Category: aging

Leaning Lest We Fall

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Today we both fell.

Eventually balance moves
out of us into the world;
it’s the pull of rabbits
grazing on the lawn
as we talk, the slow talk
of where and when,
determining what
and who we will become
as we age.

We admire the new plants
and the rings of mulch you made,
we praise the rabbits eating
the weeds’ sweet yellow flowers.

Behind our words the days
serve each other as mother,
father, cook, builder, and fixer;
these float like the clouds
beyond the trees.

It is a simple life, now,
children grown, our living made
and saved, our years our own,
husband and wife,

but in our daily stride, the one
that rises with the sun,
the chosen pride,
we lean on our other selves,
lest we fall
into a consuming fire
and lose it all.
~Richard Maxson, “Otherwise” from  Searching for Arkansas

i carry your heart with me (i carry it in
my heart) i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing, my darling)
I fear
no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet) I want
no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)
~e.e. cummings “i carry your heart with me”

May the sun bring you new energy by day,
May the moon softly restore you by night,
May the rain wash away your worries,
May the breeze blow new strength into your being.

May you walk gently through the world,
And know it’s beauty all the days of your life.
~Apache Blessing

Our days are slower now, less rushed, more reading and writing, walking and pondering, taking it all in and wondering what comes next.

I am so grateful not to hurry to work every day, planning how I should parcel out each moment when my energy and strength is waning.

Should I stay busy cooking, cleaning, sorting, giving away, simplifying our possessions so our children someday won’t have to?
Might our grandchildren tire of my attention? Or should I find ways to be of service off the farm to feel worthy of each new day, each new breath?

This time of life is a gift of grace, waking most days with no agenda and few appointments. What comes next remains uncertain, as it always has been. In my busyness, I simply didn’t pay enough attention before.

So I lean lest I fall.
I notice beauty and write about it.
I carry as many hearts as I can hold.
I keep breathing lest I forget how.

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Finding a Lovely Thing

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Look for a lovely thing and you will find it,
It is not far —
It never will be far.
~Sara Teasdale from “Night”

Queen Anne’s lace

                a hardly

                    prized but

            all the same it isn’t

                     idle look

                                    how it

                    stands straight on its

            thin stems how it 

                    scrubs its white faces

                        with the

            rays of the sun how it

                                makes all the

                                        loveliness

                                                it can.
~Mary Oliver “Passing the Unworked Field“

Until I opened my eyes to see,

I passed by lovely things all the time,
my thoughts grousing in the grayness of the day.
Oblivious and self-absorbed,
blinded to the gifts around me.

It only takes a heart open
to unexpected beauty,
not far,
really never far–
right there in our own back yard.

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Come and See: Take Him At His Word

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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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Written On My Heart

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I loved you before I was born.
It doesn’t make sense, I know.

I saw your eyes before I had eyes to see.
And I’ve lived longing 
for your ever look ever since.
That longing entered time as this body. 
And the longing grew as this body waxed.
And the longing grows as the body wanes.
The longing will outlive this body.

I loved you before I was born.
It doesn’t make sense, I know.

Long before eternity, I caught a glimpse
of your neck and shoulders, your ankles and toes.
And I’ve been lonely for you from that instant.
That loneliness appeared on earth as this body. 
And my share of time has been nothing 
but your name outrunning my ever saying it clearly. 
Your face fleeing my ever
kissing it firmly once on the mouth.

In longing, I am most myself, rapt,
my lamp mortal, my light 
hidden and singing. 

I give you my blank heart.
Please write on it
what you wish. 
~Li-Young Lee, “I Loved You Before I Was Born”

I should have recognized you at first, but didn’t.

Once I looked you in the eyes, I knew that I had loved you from before I was born. It didn’t make sense to me but nevertheless I knew.

Our longing in loneliness finally brought us face to face.

I handed you my heart and you handed me yours, to keep forever.
And there they remain with utmost tenderness,
our longings still being written.

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Let Us Be Luminous

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The February sunshine steeps your boughs
and tints the buds and swells the leaves within.
~William C. Bryant from “Among the Trees”

The sun was everywhere yesterday, thawing the frost layer on the metal roof of the barn to the point of seeping through the cracks, splattering with drops inside like taking an indoor shower during chores. I kept my hood on while I cleaned stalls, all the while trying to dodge the dripping.

The sun rays are trying to burst through our layers to activate Vitamin D thirsty skin, and there is actual warmth on our cheeks as we look up, squinting at the unaccustomed brightness.

At last, oh at last — after months of gray misty drizzle. It may be only a tease and not the real thing. Rain is back today and sub-freezing temperatures are forecast again over the next week.

Even so, the soil is feeling seduced. The snowdrop sprouts have thrust through the frozen ground and crocus are peeking out hopefully on our side of the crust rather than staying tentative and hidden down under.

This brief glimpse of spring was worth waiting for, even if winter breaks loose again for a few weeks and plunges us back into doldrums and gloom. If only a peek, it is still promise of a coming renewal and rebirth.

We won’t always have to dwell in darkness. 

Let us be luminous.

photo by Josh Scholten
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And With Ah! Bright Wings

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The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
~Gerard Manley Hopkins “God’s Grandeur”

Whom thou conceivst, conceived; yea thou art now
Thy Maker’s maker, and thy Father’s mother;
Thou hast light in dark, and shutst in little room,
Immensity cloistered in thy dear womb. 
~John Donne from “Annunciation”

I know this sound, first birds of morning.
As a child, I waited for hours for the drape
of night to roll up again. Leaning into the first
hint of the fresh day, the fragile lace of hesitant
light, the receding darkness dappled with bird song,
able at last to close my eyes.
I know this sound, some kind of redemption,
waking me from scattered sleep, a healing fragment
even as the work of the previous day marks my bones
in notches. Night leaves its small fur as the dawn
pushes, as the birds persist, and morning unfurls
like a promise you hoped someone would keep.
~Susan Moorhead “First Light” from Carry Darkness, Carry Light

Our February farm sunrises have always been full of promise over the three decades we’ve been here. The birds are waking earlier each day and when mornings are soaked, dripping with light and color, the air itself is alive.

Nothing though quite matches the phenomenon in February 2015 (top photo) when a fall streak hole or “key hole” cloud formed over nearby foothills.

It looked to me as if angels were bursting through an unfurling break in heaven’s moving veil. Though it didn’t last long, it was seen for miles around us.

When morning breaks the night, it is like the first morning which came into being with His Words:

“Let there be light” — and there continues to be the most amazing light…

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Left Up to God

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This saying good-by on the edge of the dark
And the cold to an orchard so young in the bark
Reminds me of all that can happen to harm
An orchard away at the end of the farm
All winter, cut off by a hill from the house.

I don’t want it girdled by rabbit and mouse,
I don’t want it dreamily nibbled for browse
By deer, and I don’t want it budded by grouse.

I don’t want it stirred by the heat of the sun.
(We made it secure against being, I hope,
By setting it out on a northerly slope.)
No orchard’s the worse for the wintriest storm;
But one thing about it, it mustn’t get warm.
“How often already you’ve had to be told,
Keep cold, young orchard. Good-by and keep cold.
Dread fifty above more than fifty below.”

I have to be gone for a season or so.
My business awhile is with different trees,
Less carefully nourished, less fruitful than these,
And such as is done to their wood with an ax—
Maples and birches and tamaracks.

I wish I could promise to lie in the night
And think of an orchard’s arboreal plight
When slowly (and nobody comes with a light)
Its heart sinks lower under the sod.
But something has to be left to God.
~Robert Frost from “Good-by and Keep Cold”

bluejay photo by Josh Scholten

Silence and darkness grow apace, broken only by the crack of a hunter’s gun in the woods. Songbirds abandon us so gradually that, until the day when we hear no birdsong at all but the scolding of the jay, we haven’t fully realized that we are bereft — as after a death.  Even the sun has gone off somewhere… Now we all come in, having put the garden to bed, and we wait for winter to pull a chilly sheet over its head.   
~Jane Kenyon from her essay “Good-by and Keep Cold” found in A Hundred White Daffodils

For two months now, we’ve heard hunters firing in the woods and the wetlands around our farm, most likely aiming for the ducks and geese that have stayed in the marshes through the winter.  

The usual day-long symphony of birdsong is replaced by shotguns popping, in addition to hawks and eagle chittering, the occasional dog barking, while the bluejays and squirrels argue over the last of the filbert nuts.

In the clear cold evenings, when coyotes aren’t howling in the moonlight, the owls hoot to each other across the fields from one patch of woods to another, their gentle resonant conversation echoing back and forth.   

The horses confined to their stalls in the barns snort and blow as they bury their noses in flakes of last summer’s bound hay.

Yet today felt different – today, with unseasonably spring-like temperatures in early February, things feel about to change.

As yet, there have been no birdsong arias. I am bereft, listening for their blending musical tapestry waking me at 4 AM in the spring. And soon, the peeper orchestra from the swamps will rise and fall on the evening breeze.

It has been too, too quiet. I long for the music to return, not just the surround-sound of gunshot percussion, which is no melody at all.  

I listen intently for early morning and evening serenades to return.
It won’t be long.

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No Trifling Matter

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For the bark, dulled argent, roundly wrapped
And pigeon-collared.
 
For the splitter-splatter, guttering
Rain-flirt leaves.
 
For the snub and clot of the first green cones,
Smelted emerald, chlorophyll.
 
For the scut and scat of cones in winter,
So rattle-skinned, so fossil-brittle.
 
For the alder-wood, flame-red when torn
Branch from branch.
 
But mostly for the swinging locks
Of yellow catkins.
 
Plant it, plant it,
Streel-head in the rain.
~Seamus Heaney “Planting the Alder” with an explanation of some of the poet’s poetic words here

Alder catkin,
weightless as down,
only blow it away
and all changes utterly,
and life, it appears,
is not such a trifling matter,
when nothing about it
seems merely a trifle.
…an alder catkin
lies in my palm,
and quivers, as if living..
~Yevgeny Yevtushenko from “Alder Catkin” translated by Arthur Boyars and Simon Franklin

The alder tree branches are still winter-naked as their catkins start to emerge, other-worldly in appearance.

The swinging catkins search out every breeze to spread pollen as far as possible, engaging in serious alder-production business. It’s effective, as annually our pastures fill with baby alder trees, eager to form their own dense community in the wet ground of our lowlands.

In its desire to dominate the woodlands and allergies here in the northwest, the alder catkin is nothing to trifle with. Though we don’t want a field full of them, I can’t help but admire them this time of year for their bold color and knobby texture, reminiscent of the upholstery of my family’s well-loved 1950’s davenport sofa which converted to a bed for sick kids or visiting cousins.

Another world, another life-time full of dreams…

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Restoration

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Now wind torments the field,
turning the white surface back
on itself, back and back on itself,
like an animal licking a wound.

A single green sprouting thing
would restore me . . .
~Jane Kenyon from “February: Thinking of Flowers”

Now the green blade riseth, from the buried grain,
Wheat that in dark earth many days has lain;
Love lives again, that with the dead has been:
Love is come again like wheat that springeth green.

When our hearts are wintry, grieving, or in pain,
Jesus’ touch can call us back to life again,
Fields of our hearts that dead and bare have been:
Love is come again like wheat that springeth green.
~ John Macleod Campbell Crum – two stanzas from “Now the Green Blade Riseth”

…times of dormancy and deep rest are essential to all living things. Despite all appearances, of course, nature is not dead in winter–
it has gone underground to renew itself and prepare for spring.

Winter is a time when we are admonished, and even inclined, to do the same for ourselves.

Our inward winters take many forms–failure, betrayal, depression, death. But every one of them, in my experience, yields to the same advice: “The winters will drive you crazy until you learn to get out into them.” Until we enter boldly into the fears we most want to avoid, those fears will dominate our lives. But when we walk directly into them–protected from frostbite by the warm garb of friendship or inner discipline or spiritual guidance–we can learn what they have to teach us. Then, we discover once again that the cycle of the seasons is trustworthy and life-giving, even in winter, the most dismaying season of all.
~Parker Palmer from Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation

Why did “Let It Go” from the Disney movie “Frozen” resonate as a universal pop anthem some ten years ago?

Maybe we needed the call to emerge from our dormancy, to reach out in our God-given ability to overcome challenges, despite everything the outward and inward winters blow at us.

I trust, from all I’ve learned in His Word  —  I have only gone underground temporarily and will soon emerge restored in renewal.

The cold never bothered me anyway?
Yes, of course it did, but it is not the end of my story.

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Glimpsing Eden

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I alternate between thinking of the planet as home
– dear and familiar stone hearth and garden –
and as a hard land of exile in which we are all sojourners.
~Annie Dillard from Teaching a Stone To Talk

We all long for Eden,
and we are constantly glimpsing it:
our whole nature
at its best and least corrupted,
its gentlest and most human,
is still soaked with the sense of exile.
~J.R.R. Tolkien, The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien

Wraiths of mist suddenly moving like serpents of the air
would coil about them for a second.
Grey damp would be around them, and the sun,
a copper penny, would fade away.
The wings next to their own wings
would shade into vacancy,
until each bird was a lonely sound
in cold annihilation,
a presence after uncertain.
And there they would hang in chartless nothing,
seemingly without speed or left or right or top or bottom,
until as suddenly as ever the copper penny glowed
and the serpents writhed.
Then, in a moment of time,
they would be in the jewelled world once more:
a sea under them like turquoise
and all the gorgeous palaces of heaven new created,
with the dew of Eden not yet dry.
~T.H. White from The Once and Future King

The Lord your God is with you,
    the Mighty Warrior who saves.
He will take great delight in you;
    in his love he will no longer rebuke you,
    but will rejoice over you with singing.
I will rescue the lame;
    I will gather the exiles.
I will give them praise and honor
    in every land where they have suffered shame.
At that time I will gather you;
    at that time I will bring you home.
Zephaniah 3: 17, 19-20

I, like everyone on this earth,
am only a sojourner,
seemingly settled, yet certainly not lasting.  
As a garden flourishes in the dew and then dies back,
so will I. 

This is exile in the wilderness
until we are taken back home.
He has sent His Son to fetch us.

Home. Really home.
A place of no fading or withering.

Each of us etched on His heart,
created in His image,
held fast in His Hand,
and led back home.


Lyrics:

The barren land around me lies
My flame is burning low
Cold and pale the winter skies
And I am far from home.
With my light that burns so dim,
Am I visible to Him?
Does He hear the fragile song of creatures here below?

He wakes the lark and bids her fly
To greet the coming spring,
Wakes our hearts and bids us rise
Then gives our spirits wing.
He speaks, and winter melts away,
Hears us when we come to pray,
Turns our nighttime into day –
Our Light, our Life, our King.

Glorious joy of summer sun,
The gentle healing rain,
Banishing our tears and sighs,
With beauty for our pain.
Earth and sky, lay glory by-
Christ the Lord is drawing nigh!
All creation, bow to Him
From whom all blessings flow!

Blows the wind, and soon will come
The autumn of the year
With its golden light of love
Still shining ever clear.
From the rising of the sun
To the place where day is done,
Peace on earth has now begun
To cast away our fear.
-Johanna Anderson, 2018

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