Out of the bosom of the Air, Out of the cloud-folds of her garments shaken, Over the woodlands brown and bare, Over the harvest-fields forsaken Silent, and soft, and slow Descends the snow.
Even as our cloudy fancies take Suddenly shape in some divine expression, Even as the troubled heart doth make In the white countenance confession, The troubled sky reveals The grief it feels.
This is the poem of the air, Slowly in silent syllables recorded; This is the secret of despair, Long in its cloudy bosom hoarded, Now whispered and revealed To wood and field. ~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow “Snow-Flakes”
Snowflakes cover all, settling in around us, drifting about the tucked corners of a downy white comforter
Watching as heaven comes to earth, plumps the pillows, cushions the landscape, and tries to lighten our grieving hearts.
I know dark clouds will gather ’round me I know my way is hard and steep But beauteous fields arise before me Where God’s redeemed, their vigils keep ~from Wayfaring Stranger
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To clasp the hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world. ~Karl Barth
Whatever happens. Whatever what is is is what I want. Only that. But that. ~Galway Kinnell “Prayer”
Ah — a resting place, where we come to understand it is not required of us to wrestle constantly and passionately with our God — nor pursue relentlessly all God’s decrees as we understand them, but only that we listen and wonder and hope and pray, that we might, perhaps, make just a little difference, one quiet grey day. ~Edwina Gateley “Just a Little Difference”
There is much shouting and gnashing of teeth going on in our country right now – some from the streets, some from computer keyboards and screens, and some from inside the echoing halls of government and a certain white house.
We need to stop shouting and clasp hands in prayer.
Nothing can right the world until we are right with God through talking to Him out of our depth of need and fear. Nothing can right the world until we submit ourselves wholly, bowed low, hands clasped, eyes closed, articulating the joy, the thanks, and the petitions weighing on our hearts.
An uprising is only possible when our voice comes alive, unashamed, unselfconscious, rising up from within us, uttering words that beseech and thank and praise. To rise up with hands clasped together calls upon a power needing no billions of funds and no weapons of destruction and no walls to keep people in or keep them out.
He is the Word, come to overcome and overwhelm the shambles left of our world. Nothing can be more victorious than the Amen, our Amen, at the end of our prayers.
Then we shall be where we would be, Then we shall be what we should be, Things that are not now, nor could be, Soon shall be our own. ~Thomas Kelly from his hymn “Praise the Savior, Ye Who Know Him”
Because I was not marked. Because I had neither fame nor beauty nor inquisitiveness. Because I did not ask. Because I used my hands. Because I finished my term on earth and had no knowledge of either fear nor care, no morning knowledge, no knowledge of evening, and those who came before and those following after had no more knowledge of me than I had of them. ~Mary Ruefle from “Marked”
Whether we are coming or going, beginning or ending, leading or following, rising or setting, north or south, east or west ~ one day we shall be where or what we should be, without fear nor care nor knowledge.
We’ll journey the continuum of grace and comfort, part of our Creator’s purpose and design.
So even if not now in our comings and goings, we will never be lost nor adrift.
We are forever found.
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In winter, the earth remembers its hidden life; a silence deepens that is not emptiness but preparation. ~Rowan Williams
When, in the middle of the night, you wake with the certainty you’ve done it all wrong, when you wake and see clearly all the places you’ve failed, in that moment, when dreams will not return, this is the chance for your most gentle voice— the one you reserve for those you love most— to say to you quietly, oh sweetheart, this is not yet the end of the story. Sleep will not come, but somehow, in that wide-awake moment there is peace— the kind that does not need everything to be right before it arrives. The kind that comes from not fighting what is real. The peace that rises in the dark on its sure dark wings and flies true with no moon, no stars. ~Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer “With Astonishing Tenderness” from The Unfolding
Peaceful sleep has been elusive over the last 10 nights.
I realize a significant number of people are resting more easily. They celebrate an overwhelming number of rapid changes instituted by a new government administration over a few days.
I’m not among them.
Sweetheart, this is not yet the end of the story. It never is.
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There are three kinds of men. The ones that learn by reading. The few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves. ~Will Rogers
We living creatures learn from the moment we take our first breath. We continue to learn until our last breath. With that lifetime of learning, one would think eventually we should find some semblance of wisdom.
But we don’t. We tend to learn the hard way especially when it comes to matters having to do with our (or others’) health and well-being.
Within a community, we want autonomy to do as we like, no matter what the science says. You’d think we’d know better, but as fallible human beings, we may impulsively make decisions about health issues. Is it evidence-based or simply an anecdotal story about what “worked” or “didn’t work” for someone else?
We’re facing at least four years of a new administration encouraging us all to “pee on the electric fence” and learn for ourselves rather than trust science. Careful research, years of observed experience, and plain common sense isn’t enough to trust public health and infectious disease experts to make wise recommendations about community and individual risk and prevention strategies.
The cows and horses on our farm need to touch an electric fence only once when reaching for greener grass on the other side. That moment provides a potent learning curve for them to make important future decisions. They won’t try testing it again no matter how alluring thngs appear on the other side. Humans should learn as quickly as animals but unfortunately don’t.
I know all too well what a shock feels like and I want to avoid repeating that experience. Even so, in unguarded careless moments of feeling invulnerable (it can’t happen to me!) or annoyed at being told what I can and can’t do, or simply indulging in magical thinking, I find myself reaching for the greener grass.
I suspect I’m not alone in my surprise when I’m jolted back to reality.
Many great minds have worked out various theories of effective learning, but, great mind or not, Will Rogers confirms a common sense suspicion: an adverse experience, like a “bolt out of the blue,” can be a powerful teacher.
So we call peeing on an electric fence it “a teachable moment.”
Sadly, when we learn the hard way, it often ends up hurting everyone.
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I got out of bed on two strong legs. It might have been otherwise. I ate cereal, sweet milk, ripe, flawless peach. It might have been otherwise. I took the dog uphill to the birch wood. All morning I did the work I love. At noon I lay down with my mate. It might have been otherwise. We ate dinner together at a table with silver candlesticks. It might have been otherwise. I slept in a bed in a room with paintings on the walls, and planned another day just like this day. But one day, I know, it will be otherwise. ~Jane Kenyon “Otherwise”
…this has been a day of grace in the dead of winter, the hard knuckle of the year, a day that unwrapped itself like an unexpected gift, and the stars turn on, order themselves into the winter night. ~Barbara Crooker from “Ordinary Life” in Barbara Crooker: Selected Poems
…it’s easy to forget that the ordinary is just the extraordinary that’s happened over and over again. Sometimes the beauty of your life is apparent. Sometimes you have to go looking for it. And just because you have to look for it doesn’t mean it’s not there. God, grant me the grace of a normal day. ~Billy Coffey
…there is no such thing as a charmed life, not for any of us, no matter where we live or how mindfully we attend to the tasks at hand. But there are charmed moments, all the time, in every life and in every day, if we are only awake enough to experience them when they come and wise enough to appreciate them. ~Katrina Kenison from The Gift of an Ordinary Day
These dead of winter days are lengthening, slowly and surely. I’m thankful I’m retired now so I no longer I leave the farm in darkness to head to work in town, and return in darkness at the end of the workday. I’m able to do my barn chores at either end of the day as the sun is rising to chase away the moon, and later as the sun is chased away by starlight.
I tend to get complacent in my daily routines, confident in the knowledge that tomorrow will be very much like yesterday. The distinct blessings of an ordinary day are lost in the rush of moving forward to whatever comes next. Poet Jane Kenyon wrote her poem with the knowledge she was dying of leukemia, which meant each ordinary day was precious indeed.
The reality is there is nothing ordinary about the events of each day. It might have been otherwise and some day it will be otherwise. That is the hard knuckle of the days we are given, each a gift, each peaches and cream.
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I would permit no man to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him. ~Booker T. Washington from Up from Slavery
Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction…. The chain reaction of evil — hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars — must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation. ~Martin Luther King Jr. from Strength to Love
Do not be overwhelmed with evil but overcome evil with good. Romans 12:21
The goal of this life is to live with love and compassion for others, even those who try to pull us deep into the abyss of hatred.
Each of us, whether president, prince or pauper, is called to give up our own selfish agendas and consider the dignity of others and their greater good.
Cherish life: all lives – as is crystal clear from Christ’s example on the cross – including those who do hateful things and want to harm us. Let us not be pulled down to their level, spewing angry vindictive words rather than words of grace and peace.
Our only defense against evil is God’s love as sacrifice; only He can lead us to “where everything sad will come untrue”, where tears are no longer shed in anger, sorrow, and fear.
The light beam of His love finds us in the dark abyss. The great shadow of meanness and hatefulness departs.
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How granular they feel—grief and regret, arriving, as they do, in the sharp particularities of distress. Inserting themselves— cunning, intricate, subversive—into our discourse.
In the long night, grievances seem to multiply. Old dreams mingling with new. Disappointment and regret bludgeon the soul, your best imaginings bruised, your hopes ragged.
Yet wait, watch. From the skylight the room is filling with soft early sun, slowly sifting its light on the bed, on your head, a shower of fine particles. How welcome. And how reliable. ~Luci Shaw“Sorrow”
(In my sleep I dreamed this poem)
Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness.
We are given a box full of darkness by someone who loves us, and we can’t help but open it, weeping.
It takes a lifetime to understand, if we ever do, we will inevitably hand off this gift to others we love.
Opening the box allows the Light in where none existed before.
Light pours into our brokenness.
Sorrow ends up shining through our tears: we reach out from a deep well of need. Because we are loved so thoroughly, we too love deeply beyond ourselves.
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This saying good-by on the edge of the dark And the cold to an orchard so young in the bark Reminds me of all that can happen to harm An orchard away at the end of the farm All winter, cut off by a hill from the house.
I wish I could promise to lie in the night And think of an orchard’s arboreal plight When slowly (and nobody comes with a light) Its heart sinks lower under the sod. But something has to be left to God. ~Robert Frost from “Good-bye and Keep Cold”
The winter orchard looks cold and silent yet I know plenty is happening beneath the sod.
There isn’t much to be done this time of year until the pruning hook comes out. Ideally, now is the time the trees should be shaped and shorn.
Pruning is one of those tasks that is immensely satisfying–after it’s done – way after. Several years after in some cases. In the case of our fruit trees, which all have an average age of 90 years or more, it is a matter of prune or lose them forever. We set to work, trying to gently retrain wild and chaotic apple, cherry, plum, and pear trees, but our consistency was lacking. The trees remained on the wild side, defying us, and several have toppled over in windstorms due to their weakened frame.
We hired additional help, hoping to get ahead of the new growth, but our helper had the “chain saw” approach to pruning and literally scalped several trees into dormancy before we saw what was happening and stopped the savaging.
Instead, the process of retraining a wild tree is slow, meticulous, thoughtful, and expectant. We must study the tree, the setting, know the fruit it is supposed to bear, and begin making decisions before making cuts. The dead stuff goes first–that’s easy. It’s not useful, it’s taking up space, it’s outta here. It’s the removal of viable branches that takes courage. Like thinning healthy vegetable plants in a garden, I can almost hear the plant utter a little scream as we choose it to be the next one to go. Gardening is not for the faint of heart. So ideally, we choose to trim about a third of the superfluous branches, rather than taking them all at once. In three years, we have the hoped-for tree, bearing fruit that is larger, healthier and hardier.
Then we’re in maintenance mode. That takes patience, vision, dedication, and love. That’s the ideal world.
The reality is we skip years of pruning work, sometimes several years in a row. Or we make a really dumb error and prune in a way that is counter productive, and it takes several years for the tree to recover. Or, in the case of the scalping, those trees took years to ever bear fruit again–standing embarrassed and naked among their peers.
Then there is the clean up process after pruning–if it was just lopping off stuff, I’d be out there doing it right now, but the process of picking up all those discarded branches off the ground, carrying them to a brush pile and burning them takes much more time and effort. That’s where kids come in very handy.
Our three children tolerated our shaping, trimming and pruning for years, grew tall and strong and ready to meet the world, to give it all they’ve got. In our hopes and dreams for them, there were times we probably pruned a bit in haste, or sometimes neglected to prune enough, but even so, they’re all bearing great fruit, now grown up with few “scars” to show for our mistakes.
I’m still pruned regularly by the Master Gardener, often painfully. Sometimes I see the pruning hook coming, knowing the dead branches that I’ve needlessly hung onto must go, and sometimes it comes as a complete surprise, cutting me at my most vulnerable spots. Some years I bear better fruit than other years. Some years, it seems, hardly any at all. I can be cold and dormant, unfruitful and at times desolate.
Yet, I’m still rooted, still fed when hungry and watered when thirsty, and still, amazingly enough, loved. I’ll continue to hang on to the root that chose to feed me and hold me fast through the windstorms of life. Even when my trunk is leaning, my branches broken, my fruit withered, I will know that God’s love sustains me, no matter what.
I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. John 15: 1-2
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It is precisely because we are weary, and poor in spirit, that God can touch us with hope. This is not an easy truth. It means that we do accept our common lot, and take up our share of the cross. It means that we do not gloss over the evils we confront every day, both within ourselves and without. Our sacrifices may be great.
But as the martyred archbishop of El Salvador, Oscar Romero, once said, it is only the poor and hungry, those who know they need someone to come on their behalf, who can celebrate Christmas. We can ask for courage, however, and trust that God has not led us into this new land only to abandon us there. ~Kathleen Norrisfrom God With Us
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On Epiphany day, we are still the people walking. We are still people in the dark, and the darkness looms large around us, beset as we are by fear, anxiety, brutality, violence, loss — a dozen alienations that we cannot manage.
We are — we could be — people of your light. So we pray for the light of your glorious presence as we wait for your appearing; we pray for the light of your wondrous grace as we exhaust our coping capacity; we pray for your gift of newness that will override our weariness; we pray that we may see and know and hear and trust in your good rule.
That we may have energy, courage, and freedom to enact your rule through the demands of this day. We submit our day to you and to your rule, with deep joy and high hope. ~Walter Brueggemann from Prayers for a Privileged People
When the song of the angels is stilled, when the star in the sky is gone, when the kings and princes are home, when the shepherds are back with their flocks, the work of Christmas begins: to find the lost, to heal the broken, to feed the hungry, to release the prisoner, to rebuild the nations, to bring peace among the people, to make music in the heart. ~Howard Thurman from The Mood of Christmas & Other Celebrations
O God, who am I now? Once, I was secure
in familiar territory in my sense of belonging
unquestioning of
the norms of my culture the assumptions built into my language the values shared by my society.
But now you have called me out and away from home and I do not know where you are leading. I am empty, unsure, uncomfortable. I have only a beckoning star to follow.
Journeying God, pitch your tent with mine so that I may not become deterred by hardship, strangeness, doubt. Show me the movement I must make
toward a wealth not dependent on possessions toward a wisdom not based on books toward a strength not bolstered by might toward a God not confined to heaven
All the Advent anticipation is over, Christmas and New Years are now past. Today is Epiphany, when I regret my energy and courage is waning just as the work of Christmas must begin.
I’ve swept up the last of the fir needles that dropped to the floor from a lovely Christmas tree that I watered faithfully in the house for over two weeks. But no amount of water could sustain what is rootless.
So it is with us.
I too am drying up, parts of me left behind for others to sweep up. I too must have roots of faith to survive in a troubled world.
The real work of Christmas is year-long — often very hard intensive work, not always the fun stuff of the last month, yet needed in the brokenness of hunger, disease, conflict, war and random violence, poverty, addictions, depression and pain.
We don’t need full stockings on the hearth, Christmas villages on the side table, or a blinking star on the top of the tree to reflect on the comfort of God’s care and the astounding beauty of His creation, all available to us without batteries, electrical plug ins, or the need of a ladder.
The real work of Christmas is God manifest on earth – “scandalously earthed” – in our own lives. We recognize Him in the homeless and forgotten. We are made alive to the possibility that we can make a difference in His name, to walk in others’ shoes, just as He walks in ours.
Every day. Twelve months. Life long.
Are we ready?
Unclench your fists Hold out your hands. Take mine. Let us hold each other. Thus is his Glory Manifest. ~Madeleine L’Engle “Epiphany”
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