This is the dawn I expected— the first day, whole and clean, where we emerge from the night and the silence. And free, we inhabit the substance of time ~Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen, trans. Scott Edward Anderson “25th of April” from Wine-Dark Sea: New & Selected Poems & Translations
Here in the time between snow and the bud of the rhododendron, we watch the robins, look into
the gray, and narrow our view to the patches of wild grasses coming green. The pile of ashes
in the fireplace, haphazard sticks on the paths and gardens, leaves tangled in the ivy and periwinkle
lie in wait against our will. This drawing near of renewal, of stems and blossoms, the hesitant return
of the anarchy of mud and seed says not yet to the blood’s crawl. When the deer along the stream
look back at us, we know again we have left them. We pull a blanket over us when we sleep.
As if living in a prayer, we say amen to the late arrival of red, the stun of green, the muted yellow
at the end of every twig. We will lift up our eyes unto the trees hoping to discover a gnarled nest within
More than the fuchsia funnels breaking out of the crabapple tree, more than the neighbor’s almost obscene display of cherry limbs shoving their cotton candy-colored blossoms to the slate sky of Spring rains, it’s the greening of the trees that really gets to me. When all the shock of white and taffy, the world’s baubles and trinkets, leave the pavement strewn with the confetti of aftermath, the leaves come. Patient, plodding, a green skin growing over whatever winter did to us, a return to the strange idea of continuous living despite the mess of us, the hurt, the empty. Fine then, I’ll take it, the tree seems to say, a new slick leaf unfurling like a fist to an open palm, I’ll take it all. ~Ada Limón“Instructions on Not Giving Up”
I thought I was emptied out – hollow and irretrievable – after a long drawn out winter of difficult news, and now these cold rainy spring days forecast even more bad news happening in the world.
Yet here I am ~ here we are ~ still among the living and breathing. I am swept away by what I see greening all around me.
The landscape begins to explode with layers of color and shadow. Standing close, I too am ignited. It is impossible to witness so much unfolding life and light and not be engulfed and heartened and singed around my edges.
It lures me outside where flames of green lap about my ankles as I stroll the fields and each fresh breeze fans the fires until I’ve nothing left of myself but ash and shadow.
Consumed and subsumed.
Combusted and busted.
What a way to go.
I’ll take it. I’ll take it all.
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Trust your bones Trust the pull of the earth And the earth itself Trust the hearts of trees The stone at the edge of the sea And all else true
Trust that water will bear you up Trust the moon to keep faith With ebb and flow Trust the leafing The chrysalis, the seed And every other way Death gives birth to resurrection ~Bethany Lee, “To Keep Faith” from The Breath Between
Something of God flows into us from the blue of the sky, the taste of honey, the delicious embrace of water whether cold or hot, and even from sleep itself. ~C.S.Lewis from God in the Dock
Are caterpillars told of their impending resurrection? How in dying they will be transformed from poor earth — crawlers into creatures of the air, with exquisitely pained wings? If told, do they believe it?
Is it conceivable to them that so constricted an existence as this should burgeon into so gay and lightsome a one as a butterfly’s? I imagine the wise old caterpillars shaking their heads — no, it can’t be; it’s a fantasy, self–deception, a dream. Similarly, our wise ones. Yet in the limbo between living and dying, as the night clocks tick remorselessly on, and the black sky implacably shows not one single streak or scratch of grey, I hear those words; I am the resurrection, and the life, and feel myself to be carried along on a great tide of joy and peace. ~Malcolm Muggeridge from Bread and Wine
Out in the rain a world is growing green, On half the trees quick buds are seen Where glued-up buds have been. Out in the rain God’s Acre stretches green, Its harvest quick tho’ still unseen: For there the Life hath been.
If Christ hath died His brethren well may die, Sing in the gate of death, lay by This life without a sigh: For Christ hath died and good it is to die; To sleep when so He lays us by, Then wake without a sigh.
Yea, Christ hath died, yea, Christ is risen again: Wherefore both life and death grow plain To us who wax and wane; For Christ Who rose shall die no more again: Amen: till He makes all things plain Let us wax on and wane. ~Christina Rossetti “Easter Monday”
We look to Jesus to make things plain to us: we watch the waxing and waning of the seasons, of the living and dying around us, indeed, our own waxing and waning, living and dying.
The transformation from death to life is everywhere we look, if we look.
The huge chestnut tree in our front yard fills with chrysalises of metamorphosis, from bud to green-winged butterfly leaf.
We wax on in Christ who dies for our sake.
He emerges, new and fresh, from His shroud, we are renewed, made eternal alongside Him.
Amen and Amen.
This year’s Barnstorming Lenten theme is Ephesians 3:9:
…to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things…
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These first few days of spring are a reawakening of nature’s rebirthing rhythms, with increased activity of all the wild creatures and birds around us, and most importantly, God’s renewal of our weary wintery hearts.
Some late winter and early spring mornings still are pitch black with blustering winds and rain, even hail – looking and feeling like the bleakest of December mornings about to plunge into the death spiral of winter all over again.
What self-respecting God would birth Himself into recalcitrant hearts as dark as night?
This God would.
He labors in our bleakest of hearts for good reason. We are unformed and unready to meet Him in the light, clinging as we do to our dark ways and thoughts. Though we soon celebrate the rebirth of springtime, it is just so much talk until we accept the change of being transformed ourselves.
Though the woodpeckers are already noisily hammering on the bark, the birds singing their hearts out and the frogs chorusing in the warming ponds, we, His people, are silenced as He prepares for birth within us. The labor pains are His, not ours; we are awed witnesses to His first and last breath when He makes all things, including us, new again.
The world with its creatures, including us, is reborn — even where dark reigned before, even where it is bleakest, especially inside our healing wintery hearts.
This year’s Barnstorming Lenten theme is Ephesians 3:9:
…to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things…
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Oh let me fall as grain to the good earth And die away from all dry separation, Die to my sole self, and find new birth Within that very death, a dark fruition, Deep in this crowded underground, to learn The earthy otherness of every other, To know that nothing is achieved alone But only where these other fallen gather.
If I bear fruit and break through to bright air, Then fall upon me with your freeing flail To shuck this husk and leave me sheer and clear As heaven-handled Hopkins, that my fall May be more fruitful and my autumn still A golden evening where your barns are full. ~Malcolm Guite “Unless a Grain of Wheat Falls Into the Ground and Dies”
…new life starts in the dark. Whether it is a seed in the ground, a baby in the womb, or Jesus in the tomb, it starts in the dark. ~Barbara Brown Taylor from Learning to Walk in the Dark
The ground is slowly coming to life again; snowdrops, crocus, and daffodils are surfacing from months of dormancy, buds are swelling, the spring chorus frogs have come from the mud to sing again and birds now greet the lazy dawn.
The seed shakes off the darkness surrounding it. Growth begins.
I too began a mere seed, plain and simple, lying dormant in the darkness of my mother’s body.
Just as the spring murmurs life to the seed in the ground, so the Word calls a human seed of life to stir and swell, becoming both an animate and intimate reflection of Himself.
I was awakened in the dark to sprout, bloom and fruit, to reach as far as my tethered roots allow, aiming beyond earthly bounds to touch the light.
Everything, everyone, so hidden; His touch calls us back to life. Love is come again to the fallow fields of our hearts.
This year’s Barnstorming Lenten theme is Ephesians 3:9:
…to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things…
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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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After this, Jesus and his disciples went out into the Judean countryside, where he spent some time with them, and baptized. Now John also was baptizing at Aenon near Salim, because there was plenty of water, and people were coming and being baptized. (This was before John was put in prison.) An argument developed between some of John’s disciples and a certain Jew over the matter of ceremonial washing.They came to John and said to him, “Rabbi, that man who was with you on the other side of the Jordan—the one you testified about—look, he is baptizing, and everyone is going to him.”
To this John replied, “A person can receive only what is given them from heaven. You yourselves can testify that I said, ‘I am not the Messiah but am sent ahead of him.’The bride belongs to the bridegroom. The friend who attends the bridegroom waits and listens for him, and is full of joy when he hears the bridegroom’s voice. That joy is mine, and it is now complete.He must become greater; I must become less.”
The one who comes from above is above all; the one who is from the earth belongs to the earth, and speaks as one from the earth. The one who comes from heaven is above all.He testifies to what he has seen and heard, but no one accepts his testimony.Whoever has accepted it has certified that God is truthful.For the one whom God has sent speaks the words of God, for God gives the Spirit without limit. The Father loves the Son and has placed everything in his hands. Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God’s wrath remains on them. John 3: 22-36
Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me, Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me, Christ on my right, Christ on my left, Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit down, Christ when I arise, Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me, Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks of me, Christ in every eye that sees me, Christ in every ear that hears me. ~St. Patrick
To come down and wear our skin is for you to know our frailty: our bruises and callouses, our sunburns and warts, our tears and our bleeding, our spasming backs, and toothaches.
To come down to pulse within our hearts, is for you to know our temptation for self-promotion, and our desire to fill our own emptiness before first loving and serving others.
To inhabit our souls you humbled yourself to pull together our millions of broken pieces, feeding us with yourself, your spirit becoming the adhesive to glue us back wholly, God loving us by becoming us, so we don’t simply crumble to dust.
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.
Humble and Human, willing to bend You are Fashioned of flesh and the fire of life, You are Not too proud to wear our skin To know this weary world we’re in Humble, humble Jesus
Humble in sorrow, You gladly carried Your cross Never refusing Your life to the weakest of us Not too proud to bear our sin To feel this brokenness we’re in Humble, humble Jesus
We bow our knees We must decrease You must increase We lift You high
Humble in greatness, born in the likeness of man Name above all names, holding our world in Your hands Not too proud to dwell with us, to live in us, to die for us Humble, humble Jesus
I arise today through the strength of heaven Light of sun, radiance of moon Splendor of fire, speed of lightning Swiftness of wind, depth of the sea Stability of earth, firmness of rock
I arise today through God’s strength to pilot me God’s eye to look before me God’s wisdom to guide me God’s way to lie before me God’s shield to protect me
From all who shall wish me ill Afar and a-near Alone and in a multitude Against every cruel, merciless power That may oppose my body and soul
Christ with me, Christ before me Christ behind me, Christ in me Christ beneath me, Christ above me Christ on my right, Christ on my left Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit down Christ when I arise, Christ to shield me
Christ in the heart of everyone who thinks of me Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks of me
I arise today. ~St. Patrick’s Breastplate
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Deep midwinter, the dark center of the year, Wake, O earth, awake, Out of the hills a star appears, Here lies the way for pilgrim kings, Three magi on an ancient path, Black hours begin their journeyings.
Their star has risen in our hearts, Empty thrones, abandoning fears, Out on the hills their journey starts, In dazzling darkness God appears. ~Judith Bingham “Epiphany”
It might have been just someone else’s story, Some chosen people get a special king. We leave them to their own peculiar glory, We don’t belong, it doesn’t mean a thing. But when these three arrive they bring us with them, Gentiles like us, their wisdom might be ours; A steady step that finds an inner rhythm, A pilgrim’s eye that sees beyond the stars. They did not know his name but still they sought him, They came from otherwhere but still they found; In temples they found those who sold and bought him, But in the filthy stable, hallowed ground. Their courage gives our questing hearts a voice To seek, to find, to worship, to rejoice. ~Malcolm Guite “Epiphany”
…the scent of frankincense and myrrh arrives on the wind, and I long to breathe deeply, to divine its trail. But I know their uses and cannot bring myself to breathe deeply enough to know whether what comes is the fragrant welcoming of birth or simply covers the stench of death. These hands coming toward me, is it swaddling they carry or shroud? ~Jan Richardson from Night Visions –searching the shadows of Advent and Christmas
Unclench your fists Hold out your hands. Take mine. Let us hold each other. Thus is his Glory Manifest. ~Madeleine L’Engle “Epiphany” from the Weather of the Heart
All this was a long time ago, I remember, And I would do it again, but set down This set down This: were we led all that way for Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death, But had thought they were different; this Birth was Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death. ~T.S. Eliot from “Journey of the Magi”
The Christmas season is a wrap, put away for another year. However, our hearts are not so easily boxed up and stored as the lights and decorations and ornaments of the season.
Our troubles and concerns go on; our frailty a daily reality. We can be distracted with holidays for a few weeks, but our time here slips away ever more quickly.
The Christmas story is not just about light and birth and joy to the world. It is about how swaddling clothes became a shroud that wrapped Him tight. There is not one without the other.
God came to be with us; Delivered so He could deliver. Planted on and in the earth. Born so He could die in our place To leave the linen strips behind, neatly folded.
Christmas: a dazzling unwrapping of glory to free us from darkness. Epiphany: the Seed of His Spirit takes root in our hearts.
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“Thin places,” the Celts call this space, Both seen and unseen, Where the door between the world And the next is cracked open for a moment And the light is not all on the other side. God shaped space. Holy. ~Sharlande Sledge
What if you slept And what if In your sleep You dreamed And what if In your dream You went to heaven And there plucked a strange and beautiful flower And what if When you awoke You had that flower in your hand Ah, what then? ~Samuel Coleridge “What if you slept”
Advent does not train us to look away from suffering. No, it gives us the strength with which to face it. A cup of water. A stone on which to rest. A star to guide us. And the essential hope to know that somewhere, a door is opening.
Advent is how we survive, for to live in Advent is to root ourselves in the essential gravity of things, to know that love and goodness are always stronger than whatever seeks to defeat them. We train our eyes on the small and know that it matters. A flower. A kind word. A child in the manger. That is the way that God breaks through the void. ~Stephanie Saldaña“Living on Manger Street”
I know for a while again, the health of self-forgetfulness, looking out at the sky through a notch in the valley side, the black woods wintry on the hills, small clouds at sunset passing across. And I know that this is one of the thresholds between Earth and Heaven, from which I may even step forth from myself and be free. ~ Wendell Berry, Sabbaths 2000
The partition thins between this world and the world to come, or the next or the other world. On the other side of the partition the dead are living. As one grows older some of the dead grow more alive, more essentially themselves. One loves them more. As the next world grows more distinct, this one becomes, not more vague, but more strange. ~Wendell Berry “New Poems”
photo by Nate Gibson
“Thin places,” the Celts call this space, Both seen and unseen, Where the door between the world And the next is cracked open for a moment And the light is not all on the other side. God shaped space. Holy. ~Sharlande Sledge
Ah, what then?
Home is not nearly big enough for heaven to dwell. I must content myself with this visit to the thin edge, peering through the open door, and waiting until invited to come inside.
My 2025 Advent theme: On the threshold between day and night
On that day there will be neither sunlight nor cold, frosty darkness. It will be a unique day—a day known only to the Lord— with no distinction between day and night. When evening comes, there will be light. Zechariah 14:6-7
So once in Israel love came to us incarnate, stood in the doorway between two worlds, and we were all afraid. ~Annie Dillard in Teaching a Stone to Talk
In the stillness of a church where candles glow, In the softness of a fall of fresh white snow, In the brightness of the stars hat shine this night, In the calmness of a pool of healing light, In the clearness of a choir that softly sings, In the oneness of a hush of angels’ wings, In the mildness of a night by stable bare, In the quietness of a lull near cradle fair, There’s a patience as we wait for a new morn, And the presence of a child soon to be born. ~Sally Beamish “In the Stillness”
Bethlehem in Germany, Glitter on the sloping roofs, Breadcrumbs on the windowsills, Candles in the Christmas trees, Hearths with pairs of empty shoes: Panels of Nativity Open paper scenes where doors Open into other scenes, Some recounted, some foretold. Blizzard-sprinkled flakes of gold Gleam from small interiors, Picture-boxes in the stars Open up like cupboard doors In a cabinet Jesus built.
Leaning from the cliff of heaven, Indicating whom he weeps for, Joseph lifts his lamp above The infant like a candle-crown. Let my fingers touch the silence Where the infant’s father cries. Give me entrance to the village From my childhood where the doorways Open pictures in the skies. But when all the doors are open, No one sees that I’ve returned. When I cry to be admitted, No one answers, no one comes. Clinging to my fingers only Pain, like glitter bits adhering, When I touch the shining crumbs. ~Gjertrud Schnackenberg,from “Advent Calendar” from Supernatural Love: Poems 1976-1992.
He will come like last leaf’s fall. One night when the November wind has flayed the trees to the bone, and earth wakes choking on the mould, the soft shroud’s folding.
He will come like frost. One morning when the shrinking earth opens on mist, to find itself arrested in the net of alien, sword-set beauty.
He will come like dark. One evening when the bursting red December sun draws up the sheet and penny-masks its eye to yield the star-snowed fields of sky.
He will come, will come, will come like crying in the night, like blood, like breaking, as the earth writhes to toss him free. He will come like child. ~Rowan Williams “Advent Calendar”
Who has not considered Mary And who her praise would dim, But what of humble Joseph Is there no song for him?
If Joseph had not driven Straight nails through honest wood If Joseph had not cherished His Mary as he should;
If Joseph had not proved him A sire both kind and wise Would he have drawn with favor The Child’s all-probing eyes?
Would Christ have prayed, ‘Our Father’ Or cried that name in death Unless he first had honored Joseph of Nazareth ? ~Luci Shaw “Joseph The Carpenter”
The hero of the story this season is the man in the background of each creche, the old master Nativity paintings, and the Advent Calendar doors that open each day.
He is the adoptive father who does the right thing rather than what he has legal right to do, who listens to his dreams and believes, who leads the way over dusty roads to be counted, who searches valiantly for a suitable place to stay, who does whatever he can to assist her labor, who stands tall over a vulnerable mother and infant while the poor and curious pour out of the hills, the wise and foreign appear bringing gifts, who takes his family to safety when the innocents are slaughtered.
He is only a carpenter, not born for heroics, but strong and obedient, stepping up when called.
He is a humble man teaching his son a living, until his son leaves to save the dying.
This man Joseph is the Chosen father, the best Abba a God could possibly hope for.
My 2025 Advent theme: On the threshold between day and night
On that day there will be neither sunlight nor cold, frosty darkness. It will be a unique day—a day known only to the Lord— with no distinction between day and night. When evening comes, there will be light. Zechariah 14:6-7
So once in Israel love came to us incarnate, stood in the doorway between two worlds, and we were all afraid. ~Annie Dillard in Teaching a Stone to Talk
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