Category: submission

Moving at Summer’s Pace

briarcroft2 Comments
mowingfield

 

Cut grass lies frail:
Brief is the breath
Mown stalks exhale.
Long, long the death

It dies in the white hours
Of young-leafed June
With chestnut flowers,
With hedges snowlike strewn,

White lilac bowed,
Lost lanes of Queen Anne’s lace,
And that high-builded cloud
Moving at summer’s pace.~
~Philip Larkin “Cut Grass” from The Complete Poems

Light and wind are running
over the headed grass
as though the hill had 
melted and now flowed.
~Wendell Berry “June Wind”

The uncut field grass is growing heavier, falling over, lodged before it can be cut; the undulations of summer breezes urge it back upright.  It has matured too fast, rising up too lush, too overcome with itself so that it can no longer stand unsupported.  We must work fast to save it and more rain is on the way.

Light and wind work magic on a field of melting tall grass.  The blades of the mower will come to lay it to the ground in green streams that flow up and down the slopes.  It will lie comfortless in its stoneless cemetery rows, until tossed about by the tedder into random piles to dry, then raked back into a semblance of order in mounded lines flowing over the landscape.

It will be crushed and bound together for transport to the barn,
no longer bending but bent,
no longer flowing but flown,
no longer growing but grown

We move at summer’s pace to ensure the grasses become fodder for the beasts of the farm during the cold nights when the wind beats at the doors. It will melt in their mouths, as it was meant to be.  

Way Out Beyond Us

briarcroft5 Comments

My father would lift me
to the ceiling in his big hands
and ask, How’s the weather up there?
And it was good, the weather
of being in his hands, his breath
of scotch and cigarettes, his face
smiling from the world below.
O daddy, was the lullaby I sang
back down to him as he stood on earth,
my great, white-shirted father, home
from work, his gold wristwatch
and wedding band gleaming
as he held me above him
for as long as he could,
before his strength failed
down there in the world I find myself
standing in tonight, my little boy
looking down from his flight
below the ceiling, cradled in my hands,
his eyes wide and already staring
into the distance beyond the man
asking him again and again,
How’s the weather up there?
~George Bilgere “Weather”.

It was hard work, dying, harder
than anything he’d ever done.

Whatever brutal, bruising, back-
breaking chore he’d forced himself

to endure—it was nothing
compared to this. And it took

so long. When would the job
be over? Who would call him

home for supper? And it was
hard for us (his children)—

all of our lives we’d heard
my mother telling us to go out,

help your father, but this
was work we could not do.

He was way out beyond us,
in a field we could not reach.
~Joyce Sutphen “My Father, Dying”

Deep in one of our closets is an old film reel of me about 16 months old sitting securely held by my father on his shoulders. I am bursting out with giggles as he repeatedly bends forward, dipping this head and shoulders down. I tip forward, looking like I am about to fall off, and when he stands back up straight, my mouth becomes a large O and I can almost remember the tummy tickle I feel. I want him to do it again and again, taking me to the edge of falling off and then bringing me back from the brink.

My father was a tall man, so being swept up onto his shoulders felt a bit like I was touching heaven.

It was as he was dying 24 years ago this week that I realized again how tall he was — his feet kept hitting the foot panel of the hospital bed my mother had requested for their home. We cushioned his feet with padding so he wouldn’t get abrasions even though he would never stand on them again, no longer towering over us.

His helplessness in dying was startling – this man who could build anything and accomplish whatever he set his mind to was unable to subdue his cancer. Our father, who was so self-sufficient he rarely asked for help, did not know how to ask for help now.

So we did what we could when we could tell he was uncomfortable, which wasn’t often. He didn’t say much, even though there was much we could have been saying. We didn’t reminisce. We didn’t laugh and joke together. We just were there, taking shifts catching naps on the couch so we could be available if he called out, which he never did.

This man:
who had grown up dirt poor,
fought hard with his alcoholic father
left abruptly to go to college – the first in his family –
then called to war for three years in the South Pacific.

This man:
who had raised a family on a small farm while he was a teacher,
then a supervisor, then a desk worker.

This man:
who left our family to marry another woman
but returned after a decade to ask forgiveness.

This man:
who died in a house he had built completely himself,
without assistance, from the ground up.

He didn’t need our help – he who had held tightly to us and brought us back from the brink when we went too far – he had been on the brink himself and was rescued, coming back humbled.

No question the weather is fine for him up there. I have no doubt.

What the Sun Lights Up

briarcroft1 Comment

It is possible, I suppose that sometime 
we will learn everything 
there is to learn: what the world is, for example, 
and what it means. I think this as I am crossing 
from one field to another, in summer, and the 
mockingbird is mocking me, as one who either 
knows enough already or knows enough to be 
perfectly content not knowing. Song being born 
of quest he knows this: he must turn silent 
were he suddenly assaulted with answers. Instead 
oh hear his wild, caustic, tender warbling ceaselessly 
unanswered. At my feet the white-petalled daisies display 
the small suns of their center piece, their – if you don’t 
mind my saying so – their hearts. Of course 
I could be wrong, perhaps their hearts are pale and 
narrow and hidden in the roots. What do I know? 
But this: it is heaven itself to take what is given, 
to see what is plain; what the sun lights up willingly; 
for example – I think this 
as I reach down, not to pick but merely to touch – 
the suitability of the field for the daisies, and the 
daisies for the field.
~Mary Oliver “Daisies”

I spend much of my time acknowledging I don’t know what I wish I knew. Aging means becoming content with the mystery and ceasing to strive so much for what is not yet illuminated, but will soon be.

I don’t fight my dark ignorance like I used to — no longer cry out in frustration about what I don’t understand and stomp angrily through each bewildering day.

Instead I am grateful for what insight is given freely and willingly, what is plainly illuminated, to be touched without being picked and destroyed.

I realize, if only I open up just enough to the Sun, it is my own heart that is alit and ripening. That is how heaven must be and I remain content to stay planted where I am until I’m picked.



The Vine That Tendrils Out Alone

briarcroftLeave a comment

A certain kind of Eden holds us thrall.
Even the one vine that tendrils out alone
in time turns on its own impulse,
twisting back down its upward course
a strong and then a stronger rope,
the greenest saddest strongest
kind of hope.
~Kay Ryan from “A Certain Kind of Eden” from Flamingo Watching

This is the season for entwining enchantment.

Simply walking out in the garden in the morning, the tendrils are reaching out and grabbing onto my shirt and my jeans. If I stood still for an hour, they would be wrapping up my legs and clinging to my arms. There I would be, held hostage by these insistent vines for the duration of the season.

There are worse fates: a verdant Garden is exactly where we were placed to begin with.

The vines that don’t find a grab-hold, end up bending back onto themselves, curling back down the ladder they just created, sometimes knotting themselves into a nest. They wind up and down in nothingness and sadly cannot hold fast enough to be fruitful except creeping along the ground itself.

May there always be Someone Solid to cling to, to wrap around, to hold fast. May we once again know the glories of His Garden.

Supposing a Tree Fell Down

briarcroft6 Comments

“Supposing a tree fell down, Pooh, when we were underneath it?”

“Supposing it didn’t,” said Pooh after careful thought.

Piglet was comforted by this.
~A.A. Milne

It is the final week of a very long academic year and tension is running high.

Among those students to whom I provide care,
there are many who dwell deeply in “what if?” mode,
immobilized in their anticipation of impending disaster.

I understand this line of thinking,
particularly in this day and age of
“in the moment” tragedy
played out real-time in the palm of our hand
and we can’t help but watch as it unfolds.

Those who know me well
know I can fret and worry
better than most.
Medical training only makes it worse.
It teaches one to think catastrophically.
That is what I do for a living,
to always be ready for the worse case scenario.

When I rise, sleepless,
to face a day of uncertainty
as we all must do at times~
after careful thought,
I reach for the certainty I am promised
over the uncertainty I can only imagine:

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.

“Supposing it didn’t” — He says (and thus we are comforted)


Grace Disguised

briarcroftLeave a comment

If grace is so wonderful, why do we have such difficulty recognizing and accepting it?

Maybe it’s because grace is not gentle or made-to-order.

It often comes disguised as loss, or failure, or unwelcome change.
For grace to be grace, it must give us things we didn’t know we needed
and take us places where we didn’t know we didn’t want to go.
~Kathleen Norris from Acedia and Me

I’ve been salvaged when I didn’t even know I needed saving.
I’ve been given what I didn’t think I needed so never had asked.
I’ve been taken places I never planned to be when I was sure things were fine right where I was.

Grace is not about giving me what I think I want;
it is not a reward for good behavior. 

It is giving me exactly what I need when I deserve nothing.

It is the thorny landing that catches me when I fall.
It is the tiny drop that spares me in drought.
It is scars formed as proof that healing happens to the deepest wounds.
It is being scattered when I planned to remain whole.

I am grateful, so very grateful, for what I didn’t know.
I am grateful, so very grateful, for grace disguised.

For Every Hurt

briarcroft3 Comments
oakleafhydrangeabug
 
 
Gardens are also good places
to sulk. You pass beds of
spiky voodoo lilies   
and trip over the roots   
of a sweet gum tree,   
in search of medieval   
plants whose leaves,   
when they drop off   
turn into birds
if they fall on land,
and colored carp if they   
plop into water.
 
Suddenly the archetypal   
human desire for peace   
with every other species   
wells up in you. The lion
and the lamb cuddling up. 
The snake and the snail, kissing.
Even the prick of the thistle,   
queen of the weeds, revives   
your secret belief
in perpetual spring,
your faith that for every hurt   
there is a leaf to cure it.
~Amy Gerstler  from “In Perpetual Spring“

Try as we might to find common ground with those so unlike ourselves, it is the differences we focus on despite our efforts to understand and befriend. Whether it is cranky politicians sparring in the headlines, or the perpetual struggle between weak and strong, we miss seeing Creation’s intended balance all around us.

We can dwell compatibly, lion and lamb, without one becoming a meal for the other. Indeed, prey transforms the predator.

Even the barbed and bloody thistle releases its seeds in the cushion of thistledown, drifting gently where the wind will take it next, at once forgiven for the scars it inflicted.

May I strive to be comforting rather than prickly, healing rather than inflicting, wherever I may land.