This morning the green fists of the peonies are getting ready to break my heart as the sun rises, as the sun strokes them with his old, buttery fingers
and they open — pools of lace, white and pink —
and all day under the shifty wind, as in a dance to the great wedding,
the flowers bend their bright bodies, and tip their fragrance to the air, and rise, their red stems holding
all that dampness and recklessness gladly and lightly, and there it is again — beauty the brave, the exemplary,
blazing open. Do you love this world? Do you cherish your humble and silky life? Do you adore the green grass, with its terror beneath?
Do you also hurry, half-dressed and barefoot, into the garden, and softly, and exclaiming of their dearness, fill your arms with the white and pink flowers,
with their honeyed heaviness, their lush trembling, their eagerness to be wild and perfect for a moment, before they are nothing, forever? ~Mary Oliver fromNew And Selected Poems
The peonies, too heavy with their beauty, slump to the ground. I had hoped they would live forever but ever so slowly day by day they’re becoming the soil of their birth with a faint tang of deliquescence around them. Next June they’ll somehow remember to come alive again, a little trick we have or have not learned. ~Jim Harrison “Peonies” from In Search of Small Gods
Later this month, I will bring our peonies to the graves of those from whom I came, to lay one after another exuberant floral head upon each headstone, a moment of connection between those in the ground and me standing above, acknowledging its thin space when one more humble and silky life shatters, its petals slowly scatter, lush and trembling, to the wind.
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I pray because I can’t help myself. I pray because I’m helpless. I pray because the need flows out of me all the time — waking and sleeping. It doesn’t change God — it changes me. ~attributed to C.S. Lewis in “Shadowlands”
A recovering Faye with her sister Merry
Last week, on May 1, I found a surprise hanging on our front door – a little May Day basket full of little perennial blooms, along with a cheery message and a rainbow sticker. It hung from the door handle as a symbol of spring renewal, as well as a bit of a mystery – the flowers came with no hint of who had left them.
So I did a little sleuthing (actually A LOT of sleuthing) and found out they were delivered by our nearby neighbor Faye, who turned 11 just last week. She has a very special history some of you may remember:
Nine years ago, on this Barnstorming blog, I wrote about our little neighbor, two year old Faye, sickened by E.Coli 0157 infection/toxin to the point of becoming critically ill with Hemolytic Uremic Syndrome (plummeting cell counts and renal failure requiring dialysis to keep her alive). My original post about her illness is found here. I asked for your prayers on her (and others’) behalf.
At the worst point of her hospitalization at Seattle Children’s, when the doctors were sounding very worried on her behalf, Faye’s mother Danyale, in the midst of her helplessness, wrote to our Wiser Lake Chapel Pastor Bert Hitchcock with a plea for prayers from our church.
Here is how Pastor Bert responded to Danyale and her husband Jesse who remained at home, caring for their four other children:
“I understand that Faye (and everyone dealing with her) is fighting for her life. And that’s the way I am praying: that God in his merciful power, would deliver her, even if her condition looks hopeless.
If you were able to be in church this morning, you might hear my sense of urgency, for I have chosen this benediction, with which to close the service — and I give it to you right now, from the mouth of our Lord:
Jesus said: “Do not be afraid, Danyale! I am the First and the Last. I am the Living One. I died, but look – I am alive forever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and the grave.
Neither you nor I know how this will turn out — the possibilities are terrifying. But we do know who holds the keys of life and health and death; He is the Life-giver, who heals all our diseases — nothing can rip our lives (or little Faye’s life) out of His hands. And, when He does allow these bodies to give out, He promises to give us glorious new life, safe forever in His presence. These are not pious platitudes; these are the rock-hard promises of the one who loves us more than life, and who is absolutely in control of what is happening today.
Safe in the arms of Jesus, Safe on His gentle breast; There by His love o’ershaded, Sweetly my soul shall rest.
I’m praying for you all; and your Chapel Family will be praying this morning, as we gather in the Lord’s presence.
Love you, and yours, Danyale, Pastor Bert Hitchcock
That week, Faye’s renal failure reversed itself. She was able to return home with normal kidney function and improved cell counts, having also survived a bout with pneumonia.
Here is what her mother wrote to share with you all once she came home:
“Dear Friends and readers of Barnstorming,
Some of you we know, but so many of you we do not. Whichever the case, Emily tells me you have prayed for our little girl, Faye, throughout her sickness and into her recovery. What can parents say when people–many of whom we may never be privileged to meet in this life–have come alongside us to beseech the Lord for our daughter’s life and pray for her healing? Thank you. Thank you!
Faye is doing so well; stronger every day, more and more herself! It is wonderful to see.
This week we head back down to Seattle Children’s for a check up–we’ll get to say hello to the good folks who saw her through her sickness. A special stop will be made on the dialysis unit to see Nurse Kathy, a favorite of Faye’s. We anticipate a good report!
Thanks again for your love and support, far and wide. Truly astounding. Danyale and Jesse, for Faye, too
—————————————
Now Faye is a delightful, healthy eleven year old girl who secretly blessed me with a basket of May Day flowers. She doesn’t remember the crisis that nearly took her from us nine years ago, but she does know about God’s rainbow promises. And she certainly knows about the power of prayer in the face of helplessness.
As Pastor Bert said: our faith in an unchanging and steadfast God who loves and holds us, can change us – forever.
The year Dylan’s mother died I picked sprays of apple blossom, wound its pink, off-white shades in raffia for you to take to him.
Every year it’s out I think of us, the children, how apples bring the tree so low, until they thud to the lawn, drumming the end
of summer. The blossom was heavy when Dylan’s mother was dying – old wood doing its best again – and he, like you, was so young. ~Jackie Wills “Apple Blossom”
I can see, through the rifts of the apple-boughs, The delicate blue of the sky, And the changing clouds with their marvellous tints That drift so lazily by. And strange, sweet thoughts sing through my brain, And Heaven, it seemeth near; Oh, is it not a rare, sweet time, The blossoming time of the year? ~Horatio Alger, Jr. from “Apple Blossoms”
Is there anything in Spring so fair As apple blossoms falling through the air?
When from a hill there comes a sudden breeze That blows freshly through all the orchard trees.
The petals drop in clouds of pink and white, Noiseless like snow and shining in the light.
Making beautiful an old stone wall, Scattering a rich fragrance as they fall.
There is nothing I know of to compare With apple blossoms falling through the air. ~Henry Adams Parker “Apple Blossoms”
The rain eases long enough to allow blades of grass to stand back up expectant, refreshed yet unsuspecting, primed for the mower’s next cutting swath.
Clusters of pink tinged blossoms sway in response to my mower’s pass. Apple buds bulge on ancient branches in promise of fruit caressed by honeybees’ tickling legs.
Though I bow low beneath the swollen blooms, I’m still caught by snagging branches; showers from hidden raindrop reservoirs collected within blushing petal cups.
My face is anointed by perfumed apple tears.
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And with sighs soaring, soaring síghs deliver Them; beauty-in-the-ghost, deliver it, early now, long before death Give beauty back, beauty, beauty, beauty, back to God, beauty’s self and beauty’s giver. See; not a hair is, not an eyelash, not the least lash lost; every hair Is, hair of the head, numbered. ~Gerard Manley Hopkins from “The Golden Echo”
…writing was one way to let something of lasting value emerge from the pains and fears of my little, quickly passing life. Each time life required me to take a new step into unknown spiritual territory, I felt a deep, inner urge to tell my story to others– Perhaps as a need for companionship but maybe, too, out of an awareness that my deepest vocation is to be a witness to the glimpses of God I have been allowed to catch. ~Henri Nouwenfrom Reaching Out: The Three Movements of the Spiritual Life
“Last forever!” Who hasn’t prayed that prayer? You were lucky to get it in the first place. The present is a freely given canvas. That it is constantly being ripped apart and washed downstream goes without saying. ~Annie Dillard from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
For too much of my life I have focused on my foreshortening future, bypassing the present in my headlong rush to what lies ahead. There is always a goal to achieve, a conclusion becoming commencement of the next phase, a sunset turning right around in a few hours to become sunrise.
Yet the most precious times occur when the present is so over-whelming, so riveting, so tenderly full of beauty that I believe I can see a brief glimpse of God. I must grab hold with all my strength to try and secret it away and keep it forever. Of course the present still slips away from me, elusive and evasive, torn to bits by the unrelenting movement of time.
Even when I’m able to take a photo to lock it to a page or screen, it is not enough. No matter how I choose to preserve the essence of this moment, it is already passed, ebbing away, never to return.
So I write to harvest those times to make them last a little bit longer although they will inevitably be lost downstream into the ether of unread words.
Where have all the words, all the flowers, all those moments gone?
Even if unread, I am learning that words, which had power in the Beginning to create life itself, still can bring tenderness and meaning back to my life. How blessed to live the gift twice: not just in the moment itself but in recording in words that preserve and treasure it all up, if only for that ephemeral blooming moment.
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Let us not with one stone kill one bird, much less two. Let us never put a cat in a bag nor skin them, regardless of how many ways there are to do so. And let us never take the bull, especially by his gorgeous horns. What I mean is
we could watch our tongues or keep silent. What I mean is we could scrub the violence from our speech. And if we find truth in a horse’s mouth, let us bless her
ground-down molars, no matter how old she is, especially if she was given as a gift. Again, let’s open her mouth——that of the horse, I mean——let us touch that interdental space where no teeth grow, where the cold bit was made to grip. Touch her there, gently now, touch that gentle
empty between her incisors and molars, rub her aching, vulnerable gums. Don’t worry: doing so calms her. Besides, she’s old now; she’s what we call broken; she won’t bite. She’s lived through two thirteen-year emergences of cicadas
and thought their rising a god infestation, thought each insect roiling up an iteration of the many names of god, because god to her is the grasses so what comes up from grass is god. She would not say it that way. Nor would she
say the word cicada——words are hindrances to what can be spoken through the body, are what she tolerates when straddled, giddy-up on one side then whoa on the other. After, it’s all good girl, Mable, good girl, before the saddle sweat is rinsed cool with water from the hose and a carrot is offered flat from the palm. Yes, words being
generally useless she listens instead to the confused rooster stuttering when the sun burns overhead, when it’s warm enough for those time-keepers to tunnel up from the dark and fill their wings to make them stiff and capable of flight. To her, it is the sound
of winter-coming in her mane or the sound of winter-leaving in her mane—— yes, that sound——a liquid shushing like the blood-fill of stallion desire she knew once but crisper, a dry crinkle of fall leaves. Yes, that sound, as they fill their new wings then lumber to the canopy to demand come here, come here, come here, now come.
If this is a parable you don’t understand, then, dear human, stop listening for words. Listen instead for mane, wind, wings, wind, mane, wings, wings, wings. The lesson here is of the mare and of the insects, even of the rooster puffed and strutting past. Because now, now there is only one thing worth hearing, and it is the plea of every living being in that field we call ours, is the two-word commandment trilling from the trees: let live, let live, let live. Can you hear it? Please, they say. Please. Let us live. ~Nickole Brown “Parable”
When a governor writes about her decision to shoot her wayward dog and stinky goat, our reaction is about the injustice perpetrated on the dog more than her decision to play god with any animal she has responsibility for. I feel a twinge of guilt at the accusation. Who among us can throw stones?
God is clear we are meant to be caretakers of His Creation. Yet I still swat flies and trap mice – there is no pleasure in doing so, so I still ask for forgiveness for my lack of charity and decision to make my own existence more comfortable at the expense of another living thing.
I admit I fail Creation in myriad ways.
I have owned animals whose behavior brought me to my knees, sometimes literally with my face in the muck. I have wept over the loss of a deformed stillbirth foal and a pond of koi frozen in a bitter winter storm. The stories abound of my helplessness in the face of sadness and loss and frustration but I never wanted to become executioner.
I don’t live with cycles of cicada population booms but have experienced their overwhelming din and understood we are mere witnesses and not in control. We are not “little g” gods on this earth. We are its stewards.
Deep in our sub-conscious, we are told Lie all our memories, lie all the notes Of all the music we have ever heard And all the phrases those we loved have spoken, Sorrows and losses time has since consoled, Family jokes, out-moded anecdotes Each sentimental souvenir and token Everything seen, experienced, each word Addressed to us in infancy, Before we could even know or understand The implications of our wonderland. There they all are, the legendary lies The birthday treats, the sights, the sounds, the tears Forgotten debris of forgotten years Waiting to be recalled, waiting to rise Before our world dissolves before our eyes Waiting for some small, intimate reminder, A word, a tune, a known familiar scent An echo from the past when, innocent We looked upon the present with delight And doubted not the future would be kinder And never knew the loneliness of night. ~Noel Coward “Nothing Is Lost” from Collected Verse
I wonder sometimes how memories are stored in our neurons. Do they sit on brain sulci and gyri shelves in chronological order? Or are they alphabetized, ready to be pulled and leap to the front of our awareness whenever we’re reminded by an (A)pple pie smell or a passage of a (B)ach toccata or the taste of a (C)adbury Creme Egg?
Perhaps, as we get older, they tend to mix and muddle a bit because our brain libraries are getting crowded with too much to recall and subsequently reshelf back into the proper spot. Whenever I decide to do a brain search for some long forgotten memory, it can take longer than it used to, certainly longer than a Google search does on my computer.
Then I start thinking about what can be recycled or (heavens!) trashed to make more room. Except – things get thrown away that I didn’t intend to lose…
But mostly it is all still there, nearly 70 years of recollections, some so insignificant that it is a mere dust bunny in the corner of my brain, and others still as fresh as when they happened over 65 years ago. Some memories I want to spend time mulling over and over and others can stay buried in the stacks forever as far as I’m concerned.
My mission, should I choose to accept it, is to store away the present moment with such care that I will find its memory with very little trouble. These are days to recall with warmth and delight. I want to remember them during the long and lonely nights that come unbidden at times when the power goes out. That is when I need to turn on an inner light in order to see where I’m heading.
Sure on this shining night Of star made shadows round, Kindness must watch for me This side the ground. The late year lies down the north. All is healed, all is health. High summer holds the earth. Hearts all whole. Sure on this shining night I weep for wonder wand’ring far alone Of shadows on the stars. ~James Agee
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It started before Christmas. Now our son officially walks to school alone. Semi-alone, it’s accurate to say: I or his father track him on his way. He walks up on the east side of West End, we on the west side. Glances can extend (and do) across the street; not eye contact. Already ties are feeling and not fact. Straus Park is where these parallel paths part; he goes alone from there. The watcher’s heart stretches, elastic in its love and fear, toward him as we see him disappear, striding briskly. Where two weeks ago, holding a hand, he’d dawdle, dreamy, slow, he now is hustled forward by the pull of something far more powerful than school.
The mornings we turn back to are no more than forty minutes longer than before, but they feel vastly different–flimsy, strange, wavering in the eddies of this change, empty, unanchored, perilously light since the red hat vanished from our sight. ~Rachel Hadas “The Red Hat”
You can kiss your family and friends good-bye and put miles between you, but at the same time you carry them with you in your heart, your mind, your stomach, because you do not just live in a world but a world lives in you. ~ Frederick Buechner
As a child, I lived just outside of city limits in a semi-rural area, only a half mile from my elementary school on a country road. By first grade, I was allowed to walk to school and home again, then when I was older, with my younger brother in tow. I don’t remember my parents watching me as I made the journey, but I do remember some practice walks on a weekend, to reinforce how to safely cross the roads and where to walk alongside the drainage ditch.
I don’t remember ever being worried about what might happen to me outside of my parents’ presence, and nothing scary ever did happen. I’m sure my parents were worried, but both as children had walked to their rural schools on their own – it simply was how things happened in the 20’s and 30’s.
For children growing up now, it feels different.
Our three children grew up on a farm seven miles from town, so rode a school bus or were taken to school by a parent or grandparent. They didn’t have that early independence that I did. Our grandchildren, especially those living in large cities, are even more protected. It didn’t hamper their desire to explore the world – they have traveled all over.
The difference is the anxiety of the parent, watching that child disappear around a corner on foot, or bike or eventually in a car. It is that empty feeling of letting go before one is ready, but when you know you must.
The heart stretches to encompass one’s child out in the world, out of sight, no longer anchored at home. After all, we are that elastic and that resilient.
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More like a vault — you pull the handle out and on the shelves: not a lot, And what there is (a boiled potato in a bag, a chicken carcass under foil) looking dispirited, drained, mugged. This is not a place to go in hope or hunger. But, just to the right of the middle of the middle door shelf, on fire, a lit-from-within red, heart red, sexual red, wet neon red, shining red in their liquid, exotic, aloof, slumming in such company: a jar of maraschino cherries. Three-quarters full, fiery globes, like strippers at a church social. Maraschino cherries, maraschino, the only foreign word I knew. Not once did I see these cherries employed: not in a drink, nor on top of a glob of ice cream, or just pop one in your mouth. Not once. The same jar there through an entire childhood of dull dinners — bald meat, pocked peas and, see above, boiled potatoes. Maybe they came over from the old country, family heirlooms, or were status symbols bought with a piece of the first paycheck from a sweatshop, which beat the pig farm in Bohemia, handed down from my grandparents to my parents to be someday mine, then my child’s? They were beautiful and, if I never ate one, it was because I knew it might be missed or because I knew it would not be replaced and because you do not eat that which rips your heart with joy. ~Thomas Lux “Refrigerator, 1957”
My childhood refrigerator also contained a jar of maraschino cherries. They were used only once a year, at Thanksgiving, when my mother would pull the jar out from the depths of the fridge, twist open the top and pull out four bright red cherries.
A sweet potato dish would be warming in the oven, covered by large melting marshmallows placed in the center of a ring of canned pineapple. Mom arranged the cherries, cut in half, on top of each marshmallow and replaced the dish in the oven, until the meal was ready to serve.
That was it. We never saw the cherries again for another year.
Sweet potatoes taste wonderful, all on their own, without a dressing of marshmallows and pineapples. But the special holiday tradition was set. In some magical way, the cherries dressed the dish up to help make a tense family gathering a bit jollier.
I do still have my own jar of maraschino cherries in my refrigerator. I forget why. It doesn’t have anything to do with sweet potatoes which I like to serve up plain for Sunday dinners. I possibly bought the jar out of nostalgia, or perhaps because I think every refrigerator needs a jar of maraschino cherries — kind of like the open box of baking soda that sits in most fridges to keep the odors under control.
Regardless, when I spy the jar every once in a while when rummaging in the fridge for something else, it stops time for a moment of remembrance and sadness. After all, I don’t replicate my mom’s mid-century cooking efforts of many-colored jello salads, bread-crumb-topped casseroles and… maraschino marshmallow sweet potatoes.
Even so, a daughter’s love for her mama remains irreplaceable.
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Still and calm, In purple robes of kings, The low-lying mountains sleep at the edge of the world. The forests cover them like mantles; Day and night Rise and fall over them like the wash of waves. Asleep, they reign. Silent, they say all. Hush me, O slumbering mountains – Send me dreams. ~Harriet Monroe “The Blue Ridge”
If you find yourself half naked and barefoot in the frosty grass, hearing, again, the earth’s great, sonorous moan that says you are the air of the now and gone, that says all you love will turn to dust, and will meet you there, do not raise your fist. Do not raise your small voice against it. And do not take cover. Instead, curl your toes into the grass, watch the cloud ascending from your lips. Walk through the garden’s dormant splendor. Say only, thank you. Thank you. ~Ross Gay “Thank You”
I live for those who love me, Whose hearts are kind and true; For the heaven that smiles above me, And awaits my spirit, too; For all human ties that bind me, For the task my God assigned me, For the bright hopes left behind me, And the good that I can do. For the cause that needs assistance, For the wrongs that need resistance, For the future in the distance, And the good that I can do ~George Linnaeus Banks from “What I Live For”
Our surrounding hills circle like wagons, their strong shoulders promising steadfast protection. Above them, the palette of sky changes with the weather, as turmoil and turbulence continually stirs up our world.
There is so much good to be done: our world needs hands-on, hearts-on work for causes needing assistance – for wrongs needing resistance.
Feeding, housing, healing, caring, for those in our own neighborhoods won’t make headlines like blocking freeways and college buildings.
Rather than raising tents and fists, idle hands can serve. Rather than raising voices and drums, heads can bow in grateful prayer.
The mountains remind us: Though we are here and now, we will soon turn to dust. They ask us: How to live a life that truly makes a difference for those in need?
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