I grew up with a horse in our back field. The first was a raw-boned old paint who allowed my older sister and toddler me to sit atop him, walk around the barnyard and on the driveway at no more than a walk. He was arthritic and sore, but patient and tolerant to the attention of little girls. When we moved away to another part of the state, he didn’t come with us and I was too young to fully understand where he had been sent.
The horse on our new farm was my sister’s 4H project who was a spiffy chestnut mare with a penchant for a choppy trot and speedy canter. My sister would go miles with friends on horseback down back-country roads. Sadly, my sister soon became allergic (hives and swelling) to any contact with horses. I was barely old enough to start riding by myself in our fields.The little mare missed her adventures with my sister but seemed to adapt to my inexperience and took care of me as best she could – I never fell off. One night, she broke through a fence and ate her fill in a field of growing oat grass. The next day she was euthanized due to terrible colic. I was inconsolable, crying for days when visiting her burial spot on our property.
These first two horses tolerated the inexperience of their handlers and tried to compensate for it. I’ve since owned a few horses who knew exactly how to take advantage of such inexperience. Horses size up people quickly as our feelings and fear can be so transparent; it takes much longer for us to understand the complexity of their equine mind. Many diverse training techniques are marketed as testimony to that mystery.
I have learned that horses appreciate a patient and quiet approach, reflecting their consistency and honesty. They like to be looked in the eye and appreciate a soft breath blown over their whiskers. They want us to find their itchy spots rather than act the part of a pseudo-predator with intent to harm.
That’s not asking too much of us.
In return, we learn how best to communicate what we need from them. They are remarkably willing to work when they understand the job and feel appreciated. In return, we are given a chance to experience the world through their eyes and ears, to comprehend the remarkable sensitivity of a skin able to shiver a fly away.
I’ve spent much of my life learning with horses and hope there are a few years still left to learn more. Whatever sorrow they feel in their hearts is when I’ve failed to be who they need me to be. Their gift to me is an honest willingness to forgive, again and yet again.
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The daisy follows soft the sun,
And when his golden walk is done,
Sits shyly at his feet.
He, waking, finds the flower near.
“Wherefore, marauder, art thou here?”
“Because, sir, love is sweet!”
We are the flower, Thou the sun!
Forgive us, if as days decline,
We nearer steal to Thee, —
Enamoured of the parting west,
The peace, the flight, the amethyst,
Night’s possibility!
~Emily Dickinson
So has a Daisy vanished
From the fields today—
So tiptoed many a slipper
To Paradise away—
Oozed so in crimson bubbles
Day’s departing tide—
Blooming—tripping—flowing
Are ye then with God?
~Emily Dickinson
In the shadow of a metaphor
give me a daisy
because I could hold the daisy
in my hand.
~Patrizia Cavalli
We may be as ephemeral
as the daisies of the field,
but we are not lost to God.
Our hearts swirl and spiral
into the vortex of infinity
that contains only Him.
Growing well, growing strong
The surest signs that you belong
Waited so long
But the time is now
First a bud
Then two blooms
The world will need your presence soon
Wait a while it will be clear how
So be a daisy, daisy
Be like a daisy
Strong yet still innocent and pure
And maybe, just maybe
It’ll be ok
See, there are new beginnings I’m sure
Just stop
But don’t smell the daisies
Spreading joy
Bringing cheer
When there’s so much to be feared
Every petal offering new life
What is faith if not a seed
That’s how you started and it seems
You’ve come so far with nothing to hide
So be a daisy, daisy
Be like a daisy
Strong yet still innocent and pure
And maybe, just maybe
It’ll be ok
See, there are new beginnings I’m sure
Just stop
But don’t smell the daisies
Butterflies, a sign of love
From the heavens up above
It’s no wonder that to you they flock
Others still, you draw near
Most would say they appear
As a sign of endings beauty stops
And some are pushing daisies
While other journeys start
But turning flies to flowers
Takes a special heart
So be a daisy, daisy
Be like a daisy
Strong yet still innocent and pure
And maybe, just maybe
It’ll be ok
See, there are new beginnings I’m sure
Just stop
And maybe smell the daisies
Maybe it’s time that we all smell the daisies
~Bethany Sorenson
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The essence of America, that which really unites us, is not ethnicity, or nationality or religion. It is an idea, and what an idea it is—that you can come from humble circumstances and do great things. That it doesn’t matter where you came from but where you are going.
~Condoleezza Rice
We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth and power, as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving Grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us!
~Abraham Lincoln from Proclamation 97 – Appointing a Day of National Humiliation, Fasting and Prayer (March 1863)
Perhaps Independence Day should actually become a day of National Humiliation, Fasting and Prayer, as Lincoln proclaimed in March 1863. Goodness knows, after all we’ve been through as a nation, the U.S.A. still struggles with understanding who we are and how to live out the brilliant idea that began our government nearly 250 years ago.
Even for those coming from the most humble of backgrounds, it is possible for any person to do great things here. The key is to never forget the blessings bestowed upon us by the courage and perseverance of our forebears. So much blood has been shed to bring us the freedoms we take for granted.
Today is a day to be grateful and prayerful, not proud. Let us not forget amid the cacophony of fireworks, the overabundant picnic food and unending parades – we the people must vow together that our unity be strengthened by single-minded commitment to peace and harmony rather than be destroyed by division and conflict.
Our God does not abandon the humble in spirit.
Let us not forget such a God.
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When great trees fall,
rocks on distant hills shudder,
lions hunker down
in tall grasses,
and even elephants
lumber after safety.
When great trees fall
in forests,
small things recoil into silence,
their senses
eroded beyond fear.
When great souls die,
the air around us becomes
light, rare, sterile.
We breathe, briefly.
Our eyes, briefly,
see with
a hurtful clarity.
Our memory, suddenly sharpened,
examines,
gnaws on kind words
unsaid,
promised walks
never taken.
Great souls die and
our reality, bound to
them, takes leave of us.
Our souls,
dependent upon their
nurture,
now shrink, wizened.
Our minds, formed
and informed by their
radiance, fall away.
We are not so much maddened
as reduced to the unutterable ignorance of
dark, cold
caves.
And when great souls die,
after a period peace blooms,
slowly and always
irregularly. Spaces fill
with a kind of
soothing electric vibration.
Our senses, restored, never
to be the same, whisper to us.
They existed. They existed.
We can be. Be and be
better. For they existed.
~ Maya Angelou “When Great Trees Fall”
It sounded like July 4 fireworks
lighting up the evening
a pop, then silence-
a crack, then several more.
I look out the kitchen window – the old Spitzenburg tree
had fallen, irrevocably split and splintered.
Neither wind, nor lightning-felled,
simply toppled by old age and inner rot
It lies still, its hollowed trunk
like a brittle bone broken
Given up and given in
after decades of battering winter wind storms
Instead it fell in a fragile fruiting finale,
pulled up by the roots
coming for to carry me home
at twilight’s last gleaming.
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