Category: patience

Another Year of Leaping Winds

barnstormingblogLeave a comment
walnutoctober2017
walnuthull5
frontyard2915

My mother and I debate:
we could sell
the black walnut tree
to the lumberman,
and pay off the mortgage.
Likely some storm anyway
will churn down its dark boughs,
smashing the house. We talk
slowly, two women trying
in a difficult time to be wise.
Roots in the cellar drains,
I say, and she replies
that the leaves are getting heavier
every year, and the fruit
harder to gather away.
But something brighter than money
moves in our blood – an edge
sharp and quick as a trowel
that wants us to dig and sow.
So we talk, but we don’t do
anything.

What my mother and I both know
is that we’d crawl with shame
in the emptiness we’d made
in our own and our fathers’ backyard.
So the black walnut tree
swings through another year
of sun and leaping winds,
of leaves and bounding fruit,
and, month after month, the whip-
crack of the mortgage.
~Mary Oliver from “The Black Walnut Tree” from Twelve Moons

frontyard1
april2frontyard
photo by Dan Gibson
walnuthulls2

We bought this old farm thirty-five years ago:
the Lawrence family’s “Walnut Hill Farm” –
a front yard lined with several tall black walnut trees
brought as seedlings in a grandfather’s suitcase from Ohio
in the ought-1900’s.

These trees thrived for nearly a century on this hilltop farm
overlooking the Canadian mountains to the north,
the Nooksack River valley to the west,
the Cascade peaks to the east,
each prolific in leaves
and prodigious in fruit.

The first year we were here,
a windstorm took one tree down.
A neighbor offered
to mill the twisted trunk for shares.
The fallen tree became planks
of fine grained chocolate-hued lumber.

This old tree is the back facing of our oak door cupboards,
a daily reminder of a legacy left behind~
sturdy even if imperfect,
still beautiful to the eye and the heart.

treehouse5
novtreehouse
blackwalnut

One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

$10.00
$25.00
$50.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00

Or enter a custom amount

$

Your contribution is deeply appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

My Foggy and Fine Days

barnstormingblog3 Comments

~Lustravit lampade terras~
(He has illumined the world with a lamp)
The weather and my mood have little connection.
I have my foggy and my fine days within me;
my prosperity or misfortune has little to do with the matter.
– Blaise Pascal from “Miscellaneous Writings”

And so you have a life that you are living only now,
now and now and now,
gone before you can speak of it,
and you must be thankful for living day by day,
moment by moment …
a life in the breath and pulse and living light of the present…
~Wendell Berry from Hannah Coulter

Early morning, everything damp all through.
Cars go by. A ripping sound of tires through water.
For two days the air
Has smelled like salamanders.
The little lake on the edge of town hidden in fog,
Its cattails and island gone.
All through the gloom of the dark week
Bright leaves have been dropping
From black trees
Until heaps of color lie piled everywhere
In the falling rain.
~Tom Hennen “Wet Autumn” from Darkness Sticks to Everything.

An absolute
patience.
Trees stand
up to their knees in
fog. The fog
slowly flows
uphill.
White
cobwebs, the grass
leaning where deer
have looked for apples.
The woods
from brook to where
the top of the hill looks
over the fog, send up
not one bird.
So absolute, it is
no other than
happiness itself, a breathing
too quiet to hear.
–  Denise Levertov “The Breathing“

Worry and anger and angst can be more contagious than the flu.

I want to mask up and wash my hands of it throughout the day.
There should be a vaccination against the fear of reading headlines.

I want to say to myself:
Stop now, this moment in time.
Stop and stop and stop.

Stop needing to be numb to all discomfort.
Stop resenting the gift of each breath.
Just stop.
Instead, simply be still, in this moment

I want to say to myself:
this moment, foggy or fine, is yours alone,
this moment of weeping and sharing
and breath and pulse and light.

Shout for joy in it.
Celebrate it.
I am alive in it, even in worry.

Be thankful for tears that flow over grateful lips
just as rain clears the fog.
Stop holding them back.

Just be–
be blessed in both the fine and the foggy days–
in the now and now and now.

One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

$10.00
$25.00
$50.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00

Or enter a custom amount

$

Your contribution is deeply appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

Strong Arms

barnstormingblog1 Comment

In those days, we finally chose to walk like giants
and hold the world
in arms grown strong with love.
And there may be many things we forget
in the days to come,
but this will not be one of them.
~Brian Andreas from Traveling Light: Stories & Drawings for a Quiet Mind

fos4

No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.

Therefore, strengthen your feeble arms and weak knees.
Hebrews 12:11-12

fos2

She sets about her work vigorously;
her arms are strong for her tasks.
~Proverbs 31:17

help

I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do all this through him who gives me strength.
~Philippians 4: 12-13

fos5

Some of us think holding on makes us strong;
but sometimes it is letting go.
~Hermann Hesse

fos6

The world asks of us
only the strength we have and we give it.
Then it asks more, and we give it.
~Jane Hirshfield from “The Weighing” from The Beauty

A few years ago, I dislocated and broke my elbow in a clumsy fall while doing barn chores.

After a trip to the ER to have it set and put in a restrictive brace for three months, I learned letting go takes far more strength than holding on and pushing through.

I had to figure out how to “be flexible” when in reality, I felt immobilized.

I discovered how to ask for help when I’m in need which is tough for someone who has always been the helper – there was unity in our mutual need for one another.

Others watched me carefully to see if I’d quietly go stir-crazy with my new temporary limitations. Instead, I began seeing the world in a different light: what could I do on my own and what was impossible without assistance.

I needed to rely on others. For a stubborn person who thrives on self-sufficiency, this is a humbling reminder of my brokenness and frailty.

May the Lord have mercy on all those with broken wings who still endeavor to lift up the weight of the world and fly as high as ever.

Instead, may we find our strength is in Him, not in our feeble (and very breakable) arms.

IMG_0904

photos of “Feats of Strength” by Tom Otterness at Western Washington University

One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

$10.00
$25.00
$50.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00

Or enter a custom amount

$

Your contribution is deeply appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

Horses Without Headlights

barnstormingblog2 Comments

… The Amish have maintained what I like to think is a proper scale, largely by staying with the horse. The horse has restricted unlimited expansion.
Not only does working with horses limit farm size, but horses are ideally suited to family life.
With horses you unhitch at noon to water and feed the teams and then the family eats what we still call dinner. While the teams rest there is usually time for a short nap.
And because God didn’t create the horse with headlights,
we don’t work nights.
~Amish farmer David Kline in Great Possessions

photo by Joel De Waard
photo by Joel De Waard
photo by Joel De Waard
photo by Joel De Waard

You can’t have the family farm without the family.
~G.K. Chesterton from “The Unprecedented Architecture of Commander Blair,” Tales of the Long Bow

Photo of Aaron Janicki haying with his Oberlander team in Skagit County courtesy of Tayler Rae
Benjamin Janicki of Sedro Woolley raking hay with his team of Oberlanders

I’m 71 years old ~ old enough to have parents who grew up on farms worked by horses, one raising wheat and lentils in the Palouse country of eastern Washington and the other logging in the woodlands of Fidalgo Island of western Washington. The horses were crucial to my grandfathers’ success in caring for and tilling the land, seeding and harvesting the crops and bringing supplies from town miles away.  Theirs was a hardscrabble life in the early 20th century with few conveniences. Work was year round from dawn to dusk; caring for the animals came before any human comforts. Once night fell, work ceased and sleep was welcome respite for man and beast.

In the rural NW Washington countryside where we live, we’ve been fortunate enough to live near farmers who still dabble in horse farming, whose draft teams are hitched to plows and mowers and manure spreaders as they head out to the fields to recapture the past. They still gather together in the spring to have a well-attended and friendly competition plowing match.

Watching a good team work with no diesel motor running means hearing bird calls from the field, the steady footfall of the horses, the harness chains jingling, the leather straps creaking, the machinery shushing quietly as gears turn and grass lays over in submission. No ear protection is needed. There is no clock needed to pace the day.  

There is a rhythm of nurture when animals instead of engines are part of the work day. The gauge for taking a break is the amount of foamy sweat on the horses and how fast they are breathing. 
It is time to stop and take a breather,
it is time to start back up to do a few more rows,
it is time to water,
it is time for a meal,
it is time for a nap,
it is time for a rest in a shady spot. 
This is gentle use of the land with four footed stewards who deposit right back to the soil the digested forage they have eaten only hours before.

Our modern fossil-fuel-powered approach to food production has bypassed the small family farm which was so dependent on the muscle power of humans and animals. In our move away from horses worked by skilled teamsters, what has been gained in high production values has meant loss of self-sufficiency and dedicated stewardship of a smaller acreage. Draft breeds, including the Haflinger horses we raised for forty years, now are bred for higher energy with lighter refined bone structure meant more for eye appeal and floating movement, rather than the sturdy conformation and unflappable low maintenance mindset needed for pulling work.

Modern children grow up with a different set of values as well, no longer raised to work together with other family members, as well as the animals on the farm for a common purpose of daily survival.

Still fascinated by the The Small Farmer’s Journal, I am encouraged when the next generation reaches for horse collars and bridles, hitches up their horses to do the work as it used to be done.  Although the modern world will never go back to the days of horse-drawn farming and transportation, we can acknowledge there were some benefits to the old ways of doing things, when progress meant being harnessed together as a team with our horses, tilling for truth and harvesting hope.

photo by Tayler Rae



I like farming. I like the work.
I like the livestock and the pastures and the woods. 
It’s not necessarily a good living, but it’s a good life. 
I now suspect that if we work with machines
the world will seem to us to be a machine,
but if we work with living creatures
the world will appear to us as a living creature. 
That’s what I’ve spent my life doing,
trying to create an authentic grounds for hope.
~Wendell Berry, horse farmer, essayist, poet, professor

photo by Tayler Rae
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

$10.00
$25.00
$50.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00

Or enter a custom amount

$

Your contribution is deeply appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

Call Nothing Common

barnstormingblogLeave a comment

Begin the song exactly where you are,
Remain within the world of which you’re made.
Call nothing common in the earth or air,
Accept it all and let it be for good.

Start with the very breath you breathe in now,
This moment’s pulse, this rhythm in your blood
And listen to it, ringing soft and low.
Stay with the music, words will come in time.

Slow down your breathing. Keep it deep and slow.
Become an open singing-bowl, whose chime
Is richness rising out of emptiness,
And timelessness resounding into time.

And when the heart is full of quietness
Begin the song exactly where you are.
~Malcolm Guite “The Singing Bowl” from The Singing Bowl

In the center of my chest,
a kindling there in the hollow,
as if a match had just been struck,
or the blinds snapped up on a sealed room,
gold suffusing the air,
and through the wide windows,
a solstice unfolding,
mine for the lengthening days.
~Andrea Potts “On Reading John Donne for the First Time” from Her Joy Becomes

I will not forget, dear harvest moon,
to keep you as my singing bowl
where I can find your song months from now,
even when your reflected light leaks out
to tangle up in the weary trees of autumn.

Once the leaves fall, you illuminate
even the most humble branches
in their embarrassed nakedness.

Call nothing common in the earth or air,
Accept it all and let it be for good.

When I too need your warm light
in the center of my hollowed chest,
I’ll know exactly where to find you,
as you sing lullabies, waiting for me to empty.

I’ll not forget you,
because you never forget to
keep looking for me.

One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

$10.00
$25.00
$50.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00

Or enter a custom amount

$

Your contribution is deeply appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

Living a Life to Die For

barnstormingblog2 Comments

The sound of quiet. The sky
indigo, steeping
deeper from the top, like tea.
In the absence
of anything else, my own
breathing became obscene.
I heard the beating
of bats’ wings before
the air troubled above
my head, turned to look
and saw them gone.
On the surface of the black
lake, a swan and the moon
stayed perfectly
still. I knew this was
a perfect moment.
Which would only hurt me
to remember and never
live again. My God. How lucky to have lived
a life I would die for.
~Leila Chatti “I Went Out to Hear” from Wildness Before Something Sublime  

Look, the trees
are turning
their own bodies
into pillars

of light,
are giving off the rich
fragrance of cinnamon
and fulfillment,

the long tapers
of cattails
are bursting and floating away over
the blue shoulders

of the ponds,
and every pond,
no matter what its
name is, is

nameless now.
Every year
everything
I have ever learned

in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side

is salvation,
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.
To live in this world

you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.
~Mary Oliver “In Blackwater Woods” from Devotions

(thinking today of God’s gift to the world of Jane Goodall,
whose life was about keeping promises)

When the earth and all that is in it glows indigo
in the angled light of October;
opening my eyes as witness to beauty
takes my breath away.

I can’t imagine letting go this life,
yet the other side of ashes and loss is salvation.

My God.
I am so finite.
I hold this close to my bones
with miles to go before I sleep.

My life depends on realizing
I’m living a life I would die for.

photo by Josh Scholten
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

$10.00
$25.00
$50.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00

Or enter a custom amount

$

Your contribution is deeply appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

Watchers in the Sun

barnstormingblogLeave a comment

We are walking with the month
To a quiet place.
See, only here and there the gentians stand!
Tonight the homing loon
Will fly across the moon,
Over the tired land. 
We were the idlers and the sowers,
The watchers in the sun,
The harvesters who laid away the grain.
Now there’s a sign in every vacant tree,
Now there’s a hint in every stubble field,
Something we must not forget
When the blossoms fly again.
Give me your hand!

There were too many promises in June.
Human-tinted buds of spring
Told only half the truth.
The withering leaf beneath our feet,
That wrinkled apple overhead,
Say more than vital boughs have said
When we went walking
In this growing place. 
There is something in this hour 
More honest than a flower 
Or laughter from a sunny face.
~Scudder Middleton “Song in the Key of Autumn”

I walk through the scant remainder of September
wistful~~
a witness to the harvest of
unfulfilled spring promises.

Watching sunlit days fade to
blustery rain-filled nights.

I knew the growing season wouldn’t last.
I knew the time to lie fallow would come.

Give me your hand.
We’ll walk through this darkening time together,
waiting, watching,
for, once more, the promises of spring.

Winslow Homer – Veteran in a New Field, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

$10.00
$25.00
$50.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00

Or enter a custom amount

$

Your contribution is deeply appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

To Yield to Change

barnstormingblog3 Comments

I went out to cut a last batch of zinnias this
morning from the back fencerow and got my shanks
chilled for sure: furrowy dark gray clouds with
separating fringes of blue sky-grass: and the dew

beaded up heavier than the left-overs of the rain:
in the zinnias, in each of two, a bumblebee
stirring in slow motion. Trying to unwind
the webbed drug of cold, buzzing occasionally but

with a dry rattle: bees die with the burnt honey
at their mouths, at least: the fact’s established:
it is not summer now and the simmering buzz is out of
heat: the zucchini blossoms falling show squash

overgreen with stunted growth: the snapdragons have
suckered down into a blossom or so: we passed
into dark last week the even mark of day and night
and what we hoped would stay we yield to change.
~A.R. Ammons  “Equinox” from Complete Poems

I yield now
to the heaviness of transition
from summer to autumn –
the soaking morning fog, with
dew clinging like teardrops,
a chill in the air
means I sweater-wrap my days.

It is time for change, reluctant as I may be;
both day and night now compete equally for my time
and each will win.

One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

$10.00
$25.00
$50.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00

Or enter a custom amount

$

Your contribution is deeply appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

The Work of Your Hand

barnstormingblog2 Comments

Yet you, Lord, are our Father.
We are the clay, you are the potter;
we are all the work of your hand.
Isaiah 64:8

From dust to purpose,
beauty spins as planned.
Love is crafted by surrender
when clay trusts the Potter’s hands.
~Jamie Trunnel from “The Potter’s Hands”

For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
Ephesians 2:10

The best pottery is never completely perfect, becoming an original, unique piece. It is infused with the potter’s eye and energy, the expert pressure of fingers and palm, with a design and vision coming from the heart and imagination of the potter.

Last night, during our evening church worship, two artists in our congregation, one using words of scripture and the other at a pottery wheel, demonstrated how creating and sculpting a work of pottery is key to understanding how God shapes each one of us, from our beginnings, preparing us in advance for the work we are to do.

Each one is a unique and original individual, formed by the hands of the Artist to become something with a purpose and plan. Even with imperfections, we are created as both beautiful and functional.

His Hands remain around us, holding and molding us to His plan.

One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

$10.00
$25.00
$50.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00

Or enter a custom amount

$

Your contribution is deeply appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

Arriving Home Without a Sound

barnstormingblog1 Comment

Once only when the summer
was nearly over and my own
hair had been white as the day’s clouds
for more years than I was counting
I looked across the garden at evening
Paula was still weeding around
flowers that open after dark
and I looked up to the clear sky
and saw the new moon and at that
moment from behind me a band
of dark birds and then another
after it flying in silence
long curving wings hardly moving
the plovers just in from the sea
and the flight clear from Alaska
half their weight gone to get them home
but home now arriving without
a sound as it rose to meet them
~W.S. Merwin “Homecoming” from The Moon Before Morning

In late summer, the movement of birds above me has begun, like a prayer of promise among the clouds.

There are the noisy ones: geese, ducks, swans who can’t seem to travel without announcing it everywhere, like the booming basses from teenage vehicles speeding by.

Then there are the starlings and others who murmurate with wing wooshes, forming and unforming as a choreographed larger organism.

The quietest and most earnest are the gulls and plovers, some traveling only a few miles from shore to cornfields, and others traveling half a continent without resting. They direct their energy to their wings to silently carry them home.

Some of our prayers for a safe return home are bold and loud.
Others are expressed through feathered wings and forward progress.
Most are prayed without a sound being made, becoming a constant through the rhythms of the heart, a quiet recognition that our true home will rise to meet us when we arrive.

I will have nothing to do with a God who cares only occasionally.
I need a God who is with us always, everywhere, in the deepest depths as well as the highest heights. It is when things go wrong, when good things do not happen, when our prayers seem to have been lost, that God is most present. We do not need the sheltering wings when things go smoothly. We are closest to God in the darkness, stumbling along blindly.
~Madeleine L’Engle

One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

$10.00
$25.00
$50.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00

Or enter a custom amount

$

Your contribution is deeply appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly