and the barberry: another thoughtless human assumption
sidetracking the best story this furrow spider knew to spin.
And, trying to get the sticky filament off my face, I must look,
to the neighbors, like someone being attacked by his own nervous
system, a man conducting an orchestra of bees. Or maybe it’s only the dance
of human history I’m reenacting: caught in his own careless wreckage,
a man trying to extricate himself, afraid to open his eyes. ~Jeff Worley from Lucky Talk
For a change, it is a relief the citizens of this country are waking up to clear election results. A majority of voters have mandated a new direction, in an attempt to turn this massive ship of a nation around.
Too often in recent history, the election results are uncertain the next day. We remain suspended in a sticky web of our own making for some time, dangling as the votes are recounted, rehashed, distrusted, and litigated…
Twenty-six years ago, I woke up not feeling very well after a long night of waiting for election results to come in. I thought it was from the tension of not knowing when the outcome would be finalized but no… It ended up being appendicitis — it was my 2000 post-election surgical solution to take my mind off the contest of Bush vs Gore.
It worked. I simply ceased to care about anything but my own healing. What was happening in the headlines became background noise.
This morning, I don’t need any such distraction. I will endeavor to keep myself out of the ER and the OR and just go about my day, watching our democracy in action.
For well over a decade, we the people have been caught in a sticky-wickety web, spread all over our faces. We’ve struggled to keep our eyes open to the reality of our own messy entrapment,
So today I am taking a few deep breaths and I hope you will too. And tomorrow and the next day.
And avoid radical surgery if we can.
Maybe this dance is something we can manage to do together — coordinated, cooperative, choreographed, and united — rather than flailing about in a careless wreckage of human history.
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Sometimes when day after day we have cloudless blue skies, warm temperatures, colorful trees and brilliant sun, when it seems like all this will go on forever,
when I harvest vegetables from the garden all day, then drink tea and doze in the late afternoon sun, and in the evening one night make pickled beets and green tomato chutney, the next red tomato chutney, and the day after that pick the fruits of my arbor and make grape jam,
when we walk in the woods every evening over fallen leaves, through yellow light, when nights are cool, and days warm,
when I am so happy I am afraid I might explode or disappear or somehow be taken away from all this,
at those times when I feel so happy, so good, so alive, so in love with the world, with my own sensuous, beautiful life, suddenly
I think about all the suffering and pain in the world, the agony and dying. I think about all those people being tortured, right now, in my name. But I still feel happy and good, alive and in love with the world and with my lucky, guilty, sensuous, beautiful life because,
I know in the next minute or tomorrow all this may be taken from me, and therefore I’ve got to say, right now, what I feel and know and see, I’ve got to say, right now, how beautiful and sweet this world can be. ~David Budbill“Sometimes”
This is a beautiful, wonderful, terrific day to vote.
Normally election days are filled with stressful anticipation about what storms and floods will arrive next due to the ever-changing political climate.
Yet today, as I fill out my ballot, along with millions of others in my country, no matter how erratic our leadership, how corrupt its political machinations, we together have the ability to change course through the sacred privilege and responsibility of voting.
Over two centuries of great sacrifice has bought us this right and freedom. I am proud to exercise it, no matter the result. Too many people in the world do not know this privilege, so I do not take it lightly.
Sometime, and God only knows when, we’ll find ourselves united more than divided, working together to harvest the best we can grow.
Then what a wonderful world this will be…
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Though he was ill and in pain, in disobedience to the instruction he would have received if he had asked, the old man got up from his bed, dressed, and went to the barn. The bare branches of winter had emerged through the last leaf-colors of fall, the loveliest of all, browns and yellows delicate and nameless in the gray light and the sifting rain. He put feed in the troughs for eighteen ewe lambs, sent the dog for them, and she brought them. They came eager to their feed, and he who felt their hunger was by their feeding eased. From no place in the time of present places, within no boundary nameable in human thought, they had gathered once again, the shepherd, his sheep, and his dog with all the known and the unknown round about to the heavens’ limit. Was this his stubbornness or bravado? No. Only an ordinary act of profoundest intimacy in a day that might have been better. Still the world persisted in its beauty, he in his gratitude, and for this he had most earnestly prayed. ~Wendell Berry “XI”
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.
For over forty years, I have spent about an hour a day shoveling manure out of our horse stalls and I’m a better person for it.
Wheeled to a mountainous pile in our barnyard, this daily collection of manure happily composts year round, becoming rich fertilizer in a matter of months through a crucible-like heating process of organic chemistry, bacteria and earthworms. Nothing mankind has achieved quite matches the drama of useless and basically disgusting stuff transforming into the essential elements needed for productive growth and survival.
Our government certainly hasn’t discovered the secret. This is a metaphor I can <ahem> happily muck about in.
I’m in awe, every day, at being part of this process — in many ways a far more tangible improvement to the world than anything else I manage to accomplish every day. The horses, major contributors that they are, act underwhelmed by my enthusiasm. I guess some miracles are relative, depending on one’s perspective, but if the horses understood that the grass they contentedly eat in the pasture, or the hay they munch on during the winter months, was grown thanks to their carefully recycled waste products, they might be more impressed.
Their nonchalance about the daily mucking routine is understandable. If they are outside, they probably don’t notice their beds are clean when they return to the stalls at night. If they are inside during the heavy rain days, they feel duty-bound to be in my face as I move about their stall, toting my pitchfork and pushing a wheelbarrow. I’m a source of constant amusement as they nose my jacket pockets for treats that I never carry, as they beg for scratches on their unreachable itchy spots, and as they attempt to overturn an almost full load, just to see balls of manure roll to all corners of the stall like breaking a rack of billiard balls in a game of pool.
Good thing I’m a patient person always seeking an object lesson in whatever I see or do ~ mucking out stalls every day helps me tolerate the proverbial muck I encounter in the news. And spending an hour a day getting dirty in the real stuff somehow makes the virtual manure less noxious.
Indeed, everyone should be mucking out, especially during election season, as I think the world would generally be a better place.
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Winter is an etching, spring a watercolor, summer an oil painting and autumn a mosaic of them all. ~Stanley Horowitz, a poem in Readers’ Digest Nov. 1983
WinterWinter
L’Inverno (Winter) Opus 8, No. 4, in F minor
I. Allegro non molto– Frozen and trembling in the icy snow, In the severe blast of the horrible wind, As we run, we constantly stamp our feet, And our teeth chatter in the cold. II. Largo– To spend happy and quiet days near the fire, While, outside, the rain soaks hundreds. III. Allegro– We walk on the ice with slow steps, And tread carefully, for fear of falling. Symphony, If we go quickly, we slip and fall to the ground. Again we run on the ice, Until it cracks and opens. We hear, from closed doors, Sirocco, Boreas, and all the winds in battle. This is winter, but it brings joy. ~Vivaldi (Winter poem)
SpringSpringSpringSpring
La Primavera (Spring) Opus 8, No. 1, in E Major
I. Allegro– Festive Spring has arrived, The birds salute it with their happy song. And the brooks, caressed by little Zephyrs, Flow with a sweet murmur. The sky is covered with a black mantle, And thunder, and lightning, announce a storm. When they are silent, the birds Return to sing their lovely song. II. Largo e pianissimo sempre– And in the meadow, rich with flowers, To the sweet murmur of leaves and plants, The goatherd sleeps, with his faithful dog at his side. III. Danza pastorale. Allegro– To the festive sound of pastoral bagpipes, Dance nymphs and shepherds, At Spring’s brilliant appearance. ~Vivaldi (Spring poem)
SummerSummerSummerSummer
L’Estate (Summer) Opus 8, No. 2, in G minor
I. Allegro non molto– Under the heat of the burning summer sun, Languish man and flock; the pine is parched. The cuckoo finds its voice, and suddenly, The turtledove and goldfinch sing. A gentle breeze blows, But suddenly, the north wind appears. The shepherd weeps because, overhead, Lies the fierce storm, and his destiny. II. Adagio; Presto– His tired limbs are deprived of rest By his fear of lightning and fierce thunder, And by furious swarms of flies and hornets. III. Presto– Alas, how just are his fears, Thunder and lightening fill the Heavens, and the hail Slices the tops of the corn and other grain. ~Vivaldi (Summer poem)
AutumnAutumnAutumnAutumnAutumnAutumn
L’Autunno (Autumn) Opus 8, No. 3, in F Major
I. Allegro– The peasants celebrate with dance and song, The joy of a rich harvest. And, full of Bacchus’s liquor, They finish their celebration with sleep. II. Adagio molto– Each peasant ceases his dance and song. The mild air gives pleasure, And the season invites many To enjoy a sweet slumber. III. Allegro– The hunters, at the break of dawn, go to the hunt. With horns, guns, and dogs they are off, The beast flees, and they follow its trail. Already fearful and exhausted by the great noise, Of guns and dogs, and wounded, The exhausted beast tries to flee, but dies. ~Vivaldi (Autumn poem)
I walk this farm lane to stand at the same spot countless times through the year, as witness to the changing palette around me.
The Artist lovingly chooses His color and technique with a gentle touch for each season.
So too, He paints my life with richness and variety: from the austere lines in winter, to a green emergence in spring, a summer of sweet fruitfulness and a mosaic crescendo in autumn.
The Artist’s signature can be spotted on each masterpiece, gracing the transforming canvas of each of our lives.
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The way the trees empty themselves of leaves, let drop their ponderous fruit, the way the turtle abandons the sun-warmed log, the way even the late-blooming aster succumbs to the power of frost—
this is not a new story. Still, on this morning, the hollowness of the season startles, filling the rooms of your house, filling the world with impossible light, improbable hope.
And so, what else can you do but let yourself be broken and emptied? What else is there but waiting in the autumn sun? ~Carolyn Locke “What Else?” from The Place We Become
So this is how life goes:
we are sowed, set down roots, bud and grow and flower and bloom and fruit and flourish,
then dry and change and wither and empty and break away to be carried off beyond this air and water and soil.
We thrive where we are planted, do what we could with a little nurture, then transcend the here and now.
So shall we plant the next generation in healthy soil. May we weed and water and feed as needed. May we never seek to overshadow the sun but step aside so its light fully shines on whoever comes next.
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Summer ends now; now, barbarous in beauty, the stooks rise Around; up above, what wind-walks! what lovely behaviour Of silk-sack clouds! has wilder, wilful-wavier Meal-drift moulded ever and melted across skies?
I walk, I lift up, I lift up heart, eyes, Down all that glory in the heavens to glean our Saviour; And eyes, heart, what looks, what lips yet give you a Rapturous love’s greeting of realer, of rounder replies?
And the azurous hung hills are his world-wielding shoulder Majestic – as a stallion stalwart, very-violet-sweet! – These things, these things were here and but the beholder Wanting; which two when they once meet, The heart rears wings bold and bolder And hurls for him, O half hurls earth for him off under his feet. ~Gerard Manley Hopkins “Hurrahing in Harvest”
This poem is (in Hopkin’s own words) “the outcome of half an hour of extreme enthusiasm as I walked home alone one day from fishing in the [River] Elwy.”
This afternoon was the colour of water falling through sunlight; The trees glittered with the tumbling of leaves; The sidewalks shone like alleys of dropped maple leaves, And the houses ran along them laughing out of square, open windows. Under a tree in the park, Two little boys, lying flat on their faces, Were carefully gathering red berries To put in a pasteboard box.
Some day there will be no war, Then I shall take out this afternoon And turn it in my fingers, And remark the sweet taste of it upon my palate, And note the crisp variety of its flights of leaves. To-day I can only gather it And put it into my lunch-box, For I have time for nothing But the endeavour to balance myself Upon a broken world. ~Amy Lowell from “September 1918”
There is no point in seeing without responding; there is no way to respond without seeing.
Christian life and practice require both faith (the sight of the heart) and works (the lurch of the heart toward him in obedience). ~Kathleen Mulhern from “A Christ Sighting” from Dry Bones
Am I the only one who awoke this morning praying today might be a day of healing between peoples, when the barbarous becomes beautiful and we seek to become balanced rather than broken?
A day of no drone missiles being launched, no threats of annihilation and winner takes all, no one gunned down in the street, no vehicles used as weapons, no harsh and angry words spoken, no child misused, no one sold into slavery, no one overdosing, abandoned, homeless and starving.
Am I the only one who awakes and only seeks to watch the clouds to praise the heavens to see the leaves turn color to take out this one day and taste it and find that it is good, then put it away for self-keeping to share when and if I find someone else as hungry for grace and mercy as I am,
so as to balance myself somehow in the beauty of this world while teetering on its brokenness?
The songs of small birds fade away into the bushes after sundown, the air dry, sweet with goldenrod. Beside the path, suddenly, bright asters flare in the dusk. The aged voices of a few crickets thread the silence. It is a quiet I love, though my life too often drives me through it deaf. Busy with costs and losses, I waste the time I have to be here—a time blessed beyond my deserts, as I know, if only I would keep aware. The leaves rest in the air, perfectly still. I would like them to rest in my mind as still, as simply spaced. As I approach, the sorrel filly looks up from her grazing, poised there, light on the slope as a young apple tree. A week ago I took her away to sell, and failed to get my price, and brought her home again. Now in the quiet I stand and look at her a long time, glad to have recovered what is lost in the exchange of something for money. ~Wendell Berry “The Sorrel Filly”
I am reminded at summer’s end — when it is already dark and chores not done yet, and horses waiting to be fed — of the value of decades of moments spent with long-lashed eyes, wind-swept manes, and velvet muzzles.
True, it appears to others to be time and money wasted. But for a farmer like me, sometimes deaf and blind to what is in front of me every day, not all valuables are preserved in a lock box or a bank account.
Golden treasure can have four hooves, a tail, a rumbling greeting asking if I’d somehow gotten lost since I’m a little later than usual and they were a bit concerned I’d forgotten them.
If only I would keep aware, remember where my home is, how easy it is to wander from the path that somehow always leads me back here.
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The kitchen is sweet with the smell of apples, big yellow pie apples, light in the hand, their skins freckled, the stems knobby and thick with bark, as if the tree could not bear to let the apple go. Baskets of apples circle the back door, fill the porch, cover the kitchen table.
My mother and my grandmother are running the apple brigade. My mother, always better with machines, is standing at the apple peeler; my grandmother, more at home with a paring knife, faces her across the breadboard. My mother takes an apple in her hand,
She pushes it neatly onto the sharp prong and turns the handle that turns the apple that swivels the blade pressed tight against the apple’s side and peels the skin away in long curling strips that twist and fall to a bucket on the floor. The apples, coming off the peeler,
Are winding staircases, little accordions, slinky toys, jack-in-the-box fruit, until my grandmother’s paring knife goes slicing through the rings and they become apple pies, apple cakes, apple crisp. Soon they will be married to butter and live with cinnamon and sugar, happily ever after. ~Joyce Sutphen, “Apple Season” from Coming Back to the Body.
I liked how the starry blue lid of that saucepan lifted and puffed, then settled back on a thin hotpad of steam, and the way her kitchen filled with the warm, wet breath of apples, as if all the apples were talking at once, as if they’d come cold and sour from chores in the orchard, and were trying to shoulder in close to the fire. She was too busy to put in her two cents’ worth talking to apples. Squeezing her dentures with wrinkly lips, she had to jingle and stack the bright brass coins of the lids and thoughtfully count out the red rubber rings, then hold each jar, to see if it was clean, to a window that looked out through her back yard into Iowa. And with every third or fourth jar she wiped steam from her glasses, using the hem of her apron, printed with tiny red sailboats that dipped along with leaf-green banners snapping, under puffs of pale applesauce clouds scented with cinnamon and cloves, the only boats under sail for at least two thousand miles. ~Ted Kooser “Applesauce” from Delights and Shadow
1.
Through the night the apples outside my window one by one let go their branches and drop to the lawn. I can’t see, but hear the stem-snap, the plummet through leaves, then the final thump against the ground.
Sometimes two at once, or one right after another. During long moments of silence I wait and wonder about the bruised bodies, the terror of diving through air, and think I’ll go tomorrow to find the newly fallen, but they all look alike lying there dewsoaked, disappearing before me.
2.
I lie beneath my window listening to the sound of apples dropping in
the yard, a syncopated code I long to know, which continues even as I sleep, and dream I know
the meaning of what I hear, each dull thud of unseen apple-
I tell you, folks, all politics is like applesauce. ~Will Rogers
Once again, it’s applesauce season on our farm. The number of windfall apples lying on the ground is exponentially increasing, so I can put off the task no longer.
The old apple trees in our orchard are primarily antique varieties rarely grown any longer. I have the choice of a number of varieties: a Baldwin or two, some Pippins, a few Kings, and some Dutch Mignons, a russet apple undistinguished in appearance, not at all pretty, and easy to pass by for something more showy.
It takes no time at all to fill several large boxes. Sadly, some apples are already beyond hope; they lay rotting, half consumed by hornets, slugs, deer, possum, raccoons and other critters — so I let them be.
The task of washing, peeling and coring organic apples is time consuming. They require a fair amount of preparation: the bruised spots must be cut out, as well as the worm holes and tracks. The apples are cut to the core and sliced into the simmering pot to be stirred and slowly cooked down to sauce. Before long, before my eyes, together they become a pale yellow mash, blending their varied flavors together.
However the smooth sweetness of this wonderful sauce is owed to the Dutch Mignon. It is a sublime sauce apple despite its humble unassuming appearance. Used alone, it would lack the “stand out” flavors of the other apple varieties, but as it cooks down, it becomes a foundation allowing the other apples to blend their unique qualities.
If I’m feeling really homespun, I marry the sublime with cinnamon and sugar, to create something happily ever after.
So it should be with the fellowship of diverse people and so should it be during a painful political season.
We are bruised, wormy, but salvageable. We are far better together than we are separate. And through the process, with perhaps a sprinkle of cinnamon and sweetness, we are transformed into something far better than how we began.
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Autumn begins to be inferred By millinery of the cloud, Or deeper color in the shawl That wraps the everlasting hill. ~Emily Dickinson from “Summer Begins to Have the Look”
The passing of the summer fills again my heart with strange sweet sorrow, and I find the very moments precious in my palm. Each dawn I did not see, each night the stars in spangled pattern shone, unknown to me, are counted out against me by my God, who charges me to see all lovely things… ~Jane Tyson Clement from “The Passing of Summer”
September’s Baccalaureate A combination is Of Crickets — Crows — and Retrospects And a dissembling Breeze That hints without assuming — An Innuendo sear That makes the Heart put up its Fun And turn Philosopher. ~Emily Dickinson“September’s Baccalaureate”
There’s something in my very blood that owns Bare hills, cold silver on a sky of slate A thread of water, churned to milky spate Streaming through slanted pastures fenced with stones. ~Elinor Wylie from “Wild Peaches”
Summer now is waning and wistful; it has the look of packing up, and moving on without bidding adieu or looking back over its shoulder.
Cooling winds have carried in darkening clouds with a hint of spit from the sky as I gaze upward to see (and smell) the change.
A decent rain is long overdue yet there is temptation to bargain for a little more time. Though we are in need of a good drenching there are still onions and potatoes to pull from the ground, berries to pick before they mold on the vine, tomatoes not yet ripened, corn cobs just too skinny to pick.
I’m not quite ready to wave goodbye to sun-soaked clear skies.
The overhead overcast is heavily burdened with clues of what is coming: earlier dusk, the feel of moisture, the deepening graying hues, the briskness of breezes.
There is no negotiation possible. I need to steel myself and get ready, wrapping myself in the soft shawl of inevitability.
So autumn advances with the clouds, taking up residence where summer has left off. Though there is still clean up of the overabundance left behind, autumn will bring its own unique plans for display of a delicious palette of hues.
The truth is we’ve seen nothing yet.
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Day after day, day after still day, The summer has begun to pass away. Starlings at twilight fly clustered and call, And branches bend, and leaves begin to fall. The meadow and the orchard grass are mown, And the meadowlark’s house is cut down.
The little lantern bugs have doused their fires, The swallows sit in rows along the wires. Berry and grape appear among the flowers Tangled against the wall in secret bowers, And cricket now begins to hum the hours Remaining to the passion’s slow procession Down from the high place and the golden session Wherein the sun was sacrificed for us. A failing light, no longer numinous, Now frames the long and solemn afternoons Where butterflies regret their closed cocoons. We reach the place unripe, and made to know As with a sudden knowledge that we go Away forever, all hope of return Cut off, hearing the crackle of the burn- ing blade behind us, and the terminal sound Of apples dropping on the dry ground. ~Howard Nemerov “Summer’s Elegy” from Collected Poems
As far as I can see this autumn haze That spreading in the evening air both ways, Makes the new moon look anything but new, And pours the elm-tree meadow full of blue, Is all the smoke from one poor house alone With but one chimney it can call its own; So close it will not light an early light, Keeping its life so close and out of sight No one for hours has set a foot outdoors So much as to take care of evening chores. The inmates may be lonely women-folk. I want to tell them that with all this smoke They prudently are spinning their cocoon And anchoring it to an earth and moon From which no winter gale can hope to blow it,— Spinning their own cocoon did they but know it. ~Robert Frost “The Cocoon”
The summer ends, and it is time To face another way. Our theme Reversed, we harvest the last row To store against the cold, undo The garden that will be undone. We grieve under the weakened sun To see all earth’s green fountains dried, And fallen all the works of light. You do not speak, and I regret This downfall of the good we sought As though the fault were mine. I bring The plow to turn the shattering Leaves and bent stems into the dark, From which they may return. At work, I see you leaving our bright land, The last cut flowers in your hand. ~Wendell Berry “The Summer Ends” from A Timbered Choir.
I too regret the closed cocoon, so seemingly safe at the time — once launched before being ready, there is no returning.
In this fading, failing light, I feel undone, weepy at harvest, gathering urgently, not wanting anything to go to waste, trying to memorialize it all as it changes.
I part again from you, Summer – your gifts seemed endless until you yourself ended – a reminder that someday, so must I.
photo by Bob Tjoelker
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