Category: patience

The Work of Your Hand

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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.

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Arriving Home Without a Sound

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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

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The Moonshining Place

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At the edge of the city,
at the edge of the world,
at the edge between
the earth and endless sky,
the moonshining place,
the place where we hung
our long summer legs
over the edge and fought
the urge to drop a shoe
or sneak a real first kiss,
the place where we played
hide-and-go-seek
and Tag, you’re it!
until we couldn’t breathe
or the sun went down,
the place where we came
on the quietest nights
to feel the moon kiss
the edge between
our skin and endless sky.
~Sarah Kobrinsky, from Nighttime on the Otherside of Everything

Once when we were playing
hide-and-seek and it was time
to go home, the rest gave up
on the game before it was done
and forgot I was still hiding.
I remained hidden as a matter
of honor until the moon rose.
~Galway Kinnell “Hide-and-Seek 1933” from Strong Is Your Hold.

Tomorrow
there will be sun, scalloped by clouds,
ushered in by a waterfall of birdsong.
It will be a temperate seventy-five, low
humidity. For twenty-four hours,
all politicians will be silent. Reality
programs will vanish from TV, replaced
by the “snow” that used to decorate
our screens when reception wasn’t
working. Soldiers will toss their weapons
in the grass. The oceans will stop
their inexorable rise. No one
will have to sit on a committee.
When twilight falls, the aurora borealis
will cut off cell phones, scramble the internet.
We’ll play flashlight tag, hide and seek,
decorate our hair with fireflies, spin
until we’re dizzy, collapse
on the dew-decked lawn and look up,
perhaps for the first time, to read the long lines
of cold code written in the stars….
~Barbara Crooker “Tomorrow” from Some Glad Morning.

As a kid playing hide-n-seek, I always preferred to be the “seeker” as I was secretly afraid if I hid, I would be forgotten, everyone would go home and I wouldn’t be found.

Even so, I was too proud to quit the game and come out of hiding. Of course that never happened in real life. I was really lousy at hiding.

When I got older, I was no better at hiding, though I tried. God would always locate me, even without sending the tell-tale spotlight of the moon to find me.

I gave up hiding long ago. Once found, there is no point in trying to disappear from His sight.

His eye shines bright upon us all.

photo of supermoon by Harry Rodenberger
photo of supermoon by Bob Tjoelker
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A Difficult Game Indeed

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The chief difficulty Alice found at first
was in managing her flamingo:
she succeeded in getting its body tucked away,
comfortably enough, under her arm,
with its legs hanging down, but generally,
just as she had got its neck nicely straightened out,
and was going to give the hedgehog
a blow with its head,
it would twist itself round and look up in her face,
with such a puzzled expression
that she could not help bursting out laughing:
and when she had got its head down,
and was going to begin again,
it was very provoking to find that
the hedgehog had unrolled itself,
and was in the act of crawling away….
Alice soon came to the conclusion
that it was a very difficult game indeed. 
~Lewis Carroll from Alice in Wonderland

Lewis Carroll Illustration
photo by Chris Duppenthaler

What a difficult game we find ourselves playing.

Does anyone understand the rules anymore?

Handed an uncooperative gangly mallet,
our aim is hopelessly thwarted.

The furry round target takes one look, sees no point, so wanders off, seeking a friendlier game to play somewhere else.

These are absurd times for humans and hedgehogs.

photo by Chris Duppenthaler
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Taking Time to Stand and Stare

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What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows.

No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.

No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night.

No time to turn at Beauty’s glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance.

No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began.

A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.
~W.H.Davies “Leisure”

…I believe there are certain habits that, if practiced, will stimulate the growth of humble roots in our lives. One of those is a habit of awe and wonder.

By awe and wonder, I mean the regular practice of paying careful attention to the world around us. Not merely seeing but observing. Perceiving. Considering. Asking thoughtful questions about what we see, smell, hear, touch, taste. In other words, attending with love and curiosity to what our senses sense. (How often do we eat without tasting? How often do we look without seeing? Hear without listening?) Admiring, imagining, receiving the beauty of the world around us in a regular, intentional way: this is the habit of a wonder-filled person. And it leads to humility.

A regular habit of awe and wonder de-centers us. It opens a window in our imaginations, beckoning us to climb out of our own opinions and experiences and to consider things greater and beyond our own lives. It strengthens our curiosity, which in turn lowers the volume on our anxieties and grows our ability to empathize. Over time, we become less self-focused and can admit without embarrassment what we don’t know. In short, we grow more humble.
~Kelly Givens from “Teaching Children to See” from Mere Orthodoxy

This would be a poor life indeed
if I didn’t take time
to stand and stare
at all that is displayed before me.

The golden cast at the beginning and endings of the days,
the light dancing in streams like stars,
simply staring at God’s creatures
who stare back at me,
each wondering what the other is thinking.

We don’t dare blink…

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What to Say Next

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I’ve placed her favorites—
fresh raspberries, string cheese,
a glass of milk in the giraffe cup—
on her highchair tray.

As she munches away,
swinging her short legs,
she asks thoughtfully,
Grandma, are you
pooping?

I continue my bite of oatmeal,
take a sip of coffee,
respond—No darling.
How about you?

She isn’t either—
as we both wonder
what to say next.
~Laura Foley “Breakfast Conversation” from It’s This

I heard an old man speak once,
someone who had been sober for fifty years,
a very prominent doctor.
He said that he’d finally figured out a few years ago
that his profound sense of control,
in the world and over his life,
is another addiction and a total illusion.
He said that when he sees little kids sitting in the back seat of cars,
in those car seats that have steering wheels,
with grim expressions of concentration on their faces,
clearly convinced that their efforts are causing the car
to do whatever it is doing,
he thinks of himself
and his relationship with God:
God who drives along silently,
gently amused,
in the real driver’s seat.
~Anne Lamott from Operating Instructions

The conversations I have with my grandchildren
are the most unexpected and creative I have with anyone.

They lead, and I follow.
Just to see where they are going to take me next.

They are curious what I think about things.
And I want to know what they’ll say and do next,
today and in the decades to come.

All the while, God, always in control, smiles at all He has made…

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Warned By Wild Things

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Frightening the foliage from its sleep, we travel along
the Quinault Lake Loop in our big red truck.

Roofed by dank rainforest, we know
we are not alone, though we see no bird, no beast.

You say, It’s beautiful, but do we really belong here
where creatures hide? Then an elk herd stomps across

the dirt road, and you brake, shocked. The fattest turns
to stare over his long beard. To know or warn us.

Yes, my love, we belong, but on soil-stained knees,
asking for each wild thing’s consent to stand.
~Lauren Davis, Home Beneath the Church 

I’ve been to the temperate rainforest on the Olympic Peninsula,
only a short ferry ride and two hour drive away,
where 300 year old trees tethered to one another
with connecting crepe of dangling moss,
hiding the creatures within,
taking all down with them
if they someday fall to the wind,
lying still, nursing the growth of the next generation’s seeds
from long rotting trunks.

We can only pass through this place,
having been banished from the Garden.

We are not to dwell or cut or shoot or burn or slash,
at risk of being ensnared by reaching fingers of moss
seeking yet another woody heart to soften

Whispering grassfeet
steal through us
fir-fingers touch one another
where the paths meet
thick dripping resin
glues us together
summer-greedy woodpeckers
hammer at hardy
seed-hiding hearts
~Inger Christensen  trans. Susanna Nied

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Stronger Than Seems Possible

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Light comes softly through the morning mist,
splinters as it settles on dewdrops that dangle

from the web. Pulled taut and lovely, the web
stretches above a mass of leaves-

green, amethyst, and pale rose.
silken lines hold fast to spindly branches,

all anchored to the center, geometric
rings of connection, so delicate, so strong

like this catch-all we call life,
how we gather what we think we need

for sustenance, how prisms of light flash
and fade on the fragile structures we create,

how we tremble through storms
holding on, stronger than seems possible.
~Lois Edstrom “A Fragile Light” from MoonPath Press 2025

I too am feeling stretched, trying to connect between post and branch and leaf and ground.

I move between them, sometimes not sure where I’ll land or what I’ll leave behind. Connection is a hard and heavy work of strength and aspiration, not knowing what stands firm in a world where wind and rain and storms or an oblivious creature can tear things all asunder.

Sometimes what I weave is both beautifully delicate and strong.

Sometimes it is easily shredded, full of holes, and ultimately useless.

The center doesn’t always hold. 
The tethers loosen. 
The periphery sags, frays and tears.

It is a matrix of fragile light, yet holding on…

…something created with purpose and intention.
Simply that effort makes it all worthwhile.

I’ll try again tomorrow.

(Lois Edstrom is my poet friend who lives on nearby Whidbey Island; my web photo at the top of this post is the cover for her new book of poems: A Fragile Light)

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Maybe Stop Breathing

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once
i saw my grandmother hold out
her hand cupping a small offering
of seed to one of the wild sparrows
that frequented the bird bath she
filled with fresh water every day

she stood still
maybe stopped breathing
while the sparrow looked
at her, then the seed
then back as if he was
judging her character

he jumped into her hand
began to eat
she smiled

a woman holding
a small god
~Richard Vargas “why i feed the birds” from Guernica, Revisited.


Of course I love the sparrows,
Those dun-colored darlings,
So hungry and so many.
I am a God-fearing feeder of birds,
I know he has many children,
Not all of them bold in spirit…
~Mary Oliver from “The Red Bird”

Through the year, I put seed and suet out for the sparrows and grosbeaks, the woodpeckers and chickadees, the juncos and finches, and yes — even the red-winged blackbirds and starlings. They would be fine without my daily contribution to their well-being, but in return for my provision of seeds, I am able to enjoy their spirited liveliness and their gracious ability to share the bounty with one another.

These birds give back to me simply by showing up, without ever realizing what their presence means to me. I don’t want to try to feed them from my hand – our communion is in my watching closely from my window.

How much more does God lay out for me on a daily basis to sustain me as I show up for Him? How oblivious am I to His gracious and profound gifts? How willingly do I share His gifts with others?

Unlike the birds, I could never survive on my own without His watchful care.

When life feels overwhelming, when I am filled with worries, sorrow, regrets and pain, I seek out this God who cares even for sparrows.
He knows how to quiet my troubles and strengthen my faith and perseverance, a comfort that extends far beyond a few thistle seeds.

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Feeling Them Resting There

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The sunlight now lay over the valley perfectly still.
I went over to the graveyard beside the church
and found them under the old cedars…
I am finding it a little hard to say that I felt them resting there,
but I did…

I saw that, for me, this country would always be populated
with presences and absences,
presences of absences,
the living and the dead.
The world as it is
would always be a reminder
of the world that was,
and of the world that is to come.
~Wendell Berry in Jayber Crow

In great deeds, something abides. 
On great fields, something stays. 
Forms change and pass; bodies disappear; 
but spirits linger, 
to consecrate ground for the vision-place of souls. 

And reverent men and women from afar, 
and generations that know us not and that we know not of, 
heart-drawn to see where and by whom great things were suffered and done for them, shall come to this deathless field, 
to ponder and dream; and lo!
the shadow of a mighty presence shall wrap them in its bosom, 
and the power of the vision pass into their souls. 

This is the great reward of service. 
To live, far out and on, in the life of others;
this is the mystery of the Christ,
–to give life’s best for such high sake
that it shall be found again unto life eternal.
~Major-General Joshua Chamberlain, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania 1889

A box of over 700 letters, exchanged between my parents from late 1941 to mid-1945, sat unopened for six decades.

I started reading. I felt them resting in those inked words.

My parents barely knew each other before marrying quickly on Christmas Eve 1942 – the haste due to the uncertain future for a newly trained Second Lieutenant in the Marine Corps. They only had a few weeks together before she returned home to her rural teaching position and he readied himself to be shipped out for the island battles to come.

They had no idea they would not see each other for another 30+ months or even see each other again at all. They had no idea their marriage would fall apart 35 years later and they would reunite a decade after the divorce for five more years together before Dad died of cancer at age 73.

A presence of absence: the letters do contain the long-gone but still-familiar voices of my parents, but they are the words and worries of youngsters of 20 and 21, barely prepared for the horrors to come from war and interminable waiting. When he was fighting battles on Tarawa, Saipan, and Tinian, no letters or news would be received for a month or more, otherwise they tried to write each other daily, though with minimal news to share due to military censorship. They speak mostly of their desire for a normal life together rather than a routine centered on mailbox, pen and paper and waiting – lots and lots of waiting.

I’m not sure what I hoped to find in these letters. Perhaps I hoped for flowery romantic whisperings and the poetry of longing and loneliness. Instead I am reading plain spoken words from two people who somehow made it through those awful years to make my sister and brother and myself possible.

Our inheritance is contained in this musty box of words bereft of poetry. But decades later my heart is moved by these letters – I carefully refold them back into their envelopes and replace them gently back in order. A six cent airmail stamp – in fact hundreds and hundreds of them – was a worthwhile investment in the future, not only for themselves and their family to come, but for generations of U.S. citizens who tend to take their freedom for granted.

Thank you, Dad and Mom, for the early years together you gave up to make today possible for us and the generations to follow.

I hear the mountain birds
The sound of rivers singing
A song I’ve often heard
It flows through me now
So clear and so loud
I stand where I am
And forever I’m dreaming of home
I feel so alone, I’m dreaming of home

It’s carried in the air
The breeze of early morning
I see the land so fair
My heart opens wide
There’s sadness inside
I stand where I am
And forever I’m dreaming of home
I feel so alone, I’m dreaming of home

This is no foreign sky
I see no foreign light
But far away am I
From some peaceful land
I’m longing to stand
A hand in my hand
…forever I’m dreaming of home
I feel so alone, I’m dreaming of home
~Lori Barth and Philippe Rombi “I’m Dreaming of Home”

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