I am struck by the otherness of things rather than their same- ness. The way a tiny pile of snow perches in the crook of a branch in the tall pine, away by itself, high enough not to be noticed by people, out of reach of stray dogs. It leans against the scaly pine bark, busy at some existence that does not need me.
It is the differences of objects that I love, that lift me toward the rest of the universe, that amaze me. That each thing on earth has its own soul, its own life, that each tree, each clod is filled with the mud of its own star. I watch where I step and see that the fallen leaf, old broken grass, an icy stone are placed in exactly the right spot on the earth, carefully, royalty in their own country. ~Tom Hennen “Looking for the Differences” from Darkness Sticks to Everything.
We dwell so much on our differences rather than our similarities, especially during intense political times.
There is nothing wrong with “otherness” if each “other” is seen as God sees us.
We each are one of His precious and specially-made creations, worthy of existence even in our muddy, rocky, fragile state.
These days, although a “snowflake” is disparaged in the political banter of the day as weak and overly sensitive, there is nothing more uniquely “other” than an individual crystalline creation falling from heaven to the exact spot where it is intended to land. Something so unique becomes part of something far greater than it could be on its own, blending in, infinitely stronger, but never lost.
I am placed here, weak as I am, in the exact right spot, for reasons I continue to uncover and discover. I try every day, as best as I can, to not get lost and, of course, to manage to stay out of the mud.
This year’s Barnstorming Lenten theme is Ephesians 3:9:
…to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things…
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Oh let me fall as grain to the good earth And die away from all dry separation, Die to my sole self, and find new birth Within that very death, a dark fruition, Deep in this crowded underground, to learn The earthy otherness of every other, To know that nothing is achieved alone But only where these other fallen gather.
If I bear fruit and break through to bright air, Then fall upon me with your freeing flail To shuck this husk and leave me sheer and clear As heaven-handled Hopkins, that my fall May be more fruitful and my autumn still A golden evening where your barns are full. ~Malcolm Guite “Unless a Grain of Wheat Falls Into the Ground and Dies”
…new life starts in the dark. Whether it is a seed in the ground, a baby in the womb, or Jesus in the tomb, it starts in the dark. ~Barbara Brown Taylor from Learning to Walk in the Dark
The ground is slowly coming to life again; snowdrops, crocus, and daffodils are surfacing from months of dormancy, buds are swelling, the spring chorus frogs have come from the mud to sing again and birds now greet the lazy dawn.
The seed shakes off the darkness surrounding it. Growth begins.
I too began a mere seed, plain and simple, lying dormant in the darkness of my mother’s body.
Just as the spring murmurs life to the seed in the ground, so the Word calls a human seed of life to stir and swell, becoming both an animate and intimate reflection of Himself.
I was awakened in the dark to sprout, bloom and fruit, to reach as far as my tethered roots allow, aiming beyond earthly bounds to touch the light.
Everything, everyone, so hidden; His touch calls us back to life. Love is come again to the fallow fields of our hearts.
This year’s Barnstorming Lenten theme is Ephesians 3:9:
…to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things…
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Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. For I know my transgressions, and my sin is always before me. Psalm 51:2-3
Sometimes I wish I could be drenched thoroughly when I’ve gotten myself completely covered with muck–muddy hands, dirty feet, smudged face, soiled soul. It takes work, but I can remove all the signs of griminess on the surface.
Yet when I look in the mirror, I can see everything that desperately needs spiritual soap–now. It is under the surface, harder to reach with soap, so I act helpless to do anything about it. Maybe tomorrow…
People can be pretty effective at hiding the problems in their lives, even from themselves. However, in the clinical work I did for decades, it wasn’t always so easy to conceal.
Patients came to inpatient detox because they had hit bottom in every way, so they are forced to confront the troubles that brought them there. I cared for people who had sold themselves, sold others, abandoned spouses as well as their own children, murdered others and tried to murder themselves. They come in so grimy, it is hard to even see their skin. They cry out for cleansing, for forgiveness, for healing.
Sometimes they willingly submit to that wash cycle, yet sometimes the scrubbing that is the detox process is just too physically hard and painful despite all my efforts to ease it. They can’t handle it and leave before they are truly clean. Maybe tomorrow.
I grieved for them when that happened.
Not once must I forget that their sin, ever so much more obvious, is no greater than mine–we are all tainted goods. Our only hope is the Lord holding onto us tightly over holy waters to make sure we’re scrubbed until we shine: a true cleansing baptism.
Not tomorrow.
Today.
This year’s Barnstorming Lenten theme is Ephesians 3:9:
…to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things…
Lyrics by David Wilton
Wash me clean In the warm sun dry me Cleanse my heart From all iniquity Baptize me In the Holy Spirit sea Renew my mind That wickedness may flee
Barren fields will sprout trees Deaf and blind will hear and see Dead will raise and begin to breathe
Restore my soul Holy Spirit take hold Bathe me in Your peace and let it flow Grant me hope In the dark have Your light shown Sing Your love The sweetest song I’ve ever known
Earth groans in pain to see Sons of God declare to be The full and glorious family
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Your cold mornings are filled with the heartache about the fact that although we are not at ease in this world, it is all we have, that it is ours but that it is full of strife, so that all we can call our own is strife; but even that is better than nothing at all, isn’t it?
…rejoice that your uncertainty is God’s will and His grace toward you and that that is beautiful, and part of a greater certainty…
…be comforted in the fact that the ache in your heart and the confusion in your soul means that you are still alive, still human, and still open to the beauty of the world, even though you have done nothing to deserve it. ~Paul Harding in Tinkers
I think there is no suffering greater than what is caused by the doubts of those who want to believe. I know what torment this is, but I can only see it, in myself anyway, as the process by which faith is deepened. What people don’t realize is how much religion costs. They think faith is a big electric blanket, when of course it is the cross. It is much harder to believe than not to believe. If you feel you can’t believe, you must at least do this: keep an open mind. Keep it open toward faith, keep wanting it, keep asking for it, and leave the rest to God. ~Flannery O’Connor from The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O’Connor
Nothing that comes from God, even the greatest miracle, can be proven like 2 x 2 = 4. It touches one; it is only seen and grasped when the heart is open and the spirit purged of self. Then it awakens faith. … the heart is not overcome by faith, there is no force or violence there, compelling belief by rigid certitudes. What comes from God touches gently, comes quietly; does not disturb freedom; leads to quiet, profound, peaceful resolve within the heart. ~Romano Guardini from The Living God
On my doubting days, days often full of uncertainty, I recall how the risen Christ invited Thomas to place his hand in His wounds, gently guiding him to His reality, so it became Thomas’s new reality.
Thomas then understood: this God’s open wounds were calling out for belief.
Christ’s flesh and blood awakens our fragile faith by a simple touch.
…he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.” Thomas said to him, “My Lord and my God!” John 20: 27-28
This year’s Barnstorming Lenten theme is Ephesians 3:9:
…to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things…
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It appears now that there is only one age and it knows nothing of age as the flying birds know nothing of the air they are flying through or of the day that bears them up through themselves and I am a child before there are words arms are holding me up in a shadow voices murmur in a shadow as I watch one patch of sunlight moving across the green carpet in a building gone long ago and all the voices silent and each word they said in that time silent now while I go on seeing that patch of sunlight ~W.S. Merwin, “Still Morning” from The Shadow of Sirius
photo by Barbara Hoelle
Our memories can play tricks.
Just a whiff of a fragrance can trigger an experience of another time and place, a song can transport us to a decade long ago, a momentary sensation will remind us of a past experience long forgotten.
We dwell inside a different age as the years go by, in a body that no longer looks or feels exactly the same, yet our memories take us powerfully back to a special moment that happened before.
For those who struggle with post-trauma recollections, this is a curse to be overcome. For those whose memories bring joy and comfort, they seek to nurture and cherish what has been as if it is still here and now.
Let us remember the Light, just as the poet W.S. Merwin in this poem “Still Morning” remembers the moment of his baptism in a church long gone and whose voices are long since stilled. The Light of that day remains, as fresh today as it was when it moved toward him.
Our memories aren’t tricks, and neither is the Light that shone on us. They sustain us in the here and now.
Our Savior: an ever-moving patch of Light in our lives – forever radiant.
This year’s Barnstorming Lenten theme is Ephesians 3:9:
…to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things…
TEXT O nata lux de lumine, Jesu redemptor saeculi, Dignare clemens supplicum Laudes precesque sumere.
Qui carne quondam contegi Dignatus es pro perditis, Nos membra confer effici Tui beati corporis.
TRANSLATION O Light born of Light, Jesus, redeemer of the world, Mercifully deign to accept The praises and prayers of your suppliants.
O you who once deigned to be hidden in flesh For the sake of the lost, Grant us to be made members Of your blessed body.
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Some time later, Jesus went up to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish festivals.Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades.Here a great number of disabled people used to lie—the blind, the lame, the paralyzed.One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years.When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, “Do you want to get well?”
“Sir,” the invalid replied, “I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.”Then Jesus said to him, “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.” At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked.
The day on which this took place was a Sabbath,and so the Jewish leaders said to the man who had been healed, “It is the Sabbath; the law forbids you to carry your mat.” But he replied, “The man who made me well said to me, ‘Pick up your mat and walk.’ ”
So they asked him, “Who is this fellow who told you to pick it up and walk?” The man who was healed had no idea who it was, for Jesus had slipped away into the crowd that was there.
Later Jesus found him at the temple and said to him, “See, you are well again. Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you.”The man went away and told the Jewish leaders that it was Jesus who had made him well.
So, because Jesus was doing these things on the Sabbath, the Jewish leaders began to persecute him.In his defense Jesus said to them, “My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I too am working.”For this reason they tried all the more to kill him; not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God. John 5: 1-18
I am overcome by ordinary contentment. What hurt me so terribly all my life until this moment? How I love the small, swiftly beating heart of the bird singing in the great maples; its bright, unequivocal eye. ~Jane Kenyon from “Having it out with Melancholy”
Thou art indeed just, Lord, if I contend With thee; but, sir, so what I plead is just. Why do sinners’ ways prosper? and why must Disappointment all I endeavour end?
…birds build—but not I build; no, but strain, Time’s eunuch, and not breed one work that wakes. Mine, O thou lord of life, send my roots rain. ~Gerard Manley Hopkins from “Thou art indeed just, Lord”
It seems so obvious: someone lying on a mat near a healing pool for 38 years – an Old Testament reference to Israel’s wilderness journey and inability to enter the promised land – wants to get well.
Jesus knows this man’s heart is troubled.
Yet Jesus asks this paralyzed man whether he wants to be healed. Not if he is ready to be healed, but whether he wants to be well. It doesn’t seem like a hard question to answer, but at times in our own lives, we too may not feel ready for a transformation to wholeness?
Maybe we really aren’t sure what “well” and being healed will mean to our lives. We wander in the wilderness of weak, struggling bodies and minds, hoping and praying to be led into a promised land of no illness or limitations. But often we aren’t sure. We only know there are many compelling reasons – no help, no hope, isolation from family and friends – to explain why we are stuck where we are.
We can’t imagine it being any other way.
Some are born with disabilities determining what they can and can’t do, knowing no other existence than to be dependent on others for help and care. Others develop illness or experience injury that changes everything for them, creating overwhelming needs leading to profound discouragement.
Some try anything and everything, proven or unproven, to find relief from their symptoms, to find their way out of their wilderness — sometimes with lasting results, often with no improvement.
Jesus is asking this man and asking us: are you ready to live a full life that takes you beyond your current limits? If so, we are transformed from who we have been, to someone we and others may no longer recognize.
It is a scary prospect to pick up our mat, carry our own baggage and walk. But when Jesus enters our life and asks us, point blank, if we want to get well, to become whole, to leave our wilderness behind and join Him – we should not hesitate – wasting precious time explaining all the reasons it hasn’t worked so far.
Jesus is ready, willing and able. And we will be transformed.
…our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. Romans 8:18
I am reading slowly through the words in the Book of John over the next year. Once a week, I will invite you to “come and see” what those words might mean as we explore His promises together.
This year’s Barnstorming Lenten theme is Ephesians 3:9: …to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things…
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Days pass when I forget the mystery. Problems insoluble and problems offering their own ignored solutions jostle for my attention… And then once more the quiet mystery is present to me, the throng’s clamor recedes: the mystery that there is anything, anything at all, let alone cosmos, joy, memory, everything, rather than void: and that, O Lord, Creator, Hallowed one, You still, hour by hour sustain it. ~Denise Levertov from “Primary Wonder” from Sands of the Well
Here is the mystery, the secret, one might almost say the cunning, of the deep love of God: that it is bound to draw upon itself the hatred and pain and shame and anger and bitterness and rejection of the world, but to draw all those things on to itself is precisely the means chosen from all eternity by the generous, loving God, by which to rid his world of the evils which have resulted from human abuse of God-given freedom. ~N.T. Wright from The Crown and The Fire
Inundated by the inevitable bad news of the world, I must cling to the mystery of His magnetism for my own weaknesses, flaws and bitterness.
I am frozen in the ice of sin, waiting to be thawed.
He willingly pulls evil onto Himself, out of me. Hatred and pain and shame and anger disappear into the vortex of His love and beauty, the mucky corners of my heart vacuumed spotless.
We are let in on a secret: He is not sullied by absorbing the dirty messes of our lives.
Created in His image, sustained and loved, thus a reflection of Him, it is no mystery we are washed forever clean.
photo of Mt. Baker reflected in Wiser Lake by Joel DeWaard
This year’s Barnstorming Lenten theme is Ephesians 3:9:
…to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things…
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You came from dust and dust would be Without the Great Son’s victory. The gift is free yet must be claimed By goodness lived and evil tamed.
Prepared to walk this Lenten trail They face death’s dark and shadowed vale. Rememb’ring Christ who led the way They bravely march beneath his sway. ~Ash Wednesday’s Early Morn
And so the light runs laughing from the town, Pulling the sun with him along the roads That shed their muddy rivers as he goads Each blade of grass the ice had flattened down. At every empty bush he stops to fling Handfuls of birds with green and yellow throats; While even the hens, uncertain of their notes, Stir rusty vowels in attempts to sing.
He daubs the chestnut-tips with sudden reds And throws an olive blush on naked hills That hoped, somehow, to keep themselves in white. Who calls for sackcloth now? He leaps and spreads A carnival of color, gladly spills His blood: the resurrection—and the light. ~Louis Untermeyer from “Ash Wednesday”
This is the time of tension between dying and birth... The Word without a word, the Word within The world and for the world; And the light shone in darkness and Against the Word the unstilled world still whirled About the centre of the silent Word. O my people, what have I done unto thee. ~T.S. Eliot from “Ash Wednesday”
My people, what have I done to you? Micah 6:3
May the light shine on my dusty darkness. May I be stilled, stunned to silence by the knowledge of the Lord, who sees me as I am, knows me, and loves me anyway.
O people, what have I done?
We who are His loved children, who too often turn away from Him so only our ashes remain.
His touch ignites us to light again, His blood has been spilled across the sky.
Barnstorming’s Lenten theme this year is Ephesians 3:9: “…to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things…“
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After the two days he left for Galilee. (Now Jesus himself had pointed out that a prophet has no honor in his own country.)When he arrived in Galilee, the Galileans welcomed him. They had seen all that he had done in Jerusalem at the Passover Festival, for they also had been there.
Once more he visited Cana in Galilee, where he had turned the water into wine. And there was a certain royal official whose son lay sick at Capernaum. When this man heard that Jesus had arrived in Galilee from Judea, he went to him and begged him to come and heal his son, who was close to death.
“Unless you people see signs and wonders,” Jesus told him, “you will never believe.”
The royal official said, “Sir, come down before my child dies.”
“Go,” Jesus replied, “your son will live.”
The man took Jesus at his word and departed.While he was still on the way, his servants met him with the news that his boy was living.When he inquired as to the time when his son got better, they said to him, “Yesterday, at one in the afternoon, the fever left him.”
Then the father realized that this was the exact time at which Jesus had said to him, “Your son will live.” So he and his whole household believed.
This was the second sign Jesus performed after coming from Judea to Galilee. John 4: 43-54
Faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what you believe. Hebrews 11:1
Does the road wind up-hill all the way? Yes, to the very end.
Will the day’s journey take the whole long day? From morn to night, my friend.
But is there for the night a resting-place? A roof for when the slow dark hours begin.
May not the darkness hide it from my face? You cannot miss that inn.
Shall I meet other wayfarers at night? Those who have gone before.
Then must I knock, or call when just in sight? They will not keep you standing at that door.
Shall I find comfort, travel-sore and weak? Of labour you shall find the sum.
Will there be beds for me and all who seek? Yea, beds for all who come. ~Christina Rossetti “Up-Hill”
This life of ours can be an arduous and often troubled journey.
We might feel like we are never able to reach a point of rest in our uphill climb through obstacles and hazards. It can be so dark we’re not sure we can see the road, much less where we’re headed.
When a royal official makes the 20 hour journey uphill to find Jesus to ask him to heal and save his son, he surely was at a point of desperate need. He is so convinced by the stories of Jesus’ power to heal, he would go wherever needed to make that happen for his dying son.
Yet he discovers Jesus’ power is not just in His hands, but in His words.
Our faith is not just based on what we see with our eyes, but in our trust and belief in Jesus, who is the Word.
When we are faced with that up-hill journey through troubled times, we will not be left stranded, lost and waiting by the roadside. Many have gone on before us, and those faithful are ready and waiting to help walk alongside us and give us encouragement to keep going.
There is a place waiting for wayfarers like us.
Jesus speaks the healing of the son and the royal official takes Him at His Word.
No longer is that official merely politically powerful; he descends back down the road to his home spreading the word to all around him about the far greater power of Jesus.
There is salvation through the Word to those who believe. We all are weary travelers welcomed with open arms as the uphill road points us to the best home of all.
I am reading slowly through the words in the Book of John over the next year. Once a week, I will invite you to “come and see” what those words might mean as we explore His promises together.
Lyrics by Lori McKenna:
When the road under your feet is dark and feels wrong And you find yourself lost and all your confidence gone And the stars over your head through the clouds won’t be revealed I’ll walk with you, even if it’s uphill
When the weight of your troubles send your knees into the dirt And all your loyal distractions only magnify the hurt When lonesome doesn’t quite define how so alone you feel I’ll walk with you, even if it’s uphill
Hard times and landslides are part of life I know Like they say, none of us get out alive Whatever ocean you’re swimming across However valley low Whatever mountains you climb I’ll walk with you, even if it’s uphill
Blessed are the times filled with sun, surrounded by your friends Those days when all the new roads wait right where the old roads end And should you wake up to Everest right outside your windowsill I’ll walk with you even if it’s uphill
Hard times and landslides are part of life God knows We all got some mountains to climb Whatever ocean you’re swimming across However valley low I’m right here, I’ve been right here all this time And I’ll walk with you, even if it’s uphill I’ll walk with you, even if it’s uphill
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The world is indeed full of peril and in it there are many dark places. But still there is much that is fair. And though in all lands, love is now mingled with grief, it still grows, perhaps, the greater. — J. R. R. Tolkien from The Fellowship of the Ring
A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief Isaiah 53:3
Shut out suffering, and you see only one side of this strange and fearful thing, the life of man. Christ saw both sides. He could be glad, he could rejoice with them that rejoice; and yet the settled tone of his disposition was a peculiar and subdued sadness.
That gave the calm depth to the character of Christ; he had got the true view of life by acquainting himself with grief. ~Frederick Robertson from a 1846 sermon entitled Typified by the Man of Sorrows, the Human Race
An elderly mother/grandmother apparently kidnapped from her home is yet to be heard from.
And another school shooting takes hold of my heart and breaks it.
Our sorrows fill a chasm so deep and dark that it is a fearsome thing to even peer from the edge. We join the helplessness of countless people in human history who have lived through times which appeared unendurable.
We don’t understand why inexplicable tragedy befalls good and gracious people, taking them when they are not yet finished with their work on earth.
From the unconscionable shootings of innocents, to quakes that topple buildings burying people, to waves that wipe out whole communities sweeping away thousands, to pathogens too swift and devastating for modern medicine —
we are reminded every day: we live on perilous ground and our time here has always been finite.
We don’t have control over the amount of time, but we do have control over how extensively our compassion for others is heard and spread.
There is assurance in knowing we do not weep alone; our Lord is acquainted with grief.
Our grieving is so familiar to a suffering God who too wept at the death of a beloved friend, when He faced a city about to condemn Him to death and He was tasked with enduring the unendurable.
There is comfort in knowing He too peered into the chasm of darkness; He willingly entered its depths to come to our rescue.
His has an incomparable capacity for Light, bringing to the world a Love that lasts an eternity.
Lyrics:
Angels, where you soar Up to God’s own light Take my own lost bird On your hearts tonight; And as grief once more Mounts to heaven and sings Let my love be heard Whispering in your wings ~Alfred Noyes
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