Category: incarnation

In the Light-Charged Air

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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.

Fits Like a Glove

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It can be a gift or a private kind of distress,
depending on if you’ve found your purpose.
My friend, a physician and farmer, blends
her two passions into a life of caring.

Leaving her surgical gloves in the treatment room,
she dons leather work gloves when she returns
to the farm. This evening the old work gloves
are nestled together on a bench by the back door

as if one couldn’t function without the other.
They hold the form of her hands. The gloves
are dirty, the leather wrinkled, a hole worn
through the tip of the index finger, right hand.

Over years of service, gloves have protected
her hands as she treated deep wounds
in the clinic and in the barn. This gift!
Dare I say, her work fits her like a glove?
~Lois Edstrom “Gift of Work” from A Fragile Light

Nothing much to look at
lying on the shelf, one on
top of the other, an old man
resting his hands on a cane.
Dried-out yellow cowhide,
lines cut deep into the palms
from stones, weeds pulled.
Fingers crumpled, swollen
like grub worms shoveled
up in planting. An extra pair
of hands helping with lawn
work, flower beds, shrubs,
whatever else comes along.
A grief pulled on to bury
the old cat some kid in a
speeding pickup knocked
out of the street like he’d
kick a can. Or kneeling last
fall to unearth the blooming
rose suddenly plucked by
an ice storm, then shaking
rich compost loose from its
twisted fingers still clenched,
holding on for dear life.
~Ron Stottlemyer “Work Gloves”

My farm work gloves tend to look ragged at the end of a year of service. I always depend on being gifted a new pair at Christmas to start afresh. It can take awhile to break them in to the point where they feel like a “second skin.”

These gloves keep me from blistering while forking innumerable loads of smelly manure into wheelbarrows, but also help me unkink frozen hoses, tear away blackberry vines from fencing, pull thistle from the field and heavy hay bales from the haymow.

Over the years, I’ve gone through a few dozen work gloves which have protected my hands as I’ve cleaned and bandaged deep wounds on legs and hooves, pulled on foals during the hard contractions of difficult births, held the head of dying animals as they fall asleep one final time.

Without wearing my protective farm gloves over the years, my hands would be looking very much scarred up like my tired gloves do, full of rips and holes from the thorns and barbs of the world, sustaining scratches, callouses and blisters from the hard work of life.

But they don’t.

Thanks to these gloves, before I retired, I was presentable for my “day” work as a doctor where I would don a different set of gloves many times a day as I tended to my patients’ wounds and worry.

But my work gloves don’t tell my whole story of gratitude.

I’m thankful to a Creator God who doesn’t wear gloves when He goes to work in our world:
-He gathers us up even when we are dirty, smelly, and unworthy.
-He eases us into this life when we are vulnerable and weak,
and carries us gently home as we leave this world, weak and vulnerable.
-He holds us as we bleed from self and other-inflicted wounds.
-He won’t let us go, even when we fight back, or try not to pay attention, or care who He is.

He hangs on to us for dear life.

And this God came to live beside us
with hands just like ours~
tender, beautiful, easy-to-wound hands
that bled
because He didn’t need or want to wear gloves
for what He came to do~

His hands bear evidence of His love…

photo of a plowman teamster’s hand by Joel De Waard
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contains these lyrics by Kim Andre Arnesen:
Moving like the rise and fall of wings
Hands that shape our calling voice
On the edge of answers
You’ve heard our cry, you’ve known our cry…

Come And Have Breakfast

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A lily shivered
at His passing,
supposing Him to be
the Gardener.
~Margaret D. Smith “Easter morning, yesterday”
from A Widening Light -Poems of the Incarnation

It’s so easy to look and see what we pass through in this world, but we don’t. If you’re like me, you see so little. You see what you expect to see rather than what’s there.
~Frederick Buechner from The Remarkable Ordinary

Jesus said to them, “Come and have breakfast.”
None of the disciples dared ask him, “Who are you?”
They knew it was the Lord.
John 21:12

It is too easy, by the next day, to let go of Easter — to slide back into the Monday routine, managing our best to get through each day, our jaws set, our teeth gritted, as we have before.

We are blinded by our grief, shivering in misery, thinking Him only the Gardener as He passed by. We don’t pay attention to Who is right before us, Who is always tending us: the new Adam, caring for a world desperate for rescue.

God knows this about us.  So He invites us to breakfast on Monday and every day thereafter.

He feeds us, a tangible and meaningful act of nourishing us in our most basic human needs though we’ve done nothing to deserve the gift. He cooks up fish on a beach at dawn and welcomes us to join Him, as if nothing extraordinary has just happened.

Just yesterday evening he reviewed His Word and broke bread in Emmaus, opening the eyes and hearts of those like us who failed to see Who this is walking beside them.

This is no ordinary Gardener.

When He offers up a meal of His Word, the gift is nothing less than Himself.

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Where You Go, I Will Go: Solitudes of Peace

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Now a red, sleepy sun above the rim
Of twilight stares along the quiet weald,
And the kind, simple country shines revealed
In solitudes of peace, no longer dim.
The old horse lifts his face and thanks the light,
Then stretches down his head to crop the green.
All things that he has loved are in his sight;
The places where his happiness has been
Are in his eyes, his heart, and they are good.
~Siegfried Sassoon from “Break of Day”

Stay away from reading 24 hour headlines.
Avoid being crushed by disturbing news.
Try facing the sun as it rises and sets,
knowing it will continue to do so, no matter what.

Do not forget
the eternal source of peace was
sent to earth
directly from God:
one Man walked among us, became sacrifice,
and He will return.

A new day breaks fresh each morning
and folds into itself gently each evening.

Be glad for another day
when all things you love are within reach.

Breathe deeply in gratitude for the remembrance
of infinite blessings.

This year’s Lenten theme:

…where you go I will go…
Ruth 1:16

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Give Me Holly

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A rose has thorns as well as honey,
I’ll not have her for love or money;

An iris grows so straight and fine,
That she shall be no friend of mine;

Snowdrops like the snow would chill me;


Nightshade would caress and kill me;

Crocus like a spear would fright me;

Dragon’s-mouth might bark or bite me;

Calypso Bulbosa photo by Kate Steensma

Convolvulus but blooms to die;

A wind-flower suggests a sigh;

Love-lies-bleeding makes me sad;


And poppy-juice would drive me mad:—

But give me holly, bold and jolly,
Honest, prickly, shining holly;

Pluck me holly leaf and berry
For the day when I make merry.
~Christina Rossetti “A rose has thorns as well as honey”

God’s children begin as soft as a holly blossom,
turning blood red as its berry,
fully surrounded by prickly leaves.

Christ was sent to bleed like us for us,
to wear a thorny crown and bear wounds
by smoothing over all our sharp edges.

 For what is our hope, our joy, or the crown in which we will glory in the presence of our Lord Jesus when he comes?
Is it not you?  
Indeed, you are our glory and joy.
1 Thessalonians 2: 19-20

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From a Boundless Deep

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The Incarnation is like a wave of the sea which,
rushing up on the flat beach,
runs out, even thinner and more transparent,
and does not return to its source but sinks into the sand and disappears.
~Hans Urs von Balthasar from Origen: Spirit and Fire

When the heart is full of joy,
it always allows its joy to escape.
It is like the fountain in the marketplace;
whenever it is full it runs away in streams,
and so soon as it ceases to overflow,
you may be quite sure that it has ceased to be full.
The only full heart is the overflowing heart.
~Charles Spurgeon from The Spurgeon Series 1857 & 1858: Unabridged Sermons In Modern Language

…continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness.
Colossians 2: 6b-7

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Romans 15:13

photo by Nate Gibson at Sendai, Japan

May the Lord make your love increase and overflow for each other and for everyone else, just as ours does for you.
1 Thessalonians 3:12

I do not think that skies and meadows are
Moral, or that the fixture of a star
Comes of a quiet spirit, or that trees
Have wisdom in their windless silences.
Yet these are things invested in my mood
With constancy, and peace, and fortitude,
That in my troubled season I can cry
Upon the wide composure of the sky,
And envy fields, and wish that I might be
As little daunted as a star or tree.
~John Drinkwater “Reciprocity”

I’m first class in the category of overflowing tears.

My family knows it doesn’t take much to make me cry:
saying goodbye, saying hello,
listening to a childrens’ choir singing,
a heartstring-tugging show on TV,
the whistled “Greensleeves” theme to the old Lassie series,
not to mention the whistled theme to the old “Leave it to Beaver” or “Andy Griffith” series–you name it, whistling does it.

Yesterday, instead of weeping overly sentimental tears, it was tears of relief that our country peacefully managed a transition of power – something that was very nearly thwarted four years ago. On that day, I wept tears of anger at scenes of violence coming from the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C.

Undaunted, I know God our Father remains a boundless deep source of all that is good and just in troubled times, constantly refilling the love of the Savior who seeks us out, while His Spirit flows into us like water into the sand.

We who weep will never empty.

Sunset and evening star,
  And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
  When I put out to sea,

But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
  Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
  Turns again home.

Twilight and evening bell,
  And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell,
  When I embark;

For tho’ from out our bourne of Time and Place
  The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
  When I have cross’d the bar.
~Lord Alfred Tennyson “Crossing the Bar”

Led Into a New Land

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It is precisely because we are weary, and poor in spirit, that God can touch us with hope. This is not an easy truth. It means that we do accept our common lot, and take up our share of the cross. It means that we do not gloss over the evils we confront every day, both within ourselves and without. Our sacrifices may be great.

But as the martyred archbishop of El Salvador, Oscar Romero, once said, it is only the poor and hungry, those who know they need someone to come on their behalf, who can celebrate Christmas.
We can ask for courage, however, and trust that God has not led us into this new land only to abandon us there.
~Kathleen Norris from God With Us

photo by Joel DeWaard

On Epiphany day,
     we are still the people walking.
     We are still people in the dark,
          and the darkness looms large around us,
          beset as we are by fear,
                                        anxiety,
                                        brutality,
                                        violence,
                                        loss —
          a dozen alienations that we cannot manage.

We are — we could be — people of your light.
     So we pray for the light of your glorious presence
          as we wait for your appearing;
     we pray for the light of your wondrous grace
          as we exhaust our coping capacity;
     we pray for your gift of newness that
          will override our weariness;
     we pray that we may see and know and hear and trust
          in your good rule.

That we may have energy, courage, and freedom to enact
         your rule through the demands of this day.
         We submit our day to you and to your rule, with deep joy and high hope.
~Walter Brueggemann from  Prayers for a Privileged People 

When the song of the angels is stilled,
when the star in the sky is gone,
when the kings and princes are home,
when the shepherds are back with their flocks,
the work of Christmas begins:
to find the lost,
to heal the broken,
to feed the hungry,
to release the prisoner,
to rebuild the nations,
to bring peace among the people,
to make music in the heart.
~Howard Thurman from The Mood of Christmas & Other Celebrations

O God,
who am I now?
Once, I was secure

in familiar territory
in my sense of belonging

unquestioning of 

the norms of my culture
the assumptions built into my language
the values shared by my society.

But now you have called me out and away from home
and I do not know where you are leading.
I am empty, unsure, uncomfortable.
I have only a beckoning star to follow.

Journeying God,
pitch your tent with mine
so that I may not become deterred
by hardship, strangeness, doubt.
Show me the movement I must make

toward a wealth not dependent on possessions
toward a wisdom not based on books
toward a strength not bolstered by might
toward a God not confined to heaven

but scandalously earthed, poor, unrecognized…

Help me find myself
as I walk in others’ shoes.
~Kate Compston “A Poem for Epiphany” from Bread of Tomorrow: Prayers for the Church Year

All the Advent anticipation is over, Christmas and New Years are now past. Today is Epiphany, when I regret my energy and courage is waning just as the work of Christmas must begin.

I’ve swept up the last of the fir needles that dropped to the floor from a lovely Christmas tree that I watered faithfully in the house for over two weeks. But no amount of water could sustain what is rootless.

So it is with us.

I too am drying up, parts of me left behind for others to sweep up. I too must have roots of faith to survive in a troubled world.

The real work of Christmas is year-long — often very hard intensive work, not always the fun stuff of the last month, yet needed in the brokenness of hunger, disease, conflict, war and random violence, poverty, addictions, depression and pain.

We don’t need full stockings on the hearth, Christmas villages on the side table, or a blinking star on the top of the tree to reflect on the comfort of God’s care and the astounding beauty of His creation, all available to us without batteries, electrical plug ins, or the need of a ladder.

The real work of Christmas is God manifest on earth – “scandalously earthed” – in our own lives. We recognize Him in the homeless and forgotten. We are made alive to the possibility that we can make a difference in His name, to walk in others’ shoes, just as He walks in ours.

Every day. Twelve months. Life long.

Are we ready?

Unclench your fists
Hold out your hands.
Take mine.
Let us hold each other.
Thus is his Glory Manifest.
~Madeleine L’Engle “Epiphany”

Making a Difference

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One river gives
Its journey to the next.

We give because someone gave to us.
We give because nobody gave to us.

We give because giving has changed us.
We give because giving could have changed us.

We have been better for it,
We have been wounded by it—

Giving has many faces: It is loud and quiet,
Big, though small, diamond in wood-nails.

Its story is old, the plot worn and the pages too,
But we read this book, anyway, over and again:

Giving is, first and every time, hand to hand,
Mine to yours, yours to mine.

You gave me blue and I gave you yellow.
Together we are simple green. You gave me

What you did not have, and I gave you
What I had to give—together, we made

Something greater from the difference.
~Alberto Rios “When Giving is All We Have”

Giving from hand to hand— this is what Jesus was born to do: a connection so direct with those He met that He was able to give life to the dead, sight to the blind, heal those possessed.

We are told there were times He became overwhelmed by the demands He felt, and sought out solitude. As human beings who get weary, we understand His need for respite. No man can be a superhero 24/7, yet God promises to be our rescuer for eternity.

Jesus’ story starts with the giving of gifts to Him, from the awed presence of the shepherds to the wisdom of the magi. We are incapable of giving God anything He doesn’t already possess, yet He only asks us to show up.

He asks for our presence, nothing more, not just at Christmas and Easter but every day and every moment.

Like rivers flowing together to create something deep and wide and grand, the gift of ourselves becomes especially mighty when combined with so many others showing up. Something greater this way comes.

Let’s keep showing up after Christmas and keep giving what we don’t have as well as what we do have. Jesus makes it greater and so much greener than our wild imaginings.

The True Dwelling of the Holy

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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

Mostly, I want to be kind.
And nobody, of course, is kind,
or mean,
for a simple reason.
~Mary Oliver from “Dogfish”

I’ve been thinking about the way, when you walk
down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs
to let you by. Or how strangers still say “bless you”
when someone sneezes, a leftover
from the Bubonic plague. “Don’t die,” we are saying.
And sometimes, when you spill lemons
from your grocery bag, someone else will help you
pick them up. Mostly, we don’t want to harm each other.
We want to be handed our cup of coffee hot,
and to say thank you to the person handing it. To smile
at them and for them to smile back. For the waitress
to call us honey when she sets down the bowl of clam chowder,
and for the driver in the red pick-up truck to let us pass.
We have so little of each other, now. So far
from tribe and fire. Only these brief moments of exchange.
What if they are the true dwelling of the holy, these
fleeting temples we make together when we say, “Here,
have my seat,” “Go ahead — you first,” “I like your hat.”
~Danusha Laméris “Small Kindnesses”

Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a harder battle.
~Plato

I have found that it is the small everyday deeds of ordinary folks that keep the darkness at bay. Small acts of kindness and love.
~ J.R.R. Tolkien from “The Hobbit”

It is tender kindness I miss most these days in this world aflame with anger and violence, distrust and bitterness, resentment and suspicion and plain old cussed stubbornness.

There is true holiness in moments of kindness: I notice it now more than ever. I am given infinite daily opportunities to show kindness to others and when I’m preoccupied, too inside my own head, or feeling too injured myself, I usually walk by without even trying.

Yet when kindness is shown to me, I don’t forget it – it permeates me like a homespun apple pie fragrance that lingers around me, comforting and welcoming me home when I feel alone and a stranger in the world.

I remember all the kindnesses shown to me over the years and always carry them with me. When I have an opportunity in a brief encounter to show kindness, I want to help make someone else feel noticed and special. I want them to feel like they belong, right in that moment.

This daily sharing of words and photos is one way I try to give back what I have been gifted from others over the years. During the two or three minutes you look at what I offer here daily, I want you to know:

– you belong here
– I am forever grateful for you
– your words and support enrich me.

Thank you for spending some of your precious time with me.

Dayspring to Our Dimness

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Now, newborn,
in wide-eyed wonder
he gazes up at his creation.
His hand that hurled the world
holds tight his mother’s finger.
Holy light
spills across her face
and she weeps
silent wondering tears
to know she holds the One
who has so long held her.
~Joan Rae Mills from “Mary” in  Light Upon Light 

Now burn, new born to the world,
Doubled-naturèd name,
The heaven-flung, heart-fleshed, maiden-furled
Miracle-in-Mary-of-flame,
Mid-numbered he in three of the thunder-throne!

Not a dooms-day dazzle in his coming nor dark as he came;
Kind, but royally reclaiming his own;
A released shower, let flash to the shire,
not a lightning of fíre hard-hurled.

Let him easter in us, be a dayspring to the dimness of us,
be a crimson-cresseted east…
~Gerard Manley Hopkins from “The Wreck of the Deutschland”

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
~John 1:5

Through the tender mercy of our God,
With which the Dayspring from on high has visited us;
To give light to those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death,
To guide our feet into the way of peace.
Luke 1:78-79 (Zechariah’s Song)

It never fails to surprise and amaze:
dawn seems to come from nowhere. 

There is bleak dark, then a hint of light over the foothills in a long thin line, followed by the appearance of subtle dawn shadows as if the night needs to cling to the ground a little while longer, not wanting to relent and let us go. 

Then color appears, erasing all doubt: the hills begin to glow orange along their crest, as if a flame is ignited and is spreading down a wick.  Ultimately the explosion of Light occurs, spreading the orange pink palette unto the clouds above, climbing high to bathe the glaciers of Mount Baker and onto the peaks of the Twin Sisters.

~Dayspring to our dimness~

From dark to light, ordinary to extraordinary. This gift is from the tender mercy of our God, who we welcome as the Light of a New Day, guiding our feet on the pathway of peace. 

We no longer need to stumble about in the shadows.
He is here to light our darkness.

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Sleeping child, I wonder, have you a dream to share?
May I see the things you see as you slumber there?
I dream a wind that speaks, like music as it blows
As if it were the breath of everything that grows.

I dream a flock of birds flying through the night
Like silent stars on wings of everlasting light.
I dream a flowing river, deep as a thousand years,
Its fish are frozen sorrow, its water bitter tears.

I dream a tree so green, branches wide and long,
And ev’ry leaf and ev’ry voice a song.
I dream of a babe who sleeps, a life that’s just begun.
A word that waits to be spoken.
The promise of a world to come.
~Charles Bennett “Sleeping Child”

Oh little child it’s Christmas night
And the sky is filled with glorious light
Lay your soft head so gently down
It’s Christmas night in Bethlehem town.

Chorus:
Alleluia the angels sing
Alleluia to the king
Alleluia the angels sing
Alleluia to the king.

Sleep while the shepherds find their way
As they kneel before you in the golden hay
For they have brought you a woolly lamb
On Christmas night in Bethlehem.

Chorus

Sleep till you wake at the break of day
With the sun’s first dawning ray
You are the babe, who’ll wear the crown
On Christmas morn in Bethlehem town.

Chorus

Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia. Alleluia