is taken by surprise as it speaks, are you sure this is the right street? for example—or just
cowpath—no more: a blurb, a bleep, really, out of the imagination, and then once again everything is
perfectly still, save, perhaps, a cow or two on the horizon,—
and the sound of cowbirds in sudden excellence, where
formerly there were none. ~Jane Mead“Sometimes the Mind” From The Usable Field
photo by Bette Vander Haakphoto by Bette Vander Haak
photo by Bette Vander Haak
Many current roads started out as cowpaths decades ago. These meandering trails made sense to cows at the time. Subsequently, because people lack imagination, we tend to also follow those original twist and turns as we navigate life’s byways. Now paved with asphalt and good intentions, our roads accommodate more than a herd of cows giving hitchhiking cowbirds a free meal.
Cowbirds don’t lack imagination though; they are ready-made opportunists. They occupy any furry back that happens to attract tasty insects. The (horse?)birds happily set sail on a dinner cruise while doing their host a favor by gobbling irritating flies.
Imagine meandering through countryside pastures all day, unconcerned where the next meal will come from because it always comes to you.
Its easy if you try. You can say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one. I hope someday you’ll join us and the world (horses, cows, birds) will live as one…
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They are not long, The weeping and the laughter, Love and desire and hate: I think they have no portion in us after We pass the gate.
They are not long, The days of wine and roses: Out of a misty dream Our path emerges for a while, then closes Within a dream. ~Ernest Dowson “They are not long…” “Vitae summa brevis spem nos vetat incohare longam” (Our brief sum of life forbids us to embark upon a protracted hope)
photo by Joel DeWaard
When I consider the bittersweet brevity of life, I don’t think how much I will miss wine and roses. Eventually, when I pass through the gate, it will be other loves that determine my path into the misty night:
My husband’s kind eyes and gentle hands Hugs and snuggles with grandkids Worship and prayer and potlucks with church family Just-baked bread and dark chocolate The smell and sound of long-awaited rain Ponies and puppies Scent of sweetpeas and taste of green peas in the pod Tunes of bouncy bluegrass and familiar folk songs Birdsong in the morning and frog chorus at night Wistful sunsets, and more so, welcoming sunrises
and ever so much more…
We are called forth from here to a hope beyond imagining. This is only a taste.
The squirrel sticks its head from the tree’s knot, shrieking directions, a village gossip with a huge plumed tail. It moves down the scalloped bark, swaying on tiny nails, and stops, eye-level with my swollen belly. A black blur of bird swoops, the velvet of its wing against my cheek. It nests among a ruckus of robins, less interested in being fed than being heard. Around the curve of the road, I near the farmer’s fence. His mare lowers her fan of lashes. In the pond, a fish flips, exposing its silver stomach. ~Tina Barry, “The Animals Know” from Beautiful Raft
photo by Harry Rodenberger
video by Harry Rodenberger
It has been over thirty years since I carried a child in my belly. Each time, I remember having the feeling our farm animals knew I was “expecting” even before it became obvious. Maybe it was because I was so overjoyed, I carried myself differently. After experiencing a miscarriage and two years of infertility workups, it felt almost magical being pregnant. It seemed as if our invisibly growing baby was already welcomed by all the creatures on our farm and were celebrating the anticipation along with us.
While I was pregnant with our first son, after such a long wait for parenthood, we bought a new dog, Tango and moved to a farm from the city. She was a year old and had never been around babies, so we weren’t sure how she would adapt to both new surroundings and new owners. As we drove six hours to her bring her to her new home, she happily settled in for the trip lying on my bulging tummy, pummeled by kicks from a baby she would soon meet face to face.
She loved him as soon as she saw him. She had known him and understood him as he grew inside.
Now, decades later, our family’s next generation is fulfilling their own hopes for the future: we have four cherished grandchildren in addition to the two we are now waiting to meet — one will be any day now.
The expectation of new life is so sweet. All that lives and breathes anticipates this new soul budding and about to bloom.
Somehow, they just know…
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It was dragging my hands along its belly, loosing the bit and wiping the spit from its mouth that made me a snatch of grass in the thing’s maw, a fly tasting its ear. It was touching my nose to his that made me know the clover’s bloom, my wet eye to his that made me know the long field’s secrets. But it was putting my heart to the horse’s that made me know the sorrow of horses. Made me forsake my thumbs for the sheen of unshod hooves. And in this way drop my torches. And in this way drop my knives. Feel the small song in my chest swell and my coat glisten and twitch. And my face grow long. And these words cast off, at last, for the slow honest tongue of horses. ~Ross Gay “Becoming A Horse”
photo by Emily Vander Haak
Living the dream of nearly every young girl, I grew up with a horse in our back field. The first was a raw-boned old paint who allowed my older sister and toddler me to sit atop him, walk around the barnyard and on the driveway at no more than a walk. He was arthritic and sore, but patient and tolerant to the attention of little girls. When we moved away to another part of the state, he didn’t come with us and I was too young to fully understand where he had been sent.
The horse on our new farm was my sister’s 4H project who was a spiffy chestnut mare with a penchant for a choppy trot and speedy canter. My sister would go miles with friends on horseback down back-country roads. Sadly, my sister soon became allergic (hives and swelling) to any contact with horses. I was barely old enough to start riding by myself in our fields.The little mare missed her adventures with my sister but seemed to adapt to my inexperience and took care of me as best she could – I never fell off. One night, she broke through a fence and ate her fill in a field of growing oat grass. The next day she was euthanized due to terrible colic. I was inconsolable, crying for days when visiting her burial spot on our property.
These first two horses tolerated the inexperience of their handlers and tried to compensate for it. I’ve since owned a few horses who knew exactly how to take advantage of such inexperience. Horses size up people quickly as our feelings and fear can be so transparent; it takes much longer for us to understand the complexity of their equine mind. Many diverse training techniques are marketed as testimony to that mystery.
I have learned that horses appreciate a patient and quiet approach, reflecting their consistency and honesty. They like to be looked in the eye and appreciate a soft breath blown over their whiskers. They want us to find their itchy spots rather than act the part of a pseudo-predator with intent to harm.
That’s not asking too much of us.
In return, we learn how best to communicate what we need from them. They are remarkably willing to work when they understand the job and feel appreciated. In return, we are given a chance to experience the world through their eyes and ears, to comprehend the remarkable sensitivity of a skin able to shiver a fly away.
I’ve spent much of my life learning with horses and hope there are a few years still left to learn more. Whatever sorrow they feel in their hearts is when I’ve failed to be who they need me to be. Their gift to me is an honest willingness to forgive, again and yet again.
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Why do we bother with the rest of the day, the swale of the afternoon, the sudden dip into evening, then night with his notorious perfumes, his many-pointed stars?
This is the best— throwing off the light covers, feet on the cold floor, and buzzing around the house on espresso— maybe a splash of water on the face, a palmful of vitamins—
but mostly buzzing around the house on espresso, dictionary and atlas open on the rug, the typewriter waiting for the key of the head, a cello on the radio, and, if necessary, the windows—
trees fifty, a hundred years old out there, heavy clouds on the way and the lawn steaming like a horse in the early morning. ~Billy Collins “Morning”
Dawn is a new gift every day, even when the previous night was sleepless. I rise early to see just what might happen as you never know what might be just over the horizon. Soon we’ll round the solstice corner to face the encroaching darkening.
So why do I bother with the rest of the day? Morning is always the best…
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Another word I love is evening for the balance it implies, balance being something I struggle with. I suppose I would like to be more a planet, turning in & out of light It comes down again to polarities, equilibrium. Evening. The moths take the place of the butterflies, owls the place of hawks, coyotes for dogs, stillness for business, & the great sorrow of brightness makes way for its own sorrow. Everything dances with its strict negation, & I like that. I have no choice but to like that. Systems are evening out all around us— even now, as we kneel before a new & ruthless circumstance. Where would I like to be in five years, someone asks—& what can I tell them? Surrendering with grace to the evening, with as much grace as I can muster to the circumstance of darkness, which is only something else that does not stay. ~Jeremy Radin “Evening”
Let the light of late afternoon shine through chinks in the barn, moving up the bales as the sun moves down.
Let the cricket take up chafing as a woman takes up her needles and her yarn. Let evening come.
Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned in long grass. Let the stars appear and the moon disclose her silver horn.
Let the fox go back to its sandy den. Let the wind die down. Let the shed go black inside. Let evening come.
To the bottle in the ditch, to the scoop in the oats, to air in the lung let evening come.
Let it come, as it will, and don’t be afraid. God does not leave us comfortless, so let evening come. ~Jane Kenyon “Let Evening Come”
So much of our living is preparing for rest and here I am, fighting it every step of the way.
I resist it mightily: like my toddler grandson fussing about taking a nap, or a youngster devoted to screen time and unwilling to surrender to darkness, or a parent trying to eke out the last bit of daylight to get the chores done.
I am comforted by staying busy. Yet, I was created in the image of One who remembered to rest.
So must I be “evened out” by Him. The evening comes – there is no stopping it – I am to settle into it, to breathe deeply of it, to close my eyes and drift on the comfort it brings.
When the evening falls And the daylight is fading From within me calls Could it be I am sleeping? For a moment I stray Then it holds me completely Close to home – I cannot say Close to home feeling so far away As I walk the room there before me a shadow From another world, where no other can follow Carry me to my own, to where I can cross over Close to home – I cannot say Close to home feeling so far away Forever searching; never right I am lost in oceans of night. Forever hoping I can find memories Those memories I left behind Even though I leave will I go on believing That this time is real – am I lost in this feeling? Like a child passing through Never knowing the reason I am home – I know the way I am home – feeling oh, so far away
Abendlied (Evening Song) translation Bide with us, for evening shadows darken, and the day will soon be over.
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…whenever you mark a horse, or a dog, with a peculiarly mild, calm, deep-seated eye, be sure he is an Aristotle or a Kant, tranquilly speculating upon the mysteries in man. No philosophers so thoroughly comprehend us as dogs and horses. They see through us at a glance. But there is a touch of divinity …. and a special halo about a horse… ~Herman Melville from Redburn: His First Voyage
There are some animals (and people) who will not look you in the eye. It may be a reluctance to appear too bold (as direct eye contact can imply), or it may be a reluctance to expose too much of their own inner world and feelings.
Because eyes don’t lie.
When you empty yourself into another being’s eyes and feel both understanding and understood, that is a touch of divinity at work.
The eye is a mirror, a gazing ball and a collecting pool to reveal, reflect and absorb. May we take the time and gather the courage to look deeply for the holy within one another.
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Like a storm of hornets, the little white planets layer and relayer as they whip around in their high orbits, getting more and more dense before they crash against our crust. A maelstrom of ferocious little fists and punches, so hard to believe once it’s past. ~Kay Ryan “Hailstorm”
A brief and unexpected Palm Sunday storm blew through early yesterday afternoon with gusts of southerly winds, thunder, horizontal rain and noisy hale. I had left the north/south center aisle doors wide open after morning chores, so the storm also blew through the barn. Hay, empty buckets, horse halters and cat food were strewn about. The Haflinger horses stood wide-eyed and fretful in their stalls as the hail on the metal roof hammered away.
Once I got the doors closed and secured, all was soon made right. The horses relaxed and got back to their meals and things felt normal again.
Today, Holy Monday morning, all seems calm but nevertheless, somewhat beaten up. The barn is still there, the roof still on, the horses where they belong and all seems to be as it was before the barnstorming wind. Or so it might appear.
This wind heralds another storm beginning this week that hits with such force that I’m knocked off my feet, blown away, and left bruised and breathless. No latches, locks, or barricades are strong enough to protect me from what will come over the next few days.
Yesterday he rode in on a donkey softly, humbly, and wept at what he knew must come.
Today, he overturns the tables in his fury.
Tomorrow he describes the destruction that is to happen, yet no one understands.
Wednesday, a woman boldly anoints him with precious oil, as preparation.
On Thursday, he kneels before his friends, pours water over their dusty feet, presides over a simple meal, and later, abandoned, sweats blood in agonized prayer.
By Friday, all culminates in a most perfect storm, transforming everything in its path, leaving nothing untouched, the curtain torn, the veil removed.
The silence on Saturday is deafening.
Next Sunday, the Son rises, sheds his shroud and neatly folds what is no longer needed. He is nearly unrecognizable in his glory.
He calls my name, my heart burns within me at his words and I can never be the same again.
I am, once again, barnstormed to the depths of my soul. Doors flung open wide, my roof pulled off, everything of no consequence blown away and now replaced, renewed and reconciled.
May it be done this week as he has said, again and yet again, year after year, life after life.
another barnstorming
This year’s Lenten theme: So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. 2 Corinthians 4: 18
1. Courage, my soul, and let us journey on, Tho’ the night is dark, it won’t be very long. Thanks be to God, the morning light appears, And the storm is passing over, Hallelujah!
Chorus: Hallelujah! Hallelujah! The storm is passing over, Hallelujah!
2. Billows rolling high, and thunder shakes the ground, Lightnings flash, and tempest all around, Jesus walks the sea and calms the angry waves, And the storm is passing over, Hallelujah! [Chorus]
3. The stars have disappeared, and distant lights are dim, My soul is filled with fears, the seas are breaking in. I hear the Master cry, “Be not afraid, ’tis I,” And the storm is passing over, Hallelujah! [Chorus]
4. Soon we shall reach the distant shining shore, Free from all the storms, we’ll rest forevermore. Safe within the veil, we’ll furl the riven sail, And the storm will all be over, Hallelujah! [Chorus]
Our heart wanders lost in the dark woods. Our dream wrestles in the castle of doubt. But there’s music in us. Hope is pushed down but the angel flies up again taking us with her. The summer mornings begin inch by inch while we sleep, and walk with us later as long-legged beauty through the dirty streets. It is no surprise that danger and suffering surround us. What astonishes is the singing. We know the horses are there in the dark meadow because we can smell them, can hear them breathing. Our spirit persists like a man struggling through the frozen valley who suddenly smells flowers and realizes the snow is melting out of sight on top of the mountain, knows that spring has begun. ~Jack Gilbert “Horses at Midnight Without a Moon”
As if — we are walking through the darkest valley, still stuck in the throes of winter, and catch a whiff of a floral scent, or a hint of green grass, or hear the early jingle bells song of peeper frogs in the wetlands, or feel the warm breath of horses puffing steam at night.
As if — there is hope on the other side, refreshment and renewal and rejoicing only around the corner.
As if — things won’t always be frozen or muddy or barren, that something is coming behind the snowdrops and crocus.
The snow is melting, imperceptibly, but melting nonetheless. And that, in turn, melts me…
This year’s Lenten theme: So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. 2 Corinthians 4: 18
He (the professor) asked what I made of the other students (at Oxford) so I told him. They were okay, but they were all very similar… they’d never failed at anything or been nobodies, and they thought they would always win. But this isn’t most people’s experience of life.
He asked me what could be done about it. I told him the answer was to send them all out for a year to do some dead-end job like working in a chicken processing plant or spreading muck with a tractor. It would do more good than a gap year in Peru.
He laughed and thought this was tremendously witty. It wasn’t meant to be funny. ~James Rebanks from The Shepherd’s Life (how a sheep farmer succeeds at Oxford and then goes back to the farm)
In our barn we have a very beat up old AM/FM radio that sits on a shelf next to the horse stalls and serves as company to the horses during the rainy stormy days they stay inside, and serves as distraction to me as I clean stalls of manure and wet spots morning and evening. We live about 10 miles south of the Canadian border, so most stations that come in well on this radio’s broken antenna are from the lower mainland of British Columbia. This includes a panoply of stations spoken in every imaginable language– a Babel of sorts that I can tune into: Spanish, Japanese, Chinese, Hindi, Russian, French and of course, proper British accent English. But standard issue American melting pot genetic mix that I am, I prefer to tune into the “Oldies” Station and reminisce.
There is a strange comfort in listening to songs that I enjoyed 50+ years ago, and I’m somewhat miffed and perplexed that they should be called “oldies”. Oldies used to refer to music from the 20’s, 30’s and 40’s, not the 50’s, 60’s, and 70’s and (heavens to Betsy) the 80’s and 90’s! I listen and sing along with a mixture of feeling ancient and yet transported back to my teens. I can remember faces and names I haven’t thought of in decades, recall special summer days picking berries and hear long lost voices from school days. I can smell and taste and feel things all because of the trigger of a familiar song. There is something primordial –deep in my synapses– that is stirred by this music. In fact, I shoveled manure to these same songs 55 years ago, and somehow, it seems not much as changed.
Or has it? One (very quick) glance in the mirror tells me it has, and I have.
Yesterday – I Got You, Babe and you were a Bridge Over Troubled Waters for this Natural Womanwho just wants to be Close to Youso You’ve Got a Friend. There’sSomething in the way ICherish The Way We Were and of courseLove Will Keep Us Together.If You Leave Me Now, You’re So Vain. I’ve always wanted it My Way but How Sweet It Is when I Want To Hold Your Hand. Come Saturday Morning, Here Comes the Sun as we’re Born to Be Wild
Help!Do You Know Where You’re Going To?Me and You and A Dog Named Boo will travel Country Roadsand Rock Around the Clock even though God Didn’t Make the Little Green Apples to grow in a Moonshadow. Fire and Rain will make things All Right Nowonce Morning is Broken, I’ll Say a Little Prayer For You so just Let It Be.
I Can’t Get No Satisfactionfrom the Sounds of Silence —If— Those Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head. Stand By Me as It’s Just My Imaginationthat I am a Rock, when really I only want Time in a Bottle and to just Sing, Sing a Song.
They just don’t write songs like they used to. I seem to remember my parents saying that about the songs I loved so well in the 60’s and 70’s. Somehow in the midst of decades of change, there are some constants. Music still touches our souls, no matter how young or old we are.
And every day there will always be manure that needs shoveling.
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