So we sit perhaps in a starry chamber of silence, while the laughter of the heavens is too loud for us to hear…
The tremendous figure which fills the Gospel never concealed His tears. Yet He concealed something…
He never restrained His anger. Yet He restrained something…
There was something that He hid from all men when He went up a mountain to pray. There was something that He covered constantly by abrupt silence or imperious isolation. There was some one thing that was too great for God to show us when He walked upon our earth; and I have sometimes fancied that it was His mirth. G.K. Chesterton in his closing words of Orthodoxy
The Starry Night -Vincent Van Gogh from MOMA
We see humor in the Bible–irony, puns, absurdity, parodies, paradox- yet we miss hearing the laughter of the heavens as we are simply too close to the joke to get it. In fact, we are likely the punch line of the joke more often than not.
God shows remarkable restraint when it comes to observing the absurd and hilarious antics of His children. We don’t see verses such as, “Jesus laughed” or “Jesus smiled” or “Jesus stifled a chuckle” even though He surely had plenty of opportunity. Either that or He perhaps God wrote us off as a big mistake.
Obviously, He hasn’t written us off. We’re still here and so is He.
We often take ourselves too seriously. A little joy and joke can’t hurt. Listening carefully, we just might hear the laughter of heaven itself.
photo by Emily Vander Haak
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I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel. ~Maya Angelou
Years ago, our small church, Wiser Lake Chapel, once belonged to a summer co-ed softball league, along with 8 other churches and a few local businesses. This was a traditional Thursday evening summer activity for a generation or longer. Couples met for the first time on the ball fields and eventually married. Babies attended games in back packs and strollers and eventually were catching at home plate. Relatives going to different churches found themselves on opposing teams yelling good-natured insults. During our years of participation in the league, there were a few bopped heads, abrasions, sprained fingers and one broken leg as part of the deal. Hot dog roasts and ice cream sundaes were the after-game rewards.
Nothing was quite as wonderful as how a team recreated itself year after year. It was thrown together by our coach Brenda in a mere two weeks prior to the season starting, with the youngest members needing to be at least age 14 with no upper age limit; we’ve had our share of 70+ year olds on the team over the years. Some ball players were raw beginners having never played catch or swung a bat outside of school PE class. A few others had extensive history of varsity fastpitch in school or other community league play so meant business when they strolled out on the diamond. During a few years, we were a force to be reckoned with when we had over a dozen local university students join our church who were incredible players and power hitters.
It was the ultimate diverse talent pool.
A different dynamic exists in church league softball compared to Little League, Pony League, minors or majors when you watch or play. Sure, there still are slow pitch teams that stock their ranks with “invitation-only” players, reserving the best and most athletic so there is a real chance at the trophy at the end of the summer. Churches like ours, a mere 150 people average weekly Sunday attendance, had a “come one, come all” attitude, just to make sure we avoided forfeiting by not having enough players week after week. We always did have enough. In fact we had more players than we could find positions for. And we had a whole bleacher full of fans, dedicated to cheering and clapping for anything and everything our players did, whether it was a pop-up foul ball, a strike out swing, a missed catch, or an actual hit. We loved it all and wanted our players to know they were loved too, no matter what they did or what happened.
I think that was why the players and fans came back to play week after week, though we hadn’t won a game in years. We rooted and hollered for each other, got great teaching and encouragement from our fantastic coach, and the players’ skills did improve year to year despite months of inactivity. We had a whole line up of pre-14 year olds eager to grow old enough to play, just so they could be a part of the action.
Why did it not matter that we didn’t win games? We were winning hearts, not runs. We were showing our youngsters that the spirit of play is what it is all about, not about the trophy at the end. We were teaching encouragement in the face of errors, smiles despite failure, joy in the fellowship of people who love each other–spending an evening together week after week.
We are family; family picks you up and dusts you off when you’ve fallen flat on your face during your slide to base while still being called “out.”
Most of all, I see this as a small piece of God’s kingdom in action. Although we no longer gather for church league baseball — the competition got too fierce (and hazardous to our health), the rules too tight — we still gather for a pick-up game now and then, just to remind ourselves of who we are and what we are about.
Our coach models Jesus’ acceptance of all at the table, and embodies the fruits of the spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self control.
Our players are the eager, the ambivalent, the accurate, the flawed, the strong, the weak, the fast, the slow: chosen for the game even if they were completely inadequate to the task at hand, volunteering to be part of each moment as painful as it can sometimes be.
The cheering from the bleachers comes as if from heaven itself: Do not be afraid. Good will to all. We are well pleased. Amen!
We’re sliding to home plate, running as hard as we can, diving for safety, covered in the dust and mire and blood of living/dying and will never, ever be called “out”.
Let’s play ball.
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Flung is too harsh a word for the rush of the world. Blown is more like it, but blown by a generous, unending breath. ~Annie Dillardfrom Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
Andrew Wyeth – Wind from the Sea, 1947
Perhaps as a child you had the chicken pox and your mother, to soothe you in your fever or to help you fall asleep, came into your room and read to you from some favorite book, Charlotte’s Web or Little House on the Prairie, a long story that she quietly took you through until your eyes became magnets for your shuttering lids and she saw your breathing go slow. And then she read on, this time silently and to herself, not because she didn’t know the story, it seemed to her that there had never been a time when she didn’t know this story—the young girl and her benevolence, the young girl in her sod house— but because she did not yet want to leave your side though she knew there was nothing more she could do for you. And you, not asleep but simply weak, listened to her turn the pages, still feeling the lamp warm against one cheek, knowing the shape of the rocking chair’s shadow as it slid across your chest. So that now, these many years later, when you are clenched in the damp fist of a hospital bed, or signing the papers that say you won’t love him anymore, when you are bent at your son’s gravesite or haunted by a war that makes you wake with the gun cocked in your hand, you would like to believe that such generosity comes from God, too, who now, when you have the strength to ask, might begin the story again, just as your mother would, from the place where you have both left off. ~Keetje Kuipers“Prayer”
How is it possible 64 years have flown by and I still need the same story to be told to me again?
Long ago the 5-year old me had a sudden terrifying revelation that I would someday cease to walk this earth. Now a nearly 70-year old me is more intimidated at the head-long rush of the days-months-years than at the inevitable end to come. The world hurtles through space and time at a pace that leaves me breathless. Indeed, I have been flung at times, bruised and weary from all the hurry and hubbub.
I want to find the strength to ask God to begin telling the reassuring story again, starting right where we left off. I know I will be blown away again – blown by God’s breath that loves, fills and nurtures with a generous promise both hopeful and fulfilled.
Utterly blown away by what comes next.
If only the five year old me could have known.
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No longer do I cover tables filled with food and laughter My seams are frayed my hems falling my strength no longer able To hold the hot and cold
I wish for those first days When just woven I could keep water From seeping through Repelled stains with the tightness of my weave Dazzled the sunlight with my Reflection
I grow old though pleased with my memories The tasks I can no longer complete Are balanced by the love of the tasks gone past
I offer no apology only this plea:
When I am frayed and strained and drizzle at the end Please someone cut a square and put me in a quilt That I might keep some child warm
And some old person with no one else to talk to Will hear my whispers
I make them warm to keep my family from freezing; I make them beautiful to keep my heart from breaking. –From the journal of a prairie woman, 1870
To keep a husband and five children warm, she quilts them covers thick as drifts against the door. Through every fleshy square white threads needle their almost invisible tracks; her hours count each small suture that holds together the raw-cut, uncolored edges of her life. She pieces each one beautiful, and summer bright to thaw her frozen soul. Under her fingers the scraps grow to green birds and purple improbable leaves; deeper than calico, her mid-winter mind bursts into flowers. She watches them unfold between the double stars, the wedding rings. ~Luci Shaw “Quiltmaker”
When I no longer have strength or the usefulness to perform my daily tasks, piece me up and sew me into a greater whole along with pieces of others who are also fading.
We are so much better together, so much more colorful and bold, becoming art and function in our fraying state.
Full of warmth and beauty and fun covering all who sleep and love and cuddle, or in their frailty may drift off to heaven on a quilt-cloud as their last breath is breathed.
~~click each quilt to enlarge and admire the handiwork~~
thank you again to the talented quilters displaying their art at the NW Washington Fair in Lynden (see previous years’ work here, here, here, here, here, and here )
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She sees rain coming like a pillar of smoke, gliding across the west field, a cloud bursting full, the air already moist, pots of mint stirring in the window, finches tucked away under the porch eaves. Wind rushes through the open parlor door, knocks over the jar of tiger lilies without breaking glass. Water drips to pine floor planks. She pulls off her apron, stops at the prone lilies, hand raised recalls the reverend’s picture of the wife of Lot, the woman who looked back, then turned in to the salt that begins to seep from her own eyes. How could she not look back? ~Lonnie Hull DuPont “She Sees Rain Coming” from She Calls the Moon by Its Name
All morning with dry instruments The field repeats the sound Of rain From memory And in the wall The dead increase their invisible honey It is August The flocks are beginning to form I will take with me the emptiness of my hands What you do not have you find everywhere ~W.S. Merwin “Provision”
My mistakes can’t be hidden once I take the bite and realize what I have done. There is no going back, retrieving harsh words spoken, asking for a re-do, or wishing things had worked out differently.
When I’m wrong, I must admit it and not look back. I come with empty hands, realizing what I have to give is meager indeed. All I have is my regret and sorrow, and that is all God needs to take my hand so it is no longer empty.
What I do not have, what I do not know, what I cannot be on my own — I will find in Him, and He is suddenly everywhere I look.
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The goldfinches have left. They have gathered up the air beneath their black-robed wings and shaken off the dust of our dusty world.
Abandoned thistle, crown of thorns; broken bone stalk; and morning air, cloak of our salvation, rent in absence.
What’s left? Pentimenti of hopes in a dissolving frame. Only, try to remember the endless knot of their song. ~Franchot Ballinger, “Passion Painting with no Goldfinches” from Crossings
Goldfinches, the Washington state bird, visit our feeders regularly until the air starts to chill in another month or so. Before I began offering up thistle seeds for the taking, they were only a golden streak across the barnyard during spring and summer, barely seen but clearly on a mission I could not discern. Now they linger companionably where I can witness their sparkling conversations while they share a meal with one another, as if our feeders were a local cafe.
Soon they will be gone, leaving pentimento shadows of where they once had been, their bright yellow feathers colored over with the dusty brown paint of a dry tired summer.
In over 500 Renaissance masterpieces of Jesus and Mary, the European goldfinch is included, representing the redeeming passion of Christ. In contrast to the plain black baseball cap of our American goldfinch, the legend is that its European cousin’s splash of red on its face represents Christ’s blood from the finch plucking a thorn of thistle from Jesus’ brow as He carried the cross to Calgary.
I always miss their flash of gold once they move to warmer wintering places. Yet like the restoration of Old Masters paintings, I know there will come a discovery of a painted-over portrait or scene that once again shines with renewed brilliance — the goldfinches will return with their riches of feather and song, bringing with them the promise of hope and redemption.
This is the country road we live on. I know where it ends to the east: at the very edge of the Cascade foothills, right in the middle of a small tribal nation trying to survive challenging economic times on their reservation land.
Heading west from here, there is another tribal nation trying to survive.
In between are farmers who are having to sell their dairy herds because milk prices aren’t keeping up with the cost of maintaining their business. There are families now without sustainable wage employment because large industries have pulled up stakes and closed their doors. There is land that is overpriced as people flee the chaos and lawlessness of the cities, hoping to find peace and quiet.
There is much sadness along the road we travel that leads to heaven, but as a diverse people who struggle together on this journey, we take turns carrying one another when one has what another does not. We still have the sun and the rain and the soil, the turning of the seasons and the rhythm of a sun that rises up and comes down.
Now I understand that there are two melodies playing, one below the other, one easier to hear, the other
lower, steady, perhaps more faithful for being less heard yet always present.
When all other things seem lively and real, this one fades. Yet the notes of it
touch as gently as fingertips, as the sound of the names laid over each child at birth.
I want to stay in that music without striving or cover. If the truth of our lives is what it is playing,
the telling is so soft that this mortal time, this irrevocable change,
becomes beautiful. I stop and stop again to hear the second music.
I hear the children in the yard, a train, then birds. All this is in it and will be gone. I set my ear to it as I would to a heart. ~ Annie Lighthart, “The Second Music” – author of Pax
So many themes run through our daily existence. Usually we can only attend to one thing at a time, most often the loudest. Yet if we listen and look closely, there is a softer telling just discernible under all the noise. Sometimes, like a fugue or canon, the themes trade places, one softer which becomes more apparent and insistent, then fading to soft again.
I want to hear the heart beat of the river of life that flows through me. May I never forget what is underneath all the noise.
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…I’m taking the day off. Quiet as a feather. I hardly move though really I’m traveling a terrific distance.
Stillness. One of the doors into the temple. ~Mary Oliver from “Today” from A Thousand Mornings
Some days warrant stillness. On this Sabbath day of rest, I seek to be quiet as a feather, silently in place, listening.
Maybe, to hear each other breathe again. Surely, to hear the Word and breath of God.
A funny thing about feathers: alone, each one is merely fluff and air. Together — feathers become lift and power, with strength and will to soar beyond the tether of gravity’s pull on our flawed humanity to return back to dust.
As quiet as a feather, joined and united, one overlapping another, we can rise above and fly as far as life and breath can take us.
May peace be still.
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The Northwest Washington Fair in Lynden is underway this week and for the eleventh year in a row, our Haflinger horses aren’t there on display. I feel wistful as I wake up too early on a foggy summer morning, remembering the twenty years where I would gather up our sleepy children and their friends and head into the fairgrounds to clean stalls, walk the ponies and prepare for the day. We are no long “doing” the fair as a farm, and I feel a little bit sad about that.
Our farm, BriarCroft, had been a consistent presence at this fair for nearly two decades, promoting the Haflinger breed in a well-decorated outdoor display, providing 24 hour a day coverage for the horses for the 6 days of the fair. We petitioned the Fair Board for 5 years in the late 1980s to allow us to display at the fair, and they finally said “okay, here’s the space, build it yourself” and we did! We were not there for classes, competition, or ribbons. We were there because people enjoyed our Haflingers and we enjoyed the people.
But now that our children are all grown up and moved away, all with children of their own, we lack their help to “man” the horse stalls. I miss spending that intense one week time with all of the several dozen “kid” helpers from over the years, all grown up and scattered to the winds.
Every year between 1992 and 2012, we were there, sometimes sharing space and duties with other Haflinger farms (Rodenbergers and McKees), along with several brave young women (Kelsy Smith, Chesna Klimek and Emily Vander Haak) who did Haflinger “trick riding” as part of the daily Grandstand show. The older kids watched the younger kids, the in-between kids did most of the horse stall cleaning duty, and we adults sat and shot the breeze.
Our display created good will for the fair visitors who depended on us every year to be there with horses that they and their children could actually pet (and sit on) without fear, who enjoyed our braiding demonstrations, and our various Haflinger trivia contests with prizes. Our horses came to represent what dreams are made of.
Countless times a day there would be a bright eyed child who approached our stalls, climbed up on the step stools and reached up to pet a Haflinger nose or neck and looked deep into those big brown Haflinger eyes, and lost their heart forever to the breed. They will not forget that moment when a horse they had never met before loved them back. Haflingers are magic with children and we saw that over and over again.
Our first year, in 1992, a mom and her 6 year old son came up to our stalls, as do some 10,000 people a day, and spent a long time petting the horses and talking to them, and enjoying them. They walked off, with the little boy looking over his shoulder at the Haflingers until they turned a corner and went out of sight. An hour later they were back and spent more time with the Haflingers. I offered the little boy a chance to sit on a Haflinger, and he agreed readily, and sat and sat and sat, playing with the mane and petting the shoulder and neck and was simply in heaven, quietly dreaming his own dreams on the back of a horse. His mom told me that they lived in a suburb near Seattle, but always spent this particular week in August at a local beach cabin, and the fair was one of their favorite activities each year. Her son Gary had never had an opportunity to sit on a horse before.
Next year, they were back, and Gary was a little taller, but still a quiet boy, and he kept dragging his mom back to the Haflingers, and she’d sit and visit as he’d sit on the Haflingers. He watched as we watered the horses, or fed them hay, or cleaned their stalls, and pretty soon he was asking if he could do the scooping, or dump the buckets or brush the horses. So he became, out of his own initiative, a helper.
By the time he was 8, he was spending several hours at a time with us at the stalls, taking his turn at the chores, and his mom, trusting that he was in good hands, and that he certainly wasn’t going to wander away from the Haflingers, would check back with him now and then to see if he wanted to go on rides, or see a performance, and his response was always “no, I can do that anytime, but I don’t get to see Haflingers very often!” He would talk a little about his hope someday to have a farm where he could raise Haflingers, and one year even said that his folks were looking at property to buy with acreage, but apparently a job for his dad didn’t materialize, so he remained a city kid in reality, even if he was a future farm kid in his heart.
Gary was one of our regular kid helpers every year until he was 12 when he started turning out for junior high football, and the football summer camp coincided with our fair week, so we’d only see him briefly on Saturdays as he got into his teens. He’d stop by to say hi, pet the horses, catch up on the Haflinger news, and because he only had a few hours to spend at the fair, he’d head off to other things. I really missed him and his happy smile around the stalls.
When he was 15, I missed seeing him because I was working when he stopped by. When he stopped by at age 16, he strolled up to me and I found I was looking up at this young man who I had to study to recognize. I’m a tall woman of 5’10”–he was at least 4 inches taller than me! He told me he wanted to come by because some of his best summer memories were of spending time with the Haflingers at the fair and he wanted me to know that. He thanked me for welcoming him and allowing him to “hang out” with the Haflingers. He told me his hope and dream someday was to live somewhere where he could raise Haflingers, and he was working hard in school so he could make that happen. He was a 4.0 student and the first string quarterback on his high school football team. I was as proud as if he was my own son.
This young man received a full scholarship to play football at a major university, and over four years waited his turn to be the starting quarterback. Once he had his chance, after only a few games of being the starter, he was tackled hard, sustaining a neck fracture which thankfully resulted in no permanent damage, but his college football career was suddenly over.
I have lost track of Gary over the years and I hope he is faring well. I hope his connection with our horses left him with a legacy of love for animals he’ll pass onto his children someday.
So on this misty late summer morning, instead of heading to the fairgrounds to clean stalls, I’m going to turn our dusty, unbathed Haflingers out in the field as usual. They don’t even know all the excitement they are missing.
I do hope the fair-goers still miss the friendly golden horses, with the big brown eyes, who helped over two decades to help make kids’ dreams come true.
Our Haflinger display at the NW Washington Fair
Trillium as a yearling with me at the fair 1993 – she is still part of our herd at age 29
Thank you to Lea Gibson Lozano, Emily Vander Haak, Kelsy Smith, and Chesna Klimek for their photos in this collection.
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