Category: anxiety

The Lesson of the Vetch

barnstormingblog6 Comments

sunsetvetch

 

 

kittensjuly27172

 

 

vetching

 

Hot humid summer days are barely tolerable for a temperate climate sissy pants like me.  I am melting even as I get up in the morning, and at times our house is two degrees warmer (~90 degrees) than the out of doors.  So distractions from the heat are more than welcome.

For me today it started as I drove the ten miles of country roads to get to work in town, running a bit late to an important meeting.  I was listening to the news on the car radio when I puzzled over why the radio station would be playing cat meows over the news of the Trump and Putin meeting.  I turned off the radio, and realized the meows didn’t go away.

As soon as I was able, I pulled into a parking lot and surveyed my car from back to front, looking under seats, opened the back, scratched my head.  Then the meowing started again—under the hood.  I struggled with the latch, lifted up the hood and a distressed bundle of kitten fur hurtled out at me, clinging all four little greasy paws to my shirt.  Unscathed except for greasy feet, this little two month old kitten had survived a 50 mile per hour ride for 20 minutes, including several turns and stops.  He immediately crawled up to my shoulder, settled in by my ear, and began to purr.  I contemplated showing up at a meeting with a kitten and grease marks all over me, vs. heading back home with my newly portable neck warmer.  I opted to call in with the excuse “my cat hitchhiked to work with me this morning and is thumbing for a ride back home” and headed back down the road to take him back to the barn where he belongs, now with the new name “Harley” because he clearly desires the open road.

At that point, my meeting in town was already completed without me so I went out to check fence line as the hot wire seemed to be shorting out somewhere in the pasture. The mares had decided that the wire interfered with their hearts’ desire and had broken through, so it clearly was not hot enough to discourage them.  It has been a very hot few days with persistent drying breezes so as I approached the fence line, I heard numerous snaps and pops that I interpreted as hot wire shorting out in the dry grass and weeds, creating a fire hazard and certainly potentially dangerous with the winds whipping up.

I walked closer, puzzled to hear snaps all up and down the fence, but no sparks.  I approached and heard a little “snap” and a tiny seed pod burst open in front of my eyes, dropping its contents very effectively.  It was dried common vetch seed pods that were snapping and popping, not hot wire shorting out.  They were literally exploding all up and down the fence line in a reproductive symphony of seed release.

I put the broken wire back to together, plugged it in and all was well, at least until the next Haflinger decides the adjacent pasture looks better.

Returning to the barn,  I saw one of our Haflingers pawing furiously at his round black rubber water tub in his paddock, splashing water everywhere and creating quite a spectacle.  I went up to him to refill the tub with the hose and he continued to paw and splash in the tub and actually went down on his knees in the tub and then tried to lower one shoulder into it and his neck and face.  By this time he had created quite a mud puddle of the thick dust around the tub and his splashing and thrashing was causing mud to fly everywhere, including all over me, my hair, covering his mane and tail and belly and legs.  I took the hose and sprayed the cold water over him and he leaned closer to me, begging me to spray him everywhere, turning around so I could do his other side, facing me so I could spray his face.  I drenched him completely, and he was one happy horsie and I was laughing my head off at what he had done to me.  Both drenched, muddy, dirty, but happy and much much cooler.  What a sight we were.  This is the Haflinger that slows down at water hazards on the cross country courses because he wants to splash and play in it.

So even on a hot day on the farm, there was plenty else to occupy my mind.  It is never dull here and there are always lessons to be learned:

Remember to bang on your car hood before you get in~
keep the hotwire hot~
and share a mud bath with your Haflinger.

But especially, listen to the vetch and don’t let it fool you that catastrophe is about to happen.  The vetch is simply exploding in noisy reproductive ecstasy.  It can’t get much better than that.

 

wally617

 

vetch

 

wallysolstice

Buttonholed

barnstormingblog3 Comments
simbakitty
carp
hooter79
steensmaquail2
The river is famous to the fish.
The loud voice is famous to silence,   
which knew it would inherit the earth   
before anybody said so.   
The cat sleeping on the fence is famous to the birds   
watching him from the birdhouse.   
The tear is famous, briefly, to the cheek.   
The idea you carry close to your bosom   
is famous to your bosom.   
The boot is famous to the earth,   
more famous than the dress shoe,   
which is famous only to floors.
The bent photograph is famous to the one who carries it   
and not at all famous to the one who is pictured.   
I want to be famous to shuffling men   
who smile while crossing streets,   
sticky children in grocery lines,   
famous as the one who smiled back.
I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous,   
or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular,   
but because it never forgot what it could do.
~Naomi Shihab Nye “Famous” from Words Under the Words: Selected Poems

 

prado2
Detail from “Descent from the Cross” by Rogier van der Weyden

 

boots2

 buttonhole
Here’s the truth of it:
I am the buttonhole lying in wait, hidden in the background – mere open space for locking in and securing the eye-catching button.
I’m neither decorative nor particularly noticeable yet chock-full of potential purpose even though empty.
A button without me is pure window-dressing, a flash in the pan, a bauble ready to loosen and fall off, easy to go missing.
Yet a button hole like me without a button to latch to is just plain and gaping and lonely and allows in drafts.
I never have forgotten what I’m meant to be and what I can do.  I only need the right button to fit me perfectly.
buttonbuttonhole
bonebutton

Here is the Mystery

barnstormingblog2 Comments

sunsetdandy16

 

junedawn

 

Here is the mystery, the secret, one might almost say the cunning, of the deep love of God: that it is bound to draw on to 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

 

 

sunsetdanday161

 

Inundated by overwhelmingly bad news of the world,
blasted 24/7 from cable TV,
highlighted in rapidly changing headlines online,
tweeted real time to our pocket phones from every nook and cranny~

We cling to the mystery of His magnetism for our weaknesses and flaws.

He willingly pulls our evil onto Himself and out of us.
Hatred and pain and shame and anger and bitterness
disappear into the vortex of His love and beauty,
the dusty corners of our hearts vacuumed spotless.

We are let in on a secret, the mystery revealed:

He is not sullied by absorbing the dirty messes of our lives.
Instead, once we are safely within His depths, He washes us forever clean.

 

junebarnyard

 

baker627181

 

 

The Heavens Boiling

barnstormingblog2 Comments

sunrise624185

 

sunrise624188

 

Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down,
that the mountains would tremble before you!
As when fire sets twigs ablaze
and causes water to boil…
~Isaiah 64:1-2

 

sunrise624186

 

And this, then,
is the vision of that Heaven of which 
we have heard, where those who love
each other have forgiven each other,

where, for that, the leaves are green,
the light a music in the air,
and all is unentangled,
and all is undismayed.
-Wendell Berry “To My Mother”

 

sunrise624187

 

 

Something woke me at 4:45 AM:  perhaps the orange glow bathing my face. Never one to miss a light show, I heeded the call and obeyed.

Once outside, I watched clouds boiling –  shifting and swirling in unrest as if something or someone may emerge momentarily.

No trumpets.
Just early morning bird song oblivious to the turmoil.

Within a minute, the heavens settled and so did I, no longer entangled and dismayed.

Yet for a moment this morning, I did wonder what might become of us all.

 

 

sunrise624181

 

This Trembling Globe

barnstormingblog6 Comments

dandyyellow

 

dandelion close

 

How I loved those spiky suns, 
rooted stubborn as childhood 
in the grass, tough as the farmer’s 
big-headed children—the mats 
of yellow hair, the bowl-cut fringe. 
How sturdy they were and how 
slowly they turned themselves 
into galaxies, domes of ghost stars 
barely visible by day, pale 
cerebrums clinging to life 
on tough green stems.   Like you. 
Like you, in the end.   If you were here, 
I’d pluck this trembling globe to show 
how beautiful a thing can be 
a breath will tear away. 
~Jean Nordhaus “A Dandelion for My Mother” from Innocence
dandy42615
dandybud
This is how I remember my mom at the end:
fragile, trembling,
a wispy white crown of hair,
clinging stubbornly to what was left of life
with roots that went so deep
there was no pulling them out.
Yet it only took that one last breath,
one quiet will-there-be-another
breath
to blow her away.
And she left us behind,
clinging stubbornly to those roots.
dandysunset5116
noahgrandma
dandysunset4

As I Stand Here, Empty Handed

barnstormingblog5 Comments

sunset623154

 

sunset623153

 

Have you ever seen
anything
in your life
more wonderful

than the way the sun,
every evening,
relaxed and easy,
floats toward the horizon

and into the clouds or the hills,
or the rumpled sea,
and is gone–
and how it slides again

out of the blackness,
every morning,
on the other side of the world,
like a red flower

streaming upward on its heavenly oils,
say, on a morning in early summer,
at its perfect imperial distance–
and have you ever felt for anything
such wild love–
do you think there is anywhere, in any language,
a word billowing enough
for the pleasure

that fills you,
as the sun
reaches out,
as it warms you

as you stand there,
empty-handed–
or have you too
turned from this world–

or have you too
gone crazy
for power,
for things?
~Mary Oliver, The Sun

 

dissolving

 

puffsunset2

 

sunset623152

 

On this day of transition
we stand together, wavering,
barely balancing
on the cusp of light and shadow~

this knowledge of a now diminishing sun
rests heavy in my bones as I struggle
with letting this glorious light
slip through my fingers~
I stand empty-handed
as I attend to less important things.

As darkness begins to claim our days again,
I seek to rise like a full moon
illuminating the long night,
burnishing my readiness for eternity.

 

IMG_4376

 

sunset823151

Kindness Always Remembered

barnstormingblog2 Comments

friends

 

 

help

 

Have you ever noticed how much of Christ’s life was spent in doing kind things – in merely doing kind things? … he spent a great proportion of his time simply in making people happy, in doing good turns to people.

There is only one thing greater than happiness in the world, and that is holiness; and it is not in our keeping. But what God has put in our power is the happiness of those about us, and that is largely to be secured by our being kind to them.…

I wonder why it is that we are not all kinder than we are. How much the world needs it. How easily it is done. How instantaneously it acts. How infallibly it is remembered.
~Henry Drummond from The Greatest Thing in the World

 

 

fos2

Sure on this shining night
Of star made shadows round,
Kindness must watch for me
This side the ground. 
The late year lies down the north.
All is healed, all is health.
High summer holds the earth. 
Hearts all whole.
Sure on this shining night
I weep for wonder wand’ring far alone
Of shadows on the stars.
 ~James Agee “Sure on This Shining Night”
fos1
Kindness has always watched for me;
I remember how it infallibly surrounds me.
I weep with those who weep,
whether from fear, or separation,
or frustration, or anger,
or grief, or loss,
or sheer exhaustion.
I weep to wonder
why any one of us should not know
the kindness and comfort
of being held in the arms of those we love
and who love us.
sibs

Time’s Insidious Wrinkle

barnstormingblog8 Comments

wrinkles

 

Like Time’s insidious wrinkle
On a beloved Face
We clutch the Grace the tighter
Though we resent the crease
~Emily Dickinson

 

 

foldeddogwood

 

hollyhockpink

 

 

pansyface

 

 

People are more than just the way they look.
~Madeleine L’Engle from A Wrinkle in Time

 

 

homereyes2

 

bobbieeye

 

 

 

mejierface

 

Just a glance in the mirror tells me all I need to know:

these creases I see remind me
each wrinkle is grace in action,
so tangible, so telling, so mobile –
they multiply particularly when I smile
so I must smile more often.

I won’t hide them
nor tighten them away
or inject them smooth.

Instead I’ll grin at the wrinkle of time’s passing
knowing each line gained
is grace clutched tightly
in my otherwise loosening grasp.

 

View More: http://karenmullen.pass.us/gibson-order

That Ache of Memory

barnstormingblog7 Comments

farmroad

 

 

raincoming3

 

 

homeaprilevening

 

Well-away and be it so,
To the stranger let them go.
Even cheerfully I yield
Pasture, orchard, mowing-field,
Yea and wish him all the gain
I required of them in vain.
Yea and I can yield him house,
Barn, and shed, with rat and mouse
To dispute possession of.
These I can unlearn to love.
Since I cannot help it? Good!
Only be it understood,
It shall be no trespassing
If I come again some spring
In the grey disguise of years,
Seeking ache of memory here.
~Robert Frost from “On the Sale of My Farm”

 

eveningbarnspring

 

gnomysunrise

 

florabarn

 

 

From the road, each of the two small farms where I grew up in western Washington state look nothing like they did in my childhood.  When I drive past now, whether on Google Earth virtual reality or for real , the outbuildings have changed and are unfamiliar, fences pulled down, the trees exponentially taller, the fields no longer well-tended. Instead the familiarity is in the road to get there, the lean into the curves, the acceleration in and out of dips, the landscape which triggers a simultaneous comfort and disquiet deep in my DNA.

Though my younger brother recently stopped and looked around our long-ago childhood home, and sent me pictures that looked barely recognizable, I have never stopped to knock; instead I have driven slowly past to sense if I feel what I used to feel in these places.  My memories are indeed triggered but feel a bit as if they must have happened to someone else.

One clinic day a few years ago, I glanced at the home address of a young man I was about to see for a medical issue and I realized he now lived in my childhood home over 100 miles away.  When I greeted him I told him we had something in common: we had grown up under the same roof, inside the same walls, though children of two different generations.  He was curious but skeptical — how could this gray-haired middle aged woman know anything about his home?  He told me a bit about the house, the barn, the fields, the garden and how he experienced it felt altogether strange to me.  He and I had shared nothing but a patch of real estate — our recollections were so completely disparate.

I worry for the fearsome ache if someday, due to age or finances, we must sell our current farm ~ this beloved place our children were raised, animals bred and cared for, fruit picked from an ancient orchard, plants tended and soil turned over. It will remain on the map surely as the other two farms of my past, visible as we pass by slowly on the road, but primarily alive in the words and photos I have harvested here. There will always be that sweet ache of seeking out what might be still familiar on the map of my memory.

 

 

eveningporch51218

 

 

mowedyard

 

 

leadogtree

 

 

foggyfrontyard0

To Find the Poem Itself

barnstormingblog5 Comments

yellowbegonia4

 

raindropsonroses1

 

In science we have been reading only the notes to a poem:
in Christianity we find the poem itself.
~C.S. Lewis from Miracles

 

daylily62215

 

IMG_3963

 

Science fails when we need a miracle:
it can’t
~love us always no matter what,
~give us reason to keep on living when we want to give up,
~grasp the hand of the dying who aren’t ready,
~provide hope to the weak and courage to the fearful,
~become sacrifice for all we’ve done wrong,
~redeem us through everlasting forgiveness and grace.

Science is merely the footnote
to a Word and Truth more vast:
a fermata allowing us just a long enough rest to admire Creation,
dwelling for a moment of silence
inside His ultimate symphonic Work.

 

rainbowfields2

 

rainbowbarnlight

 

hollyhockred