I go by a field where once I cultivated a few poor crops. It is now covered with young trees, for the forest that belongs here has come back and reclaimed its own. And I think of all the effort I have wasted and all the time, and of how much joy I took in that failed work and how much it taught me. For in so failing I learned something of my place, something of myself, and now I welcome back the trees. ~Wendell Berry, “IX” from Leavings.
As we both grow older, we watch our some of our farm’s fields slowly fill in with young trees, despite our efforts over the years to keep pulling out saplings to preserve pasture. Yet the trees are more determined to fill in the gaps than we are to remove them. The cottonwoods, alders and maples are returning to what once was their soil.
After all, this land was forested over a century ago and yielded to determined loggers and farmers as the old growth firs and cedars fell to the axe and the deciduous trees became firewood and furniture. We now find ourselves yielding back what we can, acknowledging what this land and these patient trees have to teach us about our transience. A few decades are a short stay to those who send roots and branches deep and wide in their effort to stay put.
Welcome back, trees. You have kindly waited for your turn to own the ground again.
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And in despair I bowed my head “There is no peace on earth,” I said, “For hate is strong and mocks the song Of peace on earth, good will to men.”
Then pealed the bells more loud and deep: “God is not dead, nor doth He sleep; The wrong shall fail, the right prevail With peace on earth, good will to men.” ~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow from “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day”
You, who are beyond our understanding, have made yourself understandable to us in Jesus Christ. You, who are the uncreated God, have made yourself a creature for us. You, who are the untouchable One, have made yourself touchable to us. You, who are most high, make us capable of understanding your amazing love and the wonderful things you have done for us. Make us able to understand the mystery of your incarnation, the mystery of your life, example and doctrine, the mystery of your cross and passion, the mystery of your resurrection and ascension. ~Angela of Foligno (1248-1309)– prayer
To all of you who come to this page each day to read words, hear music, see images of our farm life: may your sore heart be blessed, your troubled soul encouraged as we explore together the mystery of who was born today.
He does not sleep, so our eyes can rest. He came to die and rise again so we might live. He is the beauty and truth we seek for peace on earth.
The season of sunset as it draws a veil over the day, befits that repose of the soul when earthborn cares yield to the joys of heavenly communion. The glory of the setting sun excites our wonder, and the solemnity of approaching night awakens our awe. If the business of this day will permit it, it will be well, dear reader, if you can spare an hour to walk in the field at eventide, but if not, the Lord is in the town too, and will meet with you in your chamber or in the crowded street. Let your heart go forth to meet Him. ~Charles Spurgeon from Morning and Evening Devotionals
During my forty years in medical practice, I saw many patients who struggled to sleep at night. Their minds raced, they couldn’t stop worrying, their bodies were tight with tension.
I would have preferred to prescribe walking an hour with God at sunset but that was not permissible at a public institution owned by the government.
Instead, I prescribed sleep hygiene habit, over the counter herbals, prescription medications or talk therapy, wrote documentation for emotional support animals, or suggested yoga or “meditation” or even a labyrinth walk.
I find what is most effective in my own life is allowing my heart to go forth and meet God’s invitation to communion with Him.
Spurgeon, in his own anxiety and depression, knew the healing power of a walk with God at sunset or a meal together in His memory. Even when we are hungry, thirsty, exhausted with worry — by throwing the cares of our heart out to Him, He will catch and hold them tight, raising us up alongside Him on the last day.
I am the bread of life. He who comes to me shall not hunger; he who believes in me shall not thirst. No one can come to me unless the Father draw him.
And I will raise him up, and I will raise him up, and I will raise him up on the last day.
The bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world, and he who eats of this bread, he shall live for ever, he shall live for ever.
And I will raise him up, and I will raise him up, and I will raise him up on the last day.
Unless you eat of the flesh of the Son of Man and drink of his blood, and drink of his blood, you shall not have life within you.
And I will raise him up, and I will raise him up, and I will raise him up on the last day.
I am the resurrection, I am the life. He who believes in me even if he die, he shall live for ever.
And I will raise him up, and I will raise him up, and I will raise him up on the last day.
Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who has come into the world.
And I will raise him up, and I will raise him up, and I will raise him up on the last day.
Sr. Suzanne Toolan
Original Barnstorming artwork note cards available as a gift to you with a $50 donation to support Barnstorming – information here
while I grew smaller in the spreading shadow of the peonies,
grew larger by my absence to another, grew older among the ants, ancient
under the opening heads of the flowers, new to myself, and stranger.
When I heard my name again, it sounded far, like the name of the child next door, or a favorite cousin visiting for the summer,
while the quiet seemed my true name, a near and inaudible singing born of hidden ground.
Quiet to quiet, I called back. And the birds declared my whereabouts all morning. ~Li-Young Lee “Out of Hiding”
The spider, dropping down from twig, Unfolds a plan of her devising, A thin premeditated rig To use in rising.
And all that journey down through space, In cool descent and loyal hearted, She spins a ladder to the place From where she started.
Thus I, gone forth as spiders do In spider’s web a truth discerning, Attach one silken thread to you For my returning. ~E.B. White “Natural History”
I seek out the hidden web artist who rebuilds this remarkable funnel in an open pipe attached to a gate I open and close daily without a thought.
As I approach, I see the weaver’s legs scurrying hurriedly down into the safety of its chosen darkness.
This spider needs temerity, not timidity, to find its meal.
How else might it issue a dinner invitation, luring me down into a sticky funnel vortex, as a cherished guest meant never to return?
If I go astray and wander into temptation, lose my way and plunge into the hole, a silken thread remains: hearing Him call out my name from the garden, urging me to return to Whom I belong.
Indeed my soul hangs by this single gossamer thread~ this silken connection calls me back home, back to eternity.
There’s more that rises in the morning Than the sun And more that shines in the night Than just the moon It’s more than just this fire here That keeps me warm In a shelter that is larger Than this room
And there’s a loyalty that’s deeper Than mere sentiments And a music higher than the songs That I can sing The stuff of Earth competes For the allegiance I owe only to the Giver Of all good things
So if I stand let me stand on the promise That you will pull me through And if I can’t, let me fall on the grace That first brought me to You And if I sing let me sing for the joy That has born in me these songs And if I weep let it be as a man Who is longing for his home
There’s more that dances on the prairies Than the wind More that pulses in the ocean Than the tide There’s a love that is fiercer Than the love between friends More gentle than a mother’s When her baby’s at her side ~Rich Mullins
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There is always an enormous temptation in all of life to diddle around making itsy-bitsy friends and meals and journeys for itsy-bitsy years on end. It is so self-conscious, so apparently moral, simply to step aside from the gaps where the creeks and winds pour down, saying, I never merited this grace, quite rightly, and then to sulk along the rest of your days on the edge of rage.
I won’t have it.The world is wilder than that in all directions, more dangerous and bitter, more extravagant and bright.
We are making hay when we should be making whoopee; we are raising tomatoes when we should be raising Cain, or Lazarus. ~Annie Dillard from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
Other than a few exceptional circumstances in my life, I have always played it safe: a down-home, don’t rock the boat, work hard and live-a-quiet-life kind of person. My grandparents lived that way, my parents lived that way so I feel like it is bound in the twists and turns of my DNA.
Even so, I do know a thing or two about sulking on the edge of rage, lost in a morass of seething bitterness about the state of the world. Yet if I were honest about it, my discontent is all about me, always about me. I want to have accomplished more to deserve taking up space in my days on earth.
But that’s a problem we all have, isn’t it? We’re never worthy of such unmerited grace as has been shown to us. It is such a pure Gift I wait for, borne out of God’s radical sacrifice that warrants from me a life of radical gratitude, even when I choose to live it out a little quietly, making hay and raising tomatoes.
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Light and wind are running over the headed grass as though the hill had melted and now flowed. ~Wendell Berry “June Wind” from New Collected Poems
The rain to the wind said, ‘You push and I’ll pelt.’ They so smote the garden bed That the flowers actually knelt, And lay lodged–though not dead. I know how the flowers felt. ~Robert Frost “Lodged”
All that I serve will die, all my delights, the flesh kindled from my flesh, garden and field, the silent lilies standing in the woods, the woods, the hill, the whole earth, all will burn in man’s evil, or dwindle in its own age. Let the world bring on me the sleep of darkness without stars, so I may know my little light taken from me into the seed of the beginning and the end, so I may bow to mystery, and take my stand on the earth like a tree in a field, passing without haste or regret toward what will be, my life a patient willing descent into the grass. ~Wendell Berry “The Wish to be Generous” from Collected Poems
The abundant grasses in the surrounding hay fields were hit hard with heavy rainfall and wind yesterday, collapsing under the weight of the pelting moisture. Countless four foot tall tender stems are now lodged and flattened in undulating bent-over waves of green, embracing the earth from which they arose. If the rain continues as predicted over the next several days, the grass may not recover, unable to dry out enough to stand upright again, nor are the fields dry enough to bring tractors and equipment to the rescue.
It is ironic to lose a crop from too much of a good thing– lush growth demands, but often cannot withstand, quenching rains. It has matured too fast, rising up too lush, too overcome with itself so that it can no longer stand. The grass keels over in community, broken and crumpled, likely now unsuitable for cutting or baling into hay, and unless chopped quickly into silage to ferment for winter cattle feed, it must melt back into the soil again.
However–if there are dry spells amid the showers over the next few days, with a breeze to lift the soaked heads and squeeze out the wet sponge created by layered forage–the lodged crop may survive and rise back up. It may be raised and lifted again, pushing up to meet the sun, its stems strengthening and straightening.
What once was so heavy laden and down-trodden might lighten; what was silent could once again move and sing and wave with the wind.
The hill pasture, an open place among the trees, tilts into the valley. The clovers and tall grasses are in bloom. Along the foot of the hill dark floodwater moves down the river. The sun sets. Ahead of nightfall the birds sing. I have climbed up to water the horses and now sit and rest, high on the hillside, letting the day gather and pass. Below me cattle graze out across the wide fields of the bottomlands, slow and preoccupied as stars. In this world men are making plans, wearing themselves out, spending their lives, in order to kill each other. ~Wendell Berry “In This World” from Farming: A Handbook
What stood will stand, though all be fallen, The good return that time has stolen. Though creatures groan in misery, Their flesh prefigures liberty To end travail and bring to birth Their new perfection in new earth. At word of that enlivening Let the trees of the woods all sing And every field rejoice, let praise Rise up out of the ground like grass. What stood, whole in every piecemeal Thing that stood, will stand though all Fall–field and woods and all in them Rejoin the primal Sabbath’s hymn. ~Wendell Berry, from “Sabbaths” (North Point Press, 1987).
From The Nicene Creed
Et expecto resurrectionem motuorum. Et vitam venturi saeculi. Amen. Alleluia.
And I look for the resurrection of the dead, And the life of the world to come. Amen. Alleluia
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Lined with light the twigs are stubby arrows. A gilded trunk writhes Upward from the roots, from the pit of the black tentacles.
In the book of spring a bare-limbed torso is the first illustration.
Light teaches the tree to beget leaves, to embroider itself all over with green reality, until summer becomes its steady portrait and birds bring their lifetime to the boughs.
Then even the corpse light copies from below may shimmer, dreaming it feels the cheeks of blossom. ~May Swenson “April Light”
For over two years, we have been surrounded by a shimmering corpse light hovering close, masked and wary when we needed each other most.
Even so, the world is not defeated by death.
An unprecedented illumination emerged from the tomb on a bright Sabbath morning to guarantee that we struggling people, we who became no more than bare twigs and stubs, we who feel at times hardly alive, are now begetting green, ready to burst into blossom, our glowing cheeks pink with life, a picture of our future fruitfulness.
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Out of the nursery and into the garden where it rooted and survived its first hard winter, then a few years of freedom while it blossomed, put out its first tentative branches, withstood the insects and the poisons for insects, developed strange ideas about its height and suffered the pruning of its quirks and clutters, its self-indulgent thrusts and the infighting of stems at cross purposes year after year. Each April it forgot why it couldn’t do what it had to do, and always after blossoms, fruit, and leaf-fall, was shown once more what simply couldn’t happen.
Its oldest branches now, the survivors carved by knife blades, rain, and wind, are sending shoots straight up, blood red, into the light again. ~David Wagoner “The Cherry Tree”
A stone’s throw from an abandoned homestead foundation leans an ancient cherry tree, bent by countless storms and prunings, its northern half now bare, yet from the southern half dangles clusters of sweet century old promises.
Once orchard lifeblood of this farm, its fruit picked for farmers’ market an early dawn hour’s wagon ride to town; now broken down, forgotten until this week of fruitful surrender.
Already, but not yet finished, roots still reaching deep for one more season; a faithful cycle blooming forth with budding life from gnarled knots to soon yield glorious from weary dying branches.
Hundreds of glistening amber globes of rosy sheen cling clustered on crooked lichened limbs, to be gathered heaping into bowls of gold, awaiting ecstatic burst of savored perfection, fulfilling an old promise of sweet abandon.
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All changed, changed utterly: A terrible beauty is born. ~William Butler Yeats from “Easter, 1916”
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”
It has been a slow coming of spring this year, seeming in no hurry whatsoever. Snow, sleet and hail fell on our farm just this past week with the mountains piled high with white and the greening of the fields yet to begin.
The soil is too cold and damp to plant and our animals want to hang onto their winter hair, reluctant to give it up in chill winds.
Like Narnia, winter still has its terrible grip on us – and not just in terms of weather trends. We live in a world at war and we as individuals continue to find ways to argue among ourselves after a two year pandemic.
So here we are, frozen in a darkened world, thawed by a Risen Son who shines and actually warms us from our prolonged dormancy.
This is exactly what eastering is. It is awakening out of a restless sleep, opening the door to let in fresh air, and the heavy stone that locked us in the dark is now rolled back, never to cover us again.
Soon we shall reach the distant shining shore, Free from all the storms, we’ll rest forevermore. Safe within the veil, we’ll furl the riven sail, And the storm will all be over, Hallelujah!
We’ve had two days of intermittent chilly winds with rain and noisy hale storms. I wish I had not left the barn doors wide open after morning chores, as the storm also blew through the barn. Hay, empty buckets, horse halters and cat food were strewn about. The Haflinger horses stood wide-eyed and fretful in their stalls as the hail on the metal roof was deafening.
Once I got the doors closed and secured, all was soon made right. The horses relaxed and got back to their meals and things felt normal again.
The barn is still standing with the roof still on, the horses are where they belong and all seems to be as it was before the barnstorming wind.
Or so it might appear.
This wind heralds another storm beginning this week that hits with such force that I’m knocked off my feet, blown away, and left bruised and breathless. No latches, locks, or barricades are strong enough to protect me from what will come over the next few days.
Today he rides in on a donkey softly, humbly, and wept at what he knew must come.
Tomorrow he curses the fig tree that is all show with plenty of leaves, and no fruit. Then at the temple, he overturns the money-changers’ tables in His fury at their corruption of a holy place.
Tuesday he describes the destruction of Jerusalem that is to happen, yet no one understands.
Wednesday, a woman boldly anoints him with precious oil, as preparation.
On Thursday, he kneels before his friends, pours water over their dusty feet, presides over a simple meal, and later, abandoned, sweats blood in agonized prayer.
By Friday, all culminates in a most perfect storm, transforming everything in its path, leaving nothing untouched, the curtain torn, the veil removed.
The silence on Saturday is deafening.
Next Sunday, the Son rises, sheds his shroud and neatly folds what is no longer needed. He is nearly unrecognizable in his glory.
He calls my name, my heart burns within me at his words and I can never be the same again.
I am, once again, barnstormed to the depths of my soul. Doors flung open wide, my roof pulled off, everything of no consequence blown away and now replaced, renewed and reconciled.
The storm is passing over, again and yet again, year after year, life after life.
This year’s Lenten theme for Barnstorming is a daily selection from songs and hymns about Christ’s profound sacrifice on our behalf.
If we remain silent about Him, the stones themselves will shout out and start to sing (Luke 19:40).
In His name, may we sing…
Courage, my soul, and let us journey on, Tho’ the night is dark, it won’t be very long. Thanks be to God, the morning light appears, And the storm is passing over, Hallelujah!
Chorus: Hallelujah! Hallelujah! The storm is passing over, Hallelujah!
2. Billows rolling high, and thunder shakes the ground, Lightnings flash, and tempest all around, Jesus walks the sea and calms the angry waves, And the storm is passing over, Hallelujah! [Chorus]
3. The stars have disappeared, and distant lights are dim, My soul is filled with fears, the seas are breaking in. I hear the Master cry, “Be not afraid, ’tis I,” And the storm is passing over, Hallelujah! [Chorus]
4. Soon we shall reach the distant shining shore, Free from all the storms, we’ll rest forevermore. Safe within the veil, we’ll furl the riven sail, And the storm will all be over, Hallelujah! [Chorus]
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