Month: April 2024

Sing, Voice of Spring

barnstormingblogLeave a comment

I wonder if the sap is stirring yet,
If wintry birds are dreaming of a mate,
If frozen snowdrops feel as yet the sun
And crocus fires are kindling one by one:
     Sing, robin, sing;
I still am sore in doubt concerning Spring.

I wonder if the springtide of this year
Will bring another Spring both lost and dear;
If heart and spirit will find out their Spring,
Or if the world alone will bud and sing:
     Sing, hope, to me;
Sweet notes, my hope, soft notes for memory.

The sap will surely quicken soon or late,
The tardiest bird will twitter to a mate;
So Spring must dawn again with warmth and bloom,
Or in this world, or in the world to come:
     Sing, voice of Spring,
Till I too blossom and rejoice and sing.
~Christina Rossetti “The First Spring Day”

A Light exists in Spring
Not present on the Year
At any other period —
When March is scarcely here

A Color stands abroad
On Solitary Fields
That Science cannot overtake
But Human Nature feels.

It waits upon the Lawn,
It shows the furthest Tree
Upon the furthest Slope you know
It almost speaks to you.

Then as Horizons step
Or Noons report away
Without the Formula of sound
It passes and we stay —

A quality of loss
Affecting our Content
As Trade had suddenly encroached
Upon a Sacrament.
~ Emily Dickinson “A Light exists in Spring”

Maybe it is the particular tilt of our globe on its axis,
or the suffusion of clouds damp with moisture
or perhaps only the winter darkness can no longer overwhelm…

The light of spring as it melts from March into April
is immersive with sweet-scented dawn and twilight moments

Surrounded in sacrament without and within,
a renewed life lived in the Lord:
gently glowing.

Lux,
Calida gravisque pura velut aurum
Et canunt angeli molliter
modo natum.

Light
Warm and heavy, pure as gold
And the angels sing softly to
The just born

One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

$10.00
$25.00
$50.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00

Or enter a custom amount

$

Your contribution is deeply appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

Startled By the Sun, Not By the Eclipse

barnstormingblog2 Comments

We should always endeavour to wonder at the permanent thing, not at the mere exception. We should be startled by the sun, and not by the eclipse. We should wonder less at the earthquake, and wonder more about the earth.
~ G.K. Chesterton from ILLUSTRATED LONDON NEWS, October 21, 1905

As a physician, I was trained to perform physical examinations by learning first what was normal about the human body. As young, theoretically healthy, medical students, we practiced physical examinations on each other, and then had to demonstrate our skills in front of a professor for our class grade in physical assessments.

Since I went to medical school at a time when fewer than 1 in 5 students was a woman, each female student was placed in a physical exam group of three men, taught by a male physician, and then evaluated by a male professor. These were full examinations, including internal assessments, conducted in a typical open-backed hospital gown, in a classroom with long black lab tables to substitute for exam tables.

It was the ultimate feeling of vulnerability to be exposed to one’s classmates, supervisors and evaluators in such a way. Yet, it helped me understand the naked vulnerability of a patient undressing for a physician’s evaluation in the exam room.

After learning to assess and document what was normal in the physical exam, I was then trained to take note of the exceptions –
the human body equivalent of
an eclipse or an earthquake,
a wildfire or drought,
a hurricane or flood,
or merely an annoying pothole or molehill.

A physician’s attention is rarely focused on everything that is going well with the human body, but instead concentrating on what is aberrant, failing, or could be made better.

This is unfortunate; there is much beauty and amazing design to behold in every person I meet, especially those with chronic illness who feel nothing is as it should be — they feel despair and frustration at how their mind or body is aging, failing or faltering.

To counter this tendency to just find what’s wrong and needed fixing, I learned over the years to talk out loud as I was trained to do during those medical school physical assessments:
you have no concerning skin lesions,
your eardrums look clear,
your eyes react normally,
your tonsils are fine,
your thyroid feels smooth,
your lymph nodes are tiny,
your lungs auscultate clear,
your heart sounds are perfect,
your breasts reveal no palpable lumps,
your belly exam is reassuring,
your reflexes are symmetrical,
your prostate is smooth and normal,
your cervix, uterus and ovaries are healthy,
your emotional response to your stress level and
your tears are completely understandable.

I also wrote messages to patients meant to reassure:
your labs are in a typical range
or are getting better
or at least maintaining,
your xray shows no concerns,
or isn’t getting worse,
those medication side effects are to be expected and could go away.

I chose to acknowledge what was working well before attempting to intervene in what is not.

I’m not sure how much difference it made to my patient.
But it made a difference to me to wonder first at who this whole patient was before I focused in on what was broken and causing dis-ease.

I remain startled nearly 50 years later, and always astonished, by the sheer wonder that is our bodies – the Artist’s masterpiece.

One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

$10.00
$25.00
$50.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00

Or enter a custom amount

$

Your contribution is deeply appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

A Hush Now

barnstormingblogLeave a comment

There is a hush now while the hills rise up
and God is going to sleep. He trusts the ship
of Heaven to take over and proceed beautifully
as he lies dreaming in the lap of the world.
He knows the owls will guard the sweetness
of the soul in their massive keep of silence,
looking out with eyes open or closed over
the length of Tomales Bay that the egrets
conform to, whitely broad in flight, white
and slim in standing. God, who thinks about
poetry all the time, breathes happily as He
repeats to Himself: there are fish in the net,
lots of fish this time in the net of the heart.
~Linda Gregg “Fishing in the Keep of Silence” from All of It Singing.

The second before the sun went out we saw a wall of dark shadow come speeding at us. We no sooner saw it than it was upon us, like thunder. It roared up the valley. It slammed our hill and knocked us out. It was the monstrous swift shadow cone of the moon. I have since read that this wave of shadow moves 1,800 miles an hour. Language can give no sense of this sort of speed—1,800 miles an hour. It was 195 miles wide. No end was in sight—you saw only the edge. It rolled at you across the land at 1,800 miles an hour, hauling darkness like plague behind it. Seeing it, and knowing it was coming straight for you, was like feeling a slug of anesthetic shoot up your arm. If you think very fast, you may have time to think, “Soon it will hit my brain.” You can feel the deadness race up your arm; you can feel the appalling, inhuman speed of your own blood. We saw the wall of shadow coming, and screamed before it hit.

This was the universe about which we have read so much and never before felt: the universe as a clockwork of loose spheres flung at stupefying, unauthorized speeds. How could anything moving so fast not crash, not veer from its orbit amok like a car out of control on a turn?

Less than two minutes later, when the sun emerged, the trailing edge of the shadow cone sped away. It coursed down our hill and raced eastward over the plain, faster than the eye could believe; it swept over the plain and dropped over the planet’s rim in a twinkling. It had clobbered us, and now it roared away. We blinked in the light. It was as though an enormous, loping god in the sky had reached down and slapped the Earth’s face.

When the sun appeared as a blinding bead on the ring’s side, the eclipse was over. The black lens cover appeared again, back-lighted, and slid away. At once the yellow light made the sky blue again; the black lid dissolved and vanished. The real world began there. I remember now: We all hurried away.

We never looked back. It was a general vamoose … but enough is enough. One turns at last even from glory itself with a sigh of relief. From the depths of mystery, and even from the heights of splendor, we bounce back and hurry for the latitudes of home.
~Annie Dillard from her essay  “Total Eclipse” in The Atlantic about the February 1979 eclipse in Washington State

In February 1979, I was working as a medical student on an inpatient psychiatric unit in a large hospital in Seattle, less than a hundred miles from the band of total eclipse Annie Dillard describes above happening just to the south.

Our clinical team had tried to prepare our mostly psychotic and paranoid schizophrenic patients for what was about to happen outside that morning.

Our patients were much more anxious than usual, pacing and wringing their hands as the light outside slowly faded, with high noon transformed gradually to an oddly shadowy dusk. The street lights turned on automatically and cars moved about with headlights shining.

We all stood at the windows in the hospital perched high on a hill, watching the city become dark as night in the middle of the day. Our unstable patients were sure the world was ending and certain they had caused it to happen. Extra doses of medication were dispensed as needed while the light faded away and then slowly returned to the streets outside. Within an hour the sunlight was fully back, and many of our patients were napping soundly, safe in the heart of the net we had thrown over them to protect them.

A hush had fallen over us all as we watched the light go out and then return. We were safe.

We all breathed a sigh of relief, having witnessed such transient glory from the heavens. We did not cause it but a Power far greater did. The eclipse swept – a racing shadow followed by restoration of light – the edge of our sanity to accept that our light can indeed be taken away. 

For some, they live their whole lives consumed by shadow.

Miraculously, the Light has been returned to us in this shining night. We may not be able to look it in the Face —  simply too blinding — but we need never dwell in darkness again.

One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

$10.00
$25.00
$50.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00

Or enter a custom amount

$

Your contribution is deeply appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

Why Not Me?

barnstormingblog1 Comment

Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost. Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labor on what does not satisfy? Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good, and you will delight in the richest of fare. Give ear and come to me; listen, that you may live. I will make an everlasting covenant with you…
Isaiah 55:1-3

When he takes it all away,
will we love him more than things,
more than health,
more than family,
and more than life?
That’s the question.
That’s the warning.
That’s the wonderful invitation.
~John Piper in “I Was Warned By Job This Morning”

We all have recently lived through a time when the freedoms we take for granted – our jobs, education, corporate worship, visiting easily with extended family and friends, our desire to go where we wish when we wish – were challenged due to the threat of a packet of viral RNA invading our bodies and wreaking havoc.

Though that threat has largely passed, what we lost during those years still lingers – financial security, educational and career progress. Many are now chronically ill due to the virus, but most painful, we experienced the death of millions of loved ones.

The Book of Job is a warning about losing everything – what we have strived for, cared about, loved and valued suddenly taken away. If we are stripped bare naked, nothing left but our love for God and His sovereign power over our lives, will we still worship His Name, inhale His Word like air itself, submit ourselves to His plan over our plan?

I know I fall far short of the mark. It takes only small obstacles or losses to trip me up so I stagger in my faith, trying futilely to not lose my balance, and fall flat-faced and immobilized.

Just recently, people I love are confronting this reality in their own lives. When I’ve seen people lose almost everything, either in a disaster, or an accident, or devastating illness like cancer or COVID-19, I’ve looked hard at myself and asked if I could sustain such loss in my life and still turn myself over to the will of God.

I would surely plead for reprieve and ask the horribly desperate question, “why me?”,
girding myself for the response:
“and why not you?”

The invitation, scary and radical as it is, is from God straight to my heart, asking that I trust His plan for my own and my loved ones’ life and death. This trust is crucial to my faith, no matter what happens, no matter how much suffering, no matter how much, like Christ in the garden, I plead that it work out differently, and not hurt so much.

The invitation to His plan for my life has been written, personally carried to me by His Son, and lies ready in my hands, even if I’m wary of opening it. It is now up to me to read it carefully, and with deep gratitude that I am even included, respond with an RSVP that says emphatically, “I’ll be there! Nothing could keep me away.”

Or I could leave it untouched and unread, fearing it is too scary to open. Or even toss it away altogether, thinking the invitation really wasn’t meant for me.

Even if, in my heart, I knew it was.

One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

$10.00
$25.00
$50.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00

Or enter a custom amount

$

Your contribution is deeply appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

Like a Cat Asleep

barnstormingblog3 Comments

All that matters is to be at one with the living God
to be a creature in the house of the God of Life.

Like a cat asleep on a chair
at peace, in peace
and at one with the master of the house, with the mistress,
at home, at home in the house of the living,
sleeping on the hearth, and yawning before the fire.

Sleeping on the hearth of the living world
yawning at home before the fire of life
feeling the presence of the living God
like a great reassurance
a deep calm in the heart
a presence
as of the master sitting at the board
in his own and greater being,
in the house of life.
~D.H. Lawrence “Pax”

When you notice a cat in profound meditation,
     The reason, I tell you, is always the same:
His mind is engaged in a rapt contemplation
     Of the thought, of the thought, of the thought of his name:
          His ineffable effable
          Effanineffable
Deep and inscrutable singular name.
~T.S. Eliot from The Naming of Cats

The fat cat on the mat
may seem to dream
of nice mice that suffice
for him, or cream;
~J.R.R. Tolkien from “Cat” from Tales of the Perilous Realm

I don’t know where prayers go,
or what they do.
Do cats pray, while they sleep
half-asleep in the sun?

Is a prayer a gift, or a petition,
or does it matter?
The sunflowers blaze, maybe that’s their way.
Maybe the cats are sound asleep. Maybe not.
~Mary Oliver from “I Happened to be Standing” from A Thousand Mornings

Our cats seem to have no sense of time — until it is mealtime.

Otherwise they pussyfoot through the hours of the day, unworried about what comes next, or what just happened. They find a convenient patch of sun, or a particularly soft cushion, or sometimes a most unlikely place like a cardboard box or pile of shavings or top of a fencepost.

Then they yawn, become rubber-boned and curl up for a nap.

How do they contemplate the fact of their existence?
How do they appear so relaxed, in peace and serenity?
Do they understand their place in creation and give thanks?

God wants us to rest comfortably in our own skins, as adaptable as a sleeping cat. And He wants us to count our days without wasting a moment for thankfulness. We are meant to be more than just hungry and sleepy and rubber-boned.

We are created in His image, acutely aware of the privilege of our existence.

One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

$10.00
$25.00
$50.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00

Or enter a custom amount

$

Your contribution is deeply appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

Anything is Possible

barnstormingblog3 Comments

I planted the daffodils in early fall,
never thinking much about it.
Having planted so many fall seasons,
one year fell away from another.

During the year, you died.
I thought too much of it—
all we never did together;
it was too late to get more days back.

Sooner or later, grief buried itself deeper
and deeper. My heart needed rest.
There is a love that tears us to pieces
like yellow petals of grief.

And then one day, minding my business,
I pass by where the daffodils were.
I remembered that you had loved them,
and you came back to me.

Do not say second chances are not possible;
surely as one daffodil is different than another,
each launching silent boats of forgiveness,
anything is possible.
~Martin Willitts Jr., “Daffodils in Light – Narcissus Poeticus” from Leave Nothing Behind

Fair Daffodils, we weep to see
You haste away so soon;
As yet the early-rising sun
Has not attain’d his noon.

Stay, stay,
Until the hasting day
Has run
But to the even-song;
And, having pray’d together, we
Will go with you along.
 
We have short time to stay, as you,
We have as short a spring;
As quick a growth to meet decay,
As you, or anything.

We die
As your hours do, and dry
Away,
Like to the summer’s rain;
Or as the pearls of morning’s dew,
Ne’er to be found again.
~Robert Herrick “To Daffodils”

Thou yellow trumpeter of laggard Spring!
Thou herald of rich Summer’s myriad flowers!
The climbing sun with new recovered powers
Does warm thee into being, through the ring
Of rich, brown earth he woos thee, makes thee fling
Thy green shoots up, inheriting the dowers
Of bending sky and sudden, sweeping showers,
Till ripe and blossoming thou art a thing
To make all nature glad, thou art so gay;
To fill the lonely with a joy untold;
Nodding at every gust of wind to-day,
To-morrow jewelled with raindrops. Always bold
To stand erect, full in the dazzling play
Of April’s sun, for thou hast caught his gold.
~Amy Lowell “To An Early Daffodil”

Our farm was owned by the Lawrence family over one hundred years ago. At some point, perhaps as a remembrance of a loved one who passed, someone decided to bury daffodil bulbs scattered around the yard. All these decades later, dozens of faithful heralds of spring still come up as the sun and extra hours of light call them forth. Some years they bloom in February, but most typically they wait for a more predictable welcome from the weather in March.

They are very tender, easily injured by a strong wind, heavy rain or hailstorm or late snowfall – mostly an old antique variety of fluffy double blooms, but some traditional trumpet blossoms still come up called forth by the calling of the geese and swans passing over far above them.

For me, their blooming with abandon is a reminder of faithfulness and persistence, especially because of the 44 weeks per year they remain silent and buried out of sight. I have a general sense where they will appear each February, but am still surprised and impressed when they do push up through the icy ground. I walk around them carefully, knowing I could crush them with one firm inadvertent boot step if I am not cautious.

Once the daffodils are blooming, they encourage my hope that anything is possible: a promise of the spring just ahead. When the blooms wither and fade, the green spiky stems must gather the strength the bulb needs for another cycle of dormancy, so I mow around them to allow as much time as needed to replenish before disappearing underground again.

I still don’t understand how these gentle blooms somehow manage to pull me down with them into the bulb, waiting my turn alongside them buried deep in the dark. Perhaps it is because God plants each one of us here in His holy ground, to await the ultimate wakening that calls us forth to bloom everlasting.

One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

$10.00
$25.00
$50.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00

Or enter a custom amount

$

Your contribution is deeply appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

A Celebration of Resilience

barnstormingblogLeave a comment

Spring comes quickly: overnight
the plum tree blossoms,
the warm air fills with bird calls.

In the plowed dirt, someone has drawn a picture of
the sun
with rays coming out all around
but because the background is dirt, the sun is black.
There is no signature.

Alas, very soon everything will disappear:
the bird calls, the delicate blossoms. In the end,
even the earth itself will follow the artist’s name into
oblivion.

Nevertheless, the artist intends
a mood of celebration.

How beautiful the blossoms are — emblems of the
resilience of life.
The birds approach eagerly.
~Louise Glück “Primavera”

“Plowing the Field” by Joyce Lapp

Nothing is so beautiful as Spring –         
When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;         
Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens, and thrush         
Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring         
The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;
The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush         
The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush         
With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.         

What is all this juice and all this joy?         
A strain of the earth’s sweet being in the beginning
In Eden garden. – Have, get, before it cloy,         
Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning,         
Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy,         
Most, O maid’s child, thy choice and worthy the winning.   
~Gerard Manley Hopkins “Spring”

And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” Also he said, ‘Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true. ”
Revelation 21:5

Given a choice, humanity chose sour
over the sweetness we were created for ~
giving up walks together in the cool of the day
to feed an appetite that could never be sated.

God made a choice to bring us back with His own blood
as if we are worthy of Him.

He says we are.
He dies to prove it.

Every day I choose to believe
earth can be sweet and beautiful again.
Each spring becomes a celebration of our resilience.

One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

$10.00
$25.00
$50.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00

Or enter a custom amount

$

Your contribution is deeply appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

Looking for the Good Parts

barnstormingblogLeave a comment

Part of the joy of beauty
is the realization that it is part of a larger whole,
most of which appears to be just out of sight. 
We are drawn forward toward something…
and left waiting, wondering.
~N.T. Wright from Life, God and Other Small Topics

Once, in the cool blue middle of a lake,
up to my neck in that most precious element of all,

I found a pale-gray, curled-upwards pigeon feather
floating on the tension of the water

at the very instant when a dragonfly,
like a blue-green iridescent bobby pin,

hovered over it, then lit, and rested.
That’s all.

I mention this in the same way
that I fold the corner of a page

in certain library books,
so that the next reader will know

where to look for the good parts.
~Tony Hoagland “Field Guide” from Unincorporated Persons in the Late Honda Dynasty.

photo by Josh Scholten
photo by Josh Scholten

…God’s attention is indeed fixed on the little things. But this is not because God is a great cosmic cop, eager to catch us in minor transgressions, but simply because God loves us–loves us so much that the divine presence is revealed even in the meaningless workings of daily life. It is in the ordinary, the here-and-now, that God asks us to recognize that the creation is indeed refreshed like dew-laden grass that is “renewed in the morning” or to put it in more personal and also theological terms, “our inner nature is being renewed everyday”.
~Kathleen Norris from The Quotidian Mysteries

We do not want merely to see beauty…
we want something else which can hardly be put into words-
to be united with the beauty we see,
to pass into it,
to receive it into ourselves,
to bathe in it,
to become part of it.

We discern the freshness and purity of morning,
but they do not make us fresh and pure.
We cannot mingle with the splendours we see.

But all the leaves of the New Testament
are rustling with the rumour
that it will not always be so.

Someday, God willing, we shall get in.
~C.S. Lewis from The Weight of Glory

Whether it is in a favorite book of fiction or poetry,
or from the Word itself,
or as I keep my eyes open to the daily wonders around me,
I feel compelled to share the good parts with those of you who visit here.

It is easy to be ground to a pulp by the little things:
waiting in line too long,
heavy traffic,
an insistent alarm clock,
a mouse (or more) in the house,
miserable spring-time pollen allergies,
so much misery in the headlines. 

God is in the details, from dew drop to tear drop and even to nose snot. His ubiquitous presence is in all things, large and small, not just the “good parts” of His exquisite grandeur.  

It isn’t all elegance from our limited perspective, but still, they are all good parts worthy of His divine attention.

The time has come to be refreshed and renewed by His care revealed in the tiniest ways. I feel immersed in His wonder.

He has my attention and perhaps, in some small way, I now have yours.

One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

$10.00
$25.00
$50.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00

Or enter a custom amount

$

Your contribution is deeply appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

I Now Walk Wary

barnstormingblogLeave a comment

Someone spoke to me last night,
told me the truth. Just a few words,
but I recognized it.
I knew I should make myself get up,
write it down, but it was late,
and I was exhausted from working
all day in the garden, moving rocks.
Now, I remember only the flavor—
not like food, sweet or sharp.
More like a fine powder, like dust.
And I wasn’t elated or frightened,
but simply rapt, aware.
That’s how it is sometimes—
God comes to your window,
all bright light and black wings,
and you’re just too tired to open it.
~Dorianne Laux “Dust” from What We Carry

On the stiff twig up there
Hunches a wet black rook
Arranging and rearranging its feathers in the rain-
I do not expect a miracle
Or an accident

To set the sight on fire
In my eye, nor seek
Any more in the desultory weather some design,
But let spotted leaves fall as they fall
Without ceremony, or portent.

Although, I admit, I desire,
Occasionally, some backtalk
From the mute sky, I can’t honestly complain:
A certain minor light may still
Lean incandescent

Out of kitchen table or chair
As if a celestial burning took
Possession of the most obtuse objects now and then —
Thus hallowing an interval
Otherwise inconsequent

By bestowing largesse, honor
One might say love. At any rate, I now walk
Wary (for it could happen
Even in this dull, ruinous landscape); sceptical
Yet politic, ignorant

Of whatever angel any choose to flare
Suddenly at my elbow. 
I only know that a rook
Ordering its black feathers can so shine
As to seize my senses, haul
My eyelids up, and grant

A brief respite from fear
Of total neutrality. With luck,
Trekking stubborn through this season
Of fatigue, I shall
Patch together a content

Of sorts. Miracles occur,
If you care to call those spasmodic
Tricks of radiance miracles. The wait’s begun again,
The long wait for the angel.
For that rare, random descent.
~Sylvia Plath “Black Rook in Rainy Weather”

…it is no trick of light
nor is it random
when He comes to our window,
wanting us to let Him in.

This descent to us
is planned and very real:
He seizes us and does not let go
even when we are too tired
to open to Him.

We wait,
this long wait while moving rocks;
tired of waiting,
seeking contentment while waiting
rapt,
aware,
weary,
but awake and ready for His grace.

photo by Nate Gibson

I wait for the Lord, my whole being waits,
    and in his word I put my hope.
Psalm 130:5

One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time and recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

$10.00
$25.00
$50.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00

Or enter a custom amount

$

Your contribution is deeply appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

A Lily Shivers…

barnstormingblogLeave a comment

A lily shivered
at His passing,
supposing Him to be
the Gardener.
~Margaret D. Smith “Easter morning, yesterday”
from A Widening Light -Poems of the Incarnation

It’s so easy to look and see what we pass through in this world, but we don’t. If you’re like me, you see so little. You see what you expect to see rather than what’s there.
~Frederick Buechner from The Remarkable Ordinary

Jesus said to them, “Come and have breakfast.”
None of the disciples dared ask him, “Who are you?”
They knew it was the Lord.
John 21:12

It is too easy, by the next day, to let go of Easter — to slide back into the Monday routine, managing our best to get through each day, our jaws set, our teeth gritted, as we have before.

We are blinded by our grief, shivering in misery, thinking Him only the Gardener as He passed by. We don’t pay attention to Who is right before us, Who is always tending us: the new Adam, caring for a world desperate for rescue.

God knows this about us.  So He invites us to breakfast on Monday and every day thereafter.

He feeds us, a tangible and meaningful act of nourishing us in our most basic human needs though we’ve done nothing to deserve the gift. He cooks up fish on a beach at dawn and welcomes us to join Him, as if nothing extraordinary has just happened.

Just yesterday evening he reviewed His Word and broke bread in Emmaus, opening the eyes and hearts of those like us who failed to see Who this is walking beside them.

This is no ordinary Gardener.

When He offers up a meal of His Word, the gift is nothing less than Himself.

One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

$10.00
$25.00
$50.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00

Or enter a custom amount

$

Your contribution is deeply appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly