We have not yet encountered any god who is as merciful as a man who flicks a beetle over on its feet. ~Annie Dillard from The Force That Drives the Flower
What inference might one draw about the nature of God from a study of his works? An inordinate fondness for beetles. The Creator would appear as endowed with a passion for stars, on the one hand, and for beetles on the other. ~ J.B.S. Haldane, British biologist
Indeed, we stranded folk do encounter a God who saves us by flipping us back onto our feet as we lie helplessly waving our arms and legs in the air, so stuck and pitiful.
God knows all about the helplessness of suffering and hears our cry for mercy.
Once we are righted back to our feet, we walk forth forever changed – restored to the world, ready to help anyone we encounter who finds themselves stuck upside down in their misery.
When beetles fight these battles in a bottle with their paddles and the bottle’s on a poodle and the poodle’s eating noodles… …they call this a muddle puddle tweetle poodle beetle noodle bottle paddle battle. ~ Dr. Seuss from Fox in Socks
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At dusk, everything blurs and softens. From here out over the long valley, the fields and hills pull up the first slight sheets of evening, as, over the next hour, heavier, darker ones will follow.
Quieted roads, predictable deer browsing in a neighbor’s field, another’s herd of heifers, the kitchen lights starting in many windows. On horseback I take it in, neither visitor nor intruder, but kin passing, closer and closer to night, its cold streams rising in the sugarbush and hollow.
Half-aloud, I say to the horse, or myself, or whoever: let fire not come to this house, nor that barn, nor lightning strike the cattle. Let dogs not gain the gravid doe, let the lights of the rooms convey what they seem to.
And who is to say it is useless or foolish to ride out in the falling light alone, wishing, or praying, for particular good to particular beings, on one small road in a huge world?
The horse bears me along, like grace, making me better than what I am, and what I think or say or see is whole in these moments, is neither small nor broken. For up, out of the inscrutable earth, have come my body and the separate body of the mare: flawed and aching and wronged. Who then is better made to say be well, be glad,
or who to long that we, as one, might course over the entire valley, over all valleys, as a bird in a great embrace of flight, who presses against her breast, in grief and tenderness, the whole weeping body of the world? ~ Linda McCarriston, “Riding Out at Evening” fromTalking Soft Dutch
photo by Emily Vander Haak
On this, my 72nd birthday, I pray for this troubled world, reminding myself: be well, be glad…
I’m still here by the grace of God who carries not just me on His back through each day, but all earthly burdens.
I pray like a bird embracing the air which lifts its wings, tenderly holding to its breast a soaring freedom to transcend the weeping world.
I have seen so much goodness over 72 years, sometimes through tears of sorrow. I know there will be more joy and sadness before I’m done.
I am grateful, so very grateful to have lived all these years seeing tears shed, then dried, learning how love heals, knowing the only thing to last forever is God’s covenant promise to always carry us home.
photo by Brandon Dielemanphoto by Brandon Dieleman
video by Peter Tamminga
Whilst the world is weeping, let us do our bit. We have the time to sympathise, to listen and to sit. No needless thoughts, of the things we cannot do. But appreciate all the good bits and look at them anew.
The warmth and comfort of our homes, the food we have to eat. The family and friends we have, although we cannot meet. The village that we live in, and the community we share. So precious to us right now, so sit and think and care.
Whilst the world is full of sadness, anxiety and pain, It’s hard to imagine our lives ever carefree again. But nothing lasts forever, the clouds will always clear. Let’s heal the world with love, so the sunshine can appear. ~Sandra Rickman
Lyrics: Drop, drop, slow tears, and bathe those beauteous feet, which brought from heaven the news and Prince of Peace. Cease not, wet eyes, his mercies to entreat; to cry for vengeance sin doth never cease. In your deep floods drown all my faults and fears; nor let his eye see sin, but through my tears.
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“Truly, truly, I say to you, he who does not enter the sheepfold by the door but climbs in by another way, that man is a thief and a robber.But he who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep.To him the gatekeeper opens. The sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.
When he has brought out all his own, he goes before them, and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice. A stranger they will not follow, but they will flee from him, for they do not know the voice of strangers.“
This figure of speech Jesus used with them, but they did not understand what he was saying to them.
So Jesus again said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep.All who came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them.I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.
I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. He who is a hired hand and not a shepherd, who does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees, and the wolf snatches them and scatters them.He flees because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep.
I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep.And I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice.
So there will be one flock, one shepherd.“ John 10: 1-16
Not one that’s gently hinged or deftly hung, Not like the ones you planed at Joseph’s place, Not like the well-oiled openings that swung So easily for Pilate’s practiced pace, Not like the ones that closed in Mary’s face From house to house in brimming Bethlehem, Not like the one that no man may assail, The dreadful curtain, The forbidding veil That waits your breaking in Jerusalem. Not one you made but one you have become: Load-bearing, balancing, a weighted beam To bridge the gap, to bring us within reach Of your high pasture. Calling us by name, You lay your body down across the breach, Yourself the door that opens into home. ~Malcolm Guite “I Am the Door of the Sheepfold” from Parable and Paradox
The fence was down. Led by their bellwether bellies, the sheep had toddled astray. The neighbor farmer’s woods or coyotes might have got them, or the far road. I remember the night, the moon-colored grass we waded through to look for them, the oaks tangled and dark, like starting a story midway. We gazed over seed heads to the barn toppled in the homestead orchard. Then we saw the weather of white wool, a cloud in the blue moving without sound as if charmed by the moon beholding them out of bounds. Time has not tightened the wire or righted the barn. The unpruned orchard rots in its meadow and the story unravels, the sunlight creeping back like a song with nobody left to hear it. ~David Mason from “Mending Time” in The Sound: New and Selected Poems
When so much shepherding has gone so wrong, So many pastors hopelessly astray, The weak so often preyed on by the strong, So many bruised and broken on the way, The very name of shepherd seems besmeared, The fold and flock themselves are torn in half, The lambs we left to face all we have feared Are caught between the wasters and the wolf. Good Shepherd now your flock has need of you, One finds the fold and ninety-nine are lost Out in the darkness and the icy dew, And no one knows how long this night will last. Restore us; call us back to you by name, And by your life laid down, redeem our shame. ~Malcolm Guite “I Am the Good Shepherd” from Parable and Paradox
On the surface, a sheep’s life looks pretty easy – grazing in beautiful pastoral settings, blending in as a member of a flock, with the primary job being prolific in wool and lamb production.
Sounds pretty swell, all in all.
Yet it can be a hard-scrabble existence with not enough food or water in rocky terrain that is steep and tough to traverse. The wool coat can be incredibly burdensome and hooves can get too long or too short and watch out for the “bloat.”
And then there are the enemies: just ready to pounce, eager to pick off the too young or too old or anyone just not paying attention. That’s why a Shepherd is so critical to our survival because they pay attention to threats and needs and are there to defend the defenseless.
I’ve been labeled a sheep for unquestioningly following directions given to me, preferring to blend in, and appreciating the wisdom of the Shepherd. I don’t consider being considered a sheep an insult. I know I don’t know everything, nor am I capable of finding everything I need when I need it and I’m certainly not strong enough to fend off my worst enemies.
How often do we, like sheep, wander astray – out of the broken down barn, or through the fallen fence, into the orchards of rotting delights?
And Someone, always Someone, comes looking for us, lost and always hungering and endangered. Someone, always Someone, lays down in the doorway to become the breach we need to stay safe and whole.
We need our Shepherd. We know His voice. He leads us home.
I am reading slowly through the words in the Book of John over the next year alongside my church family. Once a week, I will invite you to “come and see” what those words might mean as we explore His promises together.
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Whence comes Solace?—Not from seeing What is doing, suffering, being, Not from noting Life’s conditions, Nor from heeding Time’s monitions; But in cleaving to the Dream, And in gazing at the gleam Whereby gray things golden seem.
II
Thus do I this heyday, holding Shadows but as lights unfolding, As no specious show this moment With its irised embowment; But as nothing other than Part of a benignant plan; Proof that earth was made for man. ~Thomas Hardy “On a Fine Morning”
Whence comes Solace? Cleaving to the dream, gazing at the gleam…
nothing other than Part of a benignant plan; Proof that earth was made for man.
I had to look up “benignant” – it is like being told a concerning tumor is “benign” – granting gracious kindness and beneficence in the midst of deep-seated worry.
A new lease on life.
We forget our original task of caring for the Garden. Having soiled our own nest, we can’t abandon earth for another greener, brighter, happier planet. Of all the planetary options in this infinite universe, we were placed right here for good reason, and here we remain.
Our solace: all that ordinarily seems gray gleams golden illuminated by the Light shining down on our shadowy selves.
Even when the news headlines are dismal, when our individual struggles are great, when human history seems to keep repeating itself, our Creation is purposeful, eternally preserved through divine sacrifice.
The solace of gray shadows melts to gold: as part of the overall “benignant plan” we have been given our life back.
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It’s the immemorial feelings I like the best: hunger, thirst, their satisfaction; work-weariness, earned rest; the falling again from loneliness to love; the green growth the mind takes from the pastures in March; the gayety in the stride of a good team of Belgian mares that seems to shudder from me through all my ancestry. ~Wendell Berry “Goods”
photo by Joel De Waardphoto by Joel De Waard
The plow has savaged this sweet field Misshapen clods of earth kicked up Rocks and twisted roots exposed to view Last year’s growth demolished by the blade.
I have plowed my life this way Turned over a whole history Looking for the roots of what went wrong Until my face is ravaged, furrowed, scarred.
Enough. The job is done. Whatever’s been uprooted, let it be Seedbed for the growing that’s to come. I plowed to unearth last year’s reasons—
The farmer plows to plant a greening season. ~Parker Palmer “Harrowing”
photo by Joel De Waardphoto by Joel De Waard
It’s not likely anyone would say I didn’t work hard enough.
After all, I come from a long line of human work-horses who knew it takes sweat and tears, and sometimes bleeding.
Even so, all those years I know I could have plowed more deeply than I did.
I could have thrown myself more fully into the pull on the tugs, shared the load more effectively, shouldered the yoke with greater enthusiasm, bent my neck down low with unbroken determination.
You could say somewhere I lost the gayety in my stride, and you would be right — toward the end, I was trudging through the furrow, bruised from turning up too many submerged rocks, bumping into immoveable tree stumps, tripping on hidden roots, stuck in the deep mud of long and lonely post-midnight hours.
You might even say the knowledge of a job well-done lay at a depth my plow could ever reach.
I had seen others die in the harness, never able to rest easy.
A few years ago I knew the time had come to shrug off the yoke, shake off the bridle and bit, shudder free of the harness.
On this side of the ground, I find myself wondering and wandering, the blinkers no longer impeding my vision, feeling the morning sun on my unyoked withers.
Yet when I see an untilled field, something in me even now still tries to hold on to the plow —
photo by Joel De Waardphoto by Joel De Waardphoto by Joel De Waard
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I spent seven hours yesterday at my daughter’s house helping her expand their garden by at least ten times. We dug up sod by the shovelful, shook off the dirt as best we could; sod into the wheelbarrow and off to the pile at the edge of the yard. Then all that over and over again. Five hours total work-time, with time out for lunch and supper. By the time I got home I knew all too well that seventy-two is not thirty-five; I could barely move.
I got to quit earlier than Nadine. She told me I’d done enough and that I should go get a beer and lie down on the chaise lounge and cheer her on, which is what I did.
All this made me remember my father forty years ago helping me with my garden. My father’s dead now, and has been dead for many years, which is how I’ll be one of these days too. And then Nadine will help her child, who is not yet here, with her garden. Old Nadine, aching and sore, will be in my empty shoes, cheering on her own.
So it goes. The wheel turns, generation after generation, around and around. We ride for a little while, get off and somebody else gets on. Over and over, again and again. ~David Budbill “Seventy-Two Is Not Thirty-Five” from Tumbling toward the End
The wheel turns, we cycle around again, get on and eventually get off. This is a week of July birthdays in our family, for both old and young.
This hit me when we celebrated our grandson’s third birthday a few days ago in a suburban backyard where my daughter has continued the Gibson/Polis gardening tradition, using the compost we hauled in our truck from our farm several hours away.
Her peas were full and ripe and juicy, her greens lush and tasty – simple perfection thanks to her careful tending.
Meanwhile, our son gardens with his three boys in a very small urban backyard in Denver, teaching them what is weed and what will become a future meal.
I couldn’t help but get weepy, enjoying that special birthday feast.
…and knowing someday, our grandsons will plant and weed and harvest from the soil just as we and their parents did, over and over, again and again.
And this is why my eyes are closed It’s just as well for all I’ve seen And so it goes, and so it goes And you’re the only one who knows ~Billy Joel
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They brought to the Pharisees the man who had been blind. Now the day on which Jesus had made the mud and opened the man’s eyes was a Sabbath. Therefore the Pharisees also asked him how he had received his sight. “He put mud on my eyes,” the man replied, “and I washed, and now I see.” Some of the Pharisees said, “This man is not from God, for he does not keep the Sabbath.” But others asked, “How can a sinner perform such signs?” So they were divided.
Then they turned again to the blind man, “What have you to say about him? It was your eyes he opened.” The man replied, “He is a prophet.” They still did not believe that he had been blind and had received his sight until they sent for the man’s parents. “Is this your son?” they asked. “Is this the one you say was born blind? How is it that now he can see?”
“We know he is our son,” the parents answered, “and we know he was born blind. But how he can see now, or who opened his eyes, we don’t know. Ask him. He is of age; he will speak for himself.” His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jewish leaders, who already had decided that anyone who acknowledged that Jesus was the Messiah would be put out of the synagogue.That was why his parents said, “He is of age; ask him.”
A second time they summoned the man who had been blind. “Give glory to God by telling the truth,” they said. “We know this man is a sinner.”He replied, “Whether he is a sinner or not, I don’t know. One thing I do know. I was blind but now I see!”
Then they asked him, “What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?” He answered, “I have told you already and you did not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you want to become his disciples too?” Then they hurled insults at him and said, “You are this fellow’s disciple! We are disciples of Moses!We know that God spoke to Moses, but as for this fellow, we don’t even know where he comes from.”
The man answered, “Now that is remarkable! You don’t know where he comes from, yet he opened my eyes.We know that God does not listen to sinners. He listens to the godly person who does his will.Nobody has ever heard of opening the eyes of a man born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.” To this they replied, “You were steeped in sin at birth; how dare you lecture us!” And they threw him out.
Jesus heard that they had thrown him out, and when he found him, he said, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” “Who is he, sir?” the man asked. “Tell me so that I may believe in him.” Jesus said, “You have now seen him; in fact, he is the one speaking with you.” Then the man said, “Lord, I believe,” and he worshiped him.
Jesus said, “For judgment I have come into this world, so that the blind will see and those who see will become blind.” Some Pharisees who were with him heard him say this and asked, “What? Are we blind too?” Jesus said, “If you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin; but now that you claim you can see, your guilt remains. John 9: 13-41
When we look long at one another, we soften, we relent, listen,
might forgive. We allow for silence —and when we see each other,
are known, and in that moment might change
though nothing has moved or been spoken.
There are some who say the walls cannot be broken,
but suddenly we are in a free place, and the fields
that extend from its center stretch for miles
as if out of the pupil and the iris of that momentary kingdom. ~Annie Lighthart “When We Look” from Pax
Why no! I never thought other than That God is that great absence In our lives, the empty silence Within, the place where we go Seeking, not in hope to Arrive or find. He keeps the interstices In our knowledge, the darkness Between stars. His are the echoes We follow, the footprints he has just Left. We put our hands in His side hoping to find It warm. We look at people And places as though he had looked At them, too; but miss the reflection. ~R.S. Thomas “Via Negativa”
It is this great absence that is like a presence, that compels me to address it without hope of a reply. It is a room I enter
from which someone has just gone, the vestibule for the arrival of one who has not yet come. I modernise the anachronism
of my language, but he is no more here than before. Genes and molecules have no more power to call him up than the incense of the Hebrews
at their altars. My equations fail as my words do. What resources have I other than the emptiness without him of my whole being, a vacuum he may not abhor? ~R.S. Thomas “The Absence”
We cannot recognize our blindness, unaware of what we can’t see and don’t know, until our eyes are opened.
Before that happens, all we know is the emptiness behind our closed eyes.
How can we know what vision we are capable of until suddenly, miraculously, it is given to us in a gift of grace.
Lord, banish the blindness of my guilt, fill the vacuum of my emptiness with your love, allow me to see — not only the world around me, but to look deeply into other open eyes and see You reflected.
Open up my eyes, so I might see That You have made these ways for me Open up my eyes so I may see That You my God, will walk with me ~Chorus lyrics from All My Ways are Known to You
I am reading slowly through the words in the Book of John over the next year alongside my church family. Once a week, I will invite you to “come and see” what those words might mean as we explore His promises together.
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Who loves the rain And loves his home, And looks on life with quiet eyes, Him will I follow through the storm; And at his hearth-fire keep me warm; Nor hell nor heaven shall that soul surprise, Who loves the rain, And loves his home, And looks on life with quiet eyes. ~Frances Shaw, “Who loves the rain” from Look To the Rainbow of Grace
Now more than ever you can be generous toward each day that comes, young, to disappear forever, and yet remain unaging in the mind. Every day you have less reason not to give yourself away. ~Wendell Berry from “There is no going back”
What a wonder I was when I was young, as I learn by the stern privilege of being old: how regardlessly I stepped the rough pathways of the hillside woods, treaded hardly thinking the tumbled stairways of the steep streams, and worked unaching hard days thoughtful only of the work, the passing light, the heat, the cool water I gladly drank. ~Wendell Berry “VII” 2015 from Another Day
I would like to be the air that inhabits you for a moment only. I would like to be that unnoticed and that necessary… ~Margaret Atwood
I stop writing the poem to fold the clothes. No matter who lives or who dies, I’m still a woman. I’ll always have plenty to do. I bring the arms of his shirt together. Nothing can stop our tenderness. I’ll get back to the poem. I’ll get back to being a woman. But for now there’s a shirt, a giant shirt in my hands, and somewhere a small girl standing next to her mother watching to see how it’s done. ~Tess Gallagher “I Stop Writing the Poem”
For Dan’s 73rd birthday…
In this journey together, we inhabit each other, however long may be the road we travel; you have become the air I breathe, refreshing, renewing, restoring~~ you are that necessary to me, and that beloved.
Each year, as we grow older together: grayer, softer, gentler with ourselves, each other, and the world.
I pause to say, on this day you were born, thank you, God, yet again for bringing you to earth so we could meet, raise our three amazing children, and now six grandchildren, with another on the way, walking life together with faith and hope and dreams.
It was your quiet brown eyes I trusted first and just knew I’d follow you anywhere, and I have…
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When it snows, he stands at the back door or wanders around the house to each window in turn and watches the weather like a lover. O farm boy, I waited years for you to look at me that way. Now we’re old enough to stop waiting for random looks or touches or words, so I find myself watching you watching the weather, and we wait together to discover whatever the sky might bring. ~Patricia Traxler “Weather Man”
My father was a skywatcher, cloud-noter, wind-gauger,
trained since birth to check the weather first thing and last. In those last
dim years when all else had left mind and memory, he’d still stare keenly out the car window
as I drove him to neurologist or podiatrist, and exclaim with joy and
satisfaction: Look at those clouds! And I knew right then that watching the sky
was a good way to conduct a life– that reading the outlines of clouds,
lifting a finger to the pulse of breeze coming your way,
is what can hold you close, clasp you tight to the thrum. ~Wendy Ingersoll “Weatherman”
My farm boy still looks at me that way, wondering if today will bring a storm, or a scorcher, or a deluge, and I reassure him as best I can, because he knows me so well in our many years together:
today, like nearly every other day, will be mostly cloudy with occasional sun breaks.
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We may ignore, but we can nowhere evade, the presence of God. The world is crowded with Him. He walks everywhere incognito. And the incognito is not always easy to penetrate. The real labor is to remember to attend. In fact to come awake. Still more to remain awake. ~C.S. Lewis from “Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer”
I worked hard in my professional life to be interruptible: my patients, colleagues and staff needed to be able to stop my momentum at any time to ask a question, get an opinion or redirect my attention to something more important. As a physician, it was crucial that I remained prioritized from outside my field of vision as I was not always aware at any given time where I’m needed most.
Yet in my personal life, I struggle with interruptions happening outside my control. I feel imposed upon when things don’t flow as I hoped or planned– after all, this is MY life.
Yet…
God interrupts. God interferes. God intervenes. God intrudes. God intercedes.
As He must, because He is God. And I must be ready, accepting, answering His grace with grace.
It is HIS life living within me, His plan, His timing, His priorities.
Not mine.
Never mine.
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