Category: anxiety

Seeing Clearly

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Things said or done long years ago,
Or things I did not do or say
But thought that I might say or do,
Weigh me down, and not a day
But something is recalled,
My conscience or my vanity appalled.
~William Butler Yeats from “Vacillation”

photo by Emily Dieleman

We wanted to confess our sins but there were no takers.
White clouds refused to accept them, and the wind
Was too busy visiting sea after sea.
We did not succeed in interesting the animals.
Dogs, disappointed, expected an order,
A cat, as always immoral, was falling asleep.
A person seemingly very close
Did not care to hear of things long past.
Conversations with friends over vodka or coffee
Ought not be prolonged beyond the first sign of boredom.
It would be humiliating to pay by the hour
A man with a diploma, just for listening.
Churches. Perhaps churches. But to confess there what?
That we used to see ourselves as handsome and noble
Yet later in our place an ugly toad
Half-opens its thick eyelid
And one sees clearly: “That’s me.”
~Czeslaw Milosz “At a Certain Age”

photo by Nate Gibson

I have a brief confession
that I would like to make.
If I don’t get it off my chest
I’m sure my heart will break.

I didn’t do my reading.
I watched TV instead—
while munching cookies, cakes, and chips
and cinnamon raisin bread.

I didn’t wash the dishes.
I didn’t clean the mess.
Now there are roaches eating crumbs—
a million, more or less.

I didn’t turn the TV off.
I didn’t shut the light.
Just think of all the energy
I wasted through the night.

I feel so very guilty.
I did a lousy job.
I hope my students don’t find out
that I am such a slob.
~Bruce Lansky “Confession”

Norman Rockwell’s “Before the Shot”
photo by Barb Hoelle

We all have confessions we could make.
We all want to avoid admitting mistakes and failings.
We all live under the black cloud of knowing our guilt and shame.

I have plenty of opportunity to replay the many moments I’ve regretted what I said or did,
or what I could have said or did….and didn’t.
Recalling remorse is far easier and stickier
than replaying joy that seems so fleeting in my memory.

There are times when I feel both weighed down by memories
and freed at the same time.

It almost always happens while sitting in worship in church,
silently confessing how I have wronged those around me
or turned my face from God.

Yet in the next moment,
I feel the embrace of a Creator who never forgets but still forgives.
It is an overwhelming knowledge that brings me to tears every time.

It is in that moment that my joy no longer is fleeting;
it lives deeply in my cells since I, like all around me,
am created in His image.

And no, we don’t look like a toad.

God saw what He made in His image,
and it was, and still is, good –
though flawed in our own choices.
He made each of us out of love for us,
not out of regret.
We each open our heavy eyelids, see His Face
and can say, “That’s me.”

toad picture by Josh Scholten

Within That Grip Until the End of Time

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The severest pain will send you
to your bed, drop you to the floor.

The severest pain will roll you
into a fetal ball, and squeeze.

Within that grip, you might descend
into your long-abandoned core,

where, mid uncommon darkness, you
may find the door, whose opening

avails at last that lacuna
wherein the nous proves yet to be

also more spacious than heaven,
bearing also the Very God,

who is most pleased to meet you there.
~Scott Cairn “The End of Suffering” from Lacunae

Sometimes from sorrow, for no reason,
you sing. For no reason, you accept
the way of being lost, cutting loose
from all else and electing a world
where you go where you want to.

Arbitrary, a sound comes, a reminder
that a steady center is holding
all else. If you listen, that sound
will tell you where it is and you
can slide your way past trouble.

Certain twisted monsters
always bar the path—but that’s when
you get going best, glad to be lost,
learning how real it is
here on earth, again and again.
~William Stafford “Cutting Loose” from Dancing with Joy: 99 Poems

Before my fever broke,
And the pains lessened, I could actually see
Myself, in the exact center of that square.
How still it had become in my absence, & how
Immaculate, windless, sunlit. I could see
The outline of every leaf on the nearest tree,
See it more clearly than ever, more clearly than
I had seen anything before in my whole life:
Against the modest, dark gray, solemn trunk,
The leaves were becoming only what they had to be—
Calm, yellow, things in themselves & nothing
More—& frankly they were nothing in themselves,
Nothing except their little reassurance
Of persisting for a few more days, or returning
The year after, & the year after that, & every
Year following—estranged from us by now—& clear,
So clear not one in a thousand trembled; hushed
And always coming back—steadfast, orderly,
Taciturn, oblivious—until the end of Time.
~Larry Levis from The Widening Spell of the Leaves 

I did not sleep well last night —
my mind would not stop turning over and over,
my blankets twisted in turmoil,
my muscles too tense and tight.  

The worries of the day
needed serious wrestling in the dark
rather than settling forgotten under my pillow.

Yet this morning dawns anew.

I’m comforted by the rhythm
of hours starting fresh, like leaves on the trees
steadfast, orderly,
taciturn, oblivious—until the end of Time…

So today, I’ll get my hands dirty
digging a hole deep enough to hold my worries;
tomorrow I’ll forget where exactly I buried them.

What I’m Still Learning…

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I’ve learned that no matter what happens, or how bad it seems today, life does go on, and it will be better tomorrow.

I’ve learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way he/she handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights.

I’ve learned that regardless of your relationship with your parents, you’ll miss them when they’re gone from your life.

I’ve learned that making a ‘living’ is not the same thing as making a ‘life.’

I’ve learned that life sometimes gives you a second chance.

I’ve learned that you shouldn’t go through life with a catcher’s mitt on both hands; you need to be able to throw something back.

I’ve learned that whenever I decide something with an open heart, I usually make the right decision.

I’ve learned that even when I have pains, I don’t have to be one.

I’ve learned that every day you should reach out and touch someone. People love a warm hug, or just a friendly pat on the back.

I’ve learned that I still have a lot to learn.

I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.
~Maya Angelou

…think of all the things you’ve learned over the years—
the hard and the holy,
the mysteries that will always remain mysterious,
the clean edges of truth,
the soft edges of every kindness given or received,
the way trouble and wonder will continue to show up, sometimes leaving us beached and breathless with uncontainable joy or unutterable sorrow.
I think of all the times I was knocked to my knees by a beautiful and brilliant flash of the completely obvious.
~Carrie Newcomer from A Gathering of Spirits

I learned from my mother how to love
the living, to have plenty of vases on hand
in case you have to rush to the hospital
with peonies cut from the lawn, black ants
still stuck to the buds. I learned to save jars
large enough to hold fruit salad for a whole
grieving household, to cube home-canned pears
and peaches, to slice through maroon grape skins
and flick out the sexual seeds with a knife point.
I learned to attend viewings even if I didn’t know
the deceased, to press the moist hands
of the living, to look in their eyes and offer
sympathy, as though I understood loss even then.
I learned that whatever we say means nothing,
what anyone will remember is that we came.
I learned to believe I had the power to ease
awful pains materially like an angel.
Like a doctor, I learned to create
from another’s suffering my own usefulness, and once
you know how to do this, you can never refuse.
To every house you enter, you must offer
healing: a chocolate cake you baked yourself,
the blessing of your voice, your chaste touch.
~Julie Kasdorf– “What I Learned from my Mother”

Five years ago today, I wrapped up 45 years of uninterrupted medical training and doctoring.

Even while bearing three children and going through a few surgeries myself, I was not away from patient care for more than twenty consecutive days at any one time. This was primarily out of my concern that, even after a few weeks, I would forget all that I’d ever known.

Indeed, half of what I learned in medical school and residency nearly fifty years ago has evolved, thanks to new discoveries and clarifying research. I worried if I actually stepped away from doctoring for an extended time, then return to see patients again, I would be masquerading as a physician rather than be the real thing.

I couldn’t fathom a day when I could actually investigate a medical dilemma by typing a few words in a search engine on a computer screen. Instead, I researched through opening my encyclopedic collection of reference textbooks along with huge notebooks of “Scientific American Updates,” a monthly process of throwing out old articles to be replaced by newly discovered data. That is how I kept learning before the computer replaced books and pen and paper…

If being truly honest, even now, those who spend their professional lives providing medical care to others always share this concern: if a patient only knew how much we don’t know and will never know, despite everything we DO know, there would really be no trust left for us at all.

With so much rapidly changing medical information at everyone’s fingertips and computer screens, who needs a trained physician when there are so many other resources – many sketchy and opportunistic – for seeking health care advice?

Yet, I am convinced most patients really do want doctors to share the best information they have available at any point in time rather than rely on the latest internet algorithm and so-called “experts.”

I know over forty years of clinical experience gave me an eye and an ear for the subtle signs and symptoms that no googled website or AI app or virtual doc-in-the-box can discern: the avoidance of eye contact, the tremble of the lip as they spoke, the barely palpable rash, the hardly discernible extra heart sound, the fullness over an ovary, the slight squeak in a lung base. These are things I was privileged to see and hear, about which I made decisions together with my patients. 

The work I did over four decades was a reflection of a continual learning process; out of my natural caution, I was honest when I didn’t know what the diagnosis was, nor the best treatment, but committed to doing my best to find out.

Continual learning – what I was trained to do for thousands of days and many more thousands of patients during my professional life, while passing a comprehensive certification examination every few years to prove my study and changing fund of knowledge.

Since retiring, the help I offer no longer means writing a prescription for a medication, or performing a minor surgery. I have to simply offer up me for what it’s worth, without a stethoscope.

Now I aim to be the best mom and grandma and friend I can be.
I can press my hand into another’s, hug when needed, smile and listen and nod and sometimes weep when someone has something they need to say. No advanced degree or certification required.

Someday, hopefully not too soon, I will die happy knowing I chose this with my life: still learning and still caring.

Cut and Tumble, Sickness and Weeping

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God keep my jewel this day from danger;
From tinker and pooka and bad-hearted stranger.
From harm of the water, from hurt of the fire.
From the horns of the cows going home to the byre.
From the sight of the fairies that maybe might change her.
From teasing the ass when he’s tied to the manger.
From stones that would bruise her, from thorns of the briar.
From evil red berries that wake her desire.
From hunting the gander and vexing the goat.
From the depths o’ sea water by Danny’s old boat.
From cut and from tumble, from sickness and weeping;
May God have my jewel this day in his keeping.
~Winifred Lett (1882-1973) “Prayer for a Child“

photo by Nate Gibson

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.
~C.S. Lewis

I want to make a case for the Lighthouse Parent, a term that the pediatrician Kenneth Ginsburg and others have used. A Lighthouse Parent stands as a steady, reliable guide, providing safety and clarity without controlling every aspect of their child’s journey. 

Like a lighthouse that helps sailors avoid crashing into rocks, Lighthouse Parents provide firm boundaries and emotional support while allowing their children the freedom to navigate their own challenges. They demonstrate that they trust their kids to handle difficult situations independently. The key is learning when to step back and let them find their own way.
~Russell Shaw from “Lighthouse Parents Have More Confident Kids”

celebrating a long-awaited pregnancy – 1985

This “prayer for a child” has hung on the wall in our home for four decades, purchased when I was pregnant with our first of three children.

The drawing of the praying mother watching her toddler leave the safety of the home to explore the wide world addressed my worries as a new mama. I would glance at it daily, knowing the world is full of peril; it would remind me of God’s care for our family through every scary thing, real or imagined.

It helped me smile at a few of my irrational fears. Tinkers and pookas and fairies were unlikely to find our children in our rural landscape but at times the world seems full of “black-hearted strangers” and other threats, known and unknown.

Decades later, I continue to pray for our grown children and their God-given spouses, and for six adventuresome grandchildren.

I pray because I can’t not pray, and because I’m helpless without the care and compassion of our sovereign God for each of us, especially when we are brand new, completely dependent and helpless. He is a true “lighthouse” in our lives,

May I be changed by my prayers, molded into a “grand” mother and a light for our half dozen cherished grandchildren, each a jewel in His keeping.

Imagining Glory Beyond Measure

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The night of the Perseid shower,
thick fog descended
but I would not be denied.
I had put the children to bed,
knelt with them,
and later
in the quiet kitchen
as tall red candles
burned on the table between us,
I’d listened to my wife’s sweet imprecations,
her entreaties to see a physician.
But at the peak hour—
after she had gone to bed,
and neighboring houses
stood solemn and dark—
I felt no human obligation
and went without hope into the yard.
In the white mist
beneath the soaked and dripping trees,
I lifted my eyes
into a blind nothingness of sky
and shivered in a white robe.
I couldn’t see the outline
of the neighbor’s willows,
much less the host of streaking meteorites
no bigger than grains of sand
blazing across the sky.
I questioned the mind, my troubled thinking,
and chided myself to go in,
but looking up,
I thought of the earth
on which I stood,
my own
scanty plot of ground,
and as the lights passed unseen
I imagined glory beyond all measure.
Then I turned to the lights in the windows—
the children’s nightlights,
and my wife’s reading lamp, still burning.
~Richard Jones “The Manifestation”

Perhaps as a child you had the chicken pox
and your mother, to soothe you in your fever
or to help you fall asleep, came into your room
and read to you from some favorite book,
Charlotte’s Web or Little House on the Prairie,
a long story that she quietly took you through
until your eyes became magnets for your shuttering
lids and she saw your breathing go slow. And then
she read on, this time silently and to herself,
not because she didn’t know the story,
it seemed to her that there had never been a time
when she didn’t know this story—the young girl
and her benevolence, the young girl in her sod house—
but because she did not yet want to leave your side
though she knew there was nothing more
she could do for you. And you, not asleep but simply weak,
listened to her turn the pages, still feeling
the lamp warm against one cheek, knowing the shape
of the rocking chair’s shadow as it slid across
your chest. So that now, these many years later,
when you are clenched in the damp fist of a hospital bed,
or signing the papers that say you won’t love him anymore,
when you are bent at your son’s gravesite or haunted
by a war that makes you wake with the gun
cocked in your hand, you would like to believe
that such generosity comes from God, too,
who now, when you have the strength to ask, might begin
the story again, just as your mother would,
from the place where you have both left off.
~Keetje Kuipers “Prayer”

photo by Josh Scholten

Flung is too harsh a word for the rush of the world.
Blown is more like it, but blown by a generous, unending breath.
~Annie Dillard from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

How could it be possible? 

The five year old me had a sudden terrifying revelation that I would some day cease to walk this earth.

The much older me is more afraid of the faster and faster rush of the days than of their end. 

The world hurtles through space and time at a pace that leaves me breathless. Throughout my seventy-plus years, I have felt flung all too frequently, bruised and weary from hurry and hubbub.

I have need of Someone to stop me for a moment, sit down and begin the Story again with me, starting right where we left off.

Now, with retirement from daily work obligations: breathing space. 
I’m lifted lighter, drifting where I’m blown, less weighted down
by the next thing to do and the next place to be.

Instead I can just be…
part of the story to be told,
part of the wonder. 
Blown by breath that loves,
fills and nurtures,
a generous promise hopeful and fulfilled.

I’m grateful for the opportunity to see, even in the dark,
a manifestation of glory and love just beyond my vision,
praying that one day I will see and know it clearly.

The old me ~ 
Blown upon.

If only the five year old me could have known.

A Farmgirl from the Palouse

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…I saw a mom take her raincoat off
and give it to her young daughter when
a storm took over the afternoon. My god,
I thought, my whole life I’ve been under her
raincoat thinking it was somehow a marvel
that I never got wet.
~Ada Limón from “The Raincoat”

My mother, Elna Schmitz Polis, was born 106 years ago today in the lonely isolation of a Palouse wheat and lentil farm in eastern Washington. She drew her first breath in a two story white house located down a long poplar-lined lane and nestled in a draw between the undulating hills.

She attended a one room school house until 8th grade, located a mile away in the rural countryside, then moved in with her grandmother “in town” in Rosalia to attend high school, seeing her parents only a couple times a month.

It was a childhood which accustomed her to solitude and creative play inside her mind and heart – her only sibling, an older brother, was busy helping their father on the farm. All her life and especially in her later years, she would prefer the quiet of her own thoughts over the bustle of a room full of activities and conversation.

Her childhood was filled with exploration of the rolling hills, the barns and buildings where her father built and repaired farm equipment, and the chilly cellar where the fresh eggs were stored after she reached under cranky hens to gather them. She sat in the cool breeze of the picketed yard, watching the huge windmill turn and creak next to the house. She helped her weary mother feed farm crews who came for harvest time and then settled in the screened porch listening to the adults talk about lentil prices and bushel production. She woke to the mourning dove call in the mornings and heard the coyote yips and howls at night.

She nearly died at the age of 13 from a ruptured appendix, before antibiotics were an option. That near-miss haunted her life-long, filling her with worry that it was a mistake that she survived that episode at all. Yet she thrived despite the anxiety, and ended up, much to her surprise, living a long life full of family and faith, letting go at age 88 after fracturing a femur, which also broke her will to live.

As a young woman, she was ready to leave the wheat farm behind for college, devoting herself to the skills of speech, and the creativity of acting and directing in drama, later teaching rural high school students, including a future Pulitzer Prize winning poet, Carolyn Kizer. She loved words and the power and beauty they wielded.

Marrying my father was a brave and impulsive act, traveling by train to the east coast only a week before he shipped out for almost 3 years to the South Pacific to fight as a Marine in WWII. She must have wondered about the man who returned from war changed and undoubtedly scarred in ways she could not see or touch. They worked it out mostly in silence, as rocky as it must have been at times.

Her episode of Graves’ disease, before I was born, must have been agonizing for both of them and my older sister, as her storm of thyroid overactivity resulted in months of sleepless full time panic. Only thyroid removal saved her, but radical surgeries take their toll.
Their marriage never fully recovered.

In their reconciliation after a painful divorce decades later, I finally could see the devotion and mutual respect between life companions who had finally found shared purpose and love.

As a wife and mother, she rediscovered her calling as a steward of the land and a tireless steward of her family, gardening and harvesting fruits, vegetables and us children. When I think of my mother, I most often think of her tending us children in the middle of the night whenever we were ill; her over-vigilance was undoubtedly due to her worry we might die in childhood, as she almost did.

She never did stop worrying until the last few months. As she became more dependent on others in her physical decline, she gave up the control she thought she had to maintain through her “worry energy” and became much more accepting about the control the Lord maintains over all we are and will become.

I know from where my shyness comes, my preference for birdsongs rather than radio music, my love of naps, and my tendency to be serious and straight-laced with a twinkle in my eye. This is my German-Palouse side–immersing in the quietness of solitude, thrilling to the sight of the spring wheat flowing like a green ocean wave in the breeze and appreciating the warmth of rich soil held in my hands.

My mother came from that heritage and it is the legacy she left with me. I am forever grateful for her unconditional love to the end of her life; her willingness to share the sunshine and warmth of her nest whenever we felt the need to fly back home and shelter, overprotected but safe nonetheless, under her wings.

A Delicate Sadness of Dusk

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The talkative guest has gone,
and we sit in the yard
saying nothing. The slender moon
comes over the peak of the barn.

The air is damp, and dense
with the scent of honeysuckle. . . .
The last clever story has been told
and answered with laughter.

With my sleeping self I met
my obligations, but now I am aware
of the silence, and your affection,
and the delicate sadness of dusk.
~Jane Kenyon, “The Visit” from Collected Poems

From morning suns and evening dews
At first thy little being came:
If nothing once, you nothing lose,
For when you die you are the same;
The space between, is but an hour,
The frail duration of a flower.
~Philip Freneau from “The Wild Honey Suckle”

It sprang up wild along the chain link fence—thick,
with glorious white
and yellow summer blooms, and green tips that we
pinched and pulled for one
perfect drop of gold honey. But Dad hated
it—hated its lack
of rows and containment, its disorder. Each
year, he dug, bulldozed,
and set fire to those determined vines. But each
year, they just grew back
stronger. Maybe that’s why I felt the urge to
plant it that one day
in May, when cancer stepped onto my front porch
and rang the doorbell,
loose matches spilling out of its ugly fists.
~Karla Morton “Honeysuckle” from Accidental Origami: New and Selected Works

Some things are very dear to me–
Such things as flowers bathed by rain
Or patterns traced upon the sea
Or crocuses where snow has lain . . .
The iridescence of a gem,
The moon’s cool opalescent light,
Azaleas and the scent of them,
And honeysuckles in the night.
And many sounds are also dear–
Like winds that sing among the trees
Or crickets calling from the weir
Or Negroes humming melodies.
But dearer far than all surmise
Are sudden tear-drops in your eyes
~Gwendolyn Bennett— Sonnet 2

I am an easy cryer. It takes very little to tip me over the edge: a hymn, a poem, simply witnessing a child’s joy.

Suddenly my eyes fill up.

I blame this on my paternal grandmother who was in tears much of the time while visiting our family, crying happy, crying sad, crying frustrated and angry tears, crying desperate tears after being diagnosed with metastatic pancreatic cancer. I think of her often as she was the age I am now, grateful I too have not been visited with such dire news.

My greatest trigger to weep myself is watching someone else tear up.
I think my grandmother left behind some powerful empathy genes and I will honor that when I visit her grave this weekend to lay flowers.

I needed to desensitize my response to others’ tears to be effective as a physician/healer. Witnessing tears in the exam room is a normal part of the job: patients are anxious, ill, in pain or just need to decompress in safety. I learned early on to be unobtrusive and not interrupt, letting the flow of tears be part of how the patient was trying to communicate their distress. It was a struggle when my inclination was to cry right along with them.

But I needed to remain the rock in the room, solid and steady. I could understand their tears as yet another symptom of a clinical presentation, allowing me to observe without being clouded by my own emotional response.

Sometimes that worked. Sometimes not. At times overwhelmed myself, I wept at births, I wept at deaths, I wept at the sharing of bad news.

Now retired and liberated from the exam room, I freely and regularly weep at the state of the world, or when I read of disaster and tragedy, and especially when I witness intentional harm and cruelty in others. I’m no longer a stone, but more like an over-filled sponge being squeezed – everything builds up until I can hold it no more.

Reading headlines in the news is sometimes more than I can bear.
I cry myself dry.

And that is okay, thanks to Grandma. Once emptied out, I can be filled again by so much that is good and precious and beautiful in this life – a sad and delicate dusk, the promising light of dawn, the persistence of the wild honeysuckles, the raindrops on colorful blooms, the resonance of a heartfelt spiritual, the love of my husband, children, grandchildren and friends.

Now those are worth weeping over.

A Break from Dread

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Maybe it ruins the story to say at the start that no one was hurt
the day Scotty Forester swung open the door of the family car,
climbed up, put one hand on the wheel and, then, while pushing
and pulling on buttons and knobs, he found and released 

the brake, and it started, the silver-blue Mercury, to roll 
down Robin Street, best street in the neighborhood for sledding, 
for coasting on a bike with arms waving above your head, 
Scotty gaining speed on the long sweep of that block, heading 

toward the intersection, then into it, then speeding 
through, the car beginning to slow as the street leveled out,  
although, toward the end, Scotty going fast enough 
to jump the curb before stopping, three feet from a gas pump. 

Maybe knowing the ending ruins this story, but sometimes 
we need a break from dread. We need to know that the car 
did not crash, the child did not die. We need to briefly forget 
that we live in a world where a car is gaining speed, and 

no one seems to be at the wheel. We need to be more 
like the dog Scotty drives past, who barks, and runs in circles 
as he barks some more, driven by some circuitry we have lost 
for loving this dangerous life, living it.
~Suzanne Cleary “Mercury”

A certain day became a presence to me;
there it was, confronting me — a sky, air, light:
a being. And before it started to descend
from the height of noon, it leaned over
and struck my shoulder as if with
the flat of a sword, granting me
honor and a task. The day’s blow
rang out, metallic — or it was I, a bell awakened,
and what I heard was my whole self
saying and singing what it knew: I can.
~Denise Levertov “Variation on a Theme By Rilke”

Faith is not the clinging to a shrine
but an endless pilgrimage of the heart. 
Audacious longings,
burning songs,
daring thoughts,
an impulse overwhelming the heart,
usurping the mind-
these are all a drive towards serving Him
who rings our hearts like a bell.
It is as if He were waiting to enter
our empty, perishing lives.
~Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel from Man Is Not Alone: A Philosophy of Religion

In the end,
coming to faith remains for all a sense of homecoming,
of picking up the threads of a lost life,
of responding to a bell that had long been ringing,
of taking a place at a table that had long been vacant.
~Malcolm Muggeridge

I saw the tree with lights in it. I saw the backyard cedar where the mourning doves roost charged and transfigured, each cell buzzing with flame. I stood on the grass with the lights in it, grass that was wholly fire, utterly focused and utterly dreamed.

It was less like seeing than like being for the first time seen, knocked breathless by a powerful glance.

I had been my whole life a bell, and never knew it until at that moment I was lifted and struck.
~Annie Dillard from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

Too much of the time, I worry.
I fixate on what I believe I can control in life
as I’m barreling down the hill in this runaway car
to an unknown fate.

It seems to me no one is at the wheel,
but I am wrong.

The end of my story is clear to God
so I can hand over my fear and dread
to His merciful care.

How might I appear to my Maker each day?
-my utter astonishment at waking up,
-my breathless gratitude despite each out-of-control moment,
-my pealing resonance
as like a bell, I’m struck senseless by life.

Lyrics
My father could use a little mercy now
The fruits of his labor                                                         
Fall and rot slowly on the ground
His work is almost over
It won’t be long and he won’t be around
I love my father, and he could use some mercy now

My brother could use a little mercy now
He’s a stranger to freedom
He’s shackled to his fears and doubts
The pain that he lives in is
Almost more than living will allow
I love my brother, and he could use some mercy now

My Church and my Country could use a little mercy now
As they sink into a poisoned pit
That’s going to take forever to climb out
They carry the weight of the faithful
Who follow ‘em down
I love my Church and Country and they could use some mercy now

Every living thing could use a little mercy now
Only the hand of grace can end the race
Towards another mushroom cloud
People in power, well
They’ll do anything to keep their crown
I love life, and life itself could use some mercy now

Yea, we all could use a little mercy now
I know we don’t deserve it
But we need it anyhow
We hang in the balance
Dangle ‘tween hell and hallowed ground
Every single one of us could use some mercy now
Every single one of us could use some mercy now
Every single one of us could use some mercy now

Remembering Who I Am

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All day I try to say nothing but thank you,
breathe the syllables in and out with every step I
take through the rooms of my house and outside into
a profusion of shaggy-headed dandelions in the garden
where the tulips’ black stamens shake in their crimson cups.

I am saying thank you, yes, to this burgeoning spring
and to the cold wind of its changes. Gratitude comes easy
after a hot shower, when my loosened muscles work,
when eyes and mind begin to clear and even unruly
hair combs into place.

Dialogue with the invisible can go on every minute,
and with surprising gaiety I am saying thank you as I
remember who I am, a woman learning to praise
something as small as dandelion petals floating on the
steaming surface of this bowl of vegetable soup,
my happy, savoring tongue.
~Jeanne Lohmann “To Say Nothing But Thank You”

Returned from long travel, I sit
in the familiar, sun-streaked pew, waiting
for the bread and wine of holy Communion.
The old comfort does not rise in me, only
apathy and bafflement.

What shall we do about this?” I asked
my God…
~Jane Kenyon from “Woman, Why Are You Weeping?”

Let the light of late afternoon
shine through chinks in the barn, moving
up the bales as the sun moves down.

Let the cricket take up chafing
as a woman takes up her needles
and her yarn. Let evening come.

Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned
in long grass. Let the stars appear
and the moon disclose her silver horn.

Let the fox go back to its sandy den.
Let the wind die down. Let the shed
go black inside. Let evening come.

To the bottle in the ditch, to the scoop
in the oats, to air in the lung
let evening come.

Let it come, as it will, and don’t
be afraid. God does not leave us
comfortless, so let evening come.
~Jane Kenyon “Let Evening Come”

We resist nightfall in our lives.

We fear the dark of violence and threats of war,
the suffering of innocent people who are harmed directly,
and those harmed by lack of resources
which go to bomb-making and dropping.

I wish I could remain forever sunshiny, vital and irreplaceable, living each moment with the energy I feel at dawn.

Yet I know that the forward momentum of time
inevitably winds me down to twilight.

We are not alone in our need to catch our breath,
to be still and grateful for each little thing –
each petal, each taste, each sun ray illuminating the dark.

What shall we do about this? we ask our God.

We savor what we will, with gratitude, as evening comes.
There is no stopping it as
our lungs fill with the breath of God, our Creator.

We are not left comfortless.

Come and See: Do Not Be Afraid

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chihuly7
chihuly8

When evening came, his disciples went down to the sea, got into a boat, and started across the sea to Capernaum.

It was now dark, and Jesus had not yet come to them. 
The sea became rough because a strong wind was blowing. 

When they had rowed about three or four miles, they saw Jesus walking on the sea and coming near the boat,

…and they were frightened. 

But he said to them, “It is I; do not be afraid.”  

Then they were glad to take him into the boat, and immediately the boat was at the land to which they were going.
John 6: 16-21

chihuly5

So do not fear, for I am with you;
do not be dismayed, for I am your God.
I will strengthen you and help you;
I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.
~Isaiah 41:10

Maybe, after the sermon,
 after the multitude was fed,
  one or two of them felt
   the soul slip forth

like a tremor of pure sunlight
 before exhaustion,
  that wants to swallow everything,
   gripped their bones and left them

miserable and sleepy,
 as they are now, forgetting
  how the wind tore at the sails
   before he rose and talked to it —

tender and luminous and demanding
 as he always was —
  a thousand times more frightening
   than the killer sea.
~Mary Oliver from “Maybe”

chihuly9

Here is the world.
Beautiful and terrible things will happen.
Don’t be afraid.
~Frederich Buechner

chihuly4

Most days I depend on beauty to give me hope,
knowing somewhere, it will show its face.

Sometimes, in fearsome times,
I must search in unexpected places.

It is then I worry
I’ll not ever see beauty in quite the same way again:
perhaps Beauty itself frightens me…

Yet we are told, again and again and again
so we might listen and believe:

“It is I; fear not.”

…do not be afraid
do not be afraid…
…do not be afraid…

chihuly11

I am reading slowly through the words in the Book of John over the next year alongside my church family. 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…