Category: Community

Through Many Dangers, Toils, and Snares…

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Eighteen years ago this week, a college student was brought to our university health clinic by his concerned roommates, as he seemed to be getting sicker with that winter’s seasonal influenza. His family gave permission for his story to be told.

Nothing was helping.  Everything had been tried for a week of the most intensive critical care possible.  A twenty year old man – completely healthy only two weeks previously – was dying and nothing could stop it.

The battle against a sudden MRSA (Methicillin Resistant Staph Aureus) pneumonia precipitated by a routine seasonal influenza infection had been lost. Despite aggressive hemodynamic, antibiotic, antiviral and ventilator management, he was becoming more hypoxic and his renal function was deteriorating.  He was no longer responsive to stimuli.

The intensivist looked weary and defeated. The nurses were staring at their laps, unable to look up, their eyes tearing. The hospital chaplain reached out to hold this young man’s mother’s shaking hands.

After a week of heroic effort and treatment, there was now clarity about the next step.

Two hours later, a group gathered in the waiting room outside the ICU doors. The average age was about 21; they assisted each other in tying on the gowns over their clothing, distributed gloves and masks. Together, holding each other up, they waited for the signal to gather in his room after the ventilator had been removed and he was breathing without assistance. They entered and gathered around his bed.

He was ravaged by this sudden illness, his strong body beaten and giving up. His breathing was now ragged and irregular, sedation preventing response but not necessarily preventing awareness. He was surrounded by silence as each individual who had known and loved him struggled with the knowledge that this was the final goodbye.

His father approached the head of the bed and put his hands on his boy’s forehead and cheek.  He held this young man’s face tenderly, bowing in silent prayer and then murmuring words of comfort:

It is okay to let go. It is okay to leave us now.
We will see you again. We’ll meet again.
We’ll know where you will be.

His mother stood alongside, rubbing her son’s arms, gazing into his face as he slowly slowly slipped away. His father began humming, indistinguishable notes initially, just low sounds coming from a deep well of anguish and loss.

As the son’s breaths spaced farther apart, his dad’s hummed song became recognizable as the hymn of praise by John Newton, Amazing Grace.  The words started to form around the notes. At first his dad was singing alone, giving this gift to his son as he passed, and then his mom joined in as well. His sisters wept. His friends didn’t know all the words but tried to sing through their tears. The chaplain helped when we stumbled, not knowing if we were getting it right, not ever having done anything like this before.

Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound,
That saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see.

Through many dangers, toils and snares
I have already come;
‘Tis Grace that brought me safe thus far
and Grace will lead me home.

Yea, when this flesh and heart shall fail,
And mortal life shall cease,
I shall possess within the veil,
A life of joy and peace.

When we’ve been here ten thousand years
Bright shining as the sun.
We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise
Than when we’ve first begun.

And he left us.

His mom hugged each sobbing person there–the young friends, the nurses, the doctors humbled by powerful pathogens. She thanked each one for being present for his death, for their vigil kept through the week in the hospital as his flesh and heart had failed.

This young man, now lost to this mortal life, had profoundly touched people in a way he could not have ever predicted or expected. His parents’ grief, so gracious and giving to the young people who had never confronted death before, remains unforgettable.

This was their sacred gift to their son – so Grace could lead him home.

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Somewhere Only I Know

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I miss the friendship with the pine tree and the birds
that I had when I was ten.
And it has been forever since I pushed my head
under the wild silk skirt of the waterfall.

The big rock on the shore was the skull of a dead king
whose name we could almost remember.
Under the rooty bank you could dimly see
the bunk beds of the turtles.

Nobody I know mentions these things anymore.
It’s as if their memories have been seized, erased, and relocated
among flowcharts and complex dinner-party calendars.

Now I want to turn and run back the other way,
barefoot into the underbrush,
getting raked by thorns, being slapped in the face by branches.

Down to the muddy bed of the little stream
where my cupped hands make a house, and

I tilt up the roof
to look at the face of the frog.
~Tony Hoagland, from “Nature” from  Unincorporated Persons in the Late Honda Dynasty

I grew up on a small farm with several acres of woodland. It was my retreat until I left for college; I walked among twittering birds, skittering wild bunnies, squirrels and chipmunks, busy ant hills and trails, blowing leaves, swimming tadpoles, falling nuts, waving wildflowers, large firs, pines, cottonwoods, maples and alder trees.

I had a favorite “secret” spot sitting perched on a stump where a large rock provided a favorite sunning spot for salamanders. They and I would make eye contact, pondering our common Creator.

At college I longed for a place as private, as serene, but nothing could match the woods and creatures of my childhood home. After living a decade in the city, I nearly forgot what a familiar woods felt like.

On this farm we’ve stewarded for nearly forty years, I’ve longed for a similar sanctuary, yet my distractions are so much greater than when I was a child. Filled with greater worries, I can’t empty my head and heart as completely to receive the varied gifts to be found around me.

In my ever-shortening timeline to accomplish what I’ve been placed here to do, I need to study the faces of creation, knowing those eyes reflect the face of God.

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Encased in Ice

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Ice burns,
and it is hard to the warm-skinned
to distinguish one sensation,
fire,
from the other,
frost.
~A. S. Byatt from Elementals: Stories of Fire and Ice

I have reservoirs of want enough   
to freeze many nights over.
~Conor O’Callaghan from “January Drought”

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
~Robert Frost “Fire and Ice”

Whether consumed by flames or frost,
if rendered to ash or crystal —
both burn.

Yet ashes remain ashes, reduced to
mere dust.

Yet encased by ICE, only a thaw will restore.

Frozen memories sear
until starting to melt,
thereby the imprisoned
are freed.

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The Dwindles

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Morning without you is a dwindled dawn.
~Emily Dickinson in a letter to a friend April 1885

Over the years, the most common search term bringing new readers to my Barnstorming blog is “dwindled dawn.”

I had written about Emily Dickinson’s “dwindles” on a number of occasions – missing a house full of our three children, who have their own homes with families. Yet I had not felt afflicted with a serious case of dwindles myself until the ongoing isolation during COVID-time.

I was clearly not the only one. “Dwindles” spread across the globe during the pandemic more quickly than the virus.

There really isn’t a pill that works well for dwindling. One of the most effective treatments is breaking bread with friends and family all in the same room, at the same table, playing games, lingering over conversation or singing together in harmony.

Just being together becomes the ultimate cure for dwindles.

Maybe experiencing friend and family deficiency during the pandemic helped us all understand how crucial we are to one another. It’s high time to replenish the reservoir so we don’t dwindle away to nothing.

If you are visiting these words for the first time because you too searched for “dwindled dawn” — welcome to Barnstorming. We can stave off the dwindles by joining together each day for encouragement and a bit of beauty.

Because mornings without you all diminishes me.
I just want you to know.

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A Tuesday in January

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Ms. Marcus says that an occasional poem is a poem
written about something
important
or special
that’s gonna happen
or already did.
Think of a specific occasion, she says—and write about it.

Like what?! Lamont asks.
He’s all slouched down in his seat.
I don’t feel like writing about no occasion.

How about your birthday? Ms. Marcus says.
What about it? Just a birthday. Comes in June and it ain’t
June, Lamont says. As a matter of fact,
he says, it’s January and it’s snowing.

Then his voice gets real low and he says
And when it’s January and all cold like this
feels like June’s a long, long ways away.

The whole class looks at Ms. Marcus.
Some of the kids are nodding.

Outside the sky looks like it’s made out of metal
and the cold, cold air is rattling the windowpanes
and coming underneath them too.

Then write about January, Ms. Marcus says, that’s
an occasion.
But she looks a little bit sad when she says it
Like she’s sorry she ever brought the whole
occasional poem thing up.

I was gonna write about Mama’s funeral
but Lamont and Ms. Marcus going back and forth
zapped all the ideas from my head.

I guess them arguing
on a Tuesday in January’s an occasion
So I guess this is an occasional poem.
~Jacqueline Woodson from “Occasional Poem”

I like these cold, gray winter days.  Days like these let you savor a bad mood.
–  Bill Watterson in Calvin and Hobbes

The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree
Has given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued.
~Robert Frost “Dust of Snow”

Now one year later after the occasion of an inauguration,
most of us wish things could be different than they are~
nothing feels right, rights feel like nothing,
we’re more than out of sorts, grumpy, in a bad mood –
we’re all sadly angry and angrily sad.

And we thought the pandemic was bad.

But moral decay at the highest level
is doing more damage than any virus did.
We’ve allowed politics to sow and reproduce
discord, distrust, discouragement
into our very beings.

There is no vaccine
for this aching of the heart.

An infection of the spirit
will far outlast any pandemic virus
by spreading to future generations,
eroding trust as we allow justice to decay,
as human bonds break,
withering our faith and our hope
that our country can survive anything.

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We Share the Guilt

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Do you know why this world is as bad as it is?
It is because people think only about their own business, 
and won’t trouble themselves to stand up for the oppressed, 
nor bring the wrong-doers to light. 
My doctrine is this: that if we see cruelty or wrong
that we have the power to stop, 
and do nothing,
we make ourselves sharers in the guilt.
~Anna Sewell from Black Beauty

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As nightfall does not come at once,
neither does oppression.
In both instances, there is a twilight
when everything remains seemingly unchanged.
And it is in such twilight
that we all must be most aware of change in the air
– however slight –
lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness.
~William O. Douglas from The Douglas letters: Selections from the private papers of Justice William O. Douglas by William O. Douglas

barnsunsetcentral

We live in a time where the groaning need
and dividedness of humankind
is especially to be felt and recognized.
Countless people are subjected to hatred,
violence and oppression which go unchecked.
The injustice and corruption which exist today
are causing many voices to be raised to protest
and cry out that something be done.
Many men and women are being moved to sacrifice much
in the struggle for justice, freedom, and peace.
There is a movement afoot in our time,
a movement which is growing, awakening.

We must recognize that we as individuals are to blame
for every social injustice,
every oppression,
the downgrading of others
and the injury that man does to man,
whether personal or on a broader plane.…
God must intervene with his spirit and his justice and his truth.
The present misery, need, and decay must pass away
and the new day of the Son of Man must dawn.
This is the advent of God’s coming.
~Dwight Blough from the introduction to When the Time was Fulfilled (1965)

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Be careful whom you choose to hate.
The small and the vulnerable own a protection great enough,
if you could but see it,
to melt you into jelly.
~Leif Enger from Peace Like a River

A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question
the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies.
On the one hand, we are called to play the good Samaritan
on life’s roadside; but that will be only an initial act.
One day the whole Jericho road must be transformed
so that men and women will not be beaten and robbed
as they make their journey through life.
True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar;
it understands that an edifice
that produces beggars needs restructuring.
America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world,
can well lead the way in this revolution of values.
There is nothing, except a tragic death wish,
to prevent us from reordering our priorities…
~Martin Luther King, Jr. from a speech April 4, 1967

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As we walk this life, this Jericho Road together,
we cannot pass by the brother, the sister, the child
who lies dying in the ditch.
We must stop and help.

By mere circumstances of our place of birth,
it could be you or me there bleeding, beaten, abandoned
until Someone,
journeying along that road,
comes looking for us,
He who was sent to take our place,
as Substitution
so we can get up, be made whole again,
and walk Home.

Maranatha.

The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral
begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy.
Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it.
Through violence you may murder the liar,
but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth.
Through violence you may murder the hater,
but you do not murder hate.
In fact, violence merely increases hate.
So it goes.
Returning violence for violence multiplies violence,
adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars.
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.
~Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. from Strength to Love

Lyrics:
At the edge of Jericho Road
Beneath the street light’s yellow orange glow
The feared and the fallen go
In the way of predator and prey
No one’s spared
Because hate is too great a weight to bear

In a cage of shadows we meet
Naked and bloodied in the street
At the mercy, at the feet
Of the way of predator and prey
No one’s spared
Because hate is too great a weight to bear

In the darkness on shattered pavement
The better angels fade
Blurred in slumber, murder by numbers
Do you know my name?
Do you know my name?
I believe in you

Because everyone holds some part of the truth
And now, I’m in your way
Do we stay on Jericho Road, forever going nowhere
Till hate is too great a weight to bear

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Surrounded By a Winter Sunset

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How can I feel so warm   
Here in the dead center of January? I can   
Scarcely believe it, and yet I have to, this is   
The only life I have. 
~James Wright from “A Winter Daybreak above Vence”

sunset1131812
to the northwest
sunset1131816
to the north

To-day I shall be strong,
No more shall yield to wrong,
  Shall squander life no more;
Days lost, I know not how,
I shall retrieve them now;
Now I shall keep the vow
  I never kept before.
Ensanguining the skies
How heavily it dies
  Into the west away;
Past touch and sight and sound
Not further to be found,
How hopeless under ground
  Falls the remorseful day.
~A.E. Houseman from “How Clear, How Lovely Bright”

sunset1131816
to the northeast
sunset1131810
to the east
sunset1131814
to the southeast

It was like a church to me.
I entered it on soft foot,
Breath held like a cap in the hand.
It was quiet.
What God there was made himself felt,
Not listened to, in clean colours
That brought a moistening of the eye,
In a movement of the wind over grass.
There were no prayers said. But stillness
Of the heart’s passions — that was praise
Enough; and the mind’s cession
Of its kingdom. I walked on,
Simple and poor, while the air crumbled
And broke on me generously as bread.
~R.S. Thomas “The Moor”

sunset113188
to the south
sunset1131811
to the southwest

So welcome in the dead center of January:
a surround-sunset experience on our farm – 360 degrees of evolving color and patterns, streaks and swirls, gradation and gradual decline.

All is silent. No bird song, no wind, no spoken prayer.
Yet communion takes place with the air breaking and feeding me like manna from heaven.

Witnessing the light bleeding out all around me:

I will squander my days no more, treasuring each as sheer gift.
I will seek to serve my God, church, family, friends, and community.
I will be warmed on this chilly winter day even as it descends to darkness, knowing light and hope will return.

sunset113181
to the west
sunset113182
to the west
sunset113171
to the west
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Dwelling in Possibility

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I pocketed them that day
the tour guide was not looking.

I nodded to myself that she
would not mind for me to hold

in my palm and carry home
such Possibility.
~Andrea Potos “Three Acorns from Emily’s Yard”

I dwell in Possibility –
A fairer House than Prose –
More numerous of Windows –
Superior – for Doors –

Of Chambers as the Cedars –
Impregnable of eye –
And for an everlasting Roof
The Gambrels of the Sky –

Of Visitors – the fairest –
For Occupation – This –
The spreading wide my narrow Hands
To gather Paradise –
~Emily Dickinson

When I dwell in Emily D’s poetic possibilities,
full of mysterious capitalizations,
inscrutable dashes and sideways rhymes,
I feel blinded, get easily lost,
stumbling over this and that,
and end up wondering where she is leading me
and how far I’m willing to go.

Yet she tells me

– This –
to get my attention, hold it fast,
to look up and out, beyond, and into forever.

-This-
is what I must do when I read her carefully chosen words and dashes

-This-
is what I ask of a reader who opens my own words here

-This-
is dwelling in possibility for a moment or an eternity,
all eyes and windows and doors wide open
to grasp a glimpse of Paradise.

-This-
is our hands holding the seeds of potential for the future,
to gather, to embrace, to pray,
to prepare us for Whatever it is which Comes Next…

-This-
we do it together…

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Our Hopes, Such As They Are

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A year has come to us as though out of hiding
It has arrived from an unknown distance
From beyond the visions of the old
Everyone waited for it by the wrong roads
And it is hard for us now to be sure it is here…
~W. S. Merwin from “Early January” from  The Lice 

When once the New Year came to earth,
To claim his realm by right of birth,
A forest knight, the gallant oak,
Upon the pathway threw his cloak.
The garment green, now turned to brown,
Upon the bare earth fluttered down
And o’er the velvet to his throne
The New Year walked unto his own.

Then gave the New Year a decree
To every bush and forest tree
That every growing, blooming thing
Should hail the mighty oak as king.
Yea, more, he made the king of trees
A ruler of the running seas,
In ships to bear from shore to shore
The earth’s discovered treasures o’er.

Then called he Springtime to his side,
Old Winter’s pink-limbed, blushing bride,
And bade her weave a regal cloak
To cover new the gallant oak.
And so she wove a gown of green,
The richest earth had ever seen,
And garbed anew the mighty tree
With emblem of his majesty.
~Douglas Malloch “The Gallant Oak”

I was cold and leaned against the big oak tree
as if it were my mother wearing a rough apron
of bark, her upraised arms warning of danger.
Through those boughs and leaves I saw
dark patches of sky. I thought a brooding
witch waited to catch me up from under
branches and take me, careening on her broom,
to her home in the jaundiced moon.
I looked to the roof of mom and dad’s house
and wondered if the paisley couch patterns
would change during the day. My brother peeked
from a window and waved. When the bus came,
I pawed away from the trunk, fumbled,
and took my first step toward not returning.
~Dante Di Stefano “With a Coat”

With what stillness at last
you appear in the valley
your first sunlight reaching down
to touch the tips of a few
high leaves that do not stir
as though they had not noticed
and did not know you at all
then the voice of a dove calls
from far away in itself
to the hush of the morning

so this is the sound of you
here and now whether or not
anyone hears it this is
where we have come with our age
our knowledge such as it is
and our hopes such as they are
invisible before us
untouched and still possible
~W.S. Merwin “To the New Year”, from Collected Poems 1996-2011

My hopes for this new year, such as they are,
are uneasy-
untouched, yet still possible.

I wonder if I am walking down the wrong pathway.
I wonder if what I thought would be new, remains in hiding.

“we’ve wandered many the weary foot since long, long ago.“
(Auld Lang Syne)

I have taken the first step this past week,
and then another and another,
along this unknown road to the future.
Perhaps I’ll find you walking along this way;
you too may be feeling a bit lost.

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Daring to Disturb the Universe

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photos by Nate Gibson

No one has ever regarded the First of January with indifference.
~Charles Lamb from “New Year’s Eve”

Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse…
~T.S. Eliot from “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”

This New Year’s Day, like so many that have come before, arrived with the ordinary and annoying hour-long revelry of gunshots and fireworks across our rural neighborhood.

Yet this time a new year enters under a cloud: a lingering odor remains from the mess our nation made of 2025.

Like a dog rolling in something stinky simply because it is there, 2026 may look squeaky clean but reeks of what has come before. It can’t be ignored and, even brand spanking new, this year is already badly in need of a bath.

Like a dog, we like what is familiar and comfortable, even if that means we roll about where we shouldn’t, still smelling like yesterday, if not last year.

Time leads irrevocably forward, with us in tow. There is no turning back or staying stubbornly with how things used to be. Perhaps this new year we shower off the mud, stay clear of the stinky stuff in the headlines, and take time to look at all things with new eyes.

Do we dare disturb the universe? 

10899964_10203340508741042_6001648460984325129_o

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