The rain and the wind, the wind and the rain — They are with us like a disease: They worry the heart, they work the brain, As they shoulder and clutch at the shrieking pane, And savage the helpless trees. What does it profit a man to know These tattered and tumbling skies A million stately stars will show, And the ruining grace of the after-glow And the rush of the wild sunrise? ~William Ernest Henley from “The Rain and the Wind”
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”
A heavy rain darkened a sodden gray dawn when suddenly unbidden, gusts ripped loose remaining leaves and sent them spinning, swirling earthbound in yellow clouds.
The battering of rain and wind leaves no doubt this is a day of decision – we are resigned to our fate.
I hunker down in the turbulence, tattered and tumbling, and wait for a clear night to empty itself into a fragile crystalline dawn.
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It greets me again on some cold November evening Crested with cherry and yellow hearted A most magnificent leaf on the ground by the train station
Tuesday morning and the windows are foggy My room is cold and my bed is warm And it sings it’s bright hello in crisp morning sunlight
On the 9:36 to Euston I find it in a stranger who can’t hold in his laugh, hand over mouth Chuckling through his nose. He is wonderful.
Three old ladies outside a bistro chattering Canyon laugh lines and bright lipstick When they dimple at me, I return my biggest smile
And on Saturday I do the dishes at my sister’s house Through the kitchen window the tall grass On the mountainside dances in the amber evening
Something soft blooms in my chest in answer To the cobweb glistening with dew, dragonflies, The little yellow boat at Portnoo pier, darling and weathered
To mist below the hill and the first sip of a good cup of tea My niece’s laugh and my father’s teaspoon collection And that silk moth I saw sunsoaking on a hot afternoon and I know
It cannot all be luck. My days are threaded with joy So small and featherlight, a breath against the wind. Woven together in defiant splendour
These small things And Your glory therein. ~Mary Clement Mannering “This Small Thing”
dragonfly wings photo by Josh Scholten
When cold, wet, dreary days are more gray than sunlit – even these November days still contain small things of joy.
The trick is to notice the simple threads through the day, sometimes unraveling but mostly weaving a story-telling tapestry.
I never want to forget to keep looking, even when my eyes feel heavy, my heart is weary and the news is consistently discouraging.
The small things of beauty are out there, woven together to cloak us in His glory.
photo of a windy day at Manna Farm from Nate Lovegren
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She skimmed the yellow water like a moth, Trailing her feet across the shallow stream; She saw the berries, paused and sampled them Where a slight spider cleaned his narrow tooth. Light in the air, she fluttered up the path, So delicate to shun the leaves and damp, Like some young wife, holding a slender lamp To find her stray child, or the moon, or both. Even before she reached the empty house, She beat her wings ever so lightly, rose, Followed a bee where apples blew like snow; And then, forgetting what she wanted there, Too full of blossom and green light to care, She hurried to the ground, and slipped below. ~James Wright “My Grandmother’s Ghost” from Above the River: The Complete Poems
…now you have taught me (but how late) my lack. I see the chasm. And everything you are was making My heart into a bridge by which I might get back From exile, and grow man. And now the bridge is breaking.
For this I bless you as the ruin falls. The pains You give me are more precious than all other gains. ~C.S. Lewis from “As the Ruin Falls”
Early one morning, we heard a sound, someone carefully pushing a door open, but both doors were closed. The air stirred. A whirring echoed through the room. That night we had left a small lamp on. In front of it, each time it orbited, the dark shape of a bird. ~Tina Barry from “Another Haunting” from I Tell Henrietta
when my father had been dead a week I woke with his voice in my ear I sat up in bed and held my breath and stared at the pale closed door
white apples and the taste of stone
if he called again I would put on my coat and galoshes ~Donald Hall “White Apples”
I saw my grandma’s ghost once.
She was the only grandparent I actually knew and who actually knew me — the others were lost before I was born or I was too young to realize what I had lost.
She had lived a hard life after her mother’s death when she was only 12, taking over the household duties for her father and younger brother while leaving school forever. She married too young to an abusive alcoholic, lost her first child to lymphoma at age 8 and took her three remaining children to safety away from their father. For a year, they lived above a seedy restaurant where she cooked seven days a week to make ends meet.
But there was grace too. The marriage somehow got patched together after Grandpa found God and sobriety – after his sudden death while sitting in church, Grandma’s faith never wavered. Her garden soil yielded beautiful flowers she planted and nurtured and picked to sell. Her children and grandchildren welcomed her many open armed visits and hugs.
She was busy planning her first overseas trip of a lifetime at age 72 when we noticed her eyes looked yellow. Only two weeks later she was bed-bound in unrelenting pain due to pancreatic cancer, gazing heaven-ward instead of Europe-bound. Her dreams had been dashed so quickly, she barely realized her itinerary and ultimate destination had unalterably changed.
I was nearly 16 at the time, too absorbed in my own teenage cares and concerns to really notice how quickly she was fading and failing like a wilted flower. Instead I was picking fights with my stressed parents, obsessing about taking my driver’s license driving test, distracted by all the typical social pressures of high school life.
Her funeral was unbearable for me as I had never really said goodbye – only one brief hospital visit when she was hardly recognizable in her anguish and jaundice. She looked so different, I hung back from her bedside. Regrettably, I didn’t even try to hold her hand.
Mere weeks after she had been lowered into the ground next to her husband and young daughter, she came back to me in a dream.
I was sleeping when the door opened into my dark bedroom, waking me as the bright hallway light pushed its way via a shimmering beam to my bed. My Grandma Kittie stood in my bedroom doorway, a fully recognizable silhouette backlit by the illumination. She silently stood there, looking at me.
Startled, I sat up in my bed and said to her, “Grandma, why are you here? You died. We buried you.”
She lifted her hands toward me in a gesture of reassurance and said:
“I want you to know I’m okay and always will be. You will be too.”
She then gave a little wave, turned and left, closing the door behind her. I woke suddenly with a gasp in my darkened bedroom and knew I had just been visited.
She hadn’t come to say goodbye or to tell me she loved me — I knew that already.
She had come to me, with the transient fragility of something with wings, floating gently back into the world to be my bridge. She blossomed in the light she brought with her.
Grandma came to mend my broken heart and plant it with peace.
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You’re in a better place I’ve heard a thousand times And at least a thousand times I’ve rejoiced for you
But the reason why I’m broken The reason why I cry Is how long must I wait to be with you
I close my eyes and I see your face If home’s where my heart is then I’m out of place Lord, won’t you give me strength To make it through somehow I’ve never been more homesick than now
Help me Lord cause I don’t understand your ways The reason why I wonder if I’ll ever know But, even if you showed me The hurt would be the same Cause I’m still here so far away from home
In Christ, there are no goodbyes And in Christ, there is no end
So I’ll hold onto Jesus With all that I have To see you again To see you again
And I close my eyes and I see your face If home’s where my heart is then I’m out of place Lord, won’t you give me strength To make it through somehow
Won’t you give me strength To make it through somehow Won’t you give me strength To make it through somehow I’ve never been more homesick than now ~Millard Bart Marshall
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In heaven it is always autumn. The leaves are always near to falling there but never fall, and pairs of souls out walking heaven’s paths no longer feel the weight of years upon them. Safe in heaven’s calm, they take each other’s arm, the light shining through them, all joy and terror gone. But we are far from heaven here, in a garden ragged and unkept as Eden would be with the walls knocked down, the paths littered with the unswept leaves of many years, bright keepsakes for children of the Fall. The light is gold, the sun pulling the long shadow soul out of each thing, disclosing an outcome. The last roses of the year nod their frail heads, like listeners listening to all that’s said, to ask, What brought us here? What seed? What rain? What light? What forced us upward through dark earth? What made us bloom? What wind shall take us soon, sweeping the garden bare? Their voiceless voices hang there, as ours might, if we were roses, too. Their beds are blanketed with leaves, tended by an absent gardener whose life is elsewhere. It is the last of many last days. Is it enough? To rest in this moment? To turn our faces to the sun? To watch the lineaments of a world passing? To feel the metal of a black iron chair, cool and eternal, press against our skin? To apprehend a chill as clouds pass overhead, turning us to shivering shade and shadow? And then to be restored, small miracle, the sun shining brightly as before? We go on, you leading the way, a figure leaning on a cane that leaves its mark on the earth. My friend, you have led me farther than I have ever been. To a garden in autumn. To a heaven of impermanence where the final falling off is slow, a slow and radiant happening. The light is gold. And while we’re here, I think it must be heaven. ~Elizabeth Spires from “In Heaven it is Always Autumn”from Now the Green Blade Rises
The Bench by Manet
We wander our autumn garden mystified at the passing of the weeks since seed was first sown, weeds pulled, peapods picked. It could not possibly be done so soon–this patch of productivity and beauty, now wilted and brown, vines crushed to the ground, no longer fruitful.
The root cellar is filling up, the freezer packed. The work of putting away is almost done.
So why do I go back to the now barren soil my husband so carefully worked, numb in the knowledge I will pick no more this season, feel the burst of a cherry tomato exploding in my mouth or the green freshness of a bean straight off the vine?
Because for a few fertile weeks, only a few weeks, the garden was a bit of heaven on earth, impermanent but a real taste nonetheless.
We may have mistaken Him for the gardener when He appeared to us radiant, suddenly unfamiliar. He offered the care of the garden, to bring in the sheaves, to share the forever mercies in the form of daily bread grown right here and now.
When He says my name, I will know Him.
And the light is golden.
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Seeing this place for the first time today, I think God must thoroughly enjoy playing in this gigantic sandbox. He experiments with shapes and sizes, He changes color and texture, He stacks layers and piles up rubble.
It feels like I could be visiting another planet but this one is His masterpiece.
I am stupefied at the Creative Mind behind this.
At a time when the world’s cacophony is louder than ever, I needed this quiet assurance that God is still at work as sculptor and painter, shaping more than mere rock.
He is still at work shaping us, so that beauty lives above, below, all around and within us.
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Forfeit their Paradise by their pride. ~George Herbert “The Flower”
Our small church has several gracious and kind gardeners who share the produce from their yards each week to provide a fresh bouquet to sit on the table in front of our humble wooden pulpit.
It is a treat to walk into church and see what has been brought to the altar on Sunday morning. I have started to keep a photo album of these very special Sunday “pulpit posies.”
Why are these special? After all, almost every church displays a floral arrangement every Sunday.
These are special as most of these flowers are seeded, watered, fertilized and nurtured by one of our own, grown with love and caring, just as God cares for each of His children.
These are special as some are considered simple weeds, and are picked from ditches and hedges. They are still part of God’s creation and have a wild beauty that can be as breathtaking as a hothouse orchid.
These are special because they often go home with a congregant or visitor who will enjoy their loveliness for many more days, as if they represent the manifestation of God’s Word itself.
Some of us are dahlias, zinnias and roses. Some of us are rare gardenias and orchids. Most of us are dandelions, sagebrush, fireweed, burdock, and daisies populating the ditches.
No matter which roots we sprout from, or where, we are the wonders of this gardening God of love.
As we age, we bud afresh for Him.
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The passing of the summer fills again my heart with strange sweet sorrow, and I find the very moments precious in my palm. Each dawn I did not see, each night the stars in spangled pattern shone, unknown to me, are counted out against me by my God, who charges me to see all lovely things… ~Jane Tyson Clement from “Autumn”in No One Can Stem the Tide
I have missed too much over my life time: one-of-a-kind masterpieces hung briefly in the sky at the beginning and the ending of each day.
For too long, I didn’t notice, being asleep to beauty, oblivious to a rare and loving Artist.
We’re already a month into autumn. I’ve had a hard time letting go of summer. Until the last week of heavy rain and wind, our days have been filled with blue skies, warm temps and no killing frosts.
In short, it felt like perfection: sweater weather filled with vibrant leaf color, clear moonlit nights, northern lights and some outstanding sunrises.
I feel I must try to absorb it all, to witness and record and savor it. God convicted us to see, listen, taste and believe.
Can there be a more merciful sentence for His children, given the trouble we people have been to Him? Yet He loves us still, despite the strange sweet sorrow we cause.
See, listen, taste and believe. I do and I will.
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At the alder-darkened brink Where the stream slows to a lucid jet I lean to the water, dinting its top with sweat, And see, before I can drink,
A startled inchling trout Of spotted near-transparency, Trawling a shadow solider than he. He swerves now, darting out
To where, in a flicked slew Of sparks and glittering silt, he weaves Through stream-bed rocks, disturbing foundered leaves, And butts then out of view
Beneath a sliding glass Crazed by the skimming of a brace Of burnished dragon-flies across its face, In which deep cloudlets pass
And a white precipice Of mirrored birch-trees plunges down Toward where the azures of the zenith drown. How shall I drink all this?
Joy’s trick is to supply Dry lips with what can cool and slake, Leaving them dumbstruck also with an ache Nothing can satisfy. ~Richard Wilbur “Hamlen Brook”
Like so many others right now, I’m thirsty for honest, respectful discussion and debate about the state of the world. Instead, I’m left dry and wanting, ready to blow away with the next gust.
So I ache to witness fading colors, fallen leaves, swift winds and pouring rain, as all creatures great and small prepare for winter’s chill. There is stark honesty among all soon to fall asleep.
I yearn to hear God’s Truth spoken out loud. How amazing it would be — to be dumbstruck with joy.
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Márgarét, áre you gríeving Over Goldengrove unleaving? Leáves like the things of man, you With your fresh thoughts care for, can you? Ah! ás the heart grows older It will come to such sights colder By and by, nor spare a sigh Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie; And yet you wíll weep and know why. Now no matter, child, the name: Sórrow’s spríngs áre the same. Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed What heart heard of, ghost guessed: It ís the blight man was born for, It is Margaret you mourn for. ~Gerard Manley Hopkins “Spring and Fall”
As the leaves tumble down, I think of Hopkins’ Márgarét and her vanishing goldengrove path, she who weeps for the loss of autumn leaves, not knowing or remembering they will return.
And I, now older, know spring comes again, even though wistful and sighing deeply at the loss of beauty and innocence each autumn, weeping for what was and may never be again.
In this blighted plight, I tend to forget the promise made: there is much more to come after the Fall.
My grief is not for nothing. Christ comforts those who weep, who mourn loss and wander lost.
I have hope and faith. I will see beauty again. I follow the goldengrove that leads to Him.
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The maple leaves abscond with summer’s green rain on such little stems connecting to spring’s essence, summer twigs’ foliage, the company of the living.
But now they shrug off their red-gold existence as if they’d never inhabited the verdure of the undead, drifting to a ground hardened by sudden frost. ~Donna Pucciani “One Minute”
I was standing lost, sunk, my hands in my pockets, gazing toward Tinker Mountain and feeling the earth reel down. All at once, I saw what looked like a Martian spaceship whirling towards me in the air. It flashed borrowed light like a propeller. Its forward motion greatly outran its fall. As I watched, transfixed, it rose, just before it would have touched a thistle, and hovered pirouetting in one spot, then twirled on and finally came to rest. I found it in the grass; it was a maple key…Hullo. I threw it into the wind and it flew off again, bristling with animate purpose, not like a thing dropped or windblown, pushed by the witless winds of convection currents hauling round the world’s rondure where they must, but like a creature muscled and vigorous, or a creature spread thin to that other wind, the wind of the spirit that bloweth where it listeth, lighting, and raising up, and easing down. O maple key, I thought, I must confess I thought, o welcome, cheers.
And the bell under my ribs rang a true note, a flourish of blended horns, clarion, sweet, and making a long dim sense I will try at length to explain. Flung is too harsh a word for the rush of the world. Blown is more like it, but blown by a generous, unending breath. That breath never ceases to kindle, exuberant, abandoned; frayed splinters spatter in every direction and burgeon into flame. And now when I sway to a fitful wind, alone and listing, I will think, maple key. When I see a photograph of earth from outer space, the planet so startlingly painterly and hung, I will think, maple key. When I shake your hand or meet your eyes, I will think two maple keys. If I am maple key falling, at least I can twirl. ~Annie Dillard from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
If only there were living words as plentiful as the maple keys that twirl from each branch, words that release us from our dry roots, ready to unlock life’s secrets, unlatch and push ajar the doors to heavy hearts.
Who can ever be ready to go from vibrant and alive, colorful and mobile, to dropped and still?
The reality of another spent season is a slug to the gut. Time is passing. I’m wasting time. There is no stopping it without stopping me.
Let’s dwell in the company of the living until we fall away together.
Live well, fellow leaves and we’ll let go together: swaying to a fitful wind, giving a gentle shrug and drifting, easing into settling down when the time comes.
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