There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground, And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;
And frogs in the pools singing at night, And wild plum trees in tremulous white,
Robins will wear their feathery fire Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;
And not one will know of the war, not one Will care at last when it is done.
Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree If mankind perished utterly;
And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn, Would scarcely know that we were gone. ~Sara Teasdale “There Will Come Soft Rains”
…one of man’s purposes is to assist God in the work of “hallowing” the things of Creation. By a tremendous heave of the spirit, the devout man frees the divine sparks trapped in the mute things of time; he uplifts the forms and moments of creation, bearing them aloft into the rare air and hallowing fire in which all clays must shatter and burst. ~Annie Dillard from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
The fire burst the house and let it slam flat down, puffing out skirts of spark and smoke.
The crash. The attic smashing into kitchen and parlour. The parlour into cellar, cellar into sub-cellar. Smoke and silence. A great quantity of smoke. Dawn showed faintly in the east. Among the ruins, one wall stood alone. Within the wall, a last voice said, over and over again and again, even as the sun rose to shine upon the heaped rubble and steam: “Today is August 5, 2026, today is August 5, 2026, today is…”
Yesterday, running slowly in the gravel I saw a tiny bird feathered pulsating globe of white and gray on its back black pinprick eyes pointing up to the sky. I stooped down closely to peer. We stared at one another— creature to creature— for a small eternity. I scooped him into my hands and placed him gently an offering upright onto the grass whispering a prayer to the One who sees and knows each one every sparrow and every sorrow. ~Karen Swallow Prior “Creature to Creature”
Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? And not one of them is forgotten before God. Why, even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not; you are of more value than many sparrows. Luke 12:6-7
God of the sparrow, care for us, Speak in our sorrow, Lord of grief. Sing us Your music, lift our hearts, Pour out Your mercy, send relief. ~Craig Courtney (link to song below)
A little bird, with plumage brown, Beside my window flutters down, A moment chirps its little strain, Then taps upon my window-pane, And chirps again, and hops along, To call my notice to its song; But I work on, nor heed its lay, Till, in neglect, it flies away.
So birds of peace and hope and love Come fluttering earthward from above, To settle on life’s window-sills, And ease our load of earthly ills; But we, in traffic’s rush and din Too deep engaged to let them in, With deadened heart and sense plod on, Nor know our loss till they are gone. ~Paul Laurence Dunbar “The Sparrow”
The first thing I heard this morning was a soft, insistent rustle, the rapid flapping of wings against glass as it turned out,
a small bird rioting in the frame of a high window, trying to hurl itself through the enigma of transparency into the spacious light.
A noise in the throat of the cat hunkered on the rug told me how the bird had gotten inside, carried in the cold night through the flap in a basement door, and later released from the soft clench of teeth.
Up on a chair, I trapped its pulsations in a small towel and carried it to the door, so weightless it seemed to have vanished into the nest of cloth.
But outside, it burst from my uncupped hands into its element, dipping over the dormant garden in a spasm of wingbeats and disappearing over a tall row of hemlocks.
Still, for the rest of the day, I could feel its wild thrumming against my palms whenever I thought about the hours the bird must have spent pent in the shadows of that room, hidden in the spiky branches of our decorated tree, breathing there among metallic angels, ceramic apples, stars of yarn,
its eyes open, like mine as I lie here tonight picturing this rare, lucky sparrow tucked into a holly bush now, a light snow tumbling through the windless dark. ~Billy Collins “The Christmas Sparrow”from Aimless Love
Through the winter, I feed the sparrows, the woodpeckers and chickadees, the juncos and finches and towhees, and yes — even the starlings.
They all would be fine without my daily contribution to their well-being, but in return for my provision of seeds, I am able to enjoy their spirited liveliness and their gracious ability to share the bounty with one another.
These birds give back to me simply by showing up, without ever realizing what their presence means to me.
How much more does God lay out for me on a daily basis to sustain me even if I fail to show up for Him?
How oblivious am I to His gracious and profound gifts?
How willingly do I share these gifts with others?
Unlike the birds, I could never survive on my own without His watchful care.
When life feels overwhelming, when I am filled with worries, sorrow, regrets and pain, I seek out this God who cares even for sparrows. He knows how to quiet my troubles and strengthen my faith and perseverance, a comfort that extends far beyond sunflower seeds.
photo by Harry Rodenberger
This year’s Barnstorming Lenten theme is Ephesians 3:9:
…to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things…
God of the sparrow, sing through us Songs of deliv’rance, songs of peace. Helpless we seek You, God our joy, Quiet our troubles, bid them cease, Quiet our troubles, bid them cease. Alleluia.
God of the sparrow, God of hope, Tenderly guide us, be our song, God of affliction, pain and hurt, Comfort Your children, make us strong, Comfort Your children, make us strong. Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.
God of the sparrow, care for us, Speak in our sorrow, Lord of grief. Sing us Your music, lift our hearts, Pour out Your mercy, send relief.
God, like the sparrow, we abide In Your protection, love and grace. Just as the sparrow in Your care, May Your love keep us all our days, May Your love keep us all our days. Amen. ~Craig Courtney
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Oh let me fall as grain to the good earth And die away from all dry separation, Die to my sole self, and find new birth Within that very death, a dark fruition, Deep in this crowded underground, to learn The earthy otherness of every other, To know that nothing is achieved alone But only where these other fallen gather.
If I bear fruit and break through to bright air, Then fall upon me with your freeing flail To shuck this husk and leave me sheer and clear As heaven-handled Hopkins, that my fall May be more fruitful and my autumn still A golden evening where your barns are full. ~Malcolm Guite “Unless a Grain of Wheat Falls Into the Ground and Dies”
…new life starts in the dark. Whether it is a seed in the ground, a baby in the womb, or Jesus in the tomb, it starts in the dark. ~Barbara Brown Taylor from Learning to Walk in the Dark
The ground is slowly coming to life again; snowdrops, crocus, and daffodils are surfacing from months of dormancy, buds are swelling, the spring chorus frogs have come from the mud to sing again and birds now greet the lazy dawn.
The seed shakes off the darkness surrounding it. Growth begins.
I too began a mere seed, plain and simple, lying dormant in the darkness of my mother’s body.
Just as the spring murmurs life to the seed in the ground, so the Word calls a human seed of life to stir and swell, becoming both an animate and intimate reflection of Himself.
I was awakened in the dark to sprout, bloom and fruit, to reach as far as my tethered roots allow, aiming beyond earthly bounds to touch the light.
Everything, everyone, so hidden; His touch calls us back to life. Love is come again to the fallow fields of our hearts.
This year’s Barnstorming Lenten theme is Ephesians 3:9:
…to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things…
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I dwell in Possibility – A fairer House than Prose – More numerous of Windows – Superior – for Doors –
Of Chambers as the Cedars – Impregnable of eye – And for an everlasting Roof The Gambrels of the Sky –
Of Visitors – the fairest – For Occupation – This – The spreading wide my narrow Hands To gather Paradise – ~Emily Dickinson
When I dwell in Emily D’s poetic possibilities, full of mysterious capitalizations, inscrutable dashes and sideways rhymes, I feel blinded, get easily lost, stumbling over this and that, and end up wondering where she is leading me and how far I’m willing to go.
Yet she tells me
– This – to get my attention, hold it fast, to look up and out, beyond, and into forever.
-This- is what I must do when I read her carefully chosen words and dashes
-This- is what I ask of a reader who opens my own words here
-This- is dwelling in possibility for a moment or an eternity, all eyes and windows and doors wide open to grasp a glimpse of Paradise.
-This- is our hands holding the seeds of potential for the future, to gather, to embrace, to pray, to prepare us for Whatever it is which Comes Next…
-This- we do it together…
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What would the world be, once bereft Of wet and wildness? Let them be left, O let them be left, wildness and wet; Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet. ~Gerard Manley Hopkins from “Inversnaid”
A weed is a plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson from Fortune of the Republic
I’ve always identified with weeds and wildflowers more than cultivated blooms. Even those which are thorny, bristly, spreading willy-nilly.
I too have undiscovered virtues – I’m fluffy, I thrive where I’m not necessarily wanted or needed, I tend to be resilient through frost, drought or flood.
The wild persistence of weeds inspires me to just let most of them be, though stinging nettles, poison oak and ivy need to keep to themselves.
Just as a wild beauty lies just beneath their weedy surface, I try to keep flourishing in harsh surroundings, a witness to a world bereft of softness.
O let them be left. O let me be left.
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Frightening the foliage from its sleep, we travel along the Quinault Lake Loop in our big red truck.
Roofed by dank rainforest, we know we are not alone, though we see no bird, no beast.
You say, It’s beautiful, but do we really belong here where creatures hide? Then an elk herd stomps across
the dirt road, and you brake, shocked. The fattest turns to stare over his long beard. To know or warn us.
Yes, my love, we belong, but on soil-stained knees, asking for each wild thing’s consent to stand. ~Lauren Davis, Home Beneath the Church
I’ve been to the temperate rainforest on the Olympic Peninsula, only a short ferry ride and two hour drive away, where 300 year old trees tethered to one another with connecting crepe of dangling moss, hiding the creatures within, taking all down with them if they someday fall to the wind, lying still, nursing the growth of the next generation’s seeds from long rotting trunks.
We can only pass through this place, having been banished from the Garden.
We are not to dwell or cut or shoot or burn or slash, at risk of being ensnared by reaching fingers of moss seeking yet another woody heart to soften
Whispering grassfeet steal through us fir-fingers touch one another where the paths meet thick dripping resin glues us together summer-greedy woodpeckers hammer at hardy seed-hiding hearts ~Inger Christensen trans. Susanna Nied
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once i saw my grandmother hold out her hand cupping a small offering of seed to one of the wild sparrows that frequented the bird bath she filled with fresh water every day
she stood still maybe stopped breathing while the sparrow looked at her, then the seed then back as if he was judging her character
Of course I love the sparrows, Those dun-colored darlings, So hungry and so many. I am a God-fearing feeder of birds, I know he has many children, Not all of them bold in spirit… ~Mary Oliver from “The Red Bird”
Through the year, I put seed and suet out for the sparrows and grosbeaks, the woodpeckers and chickadees, the juncos and finches, and yes — even the red-winged blackbirds and starlings. They would be fine without my daily contribution to their well-being, but in return for my provision of seeds, I am able to enjoy their spirited liveliness and their gracious ability to share the bounty with one another.
These birds give back to me simply by showing up, without ever realizing what their presence means to me. I don’t want to try to feed them from my hand – our communion is in my watching closely from my window.
How much more does God lay out for me on a daily basis to sustain me as I show up for Him? How oblivious am I to His gracious and profound gifts? How willingly do I share His gifts with others?
Unlike the birds, I could never survive on my own without His watchful care.
When life feels overwhelming, when I am filled with worries, sorrow, regrets and pain, I seek out this God who cares even for sparrows. He knows how to quiet my troubles and strengthen my faith and perseverance, a comfort that extends far beyond a few thistle seeds.
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Let Him easter in us, be a dayspring to the dimness of us, be a crimson-cresseted east. ~ Gerard Manley Hopkins from “The Wreck of the Deutschland”
There is a fragrance in the air, a certain passage of a song, an old photograph falling out from the pages of a book, the sound of somebody’s voice in the hall that makes your heart leap and fills your eyes with tears. Who can say when or how it will be that something easters up out of the dimness to remind us of a time before we were born and after we will die?
All changed, changed utterly: A terrible beauty is born. ~William Butler Yeats from “Easter, 1916”
So, friends, every day do something that won’t compute. Love the Lord. Love the world. Work for nothing. Take all that you have and be poor. Love someone who does not deserve it. Denounce the government and embrace the flag. Hope to live in that free republic for which it stands. Give your approval to all you cannot understand. Praise ignorance, for what man has not encountered he has not destroyed.
Go with your love to the fields. Lie down in the shade. Rest your head in her lap. Swear allegiance to what is nighest your thoughts. As soon as the generals and the politicos can predict the motions of your mind, lose it. Leave it as a sign to mark the false trail, the way you didn’t go. Be like the fox who makes more tracks than necessary, some in the wrong direction. Practice resurrection. ~Wendell Berry from Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front
It had been a slow coming of spring this year, seeming in no hurry whatsoever. Snow has remained in the foothills and the greening of the fields only begun.
Bravely, flowering plum and cherry trees burst into bloom despite a continued chill, and the pink dogwood and apple blossoms are now emerging. The perfumed air of spring permeates the dawn.
Such variability is disorienting, much like standing blinded in a sudden spotlight in a darkened room, practicing resurrection.
Yet this is exactly what eastering is like. It is awakening out of a restless sleep, opening a door to let in fresh fragrant air, and the heavy stone locking us in the dark is rolled back.
Overnight all changed, and changed utterly.
He is not only risen. He is given indeed.
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Here at the centre everything is still Before the stir and movement of our grief Which bears it’s pain with rhythm, ritual, Beautiful useless gestures of relief. So they anoint the skin that cannot feel Soothing his ruined flesh with tender care, Kissing the wounds they know they cannot heal, With incense scenting only empty air. He blesses every love that weeps and grieves And makes our grief the pangs of a new birth. The love that’s poured in silence at old graves Renewing flowers, tending the bare earth, Is never lost. In him all love is found And sown with him, a seed in the rich ground. ~Malcolm Guite “Station XIV of the Cross”
The Holy Saturday of our life must be the preparation for Easter, the persistent hope for the final glory of God. The virtue of our daily life is the hope which does what is possible and expects God to do the impossible. To express it somewhat paradoxically, but nevertheless seriously: the worst has actually already happened; we exist, and even death cannot deprive us of this. Now is the Holy Saturday of our ordinary life, but there will also be Easter, our true and eternal life. ~Karl Rahner “Holy Saturday” in The Great Church Year
I said to my mind, be still, and wait without hope For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love For love would be love of the wrong thing; yet there is faith But the faith and the hope and the love are all in the waiting. Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought: So the darkness shall be light, and the stillness the dancing. ~T. S. Eliot, from “East Coker” The Four Quartets
The happy ending has never been easy to believe in. After the Crucifixion the defeated little band of disciples had no hope, no expectation of Resurrection. Everything they believed in had died on the cross with Jesus. The world was right, and they had been wrong. Even when the women told the disciples that Jesus had left the stone-sealed tomb, the disciples found it nearly impossible to believe that it was not all over. The truth was, it was just beginning. Madeleine L’Engle from “Waiting for Judas” in Plough Magazine
This in-between day after all had gone so wrong: the rejection, the denials, the trumped-up charges, the beatings, the burden, the jeering, the thorns, the nails, the thirst, the despair of being forsaken.
This in-between day before all will go so right: the forgiveness and compassion, the grace and sacrifice, the debt paid in full, the immovable stone rolled away, our name on His lips, our hearts burning to hear His words.
What does it take to move the stone? When it is an effort to till the untillable, creating a place where simple seed can drop, be covered and sprout and thrive, it takes muscle and sweat and blisters and tears.
What does it take to move the stone? When it is a day when no one will speak out of fear, the silent will be moved to cry out the truth, heard and known and never forgotten.
What does it take to move the stone? When it is a day when all had given up, gone behind locked doors in grief.
When two came to tend the dead, there would be no dead to tend.
Only a gaping hole left Only an empty tomb Only a weeping weary silence broken by Love calling our name and we turn to greet Him as if hearing it for the first time.
We cannot imagine what is to come in the dawn tomorrow as the stone lifted and rolled, giving way so our separation is bridged, darkness overwhelmed by light, the crushed and broken rising to dance, and inexplicably, from the waiting stillness He stirs and we, finding death emptied, greet Him with trembling and are forever moved, just like the stone.
This year’s Lenten theme:
…where you go I will go… Ruth 1:16
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I wasn’t paying enough attention when my bird feeders ran out of suet and seed this week. My little feathered buddies fly up to the feeders by our kitchen window and poke around the empty trays, glance disparagingly in my direction, then fly away disheartened.
Although there is no free lunch today, knowing me as they do, they trust it will replenish. They will keep an eye out from a distance, will return to feast, especially the doves who have chosen to nest nearby, so are constantly cleaning up what the other birds leave behind.
I am no birder; I don’t go out looking for birds like the serious people of the birding community who keep a careful list of all they see or hear. I don’t even track every species visiting my humble offerings here on the farm nor do I recognize the frequent visitors as individuals. I just enjoy watching so many diverse sizes, colors and types coming together in one place to feast in relative peace and cooperation.
So unlike my own kind.
I’m happy to host such grateful creatures — even the innovative, voracious and athletic squirrel thieves.
This is my visual and tangible reminder that the good Lord provides, and I, in my own little way, can help.
This year’s Lenten theme:
…where you go I will go… Ruth 1:16
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