To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee, a One clover, and a bee, And revery. The revery alone will do, If bees are few. ~Emily Dickinson
Bees do have a smell, you know, and if they don’t they should, for their feet are dusted with spices from a million flowers. ~Ray Bradburyfrom Dandelion Wine
Pollinators are having a rough time of it these days, combating man-made insecticides or failing to find flowering weeds to visit given the wide-spread use of herbicides. Plus, there is the American penchant for mowing grassy landscapes to look perfectly uniform and weed-free.
When I see a honey or bumble bee happily doing its job, it is a cause for celebration.
I was thrilled to see the latest research reported today demonstrating the ability of a flowering plant, like a snapdragon in the study, to “hear” (through vibro-acoustic signals) the buzz of an approaching pollinator, responding instantly by increasing its nectar volume and sweetness. The postulated feedback mechanism is that pollinators will be more attracted to a plant that “rewards” their visit, thereby increasing the likelihood of ongoing pollination visits and survival of further generations of both creatures.
This world depends on a revery of communication we can only begin to understand – between plant to plant, plant to insect — a daydream of connections bringing the spicy smell of pollen from a million flowers to the lowly feet of the bee, which generates more of both as well as honey for you and me. May it be, may it be, may it bee…
May we know such reverie.
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Nobody can keep on being angry if she looks into the heart of a pansy for a little while. ~L.M. Montgomery
One has to wonder where they got their reputation for pansiness. Purple and proud, or any color you might imagine, they grow where they want to grow, despite the cold, so much unlike their flashy cousins, impatiens, petunias, scarlet sage, petals falling off at first frost, hardly hearty at all. Keep your prima donna blossoms, loud and boastful annuals, brief and seedless. I’ll take the pansies of the world, unassuming, resilient, quietly doing what they know to do ~Scott Owen “Pansies”
As a seed, I was shot out the back end of a blue jay when, heedless, she flew over the meadow. She had swallowed me in my homeland when she spied me lying easy under the sun—briefly, I called her Mother before I passed through her gullet like a ghost. In a blink of God’s eye I was an orphan. I trembled where I fell, alone in the dirt. That first night was a long night, early May and chilly, and I remember rain filled my furrow. I called out for mercy— only a wolverine wandered by. I cursed my luck, I cursed the happenstance of this world, I smelled his hot stink, but he nosed me deep into the mud— this was the gift of obscurity. I germinated, hidden from the giants of earth, the jostling stalks, the various, boisterous bloomers, and this was my salvation. After seven days and nights I pushed through— yes. Here I am, kissable: your tiny, purple profusion. ~Lisa Bellamy “Wild Pansy”
The world is in sore need of a cure for the grumbles.
Fortunately, it exists right outside in our back yards, along sidewalks and in gravelly vacant lots.
A cheerful face is irresistible to all but the crabbiest among us, guaranteed to bring a smile every time.
Beyond the obvious charm exists a depth of heart — roots able to thrive in the thinnest of soil, at home among rocks and weeds, resilient even when tromped on.
We carry its seeds on the tread of our boots despite our grumbling and help spread the good news: anger left unfed will dry up and blow away.
Yet the constant loyal heart of the pansy will last. It keeps smiling back – simply a twinkle in God’s eye.
For pansies are, I think, the little gleams Of children’s visions from a world of dreams, Jewels of innocence and joy and mirth, Alight with laughter as they fall to earth.
So tread not rashly, children, lest you crush A part of childhood in a thoughtless rush. Would you not treat them gently if you knew Pansies are little bits of children too? ~R.X. Lehmann from “Pansies”
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It’s so easy to look and see what we pass through in this world, but we don’t. If you’re like me, you see so little. You see what you expect to see rather than what’s there. ~Frederick Buechner from The Remarkable Ordinary
Jesus said to them, “Come and have breakfast.” None of the disciples dared ask him, “Who are you?” They knew it was the Lord. John 21:12
It is too easy, by the next day, to let go of Easter — to slide back into the Monday routine, managing our best to get through each day, our jaws set, our teeth gritted, as we have before.
We are blinded by our grief, shivering in misery, thinking Him only the Gardener as He passed by. We don’t pay attention to Who is right before us, Who is always tending us: the new Adam, caring for a world desperate for rescue.
God knows this about us. So He invites us to breakfast on Monday and every day thereafter.
He feeds us, a tangible and meaningful act of nourishing us in our most basic human needs though we’ve done nothing to deserve the gift. He cooks up fish on a beach at dawn and welcomes us to join Him, as if nothing extraordinary has just happened.
Just yesterday evening he reviewed His Word and broke bread in Emmaus, opening the eyes and hearts of those like us who failed to see Who this is walking beside them.
This is no ordinary Gardener.
When He offers up a meal of His Word, the gift is nothing less than Himself.
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“Why, what’s the matter, That you have such a February face, So full of frost, of storm and cloudiness?” – William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing
The wrap-up to February feels like spring is flirting with us. But will winter really ever be finished?
Our doldrums are deep; a brief respite of sun and warmth too rare.
We feel it in the barn as we go about our daily winter routine. The Haflingers are impatient and yearn for freedom, over-eager when handled, sometimes banging on the stall doors in their frustration at being shut in, not understanding that the alternative is to stand outside all day in cold rain and wind. To compensate for their confinement, we start grooming off their thick winter coats, urging their hair to loosen and curry off in sheets over parts of their bodies, yet otherwise still clinging tight.
The horses are a motley crew right now, much like a worn ’60s shag carpet, uneven and in dire need of updating. I prefer that no one see them (or me) like this. Eventually I know the shag on my horses will come off, revealing the sheen of new short hair beneath, but when I look at myself, I’m unconvinced there is such transformation in store for me.
Cranky, I put one foot ahead of the other, oblivious to the subtle seasonal renewal around me, refusing to believe even in the possibility.
It happened today. Dawn broke bright and blinding so I headed outside and stumbled across something extraordinary.
A patch of snowdrops sat blooming in a newly cleared space in our farmyard, visible now only because of bramble removal done last fall. These little white upside down flowers were planted decades ago around our house and yard. There they’ve been, year after year, harbingers of the long-awaited spring to come in a few short weeks, sometimes covered by the overgrowth and invisible to me in my self-absorbed blindness.
I was astonished that someone, many many years ago, had carried these bulbs around the farm, planting them, hoping they might bless another soul sometime somehow. The blossoms had sprung from their sleep beneath the covering of years of fallen leaves and blackberry vines.
It was as if I’d been physically hugged by this someone long dead, now flesh and blood beside me, with work-rough hands, and dirty fingernails, and broad brimmed hat, and a satisfied smile. This secret gardener is no long living, so I mentally reach back across those years in gratitude, showing my deep appreciation for the time and effort it took to place a foretaste of spring in an unexpected and hidden place.
I am thus compelled to look for ways to leave such a gift for someone to find 70 years from now as they likewise stumble blindly through too many gray days full of human drama, frailty and flaw. Though I will be long gone, I can reach across the years to grab them, hug them in their doldrums, lift them up and give them hope for what is to come.
It is the peeling away of winter’s shaggy coat, revealing the fresh smoothness of spring glistening underneath.
What an astonishing thought that it was done for me, and in reaffirming that promise of renewal, I might do it for another.
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Every day after work he’d sit in his armchair with its antimacassar and its plush burgundy velour and she’d kneel on the floor to unfasten the laces, loosen the tongues, and lift out his feet. When I was ten I stayed for a week and did it for her. He thought I did it for him. ~Andrea Hollander Budy “My Grandmother Taking Off My Grandfather’s Shoes” from When She Named Fire
I did not grow up in a household that took time off. Time was redeemed by work, and work was noble and honorable and proved we had a right to exist.
Vacation road trips were rare and almost always associated with my father’s work. When he came home from his desk job in town, he would immediately change into his farm clothes and put in several hours of work outside, summer or winter, rain or shine, light or dark.
My mother did not work in town while we were children, but worked throughout her day inside and outside the house doing what farm wives and mothers need to do: growing, hoeing, harvesting, preserving, washing, cleaning, sewing, and most of all, being there for us.
As kids, we had our share of chores that were simply part of our day as our work was never done on a farm. When we turned ten, we began working for others: babysitting, weeding, barn and house cleaning, berry picking. I figure I put in over 60 years of gainful employment – there were times I worked four part-time jobs at once because that was what I could put together to keep things together.
I know I’ve missed out on much of life being a “nose to the grindstone” person.
Now retired, I try a different way to redeem my time: to notice, to record, to observe, to appreciate beauty that still exists in the midst of chaos and cataclysm..
Life isn’t all about non-stop labor, yet we get on with our work because work is about showing up when and where we are needed.
And we are always needed, by someone, somewhere, somehow. That’s the reason why we’re here.
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The bud stands for all things, even for those things that don’t flower, for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing; though sometimes it is necessary to reteach a thing its loveliness, to put a hand on its brow of the flower and retell it in words and in touch it is lovely until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing; as Saint Francis put his hand on the creased forehead of the sow, and told her in words and in touch blessings of earth on the sow, and the sow began remembering all down her thick length, from the earthen snout all the way through the fodder and slops to the spiritual curl of the tail, from the hard spininess spiked out from the spine down through the great broken heart to the sheer blue milken dreaminess spurting and shuddering from the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths sucking and blowing beneath them: the long, perfect loveliness of sow. ~Galway Kinnell “Saint Francis and the Sow”
None of us trust our own loveliness; we who are concerned with a blemish or an unusual shape of toe or nose.
Yet we are made as we are as an image of our Maker.
If we consider the purpose for which we’re created, then we are just as we should be – blessed with exact shape and size and spirit with which we serve and bring joy to others.
Our loveliness must be retold so we believe it thoroughly – as a bud is all about blossoming, a mother pours her love into the empty, a father leads and guides the lost.
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The Almighty appeared on earth as a helpless human baby, needing to be fed and changed and taught to talk like any other child. The more you think about it, the more staggering it gets. Nothing in fiction is so fantastic as this truth of the Incarnation. ~J.I. Packer from Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus: Experiencing the Peace and Promise of Christmas
I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. ~John 6:51
Jesus replied, “They do not need to go away. You give them something to eat.” ~Matthew 14:16
He has filled the hungry with good things… ~Luke 1:53
If there is one thing universal about human beings, it is that we must eat to grow, stay healthy, and stay alive. Feeding a hungry person is one of the most nurturing and loving actions available to us in our outreach to others.
I learned this first as a nurses’ aide in a rest home when I was a teenager. The most disabled residents depended on me to feed them, bite full by bite full. I could not rush them or they might not swallow properly and could aspirate. I needed to be aware of what they liked and didn’t like or it might end up back in my lap in much less appetizing form.
Later, as a mother feeding my children, especially late at night rocking in our rocking chair, I found those times to be some of the most precious hours I ever spent with them. I was able to make a tangible difference in their lives with a gift from myself — of myself.
So too, we are fed by God–from His Word, from His Spirit, from His Hand at the Supper as He breaks the bread, from His Body. Our eyes are opened, our hearts burn within us.
But the ironic truth is that with the Incarnation, the world – we mere human beings – fed and nourished God Himself. He thrived, grew, and lived among us because His mother nourished Him from her own body and His earthly father had a trade that made it possible to feed his family.
Feeding others as we are fed. Feeding God when He chose to be helpless in our hands, trusting and needing us as much as we trust and need Him.
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This year’s Advent theme is from Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s sermon on the First Sunday in Advent, December 2, 1928:
The celebration of Advent is possible only to those who are troubled in soul, who know themselves to be poor and imperfect, and who look forward to something greater to come. For these, it is enough to wait in humble fear until the Holy One himself comes down to us, God in the child in the manager.
God comes.
He is, and always will be now, with us in our sin, in our suffering, and at our death. We are no longer alone. God is with us and we are no longer homeless. ~Dietrich Bonhoeffer – from Christmas Sermons
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A dim veil hangs over the landscape and flood, And the hills are all mellowed in haze, While Fall, creeping on like a monk ‘neath his hood, Plucks the thick-rustling wealth of the maize.
And long for this manna that springs from the sod Shall we gratefully give Him the praise, The source of all bounty, our Father and God, Who sent us from heaven the maize! ~William Fosdick “The Maize”
Come, boys, sing!— Sing of the yellow corn, Sing, boys, sing, Sing of the yellow corn! He springeth up from the fallow soil, With the blade so green and tall, And he payeth well the reaper’s toil, When the husks in the autumn fall. The pointed leaves, And the golden ear, The rustling sheaves, In the ripened year— Sing, boys, sing! Sing of the yellow corn, Sing, boys, sing, Sing of the yellow corn.
He drinks the rain in the summer long, And he loves the streams that run, And he sends the stalk so stout and strong, To bask in the summer sun. The pointed leaves, And the golden ear, The rustling sheaves, In the ripened year— Sing, boys, sing! Sing of the yellow corn, Sing, boys, sing, Sing of the yellow corn.
He loves the dews of the starry night, And the breathing wind that plays With his tassels green, when the mellow light Of the moon on the meadow stays. The pointed leaves, And the golden ear, The rustling sheaves, In the ripened year— Sing, boys, sing! Sing of the yellow corn, Sing, boys, sing, Sing of the yellow corn.
A glorious thing is the yellow corn, With the blade so green and tall, A blessed thing is the yellow corn, When the husks in the autumn fall. Then, sing, boys, sing! Sing of the yellow corn, Sing, boys, sing, Sing of the yellow corn! The pointed leaves, And the golden ear, The rustling sheaves, In the ripened year— Come, sing, boys, sing! Sing of the yellow corn, Sing, boys, sing, Sing of the yellow corn. ~Charles Eastman “The Yellow Corn”
The dying autumn garden can feel like a treasure hunt as we pull out and sort through the dead and dying vines and stalks: a giant zucchini growing undetected under leaves, a rotting pumpkin collapsing into itself, fat hollowed beans ready to burst with seed.
Everything is dry and rustling in the north winds.
The greatest Easter Egg of all hidden away in husk and cornsilk is glass gem corn. It grew on stunted stalks with few apparent ears, so pitiful next to our robust sweet corn crop.
It fooled us; this corn is pure gold in a kaleidoscope Thanksgiving display – purely ornamental since it doesn’t grow prolific like a sweet yellow corn. Yet these meager ears glow like stained glass, colorful quilt swatches on a stalk.
God has a palette of heaven-sent color and imagination. People come in all colors too, thanks to His artistry, but not nearly so varied as these kernels of colored glass.
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Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid. ~Frederich Buechner
…the heart of this country does not beat in Washington, DC, nor does its soul lie in a seat of power, nor does its destiny lie in which party occupies which section of government.
No, those things all lie with… people like you and me, people who get up and go to work and love their tiny plot of Earth and whose hands are rough and hardened by loving and giving. ~Billy Coffey from “The Heart of this Land”
Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree. ~Martin Luther
…as the land around turns rocky and hollow… I’d never suspected: every day, Although the nation is done for, I find new flowers. ~Donald Revell from “Election Year”
This morning I search for any hint of beauty trying its best to thrive in the rocky hollowed-out cracks of our foundation.
I look for something (anything) kind and gentle and hopeful to share here.
But we, the people, have chosen a vengeful meanness to rule us, to crush, bloody and fracture us apart.
I fear beauty and goodness have gone into hiding.
Even so, we are reminded of Words spoken again and again and again to a troubled world:
if only we can hear them for ourselves if only we can reassure one another to keep planting, growing, feeding and caring for one another
The Son came to be with us when we needed saving from ourselves, and will not abandon us:
do not be afraid do not be afraid do not be afraid
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She skimmed the yellow water like a moth, Trailing her feet across the shallow stream; She saw the berries, paused and sampled them Where a slight spider cleaned his narrow tooth. Light in the air, she fluttered up the path, So delicate to shun the leaves and damp, Like some young wife, holding a slender lamp To find her stray child, or the moon, or both. Even before she reached the empty house, She beat her wings ever so lightly, rose, Followed a bee where apples blew like snow; And then, forgetting what she wanted there, Too full of blossom and green light to care, She hurried to the ground, and slipped below. ~James Wright “My Grandmother’s Ghost” from Above the River: The Complete Poems
…now you have taught me (but how late) my lack. I see the chasm. And everything you are was making My heart into a bridge by which I might get back From exile, and grow man. And now the bridge is breaking.
For this I bless you as the ruin falls. The pains You give me are more precious than all other gains. ~C.S. Lewis from “As the Ruin Falls”
Early one morning, we heard a sound, someone carefully pushing a door open, but both doors were closed. The air stirred. A whirring echoed through the room. That night we had left a small lamp on. In front of it, each time it orbited, the dark shape of a bird. ~Tina Barry from “Another Haunting” from I Tell Henrietta
when my father had been dead a week I woke with his voice in my ear I sat up in bed and held my breath and stared at the pale closed door
white apples and the taste of stone
if he called again I would put on my coat and galoshes ~Donald Hall “White Apples”
I saw my grandma’s ghost once.
She was the only grandparent I actually knew and who actually knew me — the others were lost before I was born or I was too young to realize what I had lost.
She had lived a hard life after her mother’s death when she was only 12, taking over the household duties for her father and younger brother while leaving school forever. She married too young to an abusive alcoholic, lost her first child to lymphoma at age 8 and took her three remaining children to safety away from their father. For a year, they lived above a seedy restaurant where she cooked seven days a week to make ends meet.
But there was grace too. The marriage somehow got patched together after Grandpa found God and sobriety – after his sudden death while sitting in church, Grandma’s faith never wavered. Her garden soil yielded beautiful flowers she planted and nurtured and picked to sell. Her children and grandchildren welcomed her many open armed visits and hugs.
She was busy planning her first overseas trip of a lifetime at age 72 when we noticed her eyes looked yellow. Only two weeks later she was bed-bound in unrelenting pain due to pancreatic cancer, gazing heaven-ward instead of Europe-bound. Her dreams had been dashed so quickly, she barely realized her itinerary and ultimate destination had unalterably changed.
I was nearly 16 at the time, too absorbed in my own teenage cares and concerns to really notice how quickly she was fading and failing like a wilted flower. Instead I was picking fights with my stressed parents, obsessing about taking my driver’s license driving test, distracted by all the typical social pressures of high school life.
Her funeral was unbearable for me as I had never really said goodbye – only one brief hospital visit when she was hardly recognizable in her anguish and jaundice. She looked so different, I hung back from her bedside. Regrettably, I didn’t even try to hold her hand.
Mere weeks after she had been lowered into the ground next to her husband and young daughter, she came back to me in a dream.
I was sleeping when the door opened into my dark bedroom, waking me as the bright hallway light pushed its way via a shimmering beam to my bed. My Grandma Kittie stood in my bedroom doorway, a fully recognizable silhouette backlit by the illumination. She silently stood there, looking at me.
Startled, I sat up in my bed and said to her, “Grandma, why are you here? You died. We buried you.”
She lifted her hands toward me in a gesture of reassurance and said:
“I want you to know I’m okay and always will be. You will be too.”
She then gave a little wave, turned and left, closing the door behind her. I woke suddenly with a gasp in my darkened bedroom and knew I had just been visited.
She hadn’t come to say goodbye or to tell me she loved me — I knew that already.
She had come to me, with the transient fragility of something with wings, floating gently back into the world to be my bridge. She blossomed in the light she brought with her.
Grandma came to mend my broken heart and plant it with peace.
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You’re in a better place I’ve heard a thousand times And at least a thousand times I’ve rejoiced for you
But the reason why I’m broken The reason why I cry Is how long must I wait to be with you
I close my eyes and I see your face If home’s where my heart is then I’m out of place Lord, won’t you give me strength To make it through somehow I’ve never been more homesick than now
Help me Lord cause I don’t understand your ways The reason why I wonder if I’ll ever know But, even if you showed me The hurt would be the same Cause I’m still here so far away from home
In Christ, there are no goodbyes And in Christ, there is no end
So I’ll hold onto Jesus With all that I have To see you again To see you again
And I close my eyes and I see your face If home’s where my heart is then I’m out of place Lord, won’t you give me strength To make it through somehow
Won’t you give me strength To make it through somehow Won’t you give me strength To make it through somehow I’ve never been more homesick than now ~Millard Bart Marshall
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