Category: aging

An Everlasting Party

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In the home of God, there is a never-ending festival…
~St. Augustine in Exposition on Psalm 42

Some small bone in your foot is longing for heaven
                          —Robert Bly

This twinge at first stir
too modest for throb,
more diffident
than tug,
not an itch,
not the most

incurious twitch
of a hook,
not a jerk,
but the tease
of brustle
of the fine, stiff pinions
of every curtained
saint and cherub.
~Hailey Leithauser “Some Small Bone,”

Even the smallest part of us
~each cell, each skin pore, each little bone~
longs to know what to believe about what comes next.

~perhaps heaven is as light and gentle
as a touch of a feather.

~maybe heaven is as rich as the glow
of a full blood moon.

~or heaven is like the ever-changing colors
of the northern lights illuminating the skies.

~certainly heaven is eternal felicity,
where we join an everlasting party.

yet despite the discomfort of
our questions, quandaries and doubts,
or perhaps, because of them…

it is the Lord in heaven who longs for,
and believes in,
us.

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Each Bright Drupelet

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I eat these
wild red raspberries
still warm from the sun
and smelling faintly of jewelweed
in memory of my father

tucking the napkin
under his chin and bending
over an ironstone bowl
of the bright drupelets
awash in cream

my father
with the sigh of a man
who has seen all and been redeemed
said time after time
as he lifted his spoon

men kill for this.
~Maxine Kumin “Appetite” from Selected Poems: 1960-1990

I’ve always wondered if there was a name
for the small round globe, part of an aggregate berry
like a thimbleberry, raspberry or blackberry –
each so smooth and perfectly formed,
each unique yet a homogenous part of the whole.
Yet if separated all by itself, nearly invisible.

Each is called a small drupe,
or more familiar and lovingly, a drupelet.

Despite such a plain name,
a little drupelet has its own smooth shiny beauty,
a drop of flavor to be savored, unforgotten,
made sweeter by being part of the whole –
even sweeter when redeemed and consumed.

Kind of like us –
each of us a small part of the whole of life –
each sacrificed for a taste of eternity.

Kind of like us…

photo by Nate Gibson

Lyrics: I am a small part of the world
I have a small hand which to hold
But if I stand by your side
And you put your hand in mine
Together we can be so strong and bold

I am a small part of the world
I have a small dream in my eyes
But if I tell you my dreams
And you add your dreams to mine
Together we can reach up to the skies

Hand in hand, dreams combine
Voice with voice, together for all time
Hand in hand, dreams combine
Voice with voice, for all time

I am a small part of the world
I have a small voice ringing clear
But if I sing out for freedom
And you add your voice to mine

Hand in hand, dreams combine
Voice with voice for all time
I am a small part of the world
Take my hand

Writer(s): Jay Althouse, Sally Albrecht

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You May Not Realize…

barnstormingblog4 Comments

Without realizing it, we fill
important places in each others’ lives.
It’s that way with the guy at the corner grocery,
the mechanic at the local garage,
the family doctor, teachers, neighbors, coworkers.

Good people who are always “there,”
who can be relied upon in
small, important ways.
People who teach us,
bless us, encourage us, support us,
uplift us in the dailiness of life.

We never tell them.
I don’t know why, but we don’t.

And, of course, we fill that role ourselves.
There are those who depend on us, watch us,
learn from us, take from us.
And we never know.

You may never have proof of your importance,
but you are more important than you think.
There are always those who couldn’t do without you.
The rub is that you don’t always know who.
~Robert Fulghum from All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten

If there is one thing living through the pandemic taught me, it’s noticing the people in my life who may have not been as obvious to me before. I hadn’t realized how many folks truly are front-line serving others day-in and day-out.

It’s not only health care workers, grocery store clerks and school teachers but the list of essential workers is large, including law enforcement, plumbers and electricians, child care workers, water, sanitation and sewer maintenance, pastors, postal clerks, technicians who fix our cars and appliances and the farmers who tend the crops and livestock we need to live, as well as scores of others.

We are remarkably interdependent and need each other.

I realized how oblivious I had been before not taking the time to acknowledge the daily services I received from so many varied people. In fact, it has become more urgent for me to tell my family members and friends – some thousands of miles away from me – how much they mean to me.

Now, in non-pandemic times, I try to tell others – the grocery cashier, the medical assistant, the office receptionist – as simply and clearly as I can, whenever possible, that I appreciate what they have done and what they continue to do, how they make life better for us all.

I also need to continue to nurture relationships with family and friends crucial to my own well-being. I need them all.

I need you all.

And it is important to me that you know.

Well over a thousand of you receive these daily Barnstorming emails and posts – a handful of you communicate with me regularly.
I treasure those messages, thank you!

We all need encouragement that we are making a positive difference in others’ lives and you all make a difference to me.

You can always reach me by commenting on posts or emailing me privately at emilypgibson@gmail.com or giving anonymous feedback at https://barnstorming.blog/barnstormingreviews/

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When All Is Said…

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A butterfly dancing in the sunlight,
A bird singing to his mate,
The whispering pines,
The restless sea,
The gigantic mountains,
A stately tree,
The rain upon the roof,
The sun at early dawn,
A boy with rod and hook,
The babble of a shady brook,
A woman with her smiling babe,
A man whose eyes are kind and wise,
Youth that is eager and unafraid—
When all is said, I do love best
A little home where love abides,
And where there’s kindness, peace, and rest.
~Scottie McKenzie Frasier “The Things I Love”

When all is said and done,
I love best the people
who bring kindness, peace and rest
to the little house
we call home.

It is enough
and everything.

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Strung With Care

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In none of her other ages had she noted
her age or its burden and bounty of expectations.
The future was as flexible as the past,
and, in between, moments like unstrung pearls
strewn across velvet grieved and gladdened her
and always astonished her with their perfection.
There was no nothingness: there was only being.

Slowly she wakes from what had seemed a dream
to realize that this is her final age—
of indeterminate length and quality.
Things are ending, or have ended, or will end.
The pearls are strung with care, it is quite clear.
There is no nothingness—but she can almost,
some days, picture the world without her in it.
~Jane Greer “In none of her other ages”
(Jane died after a short illness last week at the age of 72)

I have always been well aware
we each arrive here with an expiration date
hidden from view.

We may live for decades assuming
the circled length of our own string of pearls
will continue indefinitely
with the latch closed and tight.

A few months ago,
my clasp opened unexpectedly,
my finite days of carefully strung pearls
threatening to spill, forever lost to me.

I realized things could end
without any hugged goodbyes.

Later, having been emergently restrung,
at least for the time being,
the look in my eyes
prompted the surgeon to say
“now you can live out your full life span.”

What I wanted to ask him
but couldn’t:
“and just how long might that be?”
knowing he had no true reassurance
for something only God can promise:

There is no nothingness.

By grace and a surgeon’s skill,
I gained nearly six months of pearls.
I’m still here, looking back
at the carefully strung
hours and days and weeks
behind and before me.

Right now I remain clasped tight,
hugging and held secure,
though one day I know
it will be time
to let go.

There we shall rest and we shall see;
we shall see and we shall love;
we shall love and we shall praise.
Behold what shall be in the end and shall not end.
~Augustine of Hippo from The City of God, Bk. XXII, Chap. 30

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Don’t Let Them Go

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He picked up a pebble
and threw it into the sea.

And another, and another.
He couldn’t stop.

He wasn’t trying to fill the sea.
He wasn’t trying to empty the beach.

He was just throwing away,
nothing else but.

Like a kitten playing
he was practising for the future

when there’ll be so many things
he’ll want to throw away

if only his fingers will unclench
and let them go.
~Norman MacCaig “Small Boy” from The Poems of Norman MacCaig

photo by Nate Gibson at Sendai, Japan

Some things we pick up
but toss aside like a game.
They hold no meaning
and we want to see how far they go
and how many skips they make.

Some things we pick up
and they are smooth and sparkly,
seeming somehow special;
throwing them back into the abyss
feels like a loss, yet we still let them go.

When there is the one appearing so ordinary,
yet feels just right in our hand,
picked up and pondered,
then placed securely in a pocket,
never to be tossed away.

And so it is,
ordinary as we are,
He never lets us go.
We fit perfectly in His Hand,
safely stowed inside His pocket.

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I Borrowed This Dust

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Instructions for living a life:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.
~Mary Oliver “Sometimes” from Red Bird

Getting older:

The first surprise: I like it.
Whatever happens now, some things
that used to terrify have not:

I didn’t die young, for instance. Or lose
my only love. My three children
never had to run away from anyone.

Don’t tell me this gratitude is complacent.
We all approach the edge of the same blackness
which for me is silent.

Knowing as much sharpens
my delight in January freesia,
hot coffee, winter sunlight. So we say

as we lie close on some gentle occasion:
every day won from such
darkness is a celebration.
~ Elaine Feinstein, “Getting Older” from The Clinic, Memory

Maybe
it’s time for me to practice
growing old… I only
borrowed this dust.
~Stanley Kunitz from “Passing Through” from Collected Poems

To do the useful thing,
to say the courageous thing,
to contemplate the beautiful thing:
that is enough for one man’s life.
― T.S. Eliot, The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism

I am astonished at living over seven decades,
despite my faltering dust.

Amazed by joys and sometimes by sorrows,
I hope to see much more before I’m done,
trying in my own way to tell about it.

I am grateful, so very grateful
to still be here,
living out the time left to me
learning:
how love can heal,
how tears are dried,
and most astonishing of all,
how God came here
to loan us His dust –
until the day He carries us,
all dusty,
back home.

photo by Tomomi Gibson

Lyrics from Carrie Newcomer:
I’ve been looking for beauty
In these broken times
By making some beauty
In the world that I find
Some say it′s too late
It′s too much to brave
But I believe there’s so much
Worth being saved

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Standing Still

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In my beginning is my end. Now the light falls…
I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope.
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.
~T.S. Eliot from “East Coker”

Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you.
If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.
~David Wagoner “Lost”

Come listen in the silence of the moment before rain comes down.
There’s a deep sigh in the quiet of the forest and the tall tree’s crown.

Now hold me.
Will you take the time to hold me and embrace the chill?
Or miss me,
will you take the time to miss me when the earth stands still?

Cause there’s no use running
cause the storm’s still coming
and you’ve been running for too many years.

Come listen in the silence of the moment before shadows fall.
Feel the tremor of your heartbeat matching heartbeat as we both dissolve.

Now hold me….

Cause there’s no use running
cause the storm’s still coming
and you’ve been running for too many years.

So stay with me, held in my arms
Like branches of a tree
They’ll shelter you for many years.
~Don MacDonald “When The Earth Stands Still”

If I’m feeling lost in the figurative forest of my days on this earth, unsure where I’m heading and struggling to figure out where I’ve been, I just look up at our lone fir on the hill of our farm.

This fir has stood still through years of change around it, buffeted by windstorms and frozen rain and heavy snow, thirsted through dry summers, and rooted solid during the occasional earthquake.

I tend to follow whatever path appears before me, keeping my head down to make sure I don’t trip over a root or stumble on a rock. Yet around and above me are the clues to where I am and where I’m going.

So standing still beneath this tree, with a changing sky around me, God always reminds me where I am.
He knows when my focus is distracted and floundering.

I once was lost, and now am found.

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Be Winged and Fed

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O! for a horse with wings! 
~William Shakespeare from Cymbeline

photo by Bette Vander Haak
photo by Bette Vander Haak

Be winged. Be the father of all flying horses.
~C.S. Lewis from The Magician’s Nephew

photo by Bette Vander Haak
photo by Bette Vander Haak

One reason why birds and horses are happy is because they are not trying to impress other birds and horses. 
~Dale Carnegie

photo by Bette Vander Haak

When I bestride him, I soar, I am a hawk:
he trots the air; the earth sings when he touches it;
~William Shakespeare from Henry V

We all need someone along for the ride with us, blessing us with their company — a precious friend who has our back and scratches it wonderfully – helping to keep the biting flies away by gobbling them up.

It is symbiosis at its best: a relationship built on mutual trust and helpfulness. In exchange for relief from annoying insects that a tail can’t flick off, a Haflinger horse serves up bugs on a smorgasbord landing platform located safely above farm cats and marauding coyotes.

Thanks to their perpetual full meal deals, these cowbirds do leave generous “deposits” behind that need to be brushed off at the end of the day. Like any good friendship, tidying up the little messes left behind is a small price to pay for the bliss of companionable comradeship.

We’re buds after all – best forever friends, trotting the air while the earth sings along.

And this is exactly what friends are for: one provides the feast while the other provides the wings, even if things get messy.

Be winged. Be fed. Cleaning up together.

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Has This Day Changed You?

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In June’s high light she stood at the sink
            With a glass of wine,
And listened for the bobolink,
And crushed garlic in late sunshine.

I watched her cooking, from my chair.
            She pressed her lips
Together, reached for kitchenware,
And tasted sauce from her fingertips.

“It’s ready now. Come on,” she said.
            “You light the candle.”
We ate, and talked, and went to bed,
And slept. It was a miracle.
~Donald Hall “Summer Kitchen”

Day ends, and before sleep
when the sky dies down, consider
your altered state: has this day
changed you? Are the corners
sharper or rounded off? Did you
live with death? Make decisions
that quieted? Find one clear word
that fit? At the sun’s midpoint
did you notice a pitch of absence,
bewilderment that invites
the possible? What did you learn
from things you dropped and picked up
and dropped again? Did you set a straw
parallel to the river, let the flow
carry you downstream?
~Jeanne Lohmann “Questions Before Dark” from The Light of Invisible Bodies

I know now, Lord, why you utter no answer.
You are yourself the answer.
Before your face questions die away.
~C.S. Lewis from Till We Have Faces

When the world seems to be going to hell in a hand basket, what a gift is a wonderful evening meal, conversation at the dinner table and falling asleep with a gentle sigh of contentment.

These are sweet moments are worth remembering.

It is easy to get swept up in frustration with a plethora of angry public opinions and even angrier societal actions. Yet I find that only leads to indigestion, irritability and insomnia.

I ask myself thoughtful and sometimes troubling questions at the end of the day that too often feel unanswerable — only because I’m not paying attention to the ultimate Answer to all questions.

Each day I should be ready to be changed by His call to me to finish well.

I must not take any day for granted. Each is a sweet day to be remembered for some special moment that made me hope it could last forever.

And then to bed and sleep. It is a miracle.

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