…and there was once, oh wonderful, a new horse in the pasture, a tall, slim being–a neighbor was keeping her there– and she put her face against my face, put her muzzle, her nostrils, soft as violets, against my mouth and my nose, and breathed me, to see who I was, a long quiet minute–minutes– then she stamped her feet and whisked tail and danced deliciously into the grass away, and came back. She was saying, so plainly, that I was good, or good enough. ~Mary Oliver from “The Poet Goes to Indiana”
photo by Lea Gibson
photo by Emily Vander Haak
Our farm has had many nuzzling muzzles here over the years–
Pink noses, gray noses, nondescript not-sure-what-color noses, noses that have white stripes, diamonds, hearts, triangles, or absolutely no marks at all.
Hot breath that exudes warm grassy fragrance better than any pricey perfume, lips softer than the most elegant velvet.
Noses that reach out in greeting to: blow, sniff, caress, push, search, breathe me in and breathe for me, to see who I am, or who I will become,
smudge my face and shower snot.
I guess I’m just good enough to be blessed by a nuzzling baptism of grace.
I miss the friendship with the pine tree and the birds that I had when I was ten. And it has been forever since I pushed my head under the wild silk skirt of the waterfall.
The big rock on the shore was the skull of a dead king whose name we could almost remember. Under the rooty bank you could dimly see the bunk beds of the turtles.
Nobody I know mentions these things anymore. It’s as if their memories have been seized, erased, and relocated among flowcharts and complex dinner-party calendars.
Now I want to turn and run back the other way, barefoot into the underbrush, getting raked by thorns, being slapped in the face by branches.
Down to the muddy bed of the little stream where my cupped hands make a house, and
I grew up on a small farm with several acres of woodland. It was my retreat until I left for college; I walked among twittering birds, skittering wild bunnies, squirrels and chipmunks, busy ant hills and trails, blowing leaves, swimming tadpoles, falling nuts, waving wildflowers, large firs, pines, cottonwoods, maples and alder trees.
I had a favorite “secret” spot sitting perched on a stump where a large rock provided a favorite sunning spot for salamanders. They and I would make eye contact, pondering our common Creator.
At college I longed for a place as private, as serene, but nothing could match the woods and creatures of my childhood home. After living a decade in the city, I nearly forgot what a familiar woods felt like.
On this farm we’ve stewarded for nearly forty years, I’ve longed for a similar sanctuary, yet my distractions are so much greater than when I was a child. Filled with greater worries, I can’t empty my head and heart as completely to receive the varied gifts to be found around me.
In my ever-shortening timeline to accomplish what I’ve been placed here to do, I need to study the faces of creation, knowing those eyes reflect the face of God.
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I have left my wife at the airport, flying out to help our daughter whose baby will not eat. And I am driving on to Kent to hear some poets read tonight.
I don’t know what to do with myself when she leaves me like this. An old friend has decided to end our friendship. Another is breaking it off with his wife.
I don’t know what to say to any of this-Life’s hard. And I say it aloud to myself, Living is hard, and drive further into the darkness, my headlights only going so far.
I sense my own tense breath, this fear we call stress, making it something else, hiding from all that is real.
As I glide past Twin Lakes, flat bodies of water under stars, I hold the wheel gently, slowing my body to the road, and know again that this is just living, not a trauma nor dying, but a lingering pain reminding us that we are alive. ~Larry Smith “Following the Road” from A River Remains
The grace of God means something like: Here is your life. You might never have been, but you are because the party wouldn’t have been complete without you. Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid. I am with you. Nothing can ever separate us. It’s for you I created the universe. I love you. There’s only one catch. Like any other gift, the gift of grace can be yours only if you’ll reach out and take it. Maybe being able to reach out and take it is a gift too. ~Frederich Buechner from Wishful Thinking
You get out of bed, wash and dress; eat breakfast, say goodbye and go away never maybe, to return for all you know, to work, talk, lust, pray, dawdle and do, and at the end of the day, if your luck holds, you come home again, home again. Then night again. Bed. The little death of sleep, sleep of death. Morning, afternoon, evening— the hours of the day, of any day, of your day and my day. The alphabet of grace. If there is a God who speaks anywhere, surely he speaks here: through waking up and working, through going away and coming back again, through people you read and books you meet, through falling asleep in the dark. Life is grace. Sleep is forgiveness. The night absolves. Darkness wipes the slate clean, not spotless to be sure, but clean enough for another day’s chalking. ~Frederich Buechner from “The Alphabet of Grace
Our six year old grandson, hoping to calm his older sister’s melt-down: “Life is life – it’ll be okay tomorrow…“
So tomorrow – move forward to leave a mark on a new day after tonight’s erasing rest.
No matter what took place this day, no matter the misgivings, no matter what should have been left unsaid, no matter how hard the heart, no matter the lingering pain, there is another day to make it right.
Forgiveness finds a foothold in the dark, when eyelids close, thoughts quietly open, voices hush in prayers of praise, petition and gratitude.
And so now simply sleep on it knowing his grace abounds in blameless dreams.
Morning will come awash in new light, another chance freely given.
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The birds do not sing in these mornings. The skies are white all day. The Canadian geese fly over high up in the moonlight with the lonely sound of their discontent. Going south. Now the rains and soon the snow. The black trees are leafless, the flowers gone. Only cabbages are left in the bedraggled garden. Truth becomes visible, the architecture of the soul begins to show through. God has put off his panoply and is at home with us. We are returned to what lay beneath the beauty. We have resumed our lives. There is no hurry now. We make love without rushing and find ourselves afterward with someone we know well. Time to be what we are getting ready to be next. This loving, this relishing, our gladness, this being puts down roots and comes back again year after year. ~Jack Gilbert “Half the Truth” from Collected Poems.
In the shape of this night, in the still fall of snow, Father In all that is cold and tiny, these little birds and children… Before the bells ring, before this little point in time has rushed us on Before this clean moment has gone, before this night turns to face tomorrow, Father There is this high singing in the air Forever this sorrowful human face in eternity’s window And there are other bells that we would ring, Father Other bells that we would ring. ~Kenneth Patchen from “At the New Year”
The object of a New Year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul… ~G.K.Chesterton from A Chesterton Calendar
Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky, The flying cloud, the frosty light: The year is dying in the night; Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.
Ring out the old, ring in the new, Ring, happy bells, across the snow: The year is going, let him go; Ring out the false, ring in the true.
Ring in the valiant man and free, The larger heart, the kindlier hand; Ring out the darkness of the land, Ring in the Christ that is to be. ~Lord Alfred Tennyson from “In Memoriam”
Often when something is ending we discover within it the spore of new beginning, and a whole new train of possibility is in motion before we even realize it. When the heart is ready for a fresh beginning, unforeseen things can emerge. And in a sense, this is exactly what a beginning does. It is an opening for surprises. ~John O’Donohue from “To Bless the Space Between Us”
No heralding trumpets – Just softening shadows, Timed and tracked.
Fingers of light flaring amber Over the eastern ridge of foothills, Caress the slopes of snow capped peaks. So I bid this past year farewell.
Each earthly thing bathed in gold Glimpsed and grasped without fanfare Yet wholly miraculous. Too soon this day, this year, becomes ordinary again Although it is truth: we can be born anew, year after year.
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The Word became flesh. Ultimate Mystery born with a skull you could crush one-handed. Incarnation. It is not tame. It is not beautiful. It is uninhabitable terror. It is unthinkable darkness riven with unbearable light.
Agonized laboring led to it, vast upheavals of intergalactic space, time split apart, a wrenching and tearing of the very sinews of reality itself. You can only cover your eyes and shudder before it, before this: “God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God… who for us and for our salvation,” as the Nicene Creed puts it, “came down from heaven.” Came down. Only then do we dare uncover our eyes and see what we can see. It is the Resurrection and the Life she holds in her arms. It is the bitterness of death he takes at her breast. ~Frederick Buechner from Whistling in the Dark
Down he came from up, and in from out, and here from there. A long leap, an incandescent fall from magnificent to naked, frail, small, through space, between stars, into our chill night air, shrunk, in infant grace, to our damp, cramped earthy place among all the shivering sheep.
And now, after all, there he lies, fast asleep. ~Luci Shaw “Descent” from Accompanied By Angels
[The Incarnation is like] a wave of the sea which, rushing up on the flat beach, runs out, even thinner and more transparent, and does not return to its source but sinks into the sand and disappears. ~Hans Urs von Balthasar from Origen: Spirit and Fire
Perhaps it is the mystery of the thing that brings us back, again and again, to read the story of how God came down and disappeared into us.
How can this be? God appearing on earth first to animals, then the most humble of humans.
How can He be? Through the will of the Father and the breath of the Spirit, the Son was, and is and yet to be.
O great mystery beyond all understanding.
O magnum mysterium, et admirabile sacramentum, ut animalia viderent Dominum natum, jacentem in praesepio! Beata Virgo, cujus viscera meruerunt portare Dominum Christum. Alleluia!
O great mystery and wondrous sacrament, that animals should see the new-born Lord lying in their Manger! Blessed is the Virgin whose womb was worthy to bear the Lord Jesus Christ. Alleluia!
The composer Morten Lauridsen, is a Washington state native who was born only a few miles from where my mother grew up in the wheat fields of the Palouse, and now lives in retirement in the San Juan Islands. He wrote about his inspiration, wanting to compose something that honored the words as much as the Still Life painted by Zurbaran (above) honored the Virgin Mary.
“Zurbarán (1598-1664) is the painter of “Still Life with Lemons, Oranges and a Rose.” The objects in this work are symbolic offerings to the Virgin Mary. Her love, purity and chastity are signified by the rose and the cup of water. The lemons are an Easter fruit that, along with the oranges with blossoms, indicate renewed life. The table is a symbolic altar. The objects on it are set off in sharp contrast to the dark, blurred backdrop and radiate with clarity and luminosity against the shadows.
In composing music to these inspirational words about Christ’s birth and the veneration of the Virgin Mary, I sought to impart, as Zurbarán did before me, a transforming spiritual experience within what I call “a quiet song of profound inner joy.” I wanted this piece to resonate immediately and deeply into the core of the listener, to illumine through sound.
The most challenging part of this piece for me was the second line of text having to do with the Virgin Mary. She above all was chosen to bear the Christ child and then she endured the horror and sorrow of his death on the cross. How can her significance and suffering be portrayed musically?
After exploring several paths, I decided to depict this by a single note. On the word “Virgo,” the altos sing a dissonant appoggiatura G-sharp. It’s the only tone in the entire work that is foreign to the main key of D. That note stands out against a consonant backdrop as if a sonic light has suddenly been focused upon it, edifying its meaning. It is the most important note in the piece.
A scholarly essay about Lauridsen’s composition is here.
Another version by a different composer:
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I wanted a horse. This was long after we sold the work horses, and I was feeling
restless on the farm. I got up early to help my father milk the cows, talking
a blue streak about TV cowboys he never had time to see and trying to
convince him that a horse wouldn’t cost so much and that I’d do all the work.
He listened while he leaned his head against the flank of a Holstein, pulling
the last line of warm milk into the stainless bucket. He kept listening
while the milk-machine pumped like an engine, and the black and silver cups fell off and
dangled down, clanging like bells when he stepped away, balancing the heavy milker
against the vacuum hose and the leather belt. I knew he didn’t want the trouble
of a horse, but I also knew there was nothing else I wanted the way I wanted a horse—
another way of saying I wanted to ride into the sunset and (maybe)
never come back—I think he knew that too. We’ll see, he said, we’ll see what we can do. Joyce Sutphen – “What Every Girl Wants”
I once was a skinny freckled eleven year old girl who wanted nothing more than to have her own horse. Every inch of my bedroom wall had posters of horses, all my shelves were filled with horse books and horse figurines and my bed was piled with stuffed horses.
I suffered an extremely serious case of horse fever. I wished for a horse more than anything.
I had learned to ride my big sister’s horse while my sister was off to college, but the little mare had pushed down a hot wire to get into a field of spring oats which resulted in a terrible case of colic and had to be put down. I was inconsolable until I set my mind to buy another horse. We had only a small shed, not a real barn, and no actual fences other than the electric hot wire. Though I was earning money as best I could picking berries at 3 cents a pound and babysitting at 30 cents an hour, I was a long way away from the $150 it would take to buy a trained horse back in 1965.
I pestered my father about my dreams of another horse, and since he was the one to dig the hole for my sister’s horse to be buried, he was not enthusiastic. “We’ll see,” he said. “We will see what we can do.”
So I dreamed my horsey dreams, mostly about golden horses with long white manes, hoping one day those dreams might come true.
In fall 1965, the local radio station KGY’s Saturday morning horse news program announced their “Win a Horse” contest. I knew I had to try. The prize was a weanling bay colt, part Appaloosa, part Thoroughbred, and the contest was only open to youth ages 9 to 16 years old. All I had to do was write a 250 word or less essay on “Why I Should Have a Horse”.
I worked and worked on my essay, crafting the right words and putting all my heart into it, hoping the judges would see me as a worthy potential owner. My parents took me to visit the five month old colt named “Prankster”, a fuzzy engaging little fellow who was getting plenty of attention from all the children coming to visit him, and that visit made me even more determined.
When I read these words now, I realize there is nothing quite like the passion of an eleven year old girl:
“Why I Should Have a Horse”
When God created the horse, He made one of the best creatures in the world. Horses are a part of me. I love them and want to win Prankster for the reasons which follow:
To begin with, I’m young enough to have the time to spend with the colt. My older sister had a horse when she was in high school and her school activities kept her too busy to really enjoy the horse. I’ll have time to give Prankster the love and training needed.
Another reason is that I’m shy. When I was younger I found it hard to talk to anybody except my family. When my sister got the horse I soon became a more friendly person. When her horse recently died (about when Prankster was born), I became very sad. If I could win that colt, I couldn’t begin to describe my happiness.
Also I believe I should have a horse because it would be a good experience to learn how to be patient and responsible while teaching Prankster the same thing.
When we went to see Prankster, I was invited into the stall to brush him. I was never so thrilled in my life! The way he stood there so majestically, it told me he would be a wonderful horse.
If I should win him, I would be the happiest girl alive. I would work hard to train him with love and understanding. If I could only get the wonderful smell and joy of horses back in our barn!
I mailed in my essay and waited.
Sixty years ago on November 27, 1965, my mother and I listened to the local horse program that was always featured on the radio at 8 AM on Saturday mornings. They said they had over 300 essays to choose from, and it was very difficult for them to decide who the colt should go to. I knew then I didn’t have a chance. They had several consolation prizes for 2nd through 4th place, so they read several clever poems and heartfelt essays, all written by teenagers. My heart was sinking by the minute.
The winning essay was next. The first sentence sounded very familiar to me, but it wasn’t until several sentences later that we realized they were reading my essay, not someone else’s. My mom was speechless, trying to absorb the hazards of her little girl owning a young untrained horse.
I woke up my dad, who was sick in bed with an early season flu bug. He opened one eye, looked at me, and said, “I guess I better get a fence up today, right?” Somehow, fueled by the excitement of a daughter whose one wish had just come true, he pulled himself together and put up a wood corral that afternoon, despite feeling so miserable.
That little bay colt came home to live with me the next day. Over the next few months he and I did learn together, as I checked out horse training books from the library, and joined a 4H group with helpful leaders to guide me. I made plenty of mistakes along the way, learning from each one, including those that left behind scars I still bear.
Prankster was a typical adolescent gelding who lived up to his name — full of mischief with a sense of humor and a penchant for finding trouble, but he was mine and that was all that mattered.
Dreams do come true.
…that and a dad who saw what he needed to do for his passionate kid. I’ll never forget how he showed his love for me by doing what was needed in that moment.
AI image created for this post
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There’s a single tree at the fence line… When I cross the unfertile pasture strewn with rocks and the holes of gophers, badgers, coyotes, and the rattlesnake den (a thousand killed in a decade because they don’t mix well with dogs and children) in an hour’s walking and reach the tree, I find it oppressive. Likely it’s as old as I am, withstanding its isolation, all gnarled and twisted from its battle with weather. I sit against it until we merge, and when I return home in the cold, windy twilight I feel I’ve been gone for years. ~Jim Harrison, from “Fence Line Tree” from Saving Daylight.
Our fence line apple tree is considerably older than I am, and not a far walk away from the house. I visit it nearly every day, to be reminded that there is a wonder in gnarled limbs and blatant asymmetry.
What strikes me is the consistent presence of this tree though so much changes around it: the seasons, the birds that nest in it, the animals that graze under it and the ever-changing palette above and beyond.
This tree stands bent and misshapen, though not nearly as fruitful as in its younger years, yet still a constant in my life and in generations to come.
May I be that constant for those around me, to be steady when all around me changes in swirls and storms. Perhaps being bent and wrinkled and knobby can also be beautiful.
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I kiss my hand To the stars, lovely-asunder Starlight, wafting him out of it; and Glow, glory in thunder; Kiss my hand to the dappled-with-damson west: Since, tho’ he is under the world’s splendour and wonder, His mystery must be instressed, stressed; For I greet him the days I meet him, and bless when I understand. ~Gerard Manley Hopkins from The Wreck of the Deutschland
I greet Him when I meet Him as the plum color of the evening sky spills as tipped paint far fleeting across the horizon, cleaned up and gone before grasped, I kiss my hand to the drama played out before the sun sets.
I greet Him when I meet Him as starlight speckles the overhead ceiling, each touching infinity where it begins and never ends.
I greet Him when I meet Him in glowing cloud mountains sparking lightning and clapping thunder, applause for His resplendent magnificence.
I greet Him when He is hidden mysterious unknown and unknowable, waiting for the blessing of understanding wafting from Him in royal color, in glistening speckle, in enduring glow, in inspiring spark, in appreciative applause for His splendor wrapped in wonder.
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but the whole shadowed earth reaching up, taking hold ~David Baker “Quicker”
Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, Or what’s a heaven for? ~Robert Browning from Andrea del Sarto
My branches are bared during this season of letting go.
As starkly revealed as I am, perhaps darkening days are a blessing: less spotlight on my complexity in silhouette – all knobby joints, awkward angles and curves.
One thing I know: in this season when I prefer the shadowland, I still reach up, trying to hold on to the promise beyond me. In fact, so many of us keep grasping at what we know is there but cannot see.
God has come down to grab on to each one of us — and is still hanging on.
We are not too plain or complex or awkward to be lifted, welcomed, cherished as we are, into heaven’s arms.
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overly delicate, like a flower skimmed of all fragrance.
You hear in the long last notes of the nightingale’s song
how to harbor what’s left of joy, how spring clutches
the green shoot of life and holds on and on through summer, prepares
for no end that is sure in coming, the fall ever endlessly repeating. ~Maureen Doallas “Recounting Seasons”, from Neruda’s Memoirs
Like in old cans of paint the last green hue, these leaves are sere and rough and dull-complected behind the blossom clusters in which blue is not so much displayed as it’s reflected;
They do reflect it imprecise and teary, as though they’d rather have it go away, and just like faded, once blue stationery, they’re tinged with yellow, violet and gray;
As in an often laundered children’s smock, cast off, its usefulness now all but over, one senses running down a small life’s clock.
Yet suddenly the blue revives, it seems, and in among these clusters one discovers a tender blue rejoicing in the green. ~Rainer Maria Rilke “Blue Hydrangea” Translation by Bernhard Frank
One of my greatest joys is watching our farm’s plants as days become weeks, then months, and as years flow by, the seasons’ palettes repeat endlessly.
In the “olden” days, many farmers kept daily hand-written diaries to track the events of the seasons: when the soil was warm enough to sow, when the harvest was ready, the highs and lows of temperature fluctuations, how many inches in the rain gauge, how deep the snow.
Now we follow the years with a swift scroll in our photo collection in our phones: the tulips bloomed two weeks later this year, or the tomatoes ripened early or the pears were larger two years ago.
I am comforted things tend to repeat predictably year after year, yet I can spot subtle differences. Our hydrangea bushes are a harbinger of soil conditions and seasonal change: they bloomed a darker burgundy color this year, with fewer blue tones. Their blooms always fade eventually into blended earth tones, then blanche, finally losing color altogether and becoming skeletal.
And so it is with me. I collect joy by noticing each change, knowing the repetition of the seasons and the cycle of blooming will continue as I too fade.
I am only a recorder of fact, documenting as long as I’m able.
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