Every morning I walk through folds of fields searching.
Slants of sun sink through triangled bones of leaves: bold cold refuted.
Sparrows flutter warm in given nests, ungriefed, caught, sustained by common grace.
Faith is the tenderness of banked coals in a grate, Braeburn apples on a windowsill, winding crisp with possibility. The steadiness of conversations embered over decades; a fire that has never left off crackling – on this my soul has warmed her hands. Divine ardor: too strong and sweet for the many years I’ve walked on earth.
Love without hesitation has swept my floorboards for seasons. Deep and longing in and out of time the soul reaches out – and He, grasps entire. Hold – and tender. Incandescent. ~Claire Hellar “A Search in Autumn”
The mail truck goes down the coast Carrying a single letter. At the end of a long pier The bored seagull lifts a leg now and then And forgets to put it down.
There is a menace in the air Of tragedies in the making. Last night you thought you heard television In the house next door. You were sure it was some new Horror they were reporting, So you went out to find out. Barefoot, wearing just shorts. It was only the sea sounding weary After so many lifetimes Of pretending to be rushing off somewhere And never getting anywhere.
This morning, it felt like Sunday. The heavens did their part By casting no shadow along the boardwalk Or the row of vacant cottages, Among them a small church With a dozen gray tombstones huddled close As if they, too, had the shivers. ~Charles Simic “Late September” from The Voice at 3:00 a.m.: Selected Late and New Poems
Have compassion for everyone you meet, even if they don’t want it. What seems conceit, bad manners, or cynicism is always a sign of things no ears have heard, no eyes have seen. You do not know what wars are going on down there where the spirit meets the bone. ~Miller Williams “Compassion” from The Ways We Touch: Poems.
Christians are called by God to be living so sacrificially and beautifully that the people around us, who don’t believe what we believe, will soon be unable to imagine the world without us. ~Pastor Tim Keller
As we walk this life of trouble and suffering, this Jericho Road together, we cannot pass by the brother, the sister, the child who lies dying in the ditch.
We must stop and help. We cannot turn away from others’ suffering.
By mere circumstances of our place of birth, it could be you or me there bleeding, beaten, abandoned until Someone, journeying along that road, comes looking for us.
He was sent to take our place, as Substitution so we can get up, cared for, loved, made whole again, and walk Home.
Maranatha.
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You were the one for skylights. I opposed Cutting into the seasoned tongue-and-groove Of pitch pine. I liked it low and closed, Its claustrophobic, nest-up-in-the-roof Effect. I liked the snuff-dry feeling, The perfect, trunk-lid fit of the old ceiling. Under there, it was all hutch and hatch. The blue slates kept the heat like midnight thatch.
But when the slates came off, extravagant Sky entered and held surprise wide open. For days I felt like an inhabitant Of that house where the man sick of the palsy Was lowered through the roof, had his sins forgiven, Was healed, took up his bed and walked away. ~Seamus Heaney “The Skylight” from Opened Ground.
The last moments of summer are revealed as if the roof has been ripped open to let the sky be lowered in ~ the veil torn down, the dark corners lit in extravagant morning glow~
suddenly sky enters into unexpected spaces we preferred to keep hidden. The miraculous happens when we are bold enough to accept the invitation and take a chance on the Light.
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The meaning of marriage begins in the giving of words. We cannot join ourselves to one another without giving our word. And this must be an unconditional giving, for in joining ourselves to one another we join ourselves to the unknown. ~Wendell Berry from “Poetry and Marriage” in Standing By Words
Our vows to one another forty-four years ago today:
Before God and this gathering, I vow from my heart and spirit that I will be your wife/husband for as long as we both shall live.
I will love you with faithfulness, knowing its importance in sustaining us through good times and bad.
I will love you with respect, serving your greatest good and supporting your continued growth.
I will love you with compassion, knowing the strength and power of forgiveness.
I will love you with hope, remembering our shared belief in the grace of God and His guidance of our marriage.
“And at home, by the fire, whenever you look up, there I shall be–and whenever I look up, there will be you.”
(our wedding vows for our September 19, 1981 wedding at First Seattle Christian Reformed Church — the last line adapted from Thomas Hardy’s “Far From the Madding Crowd”)
Sometimes our life reminds me of a forest in which there is a graceful clearing and in that opening a house, an orchard and garden, comfortable shades, and flowers red and yellow in the sun, a pattern made in the light for the light to return to. The forest is mostly dark, its ways to be made anew day after day, the dark richer than the light and more blessed, provided we stay brave enough to keep on going in.
We enter, willing to die, into the commonwealth of its joy. ~Wendell Berry from “A Country of Marriage”
…Marriage… joins two living souls as closely as, in this world, they can be joined. This joining of two who know, love, and trust one another brings them in the same breath into the freedom of sexual consent and into the fullest earthly realization of the image of God. From their joining, other living souls come into being, and with them great responsibilities that are unending, fearful, and joyful. The marriage of two lovers joins them to one another, to forebears, to descendants, to the community, to heaven and earth. It is the fundamental connection without which nothing holds, and trust is its necessity. ~Wendell Berry from Sex, Economy, Freedom and Community
We married forty-four years ago today in our Seattle church with Pastor Peter Holwerda officiating, with a small group of family and friends as witnesses.
It was a wedding of two frugal people with little to spend – I sewed my dress and Dan’s shirt from muslin, we grew our own flowers, our families helped potluck the lunch afterward and our tiered carrot cake was made by a friend.
Yet our vows to one another were not frugal and held nothing back. They were extravagant and comprehensive, coming from our hearts and spirits. The music we asked our amazing organist to play (versions below) inspired us by its simplicity and complexity – very much like the families that raised us and the God we worship.
Our vows have taken us from the city to the countryside, to the raising and rejoicing in three amazing children and now six grandchildren. We both served more than forty years as a public-employed attorney and physician. We have laid down those responsibilities, and picked up the tools of farm and garden along with church and community service for as long as we are able.
We treasure each day of living together in faithfulness, respect, compassion and hope – knowing that how we love and find joy in one another mirrors how God loves and revels in His people.
We pray for many more days to fill us with what endures.
A pot of red lentils simmers on the kitchen stove. All afternoon dense kernels surrender to the fertile juices, their tender bellies swelling with delight.
In the yard we plant rhubarb, cauliflower, and artichokes, cupping wet earth over tubers, our labor the germ of later sustenance and renewal.
Across the field the sound of a baby crying as we carry in the last carrots, whorls of butter lettuce, a basket of red potatoes.
I want to remember us this way— late September sun streaming through the window, bread loaves and golden bunches of grapes on the table, spoonfuls of hot soup rising to our lips, filling us with what endures. ~Peter Pereira from “A Pot of Red Lentils”
Here are versions of the organ music we selected for prelude, processional, recessional and postlude
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Yet you, Lord, are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand. Isaiah 64:8
From dust to purpose, beauty spins as planned. Love is crafted by surrender when clay trusts the Potter’s hands. ~Jamie Trunnel from “The Potter’s Hands”
For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. Ephesians 2:10
The best pottery is never completely perfect, becoming an original, unique piece. It is infused with the potter’s eye and energy, the expert pressure of fingers and palm, with a design and vision coming from the heart and imagination of the potter.
Last night, during our evening church worship, two artists in our congregation, one using words of scripture and the other at a pottery wheel, demonstrated how creating and sculpting a work of pottery is key to understanding how God shapes each one of us, from our beginnings, preparing us in advance for the work we are to do.
Each one is a unique and original individual, formed by the hands of the Artist to become something with a purpose and plan. Even with imperfections, we are created as both beautiful and functional.
His Hands remain around us, holding and molding us to His plan.
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When I saw the figure on the crown of the hill, high above the city, standing perfectly still
against a sky so saturated with the late- afternoon, late-summer Pacific light
that granules of it seemed to have come out of solution, like a fine precipitate
of crystals hanging in the brightened air, I thought whoever it was standing up there
must be experiencing some heightened state of being, or thinking—or its opposite,
thoughtlessly enraptured by the view. Or maybe, looking again, it was a statue
of Jesus or a saint, placed there to bestow a ceaseless blessing on the city below.
Only after a good five minutes did I see that the figure was actually a tree—
some kind of cypress, probably, or cedar. I was both amused and let down by my error. Not only had I made the tree a person, but I’d also given it a vision,
which seemed to linger in the light-charged air around the tree’s green flame, then disappear. ~Jeffrey Harrison “The Figure on the Hill” from Into Daylight
Who was it who suggested that the opposite of war Is not so much peace as civilisation? He knew Our assassinated Catholic greengrocer who died At Christmas in the arms of our Methodist minister, And our ice-cream man whose continuing requiem Is the twenty-one flavours children have by heart. Our cobbler mends shoes for everybody; our butcher Blends into his best sausages leeks, garlic, honey; Our cornershop sells everything from bread to kindling. Who can bring peace to people who are not civilised? All of these people, alive or dead, are civilised. ~Michael Longley “All of These People” from Collected Poems
Who among us appear in the light-charged air, visible on the crown of the hill of life – who might be mistaken for a martyr or a saint or a visionary, when each one of us is merely a person responsible to a family, committed to help friends, dedicated to serve a community, placed in this world to steady a broken civilization.
There is the simple truth that we need a person with roots deep in the ground, branches that reach up and out, bearing fruit to share with those around us.
But surely not this misery, not this blight, not this trouble, certainly not these murders, which only bears and shares a heart-rending, horrible grief.
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In 2012, we stayed with our friends Brian and Bette at their cabin on a bluff just above the Pacific Ocean at Sendai, Japan, just a few dozen feet above the devastation that wiped out an entire fishing village below during the 3/11/11 earthquake and tsunami.
As we walked that stretch of beach, we heard the stories of the people who had lived there, some of whom did not survive the waves that swept their houses and cars away before they could escape. We walked past the footprints of foundations of hundreds of demolished homes, humbled by the rubble mountains yet to be hauled away a year later, to be burned or buried. There were acres of wrecked vehicles piled one on another, waiting to become scrap metal.
It was visual evidence of life so suddenly and dramatically disrupted and carried away.
This had been a place of recreation and respite for some who visited regularly, commerce and livelihood for others who stayed year round and, in ongoing recovery efforts, struggling to be restored to something familiar. Yet it looked like a foreign ghostly landscape. Many trees perished, lost, broken off, fish nets still stuck high on their scarred trunks. There were small memorials to lost family members within some home foundations, with stuffed animals and flowers wilting from the recent anniversary observance.
Tohoku is a powerful place of memories for those who still live there and know what it once was, how it once looked and felt, and painfully, what it became in a matter of minutes on 3/11/11. The waves swept in inexplicable suffering, then carried their former lives away. Happiness gave ground to such terrible pain that could never have hurt as much without the joy and contentment that preceded it.
We are tempted to ask God why He doesn’t do something about the suffering that happened in this place or anywhere a disaster occurs –but if we do, He will ask us the same question right back. We need to be ready with our answer and our action.
God knows suffering. Far more than we do. He took it all on Himself, feeling His pain amplified, as it was borne out of His love and joy in His creation.
This beautiful place, and its dedicated survivors have slowly recovered, but the inner and outer landscape is forever altered. What remains the same is the pulsing tempo of the waves, the tides, and the rhythm of the light and the night, happening just as originally created.
With that realization, pain will finally give way, unable to stand up to His love, His joy, and our response to His sacrifice.
We can call Him up anytime and anywhere.
bent gate at Sendai beach -2012
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…today, the unseen was everything. The unknown, the only real fact of life. All this he saw, for one moment breathless and intense, vivid on the morning sky; and still, as he looked, he lived; and still, as he lived, he wondered. ~Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows
Purposefully lost in the willow stillness of a late summer meadow in the deer-filled dusk—a silver evening following a blue and amber day. ~Tim Hawkins “Purposefully Lost” from West of the Backstory
I search for the unseen, purposely lost, hoping to find meaning in the unknown.
I am bewildered by this life much of the time. Anyone looking at what I share here sees my struggle each day to discern how to make this sad and suffering world a little bit better place.
I have little to offer you other than my own wrestling match with the mysteries we all face.
Then, when a light does shine out through darkness, when a deer steps out of the woods into the meadow, I am not surprised.
I simply need to pay attention. Illumination was there all the time, but I needed the eyes to see its beauty laid bare, brave enough to show itself even brighter in the light of day.
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Without realizing it, we fill important places in each others’ lives. It’s that way with the guy at the corner grocery, the mechanic at the local garage, the family doctor, teachers, neighbors, coworkers.
Good people who are always “there,” who can be relied upon in small,important ways. People who teach us, bless us, encourage us, support us, uplift us in the dailiness of life.
We never tell them. I don’t know why, but we don’t.
And, of course, we fill that role ourselves. There are those who depend on us,watch us, learn from us, take from us. And we never know.
You may never have proof of your importance, but you are more important than you think. There are always those who couldn’t do without you. The rub is that you don’t always know who. ~Robert Fulghumfrom All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten
If there is one thing living through the pandemic taught me, it’s noticing the people in my life who may have not been as obvious to me before. I hadn’t realized how many folks truly are front-line serving others day-in and day-out.
It’s not only health care workers, grocery store clerks and school teachers but the list of essential workers is large, including law enforcement, plumbers and electricians, child care workers, water, sanitation and sewer maintenance, pastors, postal clerks, technicians who fix our cars and appliances and the farmers who tend the crops and livestock we need to live, as well as scores of others.
We are remarkably interdependent and need each other.
I realized how oblivious I had been before not taking the time to acknowledge the daily services I received from so many varied people. In fact, it has become more urgent for me to tell my family members and friends – some thousands of miles away from me – how much they mean to me.
Now, in non-pandemic times, I try to tell others – the grocery cashier, the medical assistant, the office receptionist – as simply and clearly as I can, whenever possible, that I appreciate what they have done and what they continue to do, how they make life better for us all.
I also need to continue to nurture relationships with family and friends crucial to my own well-being. I need them all.
I need you all.
And it is important to me that you know.
Well over a thousand of you receive these daily Barnstorming emails and posts – a handful of you communicate with me regularly. I treasure those messages, thank you!
We all need encouragement that we are making a positive difference in others’ lives and you all make a difference to me.
Some things we pick up but toss aside like a game. They hold no meaning and we want to see how far they go and how many skips they make.
Some things we pick up and they are smooth and sparkly, seeming somehow special; throwing them back into the abyss feels like a loss, yet we still let them go.
When there is the one appearing so ordinary, yet feels just right in our hand, picked up and pondered, then placed securely in a pocket, never to be tossed away.
And so it is, ordinary as we are, He never lets us go. We fit perfectly in His Hand, safely stowed inside His pocket.
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