Category: resurrection

An Old Barn Revived

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Just down the road… around the bend,
Stands an old empty barn; nearing the end.
It has sheltered no animals for many years;
No dairy cows, no horses, no sheep, no steers.
The neigh of a horse; the low of a cow;
Those sounds have been absent for some time now.
There was a time when the loft was full of hay,
And the resounding echoes of children at play.
At one time the paint was a bold shade of red;
Gradually faded by weather and the sun overhead.
The doors swing in the wind… the hinges are loose,
Windows and siding have taken a lot of abuse.
The fork, rope and pulleys lifted hay to the mow,
A task that always brought sweat to the brow.
But those good days are gone; forever it seems,
And that old barn now stands with sagging beams.
It is now home to pigeons, rats and mice;
The interior is tattered and doesn’t look very nice.
Old, abandoned barns have become a trend,
Just down the road… around the bend.
~Vance Oliphant “Old Barn”

photo by Nate Gibson
photo by Nate Gibson

There is something very lonely about a barn completely empty of its hay stores. Our old red hay barn had stood empty for several years; because of roof leaks and gaps in the walls, we and our neighbors who had used it for years to house a winter hay supply found other places to put our hay. The winter winds wore away its majesty: missing shingles tore away larger holes in the roof, the mighty beams providing foundational support started sinking and rotting in the ground, a gap opened in the sagging roof crest, and most devastating of all, two walls collapsed in a particularly harsh blow.

The old barn was in death throes after over one hundred years of history.

Its hollow interior echoed with a century of farmers’ voices:
soothing an upset cow during a difficult milking,
uncovering a litter of kittens high in a hay loft,
shouting orders to a steady workhorse,
singing a soft hymn while cleaning stalls,
startling out loud as a barn owl or bat flies low overhead.
Dust motes lazily drift by in the twilight,
seemingly forever suspended above the straw covered wood floor, floating protected from the cooling evening breezes

There was no heart beat left in this dying barn. It was in full arrest, all life blood drained out, vital signs flat lined. I could hardly bear to go inside much less take pictures of its deteriorating shell.

We had people show up at our front door offering to demolish it for the lumber, now all the fad for expensive modern “vintage” look in new house construction. A photo of our barn showed up in local media declaring “another grand old barn in the county has met its end.” That stung. Meanwhile we were saving our money, waiting until we could afford to bring our old red barn back to life.

It started with one strong young man digging out the support posts to locate the rot. Then another remarkable young man was able to jack up the posts one by one, putting in reinforcing steel and concrete and straightening the gaping sagging roof line, providing the old barn with its first ever foundation.

And then a crew of two men replaced the damaged roof and absent walls with metal siding. The barn became whole again.

There was a lot of clean up left to do inside: decades of old hay build up and damaged lumber and untold numbers of abandoned mouse nests and scattered barn owl pellets.

The barn had been shocked back to a pulse like in its “heyday” – the throb of voices, music blaring, dust and pollen flying chaotically, the rattle of the electric “elevator” hauling bales from wagon to loft, the grunts and groans of the crew as they heft and heave the bales into place in the stack. It will go on late into the night, the barn ablaze with lights, the barnyard buzzing with excitement and activity.

It once again has served as the back up sanctuary on Easter morning when we were rained out up on the hill for Sunrise Service.

Now vital signs are measurable, rhythm restored, volume depletion reversed, prognosis good for another 100 years.

Another old barn has been resuscitated back to life when so many are left to die. It is revived and breathing on its own again. Its floor will creak with the weight of the hay bales and walls will groan with the pressure of stacks.

I must remember there is always hope for the shattered and weary and frail among us. If an old barn can be saved, then so can we.

So can we.

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A Seed of Belief

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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

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The Grey Crossing

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“Your attention, please,” the mate’s voice says,
“we are slowing a moment for a memorial,”
and sure enough we all do, all of us, even those
entangled in a bustle to get to the other side,
restless chunks of festering business waiting,
little urgencies pricking us into a stressed huff.
Below on the car deck a small group slowly forms,
and a mate lowers a rope, beckons them forward,
the ferry engines slowing whatever our hurry,
and we are all coasting together on a rainy sea.

A heavy-set woman unwraps a nondescript urn
from a carefully held towel, handing it in turn
to an ungainly boy, a shy girl, an older man,
and she watches as each tips the urn to scatter
dust into a windy vortex off the ferry’s stern,
a fine grey mist streaming over the roiled wake
in a high breeze before settling, disappearing
into grey oblivion of sea, sky, and late afternoon.

As the ferry’s horn sounds three long blasts,
the four bow heads. The woman hesitates,
hides her face a moment in the towel, kisses
each of her party, and shakes the mate’s hand.
He speaks, his words lost to us in sea sounds
and engines, then looks up to the bridge, waves,
and the small group, holding hands, rejoins
some two hundred of us who have in silence
watched this mini-delay in our grey crossing.
The ferry’s engines begin their normal thrum
to push us forward again against a grey sea
and under a low, grey sky, where a fine dust
disappeared, and white seagulls rise and cry.
~Rob Jacques, “Memorial, Washington State Ferry” from Adagio for Su Tung-p’o

There is a sense of timelessness while riding on the ferry runs between the islands and peninsulas in Washington state. While driving my car on the busy freeways in the region, I am at the mercy of the weather, other drivers and all manner of delays. When I’m on a ferry, I become mere witness, only a rider seeking peaceful passage. Someone else worries about safely getting from Point A to Point B.

I’m able to breathe: watching the waves and the wake, the antics of gulls and cormorants, and rarely, an orca pod.

Next week is a time of memorial and remembrance of those who have passed into eternity. The ashes of my parents rest in the ground under a plaque that I visit annually with my family. Dad would have preferred his ashes to be cast out upon on the open water that he loved, but Mom chose a cemetery plot for them both, a more familiar resting place for a girl who grew up in the Palouse farmlands, no where near large bodies of water.

Last year, a good friend chose to be composted; he rests now in his beloved orchard, feeding the trees that continue to bear fruit.

No matter where our mortal bodies eventually find our rest, we hope to be remembered.

Our souls have risen, free.

video taken on the Samish Sea (Puget Sound) from my friend Andrew
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As If Living in a Prayer

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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.

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An Everlasting Quietness

barnstormingblog3 Comments

The simple words no longer work.
Neither do the grand ones.
Something about
The hanging bits of dark
Mixed with your hair.
The everlasting quietness
Attached to the deserted barn
Made me think I’d discovered you
But you already knew all about yourself
As we stood on the edge of a forest
With your dress as languid as the air,
The day made of spring wind and daffodils.
Then the sky appeared in blue patches
Among slow clouds,
Oak leaves came out on the trees,
Grass suddenly became green,
Filled with small animals that sing.
All the parts of spring were gathering,
The earth was being created all over again
One piece at a time
Just for you.
~Tom Hennen “Found on the Earth” From Darkness Sticks To Everything

I’m waking from wintry doldrums,
to earlier mornings, longer evenings,
healing from weeks of cold and weariness.

It is as if all has been rebirthed,
vivid with light and songs and color and smells –
I cannot imagine not sharing it all.

This renewal feels so personal,
as if just for me –
yet I know others are waking too.

I face the morning sun in silence,
my eyelids closed and glowing,
warming in the light.

So I offer up this blessed cup of quiet,
steeped and ready to pour out,
just for you.

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Let Me Go There…

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And God held in his hand
A small globe. Look, he said.
The son looked. Far off,
As through water, he saw
A scorched land of fierce
Colour. The light burned
There; crusted buildings
Cast their shadows; a bright
Serpent, a river
Uncoiled itself, radiant
With slime.
                        On a bare
Hill a bare tree saddened
The sky. Many people
Held out their thin arms
To it, as though waiting
For a vanished April
To return to its crossed
Boughs. The son watched
Them. Let me go there, he said.
~R.S. Thomas “The Coming”

You have answered
us with the image of yourself
on a hewn tree, suffering
injustice, pardoning it;
pointing as though in either
direction; horrifying us
with the possibility of dislocation.
Ah, love, with your arms out
wide, tell us how much more
they must still be stretched
to embrace a universe drawing
away from us at the speed of light.
~R.S.Thomas “Tell Us”

“Let me go there”
And You did. Knowing what awaited You.

Your arms out wide
to embrace us
who try to grasp
a heaven which eludes us.

This heaven, Your heaven
You brought down to us,
knowing our terrible need.

You wanted to come here,
knowing all this.

Holding us firmly
within your wounded grip,
You the Son
handed us back to heaven.

Mostly months of dirt rows
Plain and unnoticed.
Could be corn, could be beans
Could be anything;
Drive-by fly-over dull.

Yet April ignites an explosion:
Dazzling retinal hues
Singed and scorched, crying
Grateful tears for such as this
Grounded rainbow on Earth

Transient, incandescent
Brilliance hoped for.
Remembered in dreams,
Promises realized,
Housed in crystal before shattering.

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Not So Sure…

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The roofs are shining from the rain,
The sparrows twitter as they fly,
And with a windy April grace
The little clouds go by.

Yet the back yards are bare and brown
With only one unchanging tree–
I could not be so sure of Spring
Save that it sings in me.
–  Sara Teasdale, “April”

The snow piles in dark places are gone.
Pools by the railroad tracks shine clear.
The gravel of all shallow places shines.
A white pigeon reels and somersaults.

Frogs plutter and squdge-and frogs beat the air with a recurring thin steel sliver of melody.
Crows go in fives and tens;
they march their black feathers past a blue pool;
they celebrate an old festival.
A spider is trying his webs,
a pink bug sits on my hand washing his forelegs.
I might ask: Who are these people? 
~Carl Sandburg from “Just Before April Came”

And so Spring asks:

Who are these people?

Here we are, closing in on mid-April and our weather continues to be unpredictable.  I am not so sure of Spring.

Yet it sings in me.  Yes it sings.

The calendar does not lie, nor does my nose.  The pollen counts are rising despite the rains and as I step outside in early dawn, I can catch the slightest fragrance of just-opening cherry and apple blossoms in the orchard.  Within a week there will be sweet perfume in the air everywhere and the fruit trees become clothed in white puffy clouds of blossom before bursting full into green.

In defiance of the calendar, our oak trees cling stubbornly to their brown bedraggled fall leaves as if ashamed to ever appear naked, even for a week. In May they will go straight from brown to green without a moment of bare knobby branches.

Even so, it sings in me.  Yes it sings.

A morning bird symphony tunes up ever earlier including the “scree” and chatter from bald eagles high up in the fir trees surrounding our house. Nesting has begun despite the wet and cold and wind because their nest is the secure home that calls them back, again and again, year after year.

Like them, it sings in me.  Yes it sings.

I rise opening like a bud,
I dress my nakedness to cover up my knobbiness,
I wander about outside exulting in the free concert,
I manage to do chores despite the distractions —
this routine of mine which is so unchanging through the calendar days becomes glorious gift and privilege.

Hopefulness sings in me in Spring.  Yes it sings.

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A World Made New

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When I take the chilly tools
from the shed’s darkness, I come
out to a world made new
by heat and light.

Like a mad red brain
the involute rhubarb leaf
thinks its way up
through loam.
~Jane Kenyon from “April Chores” from Collected Poems

Over the last two weeks, the garden is slowly reviving, and rhubarb “brains” have been among the first to appear from the garden soil, wrinkled and folded, opening full of potential, “thinking” their way into the April sunlight.

Here I am, wishing my own brain could similarly rise brand new and tender every spring from the dust rather than leathery and weather-toughened, harboring the same old thoughts and patterns. Indeed, more wrinkles accumulate on the outside of my skull rather than the inside.

Still, I’m encouraged by my rhubarb cousin’s return every April. Like me, it may be a little sour in need of some sweetening, but its blood courses bright red and it is very very much alive.

and just because this is fun but has nothing to do with rhubarb…

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A Hush Now

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There is a hush now while the hills rise up
and God is going to sleep. He trusts the ship
of Heaven to take over and proceed beautifully
as he lies dreaming in the lap of the world.
He knows the owls will guard the sweetness
of the soul in their massive keep of silence,
looking out with eyes open or closed over
the length of Tomales Bay that the egrets
conform to, whitely broad in flight, white
and slim in standing. God, who thinks about
poetry all the time, breathes happily as He
repeats to Himself: there are fish in the net,
lots of fish this time in the net of the heart.
~Linda Gregg “Fishing in the Keep of Silence” from All of It Singing.

The second before the sun went out we saw a wall of dark shadow come speeding at us. We no sooner saw it than it was upon us, like thunder. It roared up the valley. It slammed our hill and knocked us out. It was the monstrous swift shadow cone of the moon. I have since read that this wave of shadow moves 1,800 miles an hour. Language can give no sense of this sort of speed—1,800 miles an hour. It was 195 miles wide. No end was in sight—you saw only the edge. It rolled at you across the land at 1,800 miles an hour, hauling darkness like plague behind it. Seeing it, and knowing it was coming straight for you, was like feeling a slug of anesthetic shoot up your arm. If you think very fast, you may have time to think, “Soon it will hit my brain.” You can feel the deadness race up your arm; you can feel the appalling, inhuman speed of your own blood. We saw the wall of shadow coming, and screamed before it hit.

This was the universe about which we have read so much and never before felt: the universe as a clockwork of loose spheres flung at stupefying, unauthorized speeds. How could anything moving so fast not crash, not veer from its orbit amok like a car out of control on a turn?

Less than two minutes later, when the sun emerged, the trailing edge of the shadow cone sped away. It coursed down our hill and raced eastward over the plain, faster than the eye could believe; it swept over the plain and dropped over the planet’s rim in a twinkling. It had clobbered us, and now it roared away. We blinked in the light. It was as though an enormous, loping god in the sky had reached down and slapped the Earth’s face.

When the sun appeared as a blinding bead on the ring’s side, the eclipse was over. The black lens cover appeared again, back-lighted, and slid away. At once the yellow light made the sky blue again; the black lid dissolved and vanished. The real world began there. I remember now: We all hurried away.

We never looked back. It was a general vamoose … but enough is enough. One turns at last even from glory itself with a sigh of relief. From the depths of mystery, and even from the heights of splendor, we bounce back and hurry for the latitudes of home.
~Annie Dillard from her essay  “Total Eclipse” in The Atlantic about the February 1979 eclipse in Washington State

In February 1979, I was working as a medical student on an inpatient psychiatric unit in a large hospital in Seattle, less than a hundred miles from the band of total eclipse Annie Dillard describes above happening just to the south.

Our clinical team had tried to prepare our mostly psychotic and paranoid schizophrenic patients for what was about to happen outside that morning.

Our patients were much more anxious than usual, pacing and wringing their hands as the light outside slowly faded, with high noon transformed gradually to an oddly shadowy dusk. The street lights turned on automatically and cars moved about with headlights shining.

We all stood at the windows in the hospital perched high on a hill, watching the city become dark as night in the middle of the day. Our unstable patients were sure the world was ending and certain they had caused it to happen. Extra doses of medication were dispensed as needed while the light faded away and then slowly returned to the streets outside. Within an hour the sunlight was fully back, and many of our patients were napping soundly, safe in the heart of the net we had thrown over them to protect them.

A hush had fallen over us all as we watched the light go out and then return. We were safe.

We all breathed a sigh of relief, having witnessed such transient glory from the heavens. We did not cause it but a Power far greater did. The eclipse swept – a racing shadow followed by restoration of light – the edge of our sanity to accept that our light can indeed be taken away. 

For some, they live their whole lives consumed by shadow.

Miraculously, the Light has been returned to us in this shining night. We may not be able to look it in the Face —  simply too blinding — but we need never dwell in darkness again.

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Anything is Possible

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I planted the daffodils in early fall,
never thinking much about it.
Having planted so many fall seasons,
one year fell away from another.

During the year, you died.
I thought too much of it—
all we never did together;
it was too late to get more days back.

Sooner or later, grief buried itself deeper
and deeper. My heart needed rest.
There is a love that tears us to pieces
like yellow petals of grief.

And then one day, minding my business,
I pass by where the daffodils were.
I remembered that you had loved them,
and you came back to me.

Do not say second chances are not possible;
surely as one daffodil is different than another,
each launching silent boats of forgiveness,
anything is possible.
~Martin Willitts Jr., “Daffodils in Light – Narcissus Poeticus” from Leave Nothing Behind

Fair Daffodils, we weep to see
You haste away so soon;
As yet the early-rising sun
Has not attain’d his noon.

Stay, stay,
Until the hasting day
Has run
But to the even-song;
And, having pray’d together, we
Will go with you along.
 
We have short time to stay, as you,
We have as short a spring;
As quick a growth to meet decay,
As you, or anything.

We die
As your hours do, and dry
Away,
Like to the summer’s rain;
Or as the pearls of morning’s dew,
Ne’er to be found again.
~Robert Herrick “To Daffodils”

Thou yellow trumpeter of laggard Spring!
Thou herald of rich Summer’s myriad flowers!
The climbing sun with new recovered powers
Does warm thee into being, through the ring
Of rich, brown earth he woos thee, makes thee fling
Thy green shoots up, inheriting the dowers
Of bending sky and sudden, sweeping showers,
Till ripe and blossoming thou art a thing
To make all nature glad, thou art so gay;
To fill the lonely with a joy untold;
Nodding at every gust of wind to-day,
To-morrow jewelled with raindrops. Always bold
To stand erect, full in the dazzling play
Of April’s sun, for thou hast caught his gold.
~Amy Lowell “To An Early Daffodil”

Our farm was owned by the Lawrence family over one hundred years ago. At some point, perhaps as a remembrance of a loved one who passed, someone decided to bury daffodil bulbs scattered around the yard. All these decades later, dozens of faithful heralds of spring still come up as the sun and extra hours of light call them forth. Some years they bloom in February, but most typically they wait for a more predictable welcome from the weather in March.

They are very tender, easily injured by a strong wind, heavy rain or hailstorm or late snowfall – mostly an old antique variety of fluffy double blooms, but some traditional trumpet blossoms still come up called forth by the calling of the geese and swans passing over far above them.

For me, their blooming with abandon is a reminder of faithfulness and persistence, especially because of the 44 weeks per year they remain silent and buried out of sight. I have a general sense where they will appear each February, but am still surprised and impressed when they do push up through the icy ground. I walk around them carefully, knowing I could crush them with one firm inadvertent boot step if I am not cautious.

Once the daffodils are blooming, they encourage my hope that anything is possible: a promise of the spring just ahead. When the blooms wither and fade, the green spiky stems must gather the strength the bulb needs for another cycle of dormancy, so I mow around them to allow as much time as needed to replenish before disappearing underground again.

I still don’t understand how these gentle blooms somehow manage to pull me down with them into the bulb, waiting my turn alongside them buried deep in the dark. Perhaps it is because God plants each one of us here in His holy ground, to await the ultimate wakening that calls us forth to bloom everlasting.

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