We cannot find God in noise and restlessness.
Look at nature:
the trees, flowers, grasses all grow in silence;
the stars, the moon, the sun all move in silence.
The important thing is not what we are able to say
but what God says to us
and what he speaks to others through us.
In silence he listens to us;
in silence he speaks to our souls;
in silence we are granted the privilege of hearing his voice.
~Mother Teresa from “No Greater Love”
This fevers me, this sun on green,
On grass glowing, this young spring.
The secret hallowing is come,
Regenerate sudden incarnation,
Mystery made visible
In growth, yet subtly veiled in all,
Ununderstandable in grass,
In flowers, and in the human heart,
This lyric mortal loveliness,
The earth breathing, and the sun…
…The apple takes the seafoam’s light,
And the evergreen tree is densely bright.
April, April, when will he
Be gaunt, be old, who is so young?
This fevers me, this sun on green,
On grass lowing, this young spring.
~Richard Eberhart
It is a mystery
how dead,
so very dead
can live again.
Ground frozen
mere weeks ago
now leaps lush.
Branches snapped off dry
in midwinter
now burst with bloom.
Beyond understanding
Beyond imagining
Beyond each fevered breath
that could be,
but isn’t,
our last.
A look around the farm and nearby to find our spring
I am not one to yield to the wind freely.
More poplar than willow,
there is inflexibility rather than suppleness
in my rigid branches and trunk.
This means I break, and frequently,
when bending might be easier.
This means I lie in broken pieces
awaiting salvage, or the flames.
Yea, fallen in fragments upon the rock.
O Deus, ego amo te,
O God I love Thee for Thyself
Nec amo te ut salves me,
and not that I may heaven gain
Nec quod qui te non diligent,
nor yet that they who love Thee not
Æterno igne pereunt.
must suffer hell’s eternal pain.
Ex cruces lingo germinat,
Out of the bud of the wood of the Cross
Qui pectus amor occupant,
wherefore hearts’ love embraces
Ex pansis unde brachiis,
whence out of extended arms
Ad te amandum arripes. Amen.
you lovingly take us. Amen.
~Prayer of St. Francis Xavier “O Deus Ego Amo Te” 18th Century Traditional
Suddenly, in the last week, buds are forming everywhere.
From seemingly dead wood, standing cold and dormant,
there springs new life.
What could be more lifeless than a cross piece of timbers
built specifically for execution?
Yet life sprung from that death tree,
an unexpected and glorious bud,
ready to burst into most fragrant blossom.
The set seed and the first bulbs showing.
The silence that brings the deer.
The trees are full of handles and hinges;
you can make out keyholes, latches in the leaves.
Buds tick and crack in the sun, break open
slowly in a spur of green.
*
The small-change colours of the river bed:
these stones of copper, silver, gold.
The rock-rose in the waste-ground
finding some way to bloom. The long
spill of birdsong. Flowers, all
turned to face the hot sky. Nothing stirs.
*
That woody clack of antlers.
In yellow and red, the many griefs of autumn.
The dawn light through amber leaves
and the trees are lanterned, blown
the next day to empty stars.
Smoke in the air; the air, turning.
*
Under a sky of stone and pink
faring in from the north and promising snow:
the blackbird.
In his beak, a victory of worms.
The winged seed of the maple,
the lost keys under the ash.
~Robin Robertson “Finding the Keys”
If only there were verbal keys as plentiful
as those that twirl from the maple branch,
words freed, ready to unlatch life’s secrets
and push ajar the doors of heavy hearts.
May we open just enough
to listen,
unlock horns,
and receive what falls
into our empty arms.
Although the snow still lingers
Heaped on the ivy’s blunt webbed fingers
And painting tree-trunks on one side,
Here in this sunlit ride
The fresh unchristened things appear,
Leaf, spathe and stem,
With crumbs of earth clinging to them
To show the way they came
But no flower yet to tell their name,
And one green spear
Stabbing a dead leaf from below
Kills winter at a blow.
~Andrew Young, “Last Snow”
The snow is ice-encrusts the morning
before it bids farewell under warming sunlight.
Winter encasing spring
grasping one last moment
of timelessness.
“Listen to your life.
See it for the fathomless mystery it is.
In the boredom and pain of it,
no less than in the excitement and gladness:
touch, taste, smell your way
to the holy and hidden heart of it,
because in the last analysis
all moments are key moments,
and life itself is grace.”
~Frederich Buechner
When great trees fall
in forests,
small things recoil into silence,
their senses
eroded beyond fear.
Great souls die and
our reality, bound to
them, takes leave of us.
Our souls,
dependent upon their
nurture,
now shrink, wizened.
And when great souls die,
after a period peace blooms,
slowly and always
irregularly…
Our senses, restored, never
to be the same, whisper to us.
They existed. They existed.
We can be. Be and be
better. For they existed.
~Maya Angelou from “When Great Trees Fall”
When I need to be restored,
humbled and forgiven,
I walk back to the woods on our farm
to stand before the great beings
cut down in their prime
over one hundred years ago,
their scarred stumps still bearing the notches
from the lumbermen’s springboards.
Old growth firs and cedars
became mere headstones
in the graveyard left behind.
They existed, they existed,
their grandeur leaves no doubt.
I leave the woods and come back
to the world better
because they existed.
I go to the mountain side
of the house to cut saplings,
and clear a view to snow
on the mountain. But when I look up,
saw in hand, I see a nest clutched in
the uppermost branches.
I don’t cut that one.
I don’t cut the others either.
Suddenly, in every tree,
an unseen nest
where a mountain
would be.
~Tess Gallagher “Choices”
Such tenderness,
such recognition of the other,
to save the nest
and all future potential nests
rather than a clear cut stripping
for the sake of unimpeded world view,
when the freedom of a mountain backdrop
is sacrificed–
such tenderness
when the right to choose can only mean
choosing to do right.
Barnstorming 