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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I did not just drag and drop. I did not just haul a burden so heavy that my hands, arms, and shoulders gave way and I had to let it go.
Neither did I just browse. I did not get on my hands and knees and join the gentle cows to slowly sample whatever the open field had to offer.
Instead, I sat here at my desk manipulating a mouse which is not, in fact, a mouse and I searched for something on the web that is not, in fact, a web.
And isn’t this how we move forward:
with horsepower for jet engines and candlepower for light bulbs we take what we understand from one era to describe what we don’t in the next. ~Julie Cadwallader-Staub “Progress”
I don’t store anything in the clouds that circle above, nor do I stream or phish from the flowing creeks that burgeon after the rains of winter. I’m just getting over the aches and chills of the latest virus, which landed in my nose and chest, not on my hard drive or software.
Instead of time I used to spend on embroidery, I now put too much effort following threads on discussion forums. I should get back to baking cookies.
I liked the old words better than repurposing them with new-fangled meanings. Words told more interesting stories back then, but now I can’t send any of this to you without Word, cloud, streams, and threads.
But forget my virus. I’ll keep it to myself. I’ll just wave at you through the windows while I clack away on my keyboard.
Alas! Is there no end to what we borrow and forget to give back?!?
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With a heavy heart and prayers for those who have lost their homes and livelihoods in the fires in southern California – the love that lights a home from within will never end up in ashes
We need to separate to see the life we’ve made, to leave our house where someone waits, patiently, warm beneath the sheets, to don layers of armor, sweater, coat, mittens, scarf, to stride down the frozen road, putting distance between us this cold winter morning, to look back and see, on the hilltop, our life, lit from inside. ~Laura Foley “To See It” from It’s This
Our bedroom suffused in a dark dawn’s ethereal glow from a moon-white sky, mixing a million stars and snowflakes
A snow light covers all, settling gently around us, tucking in the drifting corners of a downy comforter
I take a moment to watch you sleep, your slow even breaths and peaceful face- grateful for each day and night I spend with you.
I know you know ~ we remind each other in many ways, to never forget.
What blessing comes from a love lit from within – thriving in the dark of night, yet never shining brighter than in the delights and daylights of a new morning together.
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It is precisely because we are weary, and poor in spirit, that God can touch us with hope. This is not an easy truth. It means that we do accept our common lot, and take up our share of the cross. It means that we do not gloss over the evils we confront every day, both within ourselves and without. Our sacrifices may be great.
But as the martyred archbishop of El Salvador, Oscar Romero, once said, it is only the poor and hungry, those who know they need someone to come on their behalf, who can celebrate Christmas. We can ask for courage, however, and trust that God has not led us into this new land only to abandon us there. ~Kathleen Norrisfrom God With Us
photo by Joel DeWaard
On Epiphany day, we are still the people walking. We are still people in the dark, and the darkness looms large around us, beset as we are by fear, anxiety, brutality, violence, loss — a dozen alienations that we cannot manage.
We are — we could be — people of your light. So we pray for the light of your glorious presence as we wait for your appearing; we pray for the light of your wondrous grace as we exhaust our coping capacity; we pray for your gift of newness that will override our weariness; we pray that we may see and know and hear and trust in your good rule.
That we may have energy, courage, and freedom to enact your rule through the demands of this day. We submit our day to you and to your rule, with deep joy and high hope. ~Walter Brueggemann from Prayers for a Privileged People
When the song of the angels is stilled, when the star in the sky is gone, when the kings and princes are home, when the shepherds are back with their flocks, the work of Christmas begins: to find the lost, to heal the broken, to feed the hungry, to release the prisoner, to rebuild the nations, to bring peace among the people, to make music in the heart. ~Howard Thurman from The Mood of Christmas & Other Celebrations
O God, who am I now? Once, I was secure
in familiar territory in my sense of belonging
unquestioning of
the norms of my culture the assumptions built into my language the values shared by my society.
But now you have called me out and away from home and I do not know where you are leading. I am empty, unsure, uncomfortable. I have only a beckoning star to follow.
Journeying God, pitch your tent with mine so that I may not become deterred by hardship, strangeness, doubt. Show me the movement I must make
toward a wealth not dependent on possessions toward a wisdom not based on books toward a strength not bolstered by might toward a God not confined to heaven
All the Advent anticipation is over, Christmas and New Years are now past. Today is Epiphany, when I regret my energy and courage is waning just as the work of Christmas must begin.
I’ve swept up the last of the fir needles that dropped to the floor from a lovely Christmas tree that I watered faithfully in the house for over two weeks. But no amount of water could sustain what is rootless.
So it is with us.
I too am drying up, parts of me left behind for others to sweep up. I too must have roots of faith to survive in a troubled world.
The real work of Christmas is year-long — often very hard intensive work, not always the fun stuff of the last month, yet needed in the brokenness of hunger, disease, conflict, war and random violence, poverty, addictions, depression and pain.
We don’t need full stockings on the hearth, Christmas villages on the side table, or a blinking star on the top of the tree to reflect on the comfort of God’s care and the astounding beauty of His creation, all available to us without batteries, electrical plug ins, or the need of a ladder.
The real work of Christmas is God manifest on earth – “scandalously earthed” – in our own lives. We recognize Him in the homeless and forgotten. We are made alive to the possibility that we can make a difference in His name, to walk in others’ shoes, just as He walks in ours.
Every day. Twelve months. Life long.
Are we ready?
Unclench your fists Hold out your hands. Take mine. Let us hold each other. Thus is his Glory Manifest. ~Madeleine L’Engle “Epiphany”
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And a few favorite AI images created for my Barnstorming posts – I like to see whether computers are understanding, through an artistic interpretation, what I’m trying to say.
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Giving from hand to hand— this is what Jesus was born to do: a connection so direct with those He met that He was able to give life to the dead, sight to the blind, heal those possessed.
We are told there were times He became overwhelmed by the demands He felt, and sought out solitude. As human beings who get weary, we understand His need for respite. No man can be a superhero 24/7, yet God promises to be our rescuer for eternity.
Jesus’ story starts with the giving of gifts to Him, from the awed presence of the shepherds to the wisdom of the magi. We are incapable of giving God anything He doesn’t already possess, yet He only asks us to show up.
He asks for our presence, nothing more, not just at Christmas and Easter but every day and every moment.
Like rivers flowing together to create something deep and wide and grand, the gift of ourselves becomes especially mighty when combined with so many others showing up. Something greater this way comes.
Let’s keep showing up after Christmas and keep giving what we don’t have as well as what we do have. Jesus makes it greater and so much greener than our wild imaginings.
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Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock. “Now they are all on their knees,” An elder said as we sat in a flock By the embers in hearthside ease. We pictured the meek mild creatures where They dwelt in their strawy pen, Nor did it occur to one of us there To doubt they were kneeling then.
So fair a fancy few would weave In these years! Yet, I feel, If someone said on Christmas Eve, “Come; see the oxen kneel, “In the lonely barton by yonder coomb Our childhood used to know,” I should go with him in the gloom, Hoping it might be so. ~Thomas Hardy “The Oxen”
Says a country legend told every year: Go to the barn on Christmas Eve and see what the creatures do as that long night tips over. Down on their knees they will go, the fire of an old memory whistling through their minds!
So I went. Wrapped to my eyes against the cold I creaked back the barn door and peered in. From town the church bells spilled their midnight music, and the beasts listened – yet they lay in their stalls like stone.
Oh the heretics! Not to remember Bethlehem, or the star as bright as a sun, or the child born on a bed of straw! To know only of the dissolving Now!
Still they drowsed on – citizens of the pure, the physical world, they loomed in the dark: powerful of body, peaceful of mind, innocent of history.
Brothers! I whispered. It is Christmas! And you are no heretics, but a miracle, immaculate still as when you thundered forth on the morning of creation! As for Bethlehem, that blazing star still sailed the dark, but only looked for me. Caught in its light, listening again to its story, I curled against some sleepy beast, who nuzzled my hair as though I were a child, and warmed me the best it could all night. ~Mary Oliver“Christmas Poem” from Goodness and Light
Growing up on my childhood farm, remembering the magic of Christmas eve night, I bundled myself up to stay warm in our barn, to witness an unbelievable sight.
At midnight we knew the animals knelt down, speaking words we could all understand, to worship a Child born in Bethlehem town, in a barn, long ago in a far away land.
They were there that night, to see and to hear, the blessings that came from the sky. They patiently stood watch at the manger near, in a barn, while shepherds and kings stopped by.
My trips to the barn were always too late, our cows would be chewing, our chickens asleep, our horses breathing softly, cats climbing the gate, in our barn, there was never a neigh, moo or peep.
But I knew they had done it, I just missed it again! They were plainly so calm, well-fed and at peace in the sweet smelling straw, all snug in their pens, in a barn, a mystery, once more, took place.
Even now, I still bundle to go out Christmas eve, in the hope I’ll catch them just once more this time. Though I’m older and grayer, I still firmly believe in the barn, a Birth happened amid cobwebs and grime.
Our horses sigh low as they hear me come near, that tells me the time I hope for is now, they will drop to their knees without any fear in our barn, as worship, all living things bow.
I wonder anew at God’s immense trust for His creatures so sheltered that darkening night – the mystery of why of all places, His Son must begin life in a barn: a welcoming most holy and right. ~ “In the Barn” (written Christmas Eve 1999)
I walk to the barn tonight as I do each year, Counting my blessings, knowing my flaws, Praying for family and friends so dear, And for each precious creature with hooves or paws.
Each horse is content and a witness to peace, And I wish every person could know, Sadness and worry for a moment can cease, While patting noses down a stall row.
For once I see the sky is clear And stars are shining bright The northeast wind is coming near And briskly chills this special night.
For weeks stars hid behind a cloud Of doubt, of fear, of weeping rain, Explosions at once so horrid and loud The whole world instantly felt the pain.
Like stars that glow through blackest dark Good overwhelms bad with barely left trace All owed to a Child who left His mark By giving Himself in infinite grace.
(written Christmas Eve 2001)
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 wonderful sacrament, that animals should see the newborn Lord, lying in a manger! Blessed is the virgin whose womb was worthy to bear the Lord, Jesus Christ. Alleluia!
In time the curtain-edges will grow light. Till then I see what’s really always there: Unresting death, a whole day nearer now, Making all thought impossible but how And where and when I shall myself die.
…specious stuff that says No rational being Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing That this is what we fear—no sight, no sound, No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with, Nothing to love or link with, The anaesthetic from which none come round.
Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape. It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know, Have always known, know that we can’t escape, Yet can’t accept. One side will have to go.
The sky is white as clay, with no sun. Work has to be done. Postmen like doctors go from house to house. ~Philip Larkin from “Aubade”
Sharing an essay I wrote during Advent in 2003:
We are in our darkest of dark days today in our corner of the world–about 16 hours of darkness underwhelming our senses, restricting, confining and defining us in our little circles of artificial light that we depend on so mightily.
It is so tempting to be consumed and lost in these dark days, stumbling from one obligation to the next, one foot in front of the other, bumping and bruising ourselves and each other in our blindness. Lines are long at the stores, impatience runs high, people coughing and shivering with winter viruses, others stricken by loneliness and desperation.
So much grumbling in the dark.
Yesterday, I had a conversation with a patient of mine from my clinic at the University Student Health Center, a young college student recovering at the local hospital after a near-death experience. Her testimony made me acutely aware of my self-absorbent grumbling.
Several days ago, she was snowshoeing up to Artist Point with two other students in the bright sun above the clouds at the foot of nearby Mt. Baker. A sudden avalanche buried all three–she remembers the roar and then the deathly quiet of being covered up, and the deep darkness that surrounded her. She was buried hunched over, with the weight of the snow above her too much to break through. She had a pocket of air beneath her and in this crouching kneeling position, she could only pray–not move, not shout, not anything else. Only God was with her in that small dark place. She believes that 45 minutes later, rescuers dug her out to safety from beneath that three feet of snow. In actuality, it was 24 hours later.
She had been wrapped in the cocoon of her prayers in that deep dark pocket of air, and miraculously, kept safe and warm enough to survive. Her hands and legs, blackish purple when she was pulled out of the snow, turned pink with the rewarming process at the hospital.
When I visited her, she glowed with a light that came only from within –somehow, it had kept her alive.
Tragically, one of her friends died in that avalanche, never having a chance of survival because of how she was trapped and covered with the suffocating snow. Her other friend struggled for nearly 24 hours to free himself, bravely fighting the dark and the cold to reach the light, then calling for help from nearby skiers to try to rescue his friends.
At times we must fight with the dark–wrestle it and rale against it, bruised and beaten up in the process, but so necessary to save ourselves and others from being consumed. At other times we must kneel in the darkness and wait– praying, hoping, knowing the light is to come, one way or the other. Grateful, grace-filled, not giving up to grumbling.
May the Light find and rescue you this week in your moments of darkness.
Merry merry Christmas.
The story of the avalanche and rescue is written here in the Seattle Times.
The first thing I heard this morning was a rapid flapping sound, soft, insistent—
wings against glass as it turned out downstairs when I saw the small bird rioting in the frame of a high window, trying to hurl itself through the enigma of glass into the spacious light.
Then a noise in the throat of the cat who was hunkered on the rug told me how the bird had gotten inside, carried in the cold night through the flap of a basement door, and later released from the soft grip of teeth.
On a chair, I trapped its pulsations in a shirt and got it to the door, so weightless it seemed to have vanished into the nest of cloth.
But outside, when I uncupped my hands, it burst into its element, dipping over the dormant garden in a spasm of wingbeats then disappeared over a row of tall hemlocks.
For the rest of the day, I could feel its wild thrumming against my palms as I wondered about the hours it must have spent pent in the shadows of that room, hidden in the spiky branches of our decorated tree, breathing there among the metallic angels, ceramic apples, stars of yarn, its eyes open, like mine as I lie in bed tonight picturing this rare, lucky sparrow tucked into a holly bush now, a light snow tumbling through the windless dark. ~Billy Collins “Christmas Sparrow” from Aimless Love
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When everyone had gone I sat in the library With the small silent tree, She and I alone. How softly she shone!
And for the first time then For the first time this year, I felt reborn again, I knew love’s presence near.
Love distant, love detached And strangely without weight, Was with me in the night When everyone had gone And the garland of pure light Stayed on, stayed on. ~ May Sarton “Christmas Light” from Collected Poems
That afternoon, the air’s large hand took hold of their backyard apricot tree, the one that had fruited, bountifully, a lush yield in late summer, caught it in a downdraft of chill, shook it lightly, again, again, loosening each leaf from its thumb of stem. For two days I watched the leaves’ pale, ground-ward drift, each leaf singly, in its gentle shedding, among all the glints of gold, each crumpled flick of fiber from its stem’s thumb a departure, a declaration. An announcement, God saying, gently, Thank You for a lovely job. Now, time to let go. ~Luci Shaw “Loewy’s Apricot Tree, Fall 2022”
The child wonders at the Christmas Tree: Let him continue in the spirit of wonder…
The accumulated memories of annual emotion May be concentrated into a great joy Which shall be also a great fear, as on the occasion When fear came upon every soul: Because the beginning shall remind us of the end And the first coming of the second coming. ~T.S. Eliot from “The Cultivation of Christmas Trees”
…the Lord will be your everlasting light, and your God will be your glory Isaiah 60:19
I watch the eastern sky from the moment I get up each day. This time of year, most mornings remain dark, rainy and gray but there are some dawns that start with a low simmer around the base of the Cascade peaks. The light crawls up the slopes and climbs to illuminate the summits, then explodes into the skies.
Christ started small and lowly, then slowly crawled, then He walked beside us. He climbed up willingly to sacrifice Himself – to let go for our sake.
Once risen, He returned to the brilliance of the heavens.
Look east, good people, Love is on its way again, and again and again.
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
The tree of life my soul hath seen, Laden with fruit, and always green; The trees of nature fruitless be Compared with Christ the apple tree. This beauty doth all things excel; By faith I know, but ne’er can tell The glory which I now can see In Jesus Christ the apple tree. The tree of life . . . For happiness I long have sought, And pleasure dearly I have bought; I missed for all, but now I see ’Tis found in Christ the apple tree. 2 I’m wearied with my former toil, Here I shall sit and rest awhile; Under the shadow I will be Of Jesus Christ the apple tree. The tree of life . . . This fruit doth make my soul to thrive, It keeps my dying faith alive; Which makes my soul in haste to be With Jesus Christ the apple tree. The tree of life . . . (from the collection of Joshua Smith, New Hampshire, 1784)
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And now, as the night of this world folds you in its brutal frost (the barnyard smell strong as sin), and as Joseph, weary with unwelcome and relief, his hands bloody from your birth, spreads his thin cloak around you both, we doubly bless you, Baby, as you are acquainted, for the first time, with our grief. ~Luci Shaw from “A Blessing for the New Baby”
Grief like a cross she will bear to her own dying— she pauses under its gravity before turning the corner where she will see his tomb and now wonders at this sudden intimation of something about to be born. ~Franchot Ballinger “Advent” from Crossings
The winds were scornful, Passing by; And gathering Angels Wondered why
A burdened Mother Did not mind That only animals Were kind.
For who in all the world Could guess That God would search out Loneliness. ~Sr. M. Chrysostom, O.S.B. “The Stable” from Mary Immaculate: God’s Mother and Mine
Shut out suffering, and you see only one side of this strange and fearful thing, the life of man. Christ saw both sides. He could be glad, he could rejoice with them that rejoice; and yet the settled tone of his disposition was a peculiar and subdued sadness. That gave the calm depth to the character of Christ; he had got the true view of life by acquainting himself with grief. ~Frederick Robertson from a 1846 sermon entitled Typified by the Man of Sorrows, the Human Race
The world is indeed full of peril and in it there are many dark places. But still there is much that is fair. And though in all lands, love is now mingled with grief, it still grows, perhaps, the greater. — J. R. R. Tolkien from The Fellowship of the Ring
A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief Isaiah 53:3
Our sorrows fill a chasm so deep and dark that it is a fearsome thing to even peer from the edge. We join the helplessness of countless people in human history who have lived through times which appeared unendurable.
We don’t understand why inexplicable tragedy befalls good and gracious people, taking them when they are not yet finished with their work on earth.
From quakes that topple buildings burying people, to waves that wipe out whole cities sweeping away thousands, to a pathogen too swift and mean for modern medicine, to unconscionable shootings of innocents, we are reminded every day: we live on perilous ground and our time here has always been finite.
We don’t have control over the amount of time, but we do have control over how extensively our love for others is heard and spread.
There is assurance in knowing we do not weep alone; our Lord is acquainted with grief.
Our grieving is so familiar to a suffering God who too wept at the death of a beloved friend, when He faced a city about to condemn Him to death and He was tasked with enduring the unendurable.
There is comfort in knowing He too peered into the chasm of darkness; He willingly entered its depths to come to our rescue.
His is an incomparable capacity for Light and Love that is heard and spread for an eternity.
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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
Angels, where you soar Up to God’s own light Take my own lost bird On your hearts tonight; And as grief once more Mounts to heaven and sings Let my love be heard Whispering in your wings ~Alfred Noyes
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