They work with herbs and penicillin. They work with gentleness and the scalpel. They dig out the cancer, close an incision and say a prayer to the poverty of the skin. They are not Gods though they would like to be; they are only human trying to fix up a human. Many humans die. They die like the tender, palpitating berries in November. But all along the doctors remember: First do no harm. They would kiss if it would heal. It would not heal.
If the doctors cure then the sun sees it. If the doctors kill then the earth hides it. The doctors should fear arrogance more than cardiac arrest. If they are too proud, and some are, then they leave home on horseback but God returns them on foot. ~Anne Sexton “Doctors” from The Awful Rowing Toward God.
The only wisdom we can hope to acquire is the wisdom of humility; humility is endless. ~T.S. Eliot from East Coker
Let me never forget how humbling it was to provide care for hurting people and not be 100% certain what I do would actually work, though I was trusted to recommend the best option…
which could include a tincture of time, just wait and see, try this or that.
Or witnessing a vaccine-preventable illness gallop through a university population, taking weeks to safely harness and control.
Not unlike other physicians who tumbled off while racing a pathogen, losing their balance between overconfidence and humility, I sometimes found myself unseated and stranded, having to return on foot to retrace my steps, reframe my words and hopes and do no harm – to try once again to make a difference.
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Summer ends now; now, barbarous in beauty, the stooks rise Around; up above, what wind-walks! what lovely behaviour Of silk-sack clouds! has wilder, wilful-wavier Meal-drift moulded ever and melted across skies?
I walk, I lift up, I lift up heart, eyes, Down all that glory in the heavens to glean our Saviour; And eyes, heart, what looks, what lips yet give you a Rapturous love’s greeting of realer, of rounder replies?
And the azurous hung hills are his world-wielding shoulder Majestic – as a stallion stalwart, very-violet-sweet! – These things, these things were here and but the beholder Wanting; which two when they once meet, The heart rears wings bold and bolder And hurls for him, O half hurls earth for him off under his feet. ~Gerard Manley Hopkins “Hurrahing in Harvest”
This poem is (in Hopkin’s own words) “the outcome of half an hour of extreme enthusiasm as I walked home alone one day from fishing in the [River] Elwy.”
This afternoon was the colour of water falling through sunlight; The trees glittered with the tumbling of leaves; The sidewalks shone like alleys of dropped maple leaves, And the houses ran along them laughing out of square, open windows. Under a tree in the park, Two little boys, lying flat on their faces, Were carefully gathering red berries To put in a pasteboard box.
Some day there will be no war, Then I shall take out this afternoon And turn it in my fingers, And remark the sweet taste of it upon my palate, And note the crisp variety of its flights of leaves. To-day I can only gather it And put it into my lunch-box, For I have time for nothing But the endeavour to balance myself Upon a broken world. ~Amy Lowell from “September 1918”
There is no point in seeing without responding; there is no way to respond without seeing.
Christian life and practice require both faith (the sight of the heart) and works (the lurch of the heart toward him in obedience). ~Kathleen Mulhern from “A Christ Sighting” from Dry Bones
Am I the only one who awoke this morning praying today might be a day of healing between peoples, when the barbarous becomes beautiful and we seek to become balanced rather than broken?
A day of no drone missiles being launched, no threats of annihilation and winner takes all, no one gunned down in the street, no vehicles used as weapons, no harsh and angry words spoken, no child misused, no one sold into slavery, no one overdosing, abandoned, homeless and starving.
Am I the only one who awakes and only seeks to watch the clouds to praise the heavens to see the leaves turn color to take out this one day and taste it and find that it is good, then put it away for self-keeping to share when and if I find someone else as hungry for grace and mercy as I am,
so as to balance myself somehow in the beauty of this world while teetering on its brokenness?
She lingered in that charming little garden to say hello to the gnomes, such a glorious infestation! How few wizards realize just how much we can learn from the wise little gnomes- or, to give them their correct names, the Gernumbli gardensi. ‘Ours do know a lot of excellent swear words,’ said Ron… J.K. Rowling in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
It is hard to say exactly when the first one moved in. This farm was distinctly gnome-less when we bought it nearly forty years ago, largely due to twenty-seven hungry barn cats residing here at the time in various stages of pregnancy, growth, development and aging. It took awhile for the feline numbers to whittle down to an equilibrium that matched the rodent population.
In the mean time, our horse numbers increased from three to seven to over fifteen with a resultant exponential increase in barn chores. One spring thirty years ago, I was surprised to walk in the barn one morning to find numerous complex knots tied in the Haflingers’ manes. Puzzling as I took precious time to undo them, literally adding hours to my chores, I knew I needed to find the cause or culprit.
It took some research to determine the probable origin of these tight tangles. Based on everything I researched, they appeared to be the work of Gernumbli faenilesi, a usually transient species of gnome preferring to live in barns and haylofts in close proximity to heavy maned ponies. In this case, as the tangles persisted for months, they clearly had moved in, lock, stock and barrel. The complicated knots were their signature pride and joy, their artistic way of showing their devotion to a happy farm.
All well and good, but the extra work was killing my fingers and thinning my horses’ hair. I plotted ways to get them to cease and desist.
I set live traps of cheese and peanut butter cracker sandwiches, hoping to lure them into cages for a “catch and release”. Hoping to drive them away, I played polka music on the radio in the barn at night. Hoping to be preemptive, I braided the manes up to be less tempting but even those got twisted and jumbled. Just as I was becoming ever more desperate and about to round up more feral cats, the tangling stopped.
It appeared the gnomes had moved on to a more hospitable habitat. Apparently I had succeeded in my gnome eradication plan.
Or so I thought.
Not long after, I had the distinct feeling of being watched as I walked past some rose bushes in the yard. I stopped to take a look, expecting to spy the shining eyes of one of the pesky raccoons that frequents our yard to steal from the cats’ food dish. Instead, beneath the thorny foliage, I saw two round blue eyes peering at me serenely. This little gal was not at all intimidated by me, and made no move to escape. She was an ideal example of Gernumbli gardensi, a garden gnome known for their ability to keep varmints and vermin away from plants and flowers. They also happen to actively feud with Gernumbli Faenilesi so that explained the sudden disappearance of my little knot-tying pests in the barn.
It wasn’t long before more Gardensi moved in, a gnomey infestation. They tend to arrive in pairs and bunches, bringing their turtles and dogs with them, like to play music, smoke pipes, play on a teeter totter, work with garden tools, take naps on sun-warmed rocks and one even prefers a swing, day and night through all four seasons. They are a bit of a rowdy bunch and always up for a party, but I enjoy their happy presence and jovial demeanor. I haven’t yet heard any bad language as we have a “keep it clean” policy about bad words around here. They seem quite hardy, stoically withstand extremes in weather, wear masks when asked and only seem fearful when hornets build a nest right in their lap.
As long as they continue to coexist peaceably with us and each other, keep the varmints and their knot-tying cousins away, and avoid bad habits and swear words, I’m quite happy they are here. Actually, I’ve given them the run of the place. I’ve been told to be cautious as there are now news reports of an even more invasive species of gnome, Gernumbli kitschsi, that could move in and take over if I’m not careful. In fact, several new little fellows moved into my hanging baskets and back into the barn this week – someone obviously had put the word out this is a great place to winter over. Now I need to watch for more mane tangles again.
A gnome explosion.
I shudder to think. There goes the neighborhood.
photo by Tomomi Gibson
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Day after day, day after still day, The summer has begun to pass away. Starlings at twilight fly clustered and call, And branches bend, and leaves begin to fall. The meadow and the orchard grass are mown, And the meadowlark’s house is cut down.
The little lantern bugs have doused their fires, The swallows sit in rows along the wires. Berry and grape appear among the flowers Tangled against the wall in secret bowers, And cricket now begins to hum the hours Remaining to the passion’s slow procession Down from the high place and the golden session Wherein the sun was sacrificed for us. A failing light, no longer numinous, Now frames the long and solemn afternoons Where butterflies regret their closed cocoons. We reach the place unripe, and made to know As with a sudden knowledge that we go Away forever, all hope of return Cut off, hearing the crackle of the burn- ing blade behind us, and the terminal sound Of apples dropping on the dry ground. ~Howard Nemerov “Summer’s Elegy” from Collected Poems
As far as I can see this autumn haze That spreading in the evening air both ways, Makes the new moon look anything but new, And pours the elm-tree meadow full of blue, Is all the smoke from one poor house alone With but one chimney it can call its own; So close it will not light an early light, Keeping its life so close and out of sight No one for hours has set a foot outdoors So much as to take care of evening chores. The inmates may be lonely women-folk. I want to tell them that with all this smoke They prudently are spinning their cocoon And anchoring it to an earth and moon From which no winter gale can hope to blow it,— Spinning their own cocoon did they but know it. ~Robert Frost “The Cocoon”
The summer ends, and it is time To face another way. Our theme Reversed, we harvest the last row To store against the cold, undo The garden that will be undone. We grieve under the weakened sun To see all earth’s green fountains dried, And fallen all the works of light. You do not speak, and I regret This downfall of the good we sought As though the fault were mine. I bring The plow to turn the shattering Leaves and bent stems into the dark, From which they may return. At work, I see you leaving our bright land, The last cut flowers in your hand. ~Wendell Berry “The Summer Ends” from A Timbered Choir.
I too regret the closed cocoon, so seemingly safe at the time — once launched before being ready, there is no returning.
In this fading, failing light, I feel undone, weepy at harvest, gathering urgently, not wanting anything to go to waste, trying to memorialize it all as it changes.
I part again from you, Summer – your gifts seemed endless until you yourself ended – a reminder that someday, so must I.
photo by Bob Tjoelker
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I will wait here in the fields to see how well the rain brings on the grass. In the labor of the fields longer than a man’s life I am at home. Don’t come with me. You stay home too.
I will be standing in the woods where the old trees move only with the wind then with the gravity. In the stillness of the trees I am at home. Don’t come with me. You stay home too. ~Wendell Berry “Stay Home” from Collected Poems
A steady silver rain pours out over the gray world on an ordinary morning. Drenching for hours the field, wild flowers, soil and all the birds off somewhere dry in hidden nests, keeping quiet.
And you, too: keep quiet for a few hours, let your thoughts fizz like that silver sheen, shushshushshushshush, ceaseless sheet of velvet, of plenty. Enough to hear, to drink, to soak in, though you hadn’t known how dry you were. ~Joanne Esser “What You Need: (It Doesn’t Have to Be Lightning)” from Nothing is Stationary
Yesterday morning, our county was awakened shortly after 6AM with several thunder crashes after lightning bolts flashed and illuminated our dark bedroom.
Thunder storms are unusual in the Pacific Northwest; even more unusual is an early morning storm with so much drama and subsequent dumping rain.
I was fortunate to be sheltering inside a comfortable home with a good roof — not sitting in a tree.
I was happy,watching it happen without it happening to me.
Then I looked out my kitchen window, where a drenched pine siskin sat trembling on our bird feeder, her breakfast interrupted by the downpour. No doubt she would much rather have been at home quietly sitting in her favorite tree, but as she was unable to fly so soaked by the heavy torrent, she huddled under the little cover of the feeder, trying to ride it out.
Watching her cope with her wet plumage from an unplanned bird bath, I realized I hadn’t known how dry I was.
After twenty minutes, the storm was all over as the sun began peeking out from behind roiling clouds. She shook off the excess drops from her feathers, picked out a few more seeds before launching on her way to parts unknown.
I sat and finished my toast, musing at our brief breakfast alongside one another, each safe under temporary shelter. In her own way, she let me know: In the stillness of the trees I am at home. Don’t come with me. You stay home too.
And so I shall…
Lyrics: We all need love and shelter A place where we let go and rest To live secure with one another To be ourselves, not somebody else
Everybody needs respect and dignity Everybody needs love, real love
We all need to know we’re worthy That we are treasure to our core We can tell the truth about our trauma To be believed so we can be restored
Everybody needs love; everybody knows love Is what it takes to make a life So everybody breathe love; everyone receive love It’s how we heal and make things right
We all need confirmation To know that we are seen and heard To live our lives out in freedom Then all our flags of hope can be unfurled
We all need a place to shelter
Lyrics: Whisper truth over me I’m loved eternally Never am I alone, you’re here with me I don’t have to be afraid Faithfulness doesn’t change Unshakable terra firm underneath my need
I wanna know this love A love that never dies For when I trust I find Your love sustains my life
Whisper grace over me I don’t need to earn your peace Help me surrender now as you carry me When shadows are lengthening I’m sheltered beneath your wings Compassionate arms of love are still underneath
I wanna know this love A love that never dies For when I trust I find Your love sustains my life
I wanna know this love A love that never dies For when I trust I’ll find Your love sustains my life
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Six days before the Passover, Jesus therefore came to Bethany, where Lazarus was, whom Jesus had raised from the dead.
So they gave a dinner for him there. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those reclining with him at table. Mary therefore took a pound of expensive ointment made from pure nard, and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped his feet with her hair.
The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.
But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (he who was about to betray him), said,“Why was this ointment not sold for three hundred denarii and given to the poor?”He said this, not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief, and having charge of the moneybag he used to help himself to what was put into it.
Jesus said, “Leave her alone, so that she may keep it for the day of my burial.For the poor you always have with you, but you do not always have me.”
When the large crowd of the Jews learned that Jesus was there, they came, not only on account of him but also to see Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. So the chief priests made plans to put Lazarus to death as well,because on account of him many of the Jews were going away and believing in Jesus. John 12: 1-11
The world is charged with the grandeur of God. It will flame out, like shining from shook foil; It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod? Generations have trod, have trod, have trod; And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil; And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod. ~Gerard Manley Hopkins from “God’s Grandeur”
I am a man who has hoped, in time, that his life, when poured out at the end, would say ‘good-good-good-good-good!’ like a gallon jug of the prime local spirit. I am a man of losses, regrets, and griefs. I am an old man full of love. I am a man of faith. But faith is not necessarily, or not soon, a resting place. Faith puts you out on a wide river in a little boat, in the fog, in the dark. Even a man of faith knows that … we’ve all got to go through enough to kill us. ~Wendell Berry from Jayber Crow
She did what she could. She poured perfume on my body beforehand to prepare for my burial. Mark 14:8
Last week, it became apparent one warm late summer evening that in the thick bushes lining the front of our farmhouse under our windows, some animal had died.
The stink wafted on the breeze into our bedrooms through our summer-open windows.
The outdoor farm cats and our dog were accounted for, so it must have been a dead squirrel, a raccoon or even a (actually dead) possum, all occasional nighttime visitors to our cat food dish on the nearby front porch.
Trying to find the offending carcass would involve cutting through dense foliage that had been growing over two decades – not an easy task to undertake. So we closed the windows and hoped the smell would dissipate quickly.
Surprisingly, a day later it was mostly gone, much to our relief. It is possible another animal scavenger decided it was worth hauling away. We were most grateful the smell of death was no longer filling our house…
Just the week before this scripture section from the book of John, Martha warned Jesus that opening Lazarus’ tomb would release the inevitable stench of death. Yet when Lazarus was raised, the odor of death was overcome by renewal and restoration.
When Martha’s sister Mary anoints Jesus’ feet with an expensive fragrant oil, normally used in preparation for burial, it fills the entire house with its perfume. Jesus sees it as a harbinger for what is to come in the next week.
His faith in God’s plan means Jesus goes through enough to kill Him.
In this broken world, we live in the smudge and stench of mortal man’s smell of death, yet we are saved by this crushed, dying Savior who pours out a perfume of Himself for us.
Like Mary, let us also do what we can: filling God’s house with His fragrance.
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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In the evening there were flocks of nighthawks passing southward over the valley. The tall sunflowers stood, burning on their stalks to cold seed, by the still river. And high up the birds rose into sight against the darkening clouds. They tossed themselves among the fading landscapes of the sky like rags, as in abandonment to the summons their blood knew. And in my mind, where had stood a garden straining to the light, there grew an acceptance of decline. Having worked, I would sleep, my leaves all dissolved in flight. ~Wendell Berry “September 2”
And when I rise, let me rise Like a bird, joyfully. And when I fall, let me fall, Like a leaf, gracefully, without regret. And when I stand, let me stand, Like a tree, strong and tall. And when I lie, let me lie, Like a lake, peacefully, calm and still. And when I work, let me work, Like a bee, wholeheartedly. And when I play, let me play, Like a breeze, fresh and cool, light and clear. ~adapted from Wendell Berry’s “When I Rise” in The Mad Farmer Poems
The thistles, rooted out, throng in again; The single regal rose is mobbed by weeds; The plums, the pears, the ripening apples, rain In the sun; and past summer plants new seeds.
Here, or there, these common yearly things Repeat, repeat, and gardens do not range: Yet thistles, roses, fruit trees, birds, and stings Come to an end, and the church bells sound a change.
These many soft declensions of the day, So hard to take to heart, bear life away. ~Dunstan Thompson from “Passage”from Here At Last Is Love
This end-of-summer winding down, a descent into shorter days and longer nights, this preparation for autumn austerity, reminds me to accept my own slow decline ~ an emptying husk once so full of fruit and seed, now clinging to what is left of me ~ still filled with the joys, the tears, the eyes of a brimming-over heart.
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Many of the Jews therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what he did, believed in him,but some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done. So the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered the council and said, “What are we to do? For this man performs many signs.If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation.”
But one of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, “You know nothing at all.Nor do you understand that it is better for you that one man should die for the people, not that the whole nation should perish.”
He did not say this of his own accord, but being high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus would die for the nation,and not for the nation only, but also to gather into one the children of God who are scattered abroad.
So from that day on they made plans to put him to death.
Jesus therefore no longer walked openly among the Jews, but went from there to the region near the wilderness, to a town called Ephraim, and there he stayed with the disciples.
Now the Passover of the Jews was at hand, and many went up from the country to Jerusalem before the Passover to purifythemselves.
They were looking for Jesus and saying to one another as they stood in the temple, “What do you think? That he will not come to the feast at all?”Now the chief priests and the Pharisees had given orders that if anyone knew where he was, he should let them know, so that they might arrest him. John 11: 45-57
Thy children are gathering home, With joy they are gathering home; From all the divisions in which they were scattered, Thy children are gathering home. ~Charles Naylor from “Thy Children are Gathering Home”
A setting out to find oneself astray, And coming home at dusk a different way. ~Malcolm Guite from “Prayer/Walk”
God is at home, it’s we who have gone out for a walk. ~Meister Eckhart
we who wander, scattered beyond reach
who take wrong turns never ask for directions stumble over the rough roads find ourselves in the ditch distracted by glitter and gold forgetting our ultimate destination
nothing we’ve seen thus far no goal achieved compares to the unity awaiting us
gather us home, O Lord, as you did through your death.
just point the way.
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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I go to nature not because its flowers and sunsets speak to me (though they do) or listen to me inquire but because I have filled it with unintentionality, so that I can miss anything personal in the roar of sunset, so that I can in beds of flowers hold my head up too. ~A.R. Ammons from The Ridge Farm from Complete Poems
Take the tangle instead of the trouble it causes. Take the world inside as seriously as any other. Take your elderly mother and father at face value as they have to. Take the mirror of the sky mirrored in the bay. Take the swell of new-mown hay and the river conversing where the valley opens its mouth and the land begins to creak less as the evening steals light away— Take the wick in the far hills and take the sun and the wind and the look of nothing for granted. Take a little less, all right and try not to take fright. Take the end in mind instead of the end in sight. ~Brian Turner “Take This” from Taking Off
God speaks to each of us as he makes us, then walks with us silently out of the night.
These are the words we dimly hear:
You, sent out beyond your recall, go to the limits of your longing. Embody me.
Flare up like a flame and make big shadows I can move in.
Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final. Don’t let yourself lose me.
Nearby is the country they call life. You will know it by its seriousness.
Each of us, intentionally made by our Creator in His image, yet we discover the beauty and terror of living in His shadow.
So much happens which we don’t intend but there is nothing unintentional with God.
Books and lectures tell us to live intentionally while each day contains something that brings us to our knees.
I tell myself: even though I don’t know what tomorrow will be, I will not take fright Like a flower, I’ll hold my head up I’ll just keep going while taking His Hand and following wherever He intends to take me.
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And when he got into the boat, his disciples followed him. A gale arose on the lake, so great that the boat was being swamped by the waves; but he was asleep. And they went and woke him up, saying, ‘Lord, save us! We are perishing!’
And he said to them, ‘Why are you afraid, you of little faith?’ Then he got up and rebuked the winds and the sea; and there was a dead calm.
They were amazed, saying, ‘What sort of man is this, that even the winds and the sea obey him?’ Matthew 8:23-27
Sweet Jesus, talking his melancholy madness, stood up in the boat and the sea lay down,
silky and sorry. So everybody was saved that night… Nobody knows what the soul is.
It comes and goes like the wind over the water — sometimes, for days, you don’t think of it.
Maybe, after the sermon, after the multitude was fed, one or two of them felt the soul slip forth
like a tremor of pure sunlight before exhaustion, that wants to swallow everything, gripped their bones and left them
miserable and sleepy, as they are now, forgetting how the wind tore at the sails before he rose and talked to it —
tender and luminous and demanding as he always was — a thousand times more frightening than the killer storm. ~Mary Oliver from “Maybe”
We sleep through our diminishing days even more than we sleep through the nights, unfocused on each passing moment which never is to come again.
Those moments crash to shore, then pull back to be lost forever.
There is a blindness in us all about what is inevitably coming, how we tumble through the years like waves, overcome by their passage, helpless to stop them.
Yet He is tender and luminous and demanding He speaks to us with the same words as He addresses the relentless stormy destructive sea.
Peace be still!
And so we obey in our helplessness, forgiven, saved by grace, so silky and sorry.
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