After another school/church massacre; how can there be nothing new to say?
We’ve learned nothing about keeping weapons out of the hands of people bent on destruction – taking themselves out after taking others with them.
To our children and grandchildren: as a society, we have failed to keep you out of harm’s way by failing to control the harm of modern weapons in the wrong hands.
How can we be forgiven over and over as shootings happen again and again. Maybe we didn’t pull the trigger, but we allowed someone else to.
Together, we share the responsibility for each and every death that has happened, and more bound to happen on our watch.
And that is a heavy burden to bear.
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And out of the houses the rats came tumbling. Great rats, small rats, lean rats, brawny rats, Brown rats, black rats, gray rats, tawny rats, Grave old plodders, gay young friskers, Fathers, mothers, uncles, cousins, Cocking tails and pricking whiskers, Families by tens and dozens, Brothers, sisters, husbands, wives– Followed the Piper for their lives. From street to street he piped advancing, And step for step they followed dancing, Until they came to the river Weser Wherein all plunged and perished! ~Robert Browning from “The Pied Piper of Hamelin”
photo by Nate Gibson
It was 27 years ago in the middle of a hot August much like this one. With no air conditioning then, as now, we used fans and at night hoped for comfort from any cooling breeze drifting through the window curtains.
Sleep can be elusive when one is busy sweating all night.
I remember waking suddenly from a fitful sleep in the dark of night, startled by a sound I could not readily identify. I lay still, my eyes wide open staring into the black space of our bedroom, discerning the sound of intermittent splashing in the adjacent bathroom.
What the heck?
Our five year old daughter’s bedroom was the next room in the hallway on the other side of the bathroom. I called out her name, wondering what she could possibly be doing in the middle of the night, making splashing noises in the bathroom.
No answer. More splashing.
Now I was worried. I got up, walked into the hallway, peered into the dark bathroom, unable to see anything amiss. I flipped on the light switch. As my eyes tried to adjust to the sudden illumination, I was able to see one thing that most definitely did not belong in this picture: a rat’s hind end and long tail disappearing back down into the toilet. I gasped, shut the bathroom door quickly and gathered my wits.
There is nothing that will turn one’s stomach quite like seeing a rat in a place it absolutely should not be.
I checked my daughter’s room, flipped the light on quickly to scan the floor and her bed, and she was soundly sleeping and all seemed fine. I shut off her light and shut her door quietly.
Then I woke the man of the house, the only reasonable thing to do in such a situation.
I’m not sure he believed me. Maybe I had only imagined I’d seen a rat? Maybe it was all a dream? Maybe the heat was getting to me?
I went and got a broom and handed it to him. He opened the door to the bathroom a crack, and saw little puddles on the bathroom floor and dirty wet marks on the toilet seat. He quickly closed the door again and looked at me.
There definitely had been a grimy little something in that bathroom. But where was it now??
He opened the door again and went in, getting the broom handle ready to clobber the varmint. He peeked into the toilet and there was nothing to be found except some scummy debris floating in the water and scattered on the seat. He flushed. He flushed again. Nothing.
It was really hard to believe that a rat would voluntarily dive back into a toilet bowl and swim into the pipes …. unless it was headed for another toilet bowl. We quickly closed the toilet lid, piled books on top and went to check the two other bathrooms–no signs of disturbance, wet paw prints or other ratty evidence of invasion.
There is little rational thinking that goes on in the middle of the night when a rat has swum up your pipes into a toilet. I admit to being a little emotional. That’s when we went for the bleach and poured a gallon down each toilet bowl, flushing a dozen times each, thoroughly disrupting all the healthy bacterial flora in our septic drain field. It did make me feel better momentarily. We closed all the toilet lids, closed all the bathroom doors and didn’t sleep a wink the rest of the night. When we inspected the toilets in the morning, one of the other toilets had been “visited” as well, but with the lid shut, the rat had disappeared back down the pipe.
In the morning, we coolly told lies to our three children. We told them two of our toilets were plugged up and they had to use one only, and always put the lid down afterward. We decided if we told them about a rat in the bowl, they would never feel safe about sitting on the toilet again. There is the potential of a real psychological PTSD (post-toileting stress disorder) entity. I certainly didn’t feel safe about sitting on the toilet and kept furtively looking down, which doesn’t make for a very relaxed bathroom visit. It can be positively constipating.
We did a search under the house, around the house, trying to figure out where rats could have found access to our septic system. Finally, we discovered that a pipe previously connecting the septic drain field to our temporary single-wide trailer living quarters during our major farm house remodel the previous year had not been completely sealed off when the trailer was removed. It was an open invitation to rodents seeking a cool dark (and wet) place to hide during a hot summer.
It wasn’t the end of our rat woes, but it was the last time they breached our plumbing. We later had a major invasion of our barns, requiring the ongoing services of expert exterminators as well as super duper barn cat defense. I’m proud to say we’ve not seen evidence of rats or their homely furry selves for nearly three decades now. I wish I could say the same for their field mouse cousins, but that’s another story for another time…
We never told anyone about this little middle-of-the-night episode. In fact, our children thought for years we had sudden massive toilet failure at our house.
…until I blogged about it a few years ago because it is a good tale (tail??) to tell…
Sorry, kids. We lied to you – sort of.
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On Sundays, when the rain held off, after lunch or later, I would go with my twelve year old daughter into town, and put down the time at junk sales, antique fairs.
There I would lean over tables, absorbed by lace, wooden frames, glass. My daughter stood at the other end of the room, her flame-coloured hair obvious whenever— which was not often—
I turned around. I turned around. She was gone. Grown. No longer ready to come with me, whenever a dry Sunday held out its promises of small histories. Endings.
Spirit of irony, my caustic author of the past, of memory,—
and of its pain, which returns hurts, stings—reproach me now, remind me that I was in those rooms, with my child, with my back turned to her, searching—oh irony!— for beautiful things. ~Eavan Boland from “The Necessity for Irony” in The Lost Land.
How is it we look past the golden treasure right in front of us, the beauty gifted generously to us, to pursue the glittery with no value in the long run?
If my history of misplaced focus be forgiven, it is only because of your own golden and generous grace – ironically, always the most beautiful object of my searching.
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We lie back to back. Curtains lift and fall, like the chest of someone sleeping. Wind moves the leaves of the box elder; they show their light undersides, turning all at once like a school of fish. Suddenly I understand that I am happy. For months this feeling has been coming closer, stopping for short visits, like a timid suitor. ~Jane Kenyon “The Suitor”
Andrew Wyeth – Wind from the Sea, 1947
Happiness can be an elusive suitor and is altogether undependable.
I too have had glimpses of it throughout my life – a fleeting “this is it.” Then the clouds roll in and the ecstasy of the realization fades to mist.
I tend to trust the old reliable friends who show up regularly – like “hopeful” and “contented” and “being at peace” – plus moments when the sweetness of each breath brings tears of overwhelming joy.
Instead of pursuing happiness, (always a pursuit rather than a destination), I thrive on knowing I love deeply and am loved. That knowledge is what gets me through the really tough times when happiness doesn’t always put in an appearance.
Love shows up. Love has my back when I’m afraid and full of doubt. Love persists through sadness. Love doesn’t give up when everything hurts. Love is sufficient.
Love is enough to bring those happy tears to my eyes…
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
Love never fails. 1 Corinthians 13: 4-8a
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As to me I know of nothing else but miracles, Whether I walk city streets, Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky, Or wade with naked feet along the beach just in the edge of the water, Or stand under trees in the woods, Or talk by day with any one I love, or sleep in the bed at night with any one I love, Or sit at table at dinner with the rest, Or watch honey-bees busy around the hive of a summer forenoon, Or animals feeding in the fields, Or birds, or the wonderfulness of insects in the air, Or the wonderfulness of the sundown, or of stars shining so quiet and bright, Or the exquisite delicate thin curve of the new moon in spring; These with the rest, one and all, are to me miracles, The whole referring, yet each distinct and in its place.
To me every hour of the light and dark is a miracle, Every cubic inch of space is a miracle, Every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread with the same, Every foot of the interior swarms with the same. Every spear of grass — the frames, limbs, organs, of men and women, and all that concerns them…
What stranger miracles are there? ~Walt Whitman from Leaves of Grass
Everywhere I turn, there is a miracle in the making. I know this deep in my bones, even when our days on this earth are short. I focus my camera to try to preserve it; I search for words to do it justice.
God touches every square inch of earth as if He owns the place, but these square inches are particularly marked by His artistry. It is a place to feel awed by His magnificence.
The strange miracle is that we are here at all: in an instant we are formed in all our unique potential, never having happened before and never to happen again—to become brain and heart and skin and arms and legs. We were allowed to be born, a miracle in itself in this modern age of conditional conception.
The strangest miracle of all is that we are still loved, corrupted as we are. We are still offered salvage, undeserving as we are. We are still gifted with the miracle of grace until our last breath.
How strange indeed. How utterly wondrous.
There is not a particle of life which does not bear poetry within it. ~Gustav Flaubert
There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, Mine! ~Abraham Kuyper
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My father would lift me to the ceiling in his big hands and ask, How’s the weather up there? And it was good, the weather of being in his hands, his breath of scotch and cigarettes, his face smiling from the world below. O daddy, was the lullaby I sang back down to him as he stood on earth, my great, white-shirted father, home from work, his gold wristwatch and wedding band gleaming as he held me above him for as long as he could, before his strength failed down there in the world I find myself standing in tonight, my little boy looking down from his flight below the ceiling, cradled in my hands, his eyes wide and already staring into the distance beyond the man asking him again and again, How’s the weather up there? ~George Bilgere “Weather”.
It was hard work, dying, harder than anything he’d ever done.
Whatever brutal, bruising, back- breaking chore he’d forced himself
to endure—it was nothing compared to this. And it took
so long. When would the job be over? Who would call him
home for supper? And it was hard for us (his children)—
all of our lives we’d heard my mother telling us to go out,
help your father, but this was work we could not do.
He was way out beyond us, in a field we could not reach. ~Joyce Sutphen “My Father, Dying”
Deep in one of our closets is an old film reel of me about 16 months old sitting securely held by my father on his shoulders. I am bursting out with giggles as he repeatedly bends forward, dipping his head and shoulders down. I tip forward, looking like I am about to fall off, and when he stands back up straight, my mouth becomes a large O and I can almost remember the tummy tickle I feel. I want him to do it again and again, taking me to the edge of falling off and then bringing me back from the brink.
My father was a tall man, so being swept up onto his shoulders felt a bit like I was touching heaven.
It was as he lay dying 30 years ago this summer that I realized again how tall he was — his feet kept hitting the foot panel of the hospital bed my mother had requested for their home. We cushioned his feet with padding so he wouldn’t get abrasions even though he would never stand on them again, no longer towering over us.
His helplessness in dying was startling – this man who could build anything and accomplish whatever he set his mind to was unable to subdue his cancer. Our father, who was so self-sufficient he rarely asked for help, did not know how to ask for help now.
So we did what we could when we could tell he was uncomfortable, which wasn’t often. He didn’t say much, even though there was much we could have been saying. We didn’t reminisce. We didn’t laugh and joke together. We just were there, taking shifts catching naps on the couch so we could be available if he called out, which he never did.
This man: who had grown up dirt poor, fought hard with his alcoholic father left abruptly to go to college – the first in his family – then called to war for three years in the South Pacific.
This man: who had raised a family on a small farm while he was a teacher, then a supervisor, then a desk worker.
This man: who left our family to marry another woman but returned after a decade to ask forgiveness.
This man: who died in a house he had built completely himself, without assistance, from the ground up.
He didn’t need our help – he who had held tightly to us and brought us back from the brink when we went too far – he had been on the brink himself and was rescued, coming back humbled.
No question the weather is fine for him up there. I have no doubt.
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The cousins are coming! Cousins, cousins. Here come the boys. Bedlam, mayhem, noise, noise, noise. Blow up the air mattresses, hide the breakable toys. Cousins, cousins. Here come the boys. ~John Forster and Tom Chapin“Cousins”
photo of a windy day — photo by Danyale Tammingaphoto of a windy day — photo by Nate Lovegren
When I was growing up, I got to see my cousins maybe once a year but never lived near extended family. It was always an exciting day when the cousins were coming for a visit, or we went to see them. Now as adults, I have sadly lost touch with several of them.
I’m particularly envious of the close relationships between ten cousins growing up on the same farm just down the road from us- essentially they live interchangeably between one house or the other. What a great way to grow up, with two families who will take you in whenever you want a change in scenery or siblings. If you are fighting with a brother or sister, you can hopefully find compatible cousins a few hundred yards away.
Now we have six grandchildren living far from one another. This week they are able to play altogether in the same room in our ordinarily quiet and boring home —-at times it is mayhem and noise noise noise, but wonderful happy giggles and games abound.
It is a perfect time to treasure these family ties between our grandchildren creating as much bedlam and mayhem as possible!
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But you can have the fig tree and its fat leaves like clown hands gloved with green. You can have the touch of a single eleven-year-old finger on your cheek, waking you at one a.m. to say the hamster is back. You can have the purr of the cat and the soulful look of the black dog, the look that says, If I could I would bite every sorrow until it fled, and when it is August, you can have August and abundantly so. You can have love, though often it will be mysterious, like the white foam that bubbles up at the top of the bean pot over the red kidneys until you realize foam’s twin is blood.
You can speak a foreign language, sometimes, and it can mean something. You can visit the marker on the grave where your father wept openly. You can’t bring back the dead, but you can have the words forgive and forget hold hands as if they meant to spend a lifetime together. You can have your grandfather sitting on the side of your bed, at least for a while, you can have clouds and letters, the leaping of distances, and Indian food with yellow sauce like sunrise. You can’t count on grace to pick you out of a crowd but here is your friend to teach you how to high jump, how to throw yourself over the bar, backwards, until you learn about love, about sweet surrender, and here are periwinkles, buses that kneel, farms in the mind as real as Africa.
And when adulthood fails you, you can still summon the memory of the black swan on the pond of your childhood, the rye bread with peanut butter and bananas your grandmother gave you while the rest of the family slept. There is the voice you can still summon at will, like your mother’s, it will always whisper, you can’t have it all, but there is this. ~Barbara Ras from “You Can’t Have It All” from Bite Every Sorrow
My pragmatic mother gave up her teaching career for marriage and family so would remind me regularly that I couldn’t have it all: there was no way a woman can have a husband and children and a farm and a garden and animals and a profession and write and travel and volunteer in the community and not make a mess of it all and herself.
My father would listen to her and say to me softly under his breath: “you do whatever you put your mind to…you know what you are here for.”
They were both right.
The alluring abundance of this life has invited me to want to touch and feel and taste it all, not unlike another woman who was placed with purpose in the Garden to be a side-by-side companion and co-worker. Yet she demonstrated what happens when you want more than you are given and yes, she indeed made a mess of things.
Yet there is this: despite wanting it all and working hard for it all and believing I could do it all, I missed the point altogether.
Life is all gift, never earned. Life is all grace, not deserved. It is all August abundance, it is right now, sustaining us through the year’s droughts and floods and storms and drab gray weather.
And there is this: I know what I am here for.
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Without realizing it, we fill important places in each others’ lives. It’s that way with the guy at the corner grocery, the mechanic at the local garage, the family doctor, teachers, neighbors, coworkers.
Good people who are always “there,” who can be relied upon in small,important ways. People who teach us, bless us, encourage us, support us, uplift us in the dailiness of life.
We never tell them. I don’t know why, but we don’t.
And, of course, we fill that role ourselves. There are those who depend on us,watch us, learn from us, take from us. And we never know.
You may never have proof of your importance, but you are more important than you think. There are always those who couldn’t do without you. The rub is that you don’t always know who. ~Robert Fulghumfrom All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten
If there is one thing living through the pandemic taught me, it’s noticing the people in my life who may have not been as obvious to me before. I hadn’t realized how many folks truly are front-line serving others day-in and day-out.
It’s not only health care workers, grocery store clerks and school teachers but the list of essential workers is large, including law enforcement, plumbers and electricians, child care workers, water, sanitation and sewer maintenance, pastors, postal clerks, technicians who fix our cars and appliances and the farmers who tend the crops and livestock we need to live, as well as scores of others.
We are remarkably interdependent and need each other.
I realized how oblivious I had been before not taking the time to acknowledge the daily services I received from so many varied people. In fact, it has become more urgent for me to tell my family members and friends – some thousands of miles away from me – how much they mean to me.
Now, in non-pandemic times, I try to tell others – the grocery cashier, the medical assistant, the office receptionist – as simply and clearly as I can, whenever possible, that I appreciate what they have done and what they continue to do, how they make life better for us all.
I also need to continue to nurture relationships with family and friends crucial to my own well-being. I need them all.
I need you all.
And it is important to me that you know.
Well over a thousand of you receive these daily Barnstorming emails and posts – a handful of you communicate with me regularly. I treasure those messages, thank you!
We all need encouragement that we are making a positive difference in others’ lives and you all make a difference to me.
A butterfly dancing in the sunlight, A bird singing to his mate, The whispering pines, The restless sea, The gigantic mountains, A stately tree, The rain upon the roof, The sun at early dawn, A boy with rod and hook, The babble of a shady brook, A woman with her smiling babe, A man whose eyes are kind and wise, Youth that is eager and unafraid— When all is said, I do love best A little home where love abides, And where there’s kindness, peace, and rest. ~Scottie McKenzie Frasier “The Things I Love”
When all is said and done, I love best the people who bring kindness, peace and rest to the little house we call home.
It is enough and everything.
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