There is not one blade of grass, there is no color in this world that is not intended to make us rejoice. ~John Calvinas quoted in John Calvin: A Sixteenth Century Portrait (Oxford, 1988)byWilliam J. Bouwsma
It is too easy to become blinded to the glory surrounding us if we allow it to seem routine and commonplace.
I can’t remember the last time I celebrated a blade of grass, given how focused I am in mowing it into conformity and submission.
During the summer months, I’m seldom up early enough to witness the pink sunrise. In the winter, I’m too busy making dinner to take time to watch the sun paint the sky red as it sets.
I miss opportunities to stop and notice what surrounds me innumerable times a day. It takes only a moment of recognition and appreciation to feel the joy, and for that moment time stands still. So life stretches a little longer when I stop to acknowledge the intention of creation as an endless reservoir of rejoicing.
If a blade of grass, if a palette of color, if all this is made for joy, then perhaps, so am I. Even colorless, commonplace, sometimes stormy me. Indeed, so am I.
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The old church leans awry and looks quite odd, But it is beautiful to us, and God. ~Stephen Paulus “The Old Church”
A little aside from the main road, becalmed in a last-century greyness, there is the chapel, ugly, without the appeal to the tourist to stop his car and visit it. The traffic goes by, and the river goes by, and quick shadows of clouds, too, and the chapel settles a little deeper into the grass.
But here once on an evening like this, in the darkness that was about his hearers, a preacher caught fire and burned steadily before them with a strange light, so that they saw the splendour of the barren mountains about them and sang their amens fiercely, narrow but saved in a way that men are not now. ~R.S. Thomas “The Chapel”
It’s just a boarded-up shack with a tower Under the blazing summer sky On a back road seldom traveled Where the shadows of tall trees Graze peacefully like a row of gallows…
The congregation may still be at prayer. Farm folk from flyspecked photos Standing in rows with their heads bowed As if listening to your approaching steps. So slow they are, you must be asking yourself How come we are here one minute And in the very next gone forever? Try the locked door, then knock once.
High above you, there is the leaning spire Still feeling the blow of the last storm. And then the silence of the afternoon . . . Even the unbeliever must feel its force. ~Charles Simic, from “Wooden Church” from The Voice at 3:00 A.M.
The church knelt heavy above us as we attended Sunday School, circled by age group and hunkered on little wood folding chairs where we gave our nickels, said our verses, heard the stories, sang the solid, swinging songs.
It could have been God above in the pews, His restless love sifting with dust from the joists. We little seeds swelled in the stone cellar, bursting to grow toward the light.
Maybe it was that I liked how, upstairs, outside, an avid sun stormed down, burning the sharp- edged shadows back to their buildings, or how the winter air knifed after the dreamy basement.
Maybe the day we learned whatever would have kept me believing I was just watching light poke from the high, small window and tilt to the floor where I could make it a gold strap on my shoe, wrap my ankle, embrace any part of me. ~Maureen Ash “Church Basement”
Mom, You raised your hands while we sang this morning like I’ve never known you to, but I guess until recently I’ve never really known you in a church that let you feel alive.
There is so much wrong with churches overall, comprised as they are of fallen people with broken wings and fractured faith. We who look odd and lean awry, so keen to find flaws in one another when we are already cracked open and spilling with our own.
Yet what is right with the church is Who we pray to, why we sing and absorb the Word- we are visible people joined together as a body so bloodied, so bruised, yet being healed despite our thoroughly motley messiness.
Our Lord of Heaven and Earth rains down His restless love upon our heads no matter how humble a building we worship in, or how we look or feel today.
We are simply grateful to be alive, eating a meal together, mourning those we have lost, coming together to raise our hands, to kneel and bow in a humble house God calls His very own.
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The old church leans nearby a well-worn road, Upon a hill that has no grass or tree, The winds from off the prairie now unload The dust they bring around it fitfully.
The path that leads up to the open door Is worn and grayed by many toiling feet Of us who listen to the Bible lore And once again the old-time hymns repeat.
And ev’ry Sabbath morning we are still Returning to the altar waiting there. A hush, a prayer, a pause, and voices fill The Master’s House with a triumphant air.
The old church leans awry and looks quite odd, But it is beautiful to us and God. ~Stephen Paulus
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sphere of pillowed sky one faceless gathering of blue...
… I’m tethered, and devoted to your raw and lonely bloom
my lavish need to drink your world of crowded cups to fill. ~Tara Bray “hydrangea” from Image Journal
Like in old cans of paint the last green hue, these leaves are sere and rough and dull-complected behind the blossom clusters in which blue is not so much displayed as it’s reflected;
They do reflect it imprecise and teary, as though they’d rather have it go away, and just like faded, once blue stationery, they’re tinged with yellow, violet and gray;
As in an often laundered children’s smock, cast off, its usefulness now all but over, one senses running down a small life’s clock.
Yet suddenly the blue revives, it seems, and in among these clusters one discovers a tender blue rejoicing in the green. ~Rainer Maria Rilke “Blue Hydrangea” Translation by Bernhard Frank
Dwelling within a mosaic of dying colors, these petals fold and collapse under the weight of the sky’s tears.
This hydrangea bears a rainbow of hues, once-vibrant promises of blue now fading to rusts and grays.
I know what this is like: the running out of the clock, feeling the limits of vitality.
Withering and drying, I’m drawn, thirsty for the beauty, to this waning artist’s palette.
To quench my thirst: from an open cup, an invitation, an everlasting visual sacrament.
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Obscurely yet most surely called to praise, As sometimes summer calls us all, I said The hills are heavens full of branching ways Where star-nosed moles fly overhead the dead; I said the trees are mines in air, I said See how the sparrow burrows in the sky! And then I wondered why this mad instead Perverts our praise to uncreation, why Such savour’s in this wrenching things awry. Does sense so stale that it must needs derange The world to know it? To a praiseful eye Should it not be enough of fresh and strange That trees grow green, and moles can course in clay, And sparrows sweep the ceiling of our day? ~Richard Wilbur “Praise in Summer”
It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we. ~G.K.Chesterton from Orthodoxy
I need no help to imagine this world feels upside down much of the time. When I read the headlines, I have difficulty understanding how anything makes any sense anymore.
Creation inversed: the birds somehow soar through the earth beneath us and the moles and mushrooms are populating the clouds. Instead of stars in the sky, there are innumerable molehills gracing the hillside. We are all mixed up in our perspective, turning creation on its head.
Thank goodness and thank God that everything is put back where it belongs when we are in sore need of reorientation. When we forget our purpose in creation, He reminds us by restoring predictable order and rhythms. When we destroy, He heals and protects. When we get bored with how things are – desperate for innovation and excitement in our attempt to turn the world upside down – He demonstrates contentment with how things were created, and turns it back to right again.
There is enough to keep us busy in this world: crazy weather, global pandemics, volcanic eruptions and quaking ground. We don’t need to complicate an already complicated creation with our designed messes.
We’re meant to admire the birds’ soaring in the skies and appreciate that grubs and gophers course through the soil beneath us. We can praise the sun as it rises each morning and the moon’s varied journey at night – so predictable and reliable and meant to be that way from the very beginning.
Keep it going, God. Do it again.
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Toward the end of August I begin to dream about fall, how this place will empty of people, the air will get cold and leaves begin to turn. Everything will quiet down, everything will become a skeleton of its summer self. Toward
the end of August I get nostalgic for what’s to come, for that quiet time, time alone, peace and stillness, calm, all those things the summer doesn’t have. The woodshed is already full, the kindling’s in, the last of the garden soon
will be harvested, and then there will be nothing left to do but watch fall play itself out, the earth freeze, winter come. ~David Budbill “Toward the End of August”
As the calendar page flips to September this morning, I feel sad for what we leave behind, while knowing what is coming.
Summer is filled with so much overwhelming activity due to 18 hours of daylight accompanying weeks of unending sunny weather resulting in never-enough-sleep. Waking on a summer morning is brim full with possibilities: there are places to go, people who visit, new things to explore and of course, a garden and orchard bearing and fruiting out of control.
As early September days usher us toward autumn, our older grandchildren will adjust to a more predictable routine of school days, ripe with learning opportunities. Great teachers will lead them into vast new worlds of knowledge.
My teacher friend Bonnie coordinates an innovative introduction to fifth grade by asking her students, with some parental assistance, to make (from scratch) their own personalized school desks that will go home with them at the end of the school year. These students create their own learning center with both brains and hands, applying wood-burned and painted designs, with inspirational quotes for daily encouragement. Their desks represent a solid reminder of what they leave behind each year, while striving to become something new.
And so it goes, year after year.
I am wistful about September’s quiet commencement despite no school or job to return to. There is a cool freshness in the air as breezes begin to pluck and toss a few drying leaves from the trees.
I watch the days play themselves out. No longer do I feel I must direct each moment.
And so it goes, and so it goes. And you are the only one who knows.
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a trace of peace. ~Christian Wiman “Prayer” from Once in the West
We all have times when nothing makes sense. The mind blurs with stress or fear or a sense of unreality – all focus is lost and the world becomes simultaneously fuzzy and prickly.
If that happens here in these pages, through these words and photos I share, it is because I need reminding: things often don’t make sense to me when tragedy, pain and suffering happen to people on the other side of the earth, or just down the road from here, or to those I love.
Or to me.
It still makes sense to God. He has clear vision I will never have.
He doesn’t make bad things happen; He grieves it too. He is the focus when all else is blurry.
God calls to us out of the haze that obscures. Only then peace begins.
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A gang of crows was chasing off a hawk. The little stream was laughing and shushing itself. The hawk’s reflection briefly blurred a pool of water and then the pool went back to waiting for nothing or the next reflection. The maple trees were yellow and red, but redder farther up the stream. I wanted especially to share the cloud of redder leaves upstream with the little girl I had with me, but she was sleeping. Walking home, I thought the willow trees around the pond were standing up like brooms to sweep the sky. That was the voice in my head describing the willow trees as brooms, a thought to stop the world for a moment’s moment. She might have thought the willows looked like lashes winking around a deep-green eye, but as I say, she was asleep for this excursion in the world. And she hasn’t told me yet about the voice inside her head. For the moment that voice is learning how to listen to its own mysterious silence. I expect it’s like a sanctuary in there with a candle glowing at the back of the room and violets dotting the grass outside. ~Maurice Manning “Violets in the Fall” from Snakedoctor
My internal voice remains a mystery.
Although I know the silent words I perceive are my own thoughts, there are times when I wonder it that voice is coming from a place deeper than my own brain’s meanderings. Mostly it feels like running commentary about what is happening around me.
I can be surprised though.
A word I seldom use will pop up in my thoughts, with wonder or puzzlement – where did that come from and why now? Perhaps my voice is not just mine alone…
I do aim for an expectant inner stillness. without being asleep to the world. Quieting a busy brain isn’t easy. We need to retreat often to an internal sanctuary of calm, with gentleness and self-kindness, and just enough illumination to light the way to a bit of insight and a wisp of wisdom.
I’ll keep the candle glowing in the back.
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In my beginning is my end. Now the light falls Across the open field, leaving the deep lane Shuttered with branches, dark in the afternoon…
The dahlias sleep in the empty silence. Wait for the early owl.
Dawn points, and another day Prepares for heat and silence. Out at sea the dawn wind Wrinkles and slides. I am here Or there, or elsewhere. In my beginning.
Home is where one starts from. As we grow older the world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated Of dead and living. Not the intense moment Isolated, with no before and after, But a lifetime burning in every moment And not the lifetime of one man only But of old stones that cannot be deciphered. There is a time for the evening under starlight, A time for the evening under lamplight
Love is most nearly itself When here and now cease to matter. ~T. S. Eliot, verses from “East Coker” in Four Quartets
I’m reminded daily of my limited point of view; I can scarcely peer past the end of my nose. It takes a special kind of vision to see the young barn owl, still covered with downy blonde feathers, sitting among the stones outside its big barn home.
How can I possibly begin to understand the increasing complexity of the world around me as I try to look beyond, behind and through the here and now right in front of me?
I’m not alone. For uncounted generations, people have sought answers when confronted with the indecipherable mysteries of existence. We create massive monuments to the living and the dead to honor, appease and somehow maintain access to them.
We make up our own stories to explain the inexplicable rather than seeing and listening to what has been handed to us.
The Word as given is all the story we need.
All shall be revealed – still, we wait and wait as our lifetime burns through every moment, watching the Light illuminate our darkness as Love is laid down as never before.
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photo of our friends’ bedroom after a particularly bad windstorm
Of course, there are no guarantees about how a particular day is going to go — no matter how selfless we are, how devout our practices, how righteous we appear in others’ eyes.
A natural disaster can still happen, an illness gets worse, the unexpected bad stuff still happens because there is no extended service warranty on how things are supposed to go.
What is guaranteed is our vision of God’s glory as portrayed through His infinite sacrifice, His infinite worth, His infinite value, His infinite presence and transcendence. We glorify him through our enjoyment of Him — right now, right here — celebrating the bonus of another morning, another noon, another evening. It is bonus, and not anything we are owed.
What is my only comfort in life and in death? That I am not my own, but belong —body and soul, in life and in death— to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ. Heidelberg Catechism Question and Answer 1
“Supposing it didn’t” — says our Lord (and we are comforted by this) but even if it did … even if it did – as awful things sometimes do – we are never abandoned.
He is with us always and guaranteed glorious. Unlimited warranty.
We who long to be cherished…are.
The God who made you adores and desires you deeply. His words to Jesus, “This is my beloved Son, whom I love; with Him I am well pleased” (Matthew 3:17), are also directed toward you as you rest by faith in Christ.
And guess what? Even when you feel that this is all too good to be true…
I thought of happiness, how it is woven Out of the silence in the empty house each day And how it is not sudden and it is not given But is creation itself like the growth of a tree. No one has seen it happen, but inside the bark Another circle is growing in the expanding ring. No one has heard the root go deeper in the dark, But the tree is lifted by this inward work And its plumes shine, and its leaves are glittering.
For what is happiness but growth in peace, And as the air moves, so the old dreams stir The shining leaves of present happiness? No one has heard thought or listened to a mind, But where people have lived in inwardness The air is charged with blessing and does bless; Windows look out on mountains and the walls are kind. ~ May Sarton, from “The Work of Happiness” in Collected Poems, 1930-1993
The settled happiness and security which we all desire, God withholds from us by the very nature of the world: but joy, pleasure, and merriment, he has scattered broadcast. We are never safe, but we have plenty of fun, and some ecstasy. It is not hard to see why.
The security we crave would teach us to rest our hearts in this world and oppose an obstacle to our return to God: a few moments of happy love, a landscape, a symphony, a merry meeting with our friends, a bath or a football match, have no such tendency.
Our Father refreshes us on the journey with some pleasant inns, but will not encourage us to mistake them for home. ~C.S. Lewis from The Problem of Pain
I am reminded every day, as headlines proclaim bad news: this is not our home. I am only a wayfarer, not a settler.
Just like the distress of my four year old grandson, staying overnight and waking with a bad dream, appearing at my bedside at 3 AM, saying simply “I need a hug!”
We need reassurance that all this scary stuff is not forever.
Sometimes I lose focus on the “why” of my journey on this troubled earth: so much of my time and energy is understandably spent seeking safety and security, striving on a journey I hope will be filled with happiness, joy and contentment, as if that is my ultimate destination and purpose.
Yet the nature of a fallen world filled with faltering souls such as myself leads me down boulder-strewn paths filled with potholes and sheer cliffs and yes, bad dreams.
At times nowhere feels safe or secure and I overthink my next step.
God hears my fear of the unknown destination, as only He can know what lies ahead on my or anyone’s journey. God in His mercy does not leave us homeless, without hope and unable to wake from the bad dream.
We breathe air charged with His blessing. He gifts Himself; I can breathe because of Him.
I need a hug…
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