Category: Birth

The Way is Clear

barnstormingblogLeave a comment

The woods is shining this morning.
Red, gold and green, the leaves
lie on the ground, or fall,
or hang full of light in the air still.
Perfect in its rise and in its fall, it takes
the place it has been coming to forever.
It has not hastened here, or lagged.
See how surely it has sought itself,
its roots passing lordly through the earth.
See how without confusion it is
all that it is, and how flawless
its grace is. Running or walking, the way
is the same. Be still. Be still.
“He moves your bones, and the way is clear.”
~Wendell Berry “Grace”

If I’m unsure, as I often am,
about where I’ve been,
where I am, where I’m going,
I look to the cycles of the seasons
to be reminded all things must come round

what is barren will bud
what buds will grow lush and fruit
what flourishes will fade and fall,
and come to rest and stillness

All things come round,
making the way to Him clear.
Grace forges a path
my bones and I follow.

Shining as the smallest bud,
shining in fruitfulness,
shining when fallen,
shining in His glory.

I’ll be still. Will be still.

One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

$10.00
$25.00
$50.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00

Or enter a custom amount

$

Your contribution is deeply appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

Taking Sadness Into Myself

barnstormingblog1 Comment

All that summer the sun refused to open
On the sky, and the river carried rain-spots
Down and over the weir, and by the footbridge
Swans’ eggs chilled in their nest. I saw them, rained on,
Blue and dead as the moon the clouds were hiding
Every night when I looked to find it. What could
Live, neglected like that? The wind, cold and green
With the smell of the hawthorn flowering, came
Brooding over the fens, but what could it bring me,
Who had chosen to view the world with sadness,
Or had taken its sadness into myself,
Gift and charism? One day, though, I saw them,
Triple vee-wakes on dark tree-printed currents:
One ahead of the others, big and whiter 
Than the cloud-pale sky. Two cygnets, gray, living,
Broken free from the death I’d assumed for them.

Well, their ways are not my ways. The next summer, 
Walking that same towpath, heavy with a child
Who had come to me after years of asking —
Who was taking his time just then, head downward,
Happy where he was — I saw them paddling
Under the bridge, where it laid out its shadow,
Current-rumpled. The same swans? Or three strangers
Hummed down onto a river pricked with sunlight,
Strange and new as the season? I can’t say now.
I remember the baby’s head engaging, 
Heavy, ready, real, an impending pressure. 
I remember the wakes widening, the river
Flowing down in the sun, and by the footbridge, 
Gray, empty, the mess of twigs, leaves, and feathers.
~Sally Thomas “Swans”

Decades ago, there were several years when I took sadness into myself, feeling empty and barren with no hope that could change.

Sorrow became the bridge I walked across, unaware what I would find on the other side, assuming only it would be more of the same.

If I had listened to my own tearful prayers, I might have understood –even the most comfortable nests are abandoned when it is time to break free from the sadness.

I gave up my timing and my plans to let things be according to His will.

And life happened. And sadness no longer found a place in me.
The empty was filled, the sorrow overwhelmed with blessing.
Babies born, grown, now flown away to a life and babies of their own.

All from the one nest, emptied, as ever it should be.

AI image created for this post
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

$10.00
$25.00
$50.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00

Or enter a custom amount

$

Your contribution is deeply appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

The Quiet Eyes I Trust

barnstormingblog8 Comments

Who loves the rain    
    And loves his home, 
And looks on life with quiet eyes,  
     Him will I follow through the storm;    
     And at his hearth-fire keep me warm;
Nor hell nor heaven shall that soul surprise,    
     Who loves the rain, 
     And loves his home, 
And looks on life with quiet eyes.
~Frances Shaw, “Who loves the rain” from Look To the Rainbow of Grace

Now more than ever you can be
generous toward each day
that comes, young, to disappear
forever, and yet remain
unaging in the mind.
Every day you have less reason
not to give yourself away.
~Wendell Berry from “There is no going back”

I wait for you

In the grassland

Where small lilies bloom.

On the corners of the field,

The rainbow shows up.

–Yosano Akiko


Thinking out loud on this day you were born,
I thank God yet again
for bringing you to earth
so we could meet,
raise three amazing children,
and walk this journey together
with pulse and breath and dreams.

The boy you were
became the man you are:
so blessed by God,
needed by your family, church and community.

You give yourself away every day with such grace,
loved by your children and grandchildren.

It was your quiet brown eyes I trusted first
and just knew
I’d follow you anywhere
and I have.

In this journey together,
we inhabit each other,
however long may be the road we travel;
you have become the air I breathe,
refreshing, renewing, restoring~~
you are that necessary to me,
and that beloved.

One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

$10.00
$25.00
$50.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00

Or enter a custom amount

$

Your contribution is deeply appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

The Color of a Pivoting Ear

barnstormingblog1 Comment

Near dusk, near a path, near a brook,
we stopped, I in disquiet and dismay
for the suffering of someone I loved,
the doe in her always incipient alarm.

All that moved was her pivoting ear
the reddening sun was shining through
transformed to a color I’d only seen
in a photo of a new child in a womb.

Nothing else stirred, not a leaf,
not the air, but she startled and bolted
away from me into the crackling brush.

The part of my pain which sometimes
releases me from it fled with her, the rest,
in the rake of the late light, stayed.
~C. K. Williams  “The Doe” from The Singing

Oh little one
who was to be born this week in June
forty one years ago~
so wanted
so anticipated
but lost too soon
gone as swiftly in a clot of red
as a doe disappearing in a thicket:
a memory, when I think of you
that makes me question if you were real —
but you were
and you are
and someday
I’ll know you when I see you
and curious about who I am,
you won’t flee,
but remain close to find out.

AI image created for this post
AI image created for this post
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

$10.00
$25.00
$50.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00

Or enter a custom amount

$

Your contribution is deeply appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

Licked Clean of Fog

barnstormingblog1 Comment

At first she sees the fog as a shroud
settling over the fields of beans, but
she does not wish to start this day
with such a word. She could say the fog
is like muslin stretched over the mouth
of a jelly jar, or it could be like
the birth caul covering a newborn calf
before its mother licks it clean.
It could be like the clouds
in the calico’s old eyes—
no, not that. Let it be the caul.
The bean fields, like a baby calf,
are born again this morning,
and the sun will lick them clean.
~Lonnie Hull DuPont, “At first she sees the fog…” from She Calls the Moon by Its Name

This is an interesting comparison of the “bags” we find ourselves in at the very beginning and ending of life.

Evening fog often acts like a shroud, cloudy, murky and blinding. It muffles sound and stifles light and feels like walking in a gray sponge that sucks our breath and life.

On the other hand, morning fog appears on the wane, fading away while torn apart by the rising sun’s rays and warmth. It is discarded as it dissipates. The world emerges fresh, its surface clean and drying.

I would rather strive to break free of a covering caul than immobilized in a smothering shroud. Each morning, I am born into a fresh start with new and clearer vision.

I too have been licked clean.

AI image created for this post
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

$10.00
$25.00
$50.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00

Or enter a custom amount

$

Your contribution is deeply appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

A Seed of Belief

barnstormingblog1 Comment

When the time’s toxins
have seeped into every cell

and like a salted plot
from which all rain, all green, are gone

I and life are leached
of meaning

somehow a seed
of belief

sprouts the instant
I acknowledge it:

little weedy hardy would-be
greenness

tugged upward
by light

while deep within
roots like talons

are taking hold again
of this our only earth.
~Christian Wiman “When the Time’s Toxins”

True gardeners cannot bear a glove
Between the sure touch and the tender root,
Must let their hands grow knotted as they move
With a rough sensitivity about
Under the earth, between the rock and shoot,
Never to bruise or wound the hidden fruit.
And so I watched my mother’s hands grow scarred,
She who could heal the wounded plant or friend
With the same vulnerable yet rigorous love;
I minded once to see her beauty gnarled,
But now her truth is given me to live,
As I learn for myself we must be hard
To move among the tender with an open hand,
And to stay sensitive up to the end
Pay with some toughness for a gentle world.
~May Sarton “An Observation”

I’m reminded every spring, as my husband’s hands prepare the soil in the garden for that season’s planting, how challenging is the job of the gardener. His hands must fight the chaos of weeds and rocks to prepare a gentle bed for each seed.

A seed is a plain, unadorned and ordinary thing, a little boring even, practically forgotten once it is placed in the ground. Yet the ordinariness is only the outer dress; the extraordinary is contained inside, and within days a tender shoot braves all to come to the surface, bowed and humble. It establishes a tenacious root that ensures survival, grabbing hold in even the most inhospitable ground.

So it is with Jesus whose ordinary origins belied his holiness and majesty. Both hardy root and tender shoot, he reaches up to the heavens while his feet tread the soil,  both at once. His toughness paid for our chance at a more gentle world.

And thanks to Him, we are fed.

For he grew up before him like a young plant,
and like a root out of dry ground;
Isaiah 53:2a

AI image created for this post
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

$10.00
$25.00
$50.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00

Or enter a custom amount

$

Your contribution is deeply appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

These Precious Days

barnstormingblog1 Comment

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” from Rattle #28, Winter 2007

These autumn days will shorten and grow cold.
The leaves will shake loose from the trees and fall.
Christmas will come, then the snows of winter.
You will live to enjoy the beauty of the frozen world,
for you mean a great deal to Zuckerman
and he will not harm you, ever.
Winter will pass, the days will lengthen,
the ice will melt in the pasture pond.
The song sparrow will return and sing,
the frogs will awake, the warm wind will blow again.
All these sights and sounds and smells will be yours to enjoy,Wilbur — this lovely world, these precious days …
~E.B. White (Charlotte talking to Wilbur) from Charlotte’s Web

Each passing moment is precious, as time flows relentlessly.

We, on a linear trajectory from birth to death, bear witness to the cycling of the seasons while earth spins and orbits through space.

The story of me, and the story of you, is not yet finished. While our heads nod, our eyelids become heavy, the Author is turning the pages, reading resonant Words that define our days.

We pick up where we left off, wanting to hear the next unknowable chapter. We try to stay awake, eager to see what comes next.

We aren’t quite ready to fall asleep, not yet.
Not yet…

One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

$10.00
$25.00
$50.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00

Or enter a custom amount

$

Your contribution is deeply appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

The Birth of Time

barnstormingblog3 Comments

An empty day without events.
And that is why
it grew immense
as space. And suddenly
happiness of being
entered me.

I heard
in my heartbeat
the birth of time
and each instant of life
one after the other
came rushing in
like priceless gifts.
~Anna Swir “Priceless Gifts” from Talking To My Body

It may be that when we no longer know what to do
we have come to our real work and that
when we no longer know which way to go
we have begun our real journey.
The mind that is not baffled is not employed.
The impeded stream is the one that sings.
The world, the truth, is more abounding,
more delightful, more demanding than we thought.
What appeared for a time perhaps to be mere dutifulness …
suddenly breaks open in sweetness —
and we are not where we thought we were,
nowhere that we could have expected to be.
~Wendell Berry from “Poetry and Marriage: The Use of Old Forms,” in Standing By Words

Who among us knows with certainty each morning
what we are meant to do this day
or where we might be asked to go?

Or do we make our best guess by
putting one foot ahead of the other
until the day is done and it is time to rest?

For me, over five decades of work,
I woke humbled by commitment and duty
and kept going, even when baffled and impeded.

While doctoring, I tried so hard
to keep my eyes open for beauty
within the painful times.

These days now overflow with uncertainty
of what comes next: each heartbeat a new birth.
My real work remains a search for life’s priceless beauty.

One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

$10.00
$25.00
$50.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00

Or enter a custom amount

$

Your contribution is deeply appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

As If Living in a Prayer

barnstormingblogLeave a comment

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

the branches’ negative space. And
we will watch for a fox sparrow
rustling in the dead leaves underneath.
~Jack Ridl “Here in the Time Between” from Practicing to Walk Like a Heron

We live in an in-between time:
we see the coming glory of spring and rebirth
yet winter’s mud and ice still grasps at us.

We want to crawl back under the blankets,
hoping to wake again on a brighter day.

Praying to emerge from the mud of in-between and not-yet,
we are ready to bud and blossom and wholly bloom.

One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

$10.00
$25.00
$50.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00

Or enter a custom amount

$

Your contribution is deeply appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

A Celebration of Resilience

barnstormingblogLeave a comment

Spring comes quickly: overnight
the plum tree blossoms,
the warm air fills with bird calls.

In the plowed dirt, someone has drawn a picture of
the sun
with rays coming out all around
but because the background is dirt, the sun is black.
There is no signature.

Alas, very soon everything will disappear:
the bird calls, the delicate blossoms. In the end,
even the earth itself will follow the artist’s name into
oblivion.

Nevertheless, the artist intends
a mood of celebration.

How beautiful the blossoms are — emblems of the
resilience of life.
The birds approach eagerly.
~Louise Glück “Primavera”

“Plowing the Field” by Joyce Lapp

Nothing is so beautiful as Spring –         
When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;         
Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens, and thrush         
Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring         
The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;
The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush         
The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush         
With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.         

What is all this juice and all this joy?         
A strain of the earth’s sweet being in the beginning
In Eden garden. – Have, get, before it cloy,         
Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning,         
Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy,         
Most, O maid’s child, thy choice and worthy the winning.   
~Gerard Manley Hopkins “Spring”

And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” Also he said, ‘Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true. ”
Revelation 21:5

Given a choice, humanity chose sour
over the sweetness we were created for ~
giving up walks together in the cool of the day
to feed an appetite that could never be sated.

God made a choice to bring us back with His own blood
as if we are worthy of Him.

He says we are.
He dies to prove it.

Every day I choose to believe
earth can be sweet and beautiful again.
Each spring becomes a celebration of our resilience.

One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

$10.00
$25.00
$50.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00

Or enter a custom amount

$

Your contribution is deeply appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly