About the middle of the feast Jesus went up into the temple and began teaching. The Jews therefore marveled, saying, “How is it that this man has learning, when he has never studied?” So Jesus answered them, “My teaching is not mine, but his who sent me. If anyone’s will is to do God’s will, he will know whether the teaching is from God or whether I am speaking on my own authority. The one who speaks on his own authority seeks his own glory; but the one who seeks the glory of him who sent him is true, and in him there is no falsehood. Has not Moses given you the law? Yet none of you keeps the law. Why do you seek to kill me?” The crowd answered, “You have a demon! Who is seeking to kill you?” Jesus answered them, “I did one work, and you all marvel at it. Moses gave you circumcision (not that it is from Moses, but from the fathers), and you circumcise a man on the Sabbath.If on the Sabbath a man receives circumcision, so that the law of Moses may not be broken, are you angry with me because on the Sabbath I made a man’s whole body well? Do not judge by appearances, but judge with right judgment.” John 7:14-24
The onening, she saw, the onening with the Godhead opened Him utterly to the pain of all minds, all bodies – sands of the sea, of the desert – from first beginning to last day. The great wonder is that the human cells of His flesh and bone didn’t explode when utmost Imagination rose in that flood of knowledge. Unique in agony, infinite strength, Incarnate, empowered Him to endure inside of history, through those hours when He took Himself the sum total of anguish and drank even the lees of that cup: within the mesh of the web, Himself woven within it, yet seeing it, seeing it whole, Every sorrow and desolation He saw, and sorrowed in kinship. ~Denise Levertov from “On a Theme from Julian’s Chapter XX”
Jesus seems perplexed: He came to deliver a new covenant with God’s people so why did those He came to save now seek to kill him?
Why are they angry when He healed one of their own, no matter what day of the week?
This makes no sense to the One who shares human cells with those who now want Him dead, with whom He came alongside to become “one,” experiencing all our pain and sorrows and loneliness.
He is “one-ning” with those who seek to crush Him.
Jesus is – incredibly – our kin within our skin, woven within us and yet, knowing all our sins, He still loves us and wants to bring us home to Him.
Amazing grace.
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.
I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made; Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee, And live alone in the bee-loud glade.
And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow, Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings; There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow, And evening full of the linnet’s wings.
I will arise and go now, for always night and day I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore; While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey, I hear it in the deep heart’s core. ~William Butler Yeats “The Lake Isle of Innisfree”
O gentle bees, I have come to say That grandfather fell to sleep to-day. And we know by the smile on grandfather’s face. He has found his dear one’s biding place. So, bees, sing soft, and, bees, sing low. As over the honey-fields you sweep,— To the trees a-bloom and the flowers a-blow Sing of grandfather fast asleep; And ever beneath these orchard trees Find cheer and shelter, gentle bees. ~Eugene Field from “Telling the Bees”
Here is the place; right over the hill Runs the path I took; You can see the gap in the old wall still, And the stepping-stones in the shallow brook.
There is the house, with the gate red-barred, And the poplars tall; And the barn’s brown length, and the cattle-yard, And the white horns tossing above the wall.
There are the beehives ranged in the sun; And down by the brink Of the brook are her poor flowers, weed-o’errun, Pansy and daffodil, rose and pink.
A year has gone, as the tortoise goes, Heavy and slow; And the same rose blows, and the same sun glows, And the same brook sings of a year ago.
I can see it all now,—the slantwise rain Of light through the leaves, The sundown’s blaze on her window-pane, The bloom of her roses under the eaves.
Just the same as a month before,— The house and the trees, The barn’s brown gable, the vine by the door,— Nothing changed but the hives of bees.
Before them, under the garden wall, Forward and back, Went drearily singing the chore-girl small, Draping each hive with a shred of black.
Trembling, I listened: the summer sun Had the chill of snow; For I knew she was telling the bees of one Gone on the journey we all must go! ~John Greenleaf Whittier from “Telling the Bees”
If you talk to him, he will not pretend to be an ordinary man. He won’t let on he is one who isn’t afraid to hold in his outstretched hands the buzzing gold.
He won’t tell you he is the man who keeps farmers warm in their livelihood, or the man who keeps the grocery shelves full, then adds, simply for good measure, jars of his shining honey. He won’t explain that he is the one who sets his suffering neighbors free from their pain with gifts of jars that sting.
He won’t let on to be the lifegiver or a god. He will pretend he is just an old man with sand-colored hair, a blue truck heavy with breezy hives, and a comb-spinner in his cellar. ~Sidney Hall Jr., from This Understated Land
…The world was really one bee yard, and the same rules work fine in both places. Don’t be afraid, as no life-loving bee wants to sting you. Still, don’t be an idiot; wear long sleeves and pants. Don’t swat. Don’t even think about swatting. If you feel angry, whistle. Anger agitates while whistling melts a bee’s temper. Act like you know what you’re doing, even if you don’t. Above all, send the bees love. Every little thing wants to be loved. ~Sue Monk Kiddfrom The Secret Life of Bees
He calls the honeybees his girls although he tells me they’re ungendered workers who never produce offspring. Some hour drops, the bees shut off. In the long, cool slant of sun, spent flowers fold into cups. He asks me if I’ve ever seen a Solitary Bee where it sleeps. I say I’ve not. The nearest bud’s a long-throated peach hollyhock. He cradles it in his palm, holds it up so I spy the intimacy of the sleeping bee. Little life safe in a petal, little girl, your few furious buzzings as you stir stay with me all winter, remind me of my work undone. ~Heid E. Erdrich, from “Intimate Detail” from The Mother’s Tongue
It was just like I was telling the bees last night. I saw two of them asleep inside the cup of a hollyhock, covered in pollen, just holding each other’s feet, just sleeping in the flower waiting for the sun to warm them so they could fly off. To see two of them curled up like that, it was very sweet. ~Diana Gabaldon/Matt Roberts from the final episode of Outlander TV series
A beekeeper must be a loving and patient person; the bees know who loves them, and who will always be there to care for them.
An old Celtic tradition necessitates sharing any news from the household with the farm’s bee hives, whether cheery like a new birth or a wedding celebration or sad like a family death. This ensures the hives’ well-being and continued connection to home and community – the bees are kept in the loop, so to speak, so they stay at home, not swarm and move on to a more hospitable place.
Each little life safe at home, each little life with work still undone.
Good news seems always easy to share; we tend to keep bad news to ourselves so this tradition helps remind us that what affects one of us, affects us all.
These days, with instant news at our fingertips at any moment, bad news is constantly bombarding us. Like the bees in the hives of the field, we want to flee from it and find a more hospitable home.
Our Creator (the ultimate Beekeeper) says personally to each of us: “Here is what has happened. All will be well, dear one. We will navigate your life together.”
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Not much to me is yonder lane Where I go every day; But when there’s been a shower of rain And hedge-birds whistle gay, I know my lad that’s out in France With fearsome things to see Would give his eyes for just one glance At our white hawthorn tree.
. . . .
Not much to me is yonder lane Where he so longs to tread: But when there’s been a shower of rain I think I’ll never weep again Until I’ve heard he’s dead. ~Siegfried Sassoon“The Hawthorn Tree”
First of all, we’ve been using the wrong word all these years. It means without rhythm. The only arrhythmia is asystole, I tell my students. That’s the flat line accompanied by the clang of alarms in all the television dramas. There’s not much you can do about it; the patient is dead and usually stays dead. The correct word to describe all the ways a heart can dance and die is dysrhythmia, which means a disordered rhythm. There’s the soldiered march of ventricular tachycardia or the pirouette twirl of Torsades. Ventricular fibrillation simply quivers on the monitor. When these rhythms occur, the patient is pulseless and sometimes you give magnesium, usually shock, and always pump their chest to the beat of whatever song lives in your head. Once I was speaking with a man who stopped in the middle of a word, and I watched the rhythm on the monitor change. When I didn’t feel a pulse, I started CPR, and then we placed the paddles on his chest and shouted, Clear, just like in the movies. And it worked. He opened his eyes and looked at me and said, I don’t feel good. And I said, It’s okay, I’m going to get you better and smoothed the fair from his forehead, but then the alarms blared and the V tach returned, and we did it all over again—the drugs and compressions and shocks, and his eyes opened one more time and he mouthed I’m scared around the tube I’d placed in his throat, and I said, I’m here with you. But that was the last time he said anything. We didn’t stop for thirty minutes or more. He’d waved to his family when the medics loaded him into the ambulance with just a little chest pain, so they were shocked when I entered the small consult room to tell them he had died. His teenage son collapsed and landed on his knees and punched the ground and said, But we were fighting, and I think the last thing I said was I hate you.
If you break break going out not in. How you live your life I don’t care but I’ll sell my arms for you, hold your secrets for ever.
If I speak of death which you fear now, greatly, it is without answers, except that each one we know is in our blood. Don’t recall graves. Memory is permanent. ~Michael Ondaatje from “To a Sad Daughter”
I was still a kid interning at State he reminisces late in the meal— It was a young red-headed woman looked like my sister when the lines went flat I fell apart shook like a car with a broken axle Went to the head surgeon a fatherly man Boy, he said, you got to fill a graveyard before you know this business and you just did row one, plot one. ~Alicia Suskin Ostriker, “The Surgeon” from The Book of Seventy
Like many other medical professionals who have worked in the trenches of frontline healthcare, I too am fascinated by the emergency room streaming drama “The Pitt.”
At first, I couldn’t watch without feeling I too should be working at the bedside alongside the ER team, trying my best to do the task assigned to me, responding to each new instruction, grateful when things go as hoped, crushed when nothing helps and the patient is lost.
The Pitt is the newest addition to the canon of medical dramas and feels like the real thing. All the technology is there, the medical terminology and procedures are real, in addition to the fraught interaction of professionals under stress. Most of all, it feels real because it shows patients and their families trying to cope with the worst day of their lives.
And medical miracles do happen, on TV and in real life.
Recently, a church friend was rescued in a drowning event, was unconscious on a ventilator for nearly a week, with much uncertainty about how much damage his brain had endured while under water. Several weeks later, he is now home, dealing with some memory gaps and muscle weakness, but improving strength daily.
Last week, I had the privilege of meeting a middle-aged pastor who was saved a few weeks ago when his heart stopped in his sleep. His wife started CPR, paramedics shocked his heart in the field more than once, he was stabilized in the ER, unconscious on a ventilator, cooled down to a lower body temperature to preserve his brain function.
His care team, along with family and friends, watched and waited and prayed, uncertain what would be the rest of his story.
When he was warmed up 24 hours later, he woke up, able to breathe on his own. Other than no memory for those brief hours of unconsciousness, he is still himself – living with a new awareness of his vulnerability and an immense gratitude, now with an implanted defibrillator in his chest.
The right words after being brought back from the dead? The right words when we never know if they will be the last words we utter or the last we will ever hear?
I know what they would be for me. I carry them in my heart…
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Then Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.
But as I told you, you have seen me and still you do not believe.All those the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away.
For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all those he has given me, but raise them up at the last day.
For my Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day.” John 6: 35-40
Awake sad heart, whom sorrow ever drowns; Take up thine eyes, which feed on earth; Unfold thy forehead gather’d into frowns: Thy Saviour comes, and with him mirth: Awake, awake; And with a thankfull heart his comforts take. But thou dost still lament, and pine, and crie; And feel his death, but not his victorie.
Arise sad heart; if thou dost not withstand, Christs resurrection thine may be: Do not by hanging down break from the hand, Which as it riseth, raiseth thee: Arise, Arise; And with his buriall-linen drie thine eyes: Christ left his grave-clothes, that we might, when grief Draws tears, or blood, not want an handkerchief. ~George Herbert “The Dawning”
On my doubting days in this fraught world, too frequent and discouraging, I remember the risen Christ who awoke, left behind His folded grave clothes, so we could dry our tears of grief.
He reached out to place Thomas’s hand in His wounds, gently guiding Thomas to His reality, to become our new reality~ His open wounds called to Thomas’s mind and heart, His flesh and blood awakening a struggling faith by a simple touch.
Leave it God to know how to dry our tears when we grieve. Leave it to God to know how to raise the unreachable.
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.
Text by Mechthild of Magdeburg Effortlessly, Love flows from God into man, Like a bird Who rivers the air Without moving her wings. Thus we move in His world One in body and soul, Though outwardly separate in form. As the Source strikes the note, Humanity sings — The Holy Spirit is our harpist, And all strings Which are touched in Love Must sound.
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Though I know well enough To hunt the Lady’s Slipper now Is playing blindman’s-buff, For it was June She put it on And grey with mist the spider’s lace Swings in the autumn wind, Yet through this hill-wood, high and low, I peer in every place; Seeking for what I cannot find I do as I have often done And shall do while I stay beneath the sun. ~Andrew Young “Lady’s Slipper Orchid”
Everything is beautiful and I am so sad. This is how the heart makes a duet of wonder and grief. The light spraying through the lace of the fern is as delicate as the fibers of memory forming their web around the knot in my throat. The breeze makes the birds move from branch to branch as this ache makes me look for those I’ve lost in the next room, in the next song, in the laugh of the next stranger. In the very center, under it all, what we have that no one can take away and all that we’ve lost face each other. It is there that I’m adrift, feeling punctured by a holiness that exists inside everything. I am so sad and everything is beautiful. ~Mark Nepo “Adrift” from Inside the Miracle: Enduring Suffering, Approaching Wholeness
Under the pines, near the murmuring brook, I know the wild orchids grow, Fair and pure in their shady nook, A page in God’s own wonderful book With a message for me to know.
Come in the Spring to that beautiful bower And pause by the moss and the fern To study. And know from the little flower God’s promise of hope is ready to shower On those who will trust and learn.
Over the land, with colors so bright, Leaves whirl in the chill, fitful breeze. The gurgling brook, ice-coated and white; Ferns, mosses and orchids have vanished from sight, Dead and lost in the Winter’s first freeze.
In weakening faith and hopeless despair, Black winters of woe hold my soul. For death is the end; and each mortal must share The fate of the orchids that once blossomed there. Oblivion marketh the goal.
Hold thy hope, faithless soul, for again in the Spring Neath the pines, the wild orchids will bloom. Struggle upward toward God, thy Creator and King. The Saviour is risen and Nature doth sing, Christ overcomes death and the tomb! ~Joseph Pullman Porter “Wild Orchids”
How strange to find you where I did along a path beside a road, your legs in graceful green dancing to music made by wind and woods.
Like ladies from a bygone age, you left your slippers there to air in dappled shade, while you, barefoot, relaxed your stays, let loose your hair.
The treasures of this world might be as simple as an orchid’s bloom; how sad that so much time is spent in filling coffers for the tomb.
If only life could be so fresh and free as you in serenade, we might learn we value most those things found lost in woodland shade. ~Mike Orlock “Lady Slipper Serenade (in 4/4 time)”
My grandmother’s house where my father was born had been torn down. She sold her property on Fidalgo Island near Anacortes, Washington to a lumber company – this was the house where all four of her babies were born, where she and my grandfather loved and fought and separated and finally loved again, and where we spent chaotic and memorable Thanksgiving and Christmas meals. After Grandpa died, Grandma took on boarders, trying to afford to remain there on the homesteaded wooded acreage on Similk Bay, fronted by meadows where her Scottish Highland cattle grazed. Her own health was suffering and she reached a point when it was no longer possible to make it work. A deal was struck with the lumber company and she moved to a small apartment for the few years left to her, remaining bruised by leaving her farm.
My father realized what selling to a lumber company meant and it was a crushing thought. The old growth woods would soon be stumps on the rocky hill above the bay, opening a view to Mt. Baker to the east, to the San Juan Islands to the north, and presenting an opportunity for development into a subdivision. He woke my brother and me early one Saturday in May and told us we were driving the 120 miles to Anacortes.
He was on a mission.
As a boy growing up on that land, he had wandered the woods, explored the hill, and helped his dad farm the rocky soil. There was only one thing he felt he needed from that farm and he had decided to take us with him, to trespass where he had been born and raised to bring home a most prized treasure–his beloved lady slippers (Calypso bulbosa) from the woods.
These dainty flowers enjoy a spring display known for its brevity–a week or two at the most–and they tend to bloom in small little clusters in the leafy duff mulch of the deep woods, preferring only a little indirect sunlight part of the day. They are not easy to find unless you know where to look.
My father remembered exactly where to look.
We hauled buckets up the hill along with spades, looking as if we were about to dig for clams at the ocean. Dad led us up a trail into the thickening foliage, until we had to bushwhack our way into the taller trees where the ground was less brush and more hospitable ground cover. He would stop occasionally to get his bearings as things were overgrown. We reached a small clearing and he knew we were near. He went straight to a copse of fir trees standing guard over a garden of lady slippers.
There were almost thirty of them blooming, scattered about in an area the size of my small bedroom. Each orchid-like pink and lavender blossom had a straight backed stem that held it with sturdy confidence. To me, they looked like they could be little shoes for fairies who may have hung them up while they danced about barefoot. To my father, they represented the last redeeming vestiges of his often traumatic childhood, and were about to be trammeled by bulldozers. We set to work gently digging them out of their soft bedding, carefully keeping their bulb-like corms from losing a protective covering of soil and leafy mulch. Carrying them in the buckets back to the car, we felt some vindication that even if the trees were to be lost to the saws, these precious flowers would survive.
When we got home, Dad set to work creating a spot where he felt they could thrive in our own woods. He found a place with the ideal amount of shade and light, with the protection of towering trees and the right depth of undisturbed leaf mulch. We carefully placed the lady slippers in their new home, scattered in a pattern similar to how we found them. Then Dad built a four foot split rail fence in an octagon around them, as a protection from our cattle and a horse who wandered the woods, and as a way to demarcate that something special was contained inside.
The next spring, only six lady slippers bloomed from the original thirty. Dad was disappointed but hoped another year might bring a resurgence as the flowers established themselves in their new home. The following year there were only three. A decade later, my father left our farm and family, not looking back.
Sometime after the divorce, when my mother had to sell the farm, I visited our lady slipper sanctuary in the woods for the last time in the middle of May, seeking what I hoped might still be there, but I knew was no longer.
The split rail fence still stood, guarding nothing but old memories. No lady slippers bloomed. There was not a trace they had ever been there. They had given up and disappeared.
The new owners of the farm surely puzzled over the significance of the small fenced-in area in the middle of our woods. They probably thought it surrounded a graveyard of some sort.
And they would be right – it did.
An embroidery I made for my father after he replanted the lady slippers — on the back I wrote “The miracle of creation recurs each spring in the delicate beauty of the lady slipper – may we ourselves be recreated as well…”
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This post is from April 14, 2025 – about a special mare who still lives in our hearts:
Marlee has gone home this morning, far sooner than we planned. She was only twenty two, born only two months after our daughter’s birth, much too young an age for a Haflinger to die.
But something dire was happening to her over the last two weeks — not eating much, an expanding girth, then shortness of breath, and last week it was confirmed she had untreatable lymphoma.
Her bright eyes were shining to the end so it was very hard to ask the vet to turn the light off. But the time had come.
Marlee M&B came to us as a six month old “runty orphan” baby by the lovely stallion Sterling Silver, but she was suddenly weaned at three days when her mama Melissa died of sepsis.
She never really weaned from her bottle/bucket feeding humans Stefan and Andrea Bundshuh at M&B Farm in Canada. From them she knew people’s behavior, learned their nonverbal language, and understood human subtleties that most horses never learn. This made her quite a handling challenge as a youngster as it also meant there was no natural reserve nor natural respect for people. She had no boundaries taught by a mother, so we tried to teach her the proper social cues.
When turned out with the herd as a youngster, she was completely clueless–she’d approach the dominant alpha mare incorrectly, without proper submission, get herself bitten and kicked and was the bottom of the social heap for years, a lonesome little filly with few friends and very few social skills. She had never learned submission with people either, and had to have many remedial lessons on her training path.
Once she was a mature working mare, her relationship with people markedly improved as there was structure to her work and predictability for her, and after having her own foals, she picked up cues and signals that helped her keep her foal safe, though she had always been one of our most relaxed “do whatever you need to do” mothers when we handled her foals as she simply never learned that she needed to be concerned.
Over the years, as the herd has changed, Marlee became the alpha mare, largely by default and seniority, so I don’t believe she really trusted her position as “real”. She tended to bully, and react too quickly out of her own insecurity about her inherited position. She was very skilled with her ears but she was also a master at the tail “whip” and the tensed upper lip–no teeth, just a slight wrinkling of the lip. The herd scattered when they saw her face change. The irony of it all is that when she was “on top” of the herd hierarchy, she was more lonely than when she was at the bottom and I think a whole lot less happy as she had few grooming partners any more.
She accompanied us to the fair for a week of display of our Haflingers year after year after year — she could be always counted on to greet the public and enjoy days of braiding and petting and kids sitting on her back.
The day she started formal under saddle training under Val Bash was when the light bulb went off in her head–this was a job she could do! This was constant communication and interaction with a human being, which she craved! This was what she was meant for! And she thrived under saddle, advancing quickly in her skills, almost too fast, as she wanted so much to please her trainer.
She had, at the time, an unequaled record among North American Haflingers. She was not only regional champion in her beginner novice division of eventing as a pregnant 5 year old, but also received USDF Horse of the Year awards in First and Second Level dressage that year as the highest scoring Haflinger.
With Jessica Heidemann she did a “bridleless” ride display in front of hundreds of people at the annual Haflinger event, and with Garyn Heidemann as instructor, she became an eventing pony for a young rider whose blonde hair matched Marlee’s. She galloped with abandon in the field on bareback rides with Emily Vander Haak and became our daughter Lea’s special riding horse over the last few years.
She had a career of mothering along with intermittent riding work, with 5 foals –Winterstraum, Marquisse, Myst, Wintermond, and Nordstrom—each from different stallions, and each very different from one another.
This mare had such a remarkable work ethic, was “fine-tuned” so perfectly with a sensitivity to cues–that our daughter said: “Mom, it’s going to make me such a better rider because I know she pays attention to everything I do with my body–whether my heels are down, whether I’m sitting up straight or not.”
Marlee was, to put it simply, trained to train her riders.
We will miss her high pitched whinny from the barn whenever she heard the back door to the house open. We will miss her pushy head butt on the stall door when it was time to close it up for the night. We will miss that beautiful unforgettable face and those large deep brown eyes where the light was on.
What a ride she had for twenty two years, that dear little orphan. What a ride she gave to many who trained her and who she trained over the years. Though I never climbed on her back, what joy she gave me, the surrogate mom who loved and fed her, unable to resist those bright eyes, which are now closed in peace.
Photo Montage by Emily Vander Haak
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For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. 2 Corinthians 4:6
…there must take place that struggle no human presumes to picture: living, dying, descending to rescue the just from shadow, were lesser travails than this: to break through earth and stone of the faithless world back to the cold sepulchre, tearstained stifling shroud; to break from them back into breath and heartbeat, and walk the world again, closed into days and weeks again, wounds of His anguish open, and Spirit streaming through every cell of flesh so that if mortal sight could bear to perceive it, it would be seen His mortal flesh was lit from within, now, and aching for home. He must return, first, in Divine patience, and know hunger again, and give to humble friends the joy of giving Him food—fish and a honeycomb. ~Denise Levertov from “Ikon: The Harrowing of Hell”
People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within. ~ Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
Christ forced open a door that has been locked since the death of the first man. He has met, fought and beaten the king of death. Everything is different because he has done so. ~C.S. Lewis from Miracles
In my clinical work over four decades, I met people living with dark times. It is rare for a patient to come to clinic because all is well.
They come because they are beaten down, struggling to keep going, running out of fuel, hungry for calm as they are blown about by the storms of life.
It was my challenge to stoke and feed the inner light hidden deep within each person, fighting back the darkness as I sorted out how to mend their unwellness.
I’m reminded Christ came back from the harrowing darkness of hell to be joyfully met by His disciples, who fed His hunger. Then He cooked breakfast for them, forever offering Himself as sanctuary from the darkness He had known.
So too, we are fed, bathing in His glow.
Lyrics Jesus Christ, inner light, let not our own darkness conquer us. Jesus Christ, inner light, enable us to welcome your love. Jesus Christ, in our search for you, Bring us into the warmth of your light. Jesus Christ, inner light, enable us to welcome your love.
Lyrics: Through love to light! Oh, wonderful the way That leads from darkness to the perfect day! From darkness and from sorrow of the night To morning that comes singing o’er the sea. Through love to light! Through light, O God, to thee, Who art the love of love, the eternal light of light!
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All day I try to say nothing but thank you, breathe the syllables in and out with every step I take through the rooms of my house and outside into a profusion of shaggy-headed dandelions in the garden where the tulips’ black stamens shake in their crimson cups.
I am saying thank you, yes, to this burgeoning spring and to the cold wind of its changes. Gratitude comes easy after a hot shower, when my loosened muscles work, when eyes and mind begin to clear and even unruly hair combs into place.
Dialogue with the invisible can go on every minute, and with surprising gaiety I am saying thank you as I remember who I am, a woman learning to praise something as small as dandelion petals floating on the steaming surface of this bowl of vegetable soup, my happy, savoring tongue. ~Jeanne Lohmann “To Say Nothing But Thank You”
Returned from long travel, I sit in the familiar, sun-streaked pew, waiting for the bread and wine of holy Communion. The old comfort does not rise in me, only apathy and bafflement.
Let the light of late afternoon shine through chinks in the barn, moving up the bales as the sun moves down.
Let the cricket take up chafing as a woman takes up her needles and her yarn. Let evening come.
Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned in long grass. Let the stars appear and the moon disclose her silver horn.
Let the fox go back to its sandy den. Let the wind die down. Let the shed go black inside. Let evening come.
To the bottle in the ditch, to the scoop in the oats, to air in the lung let evening come.
Let it come, as it will, and don’t be afraid. God does not leave us comfortless, so let evening come. ~Jane Kenyon “Let Evening Come”
We resist nightfall in our lives.
We fear the dark of violence and threats of war, the suffering of innocent people who are harmed directly, and those harmed by lack of resources which go to bomb-making and dropping.
I wish I could remain forever sunshiny, vital and irreplaceable, living each moment with the energy I feel at dawn.
Yet I know that the forward momentum of time inevitably winds me down to twilight.
We are not alone in our need to catch our breath, to be still and grateful for each little thing – each petal, each taste, each sun ray illuminating the dark.
What shall we do about this? we ask our God.
We savor what we will, with gratitude, as evening comes. There is no stopping it as our lungs fill with the breath of God, our Creator.
We are not left comfortless.
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