On the day when The weight deadens On your shoulders And you stumble, May the clay dance To balance you.
May a flock of colours, Indigo, red, green And azure blue, Come to awaken in you A meadow of delight.
May the nourishment of the earth be yours, May the clarity of light be yours, May the fluency of the ocean be yours, May the protection of the ancestors be yours.
And so may a slow Wind work these words Of love around you, An invisible cloak To mind your life. ~John O’Donohue from “Beannacht“
We all stumble, bearing the bruises and scars of our fall. We all waken to gray days when there seems no point in going on. We all can be sucked into the darkest thoughts, tunneling ever more deeply.
In those moments, those days, those months, may we be wrapped tightly in love’s cloak of invisibility: and darkness swallow us no longer~ we follow a brightening path of light and color, with contentment and encouragement, our failing feet steadied, the gray kaleidoscoped, the way to go illuminated with hope.
May our brokenness be forever covered in such blessings.
AI image created for this post
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee, a One clover, and a bee, And revery. The revery alone will do, If bees are few. ~Emily Dickinson
Bees do have a smell, you know, and if they don’t they should, for their feet are dusted with spices from a million flowers. ~Ray Bradburyfrom Dandelion Wine
Pollinators are having a rough time of it these days, combating man-made insecticides or failing to find flowering weeds to visit given the wide-spread use of herbicides. Plus, there is the American penchant for mowing grassy landscapes to look perfectly uniform and weed-free.
When I see a honey or bumble bee happily doing its job, it is a cause for celebration.
I was thrilled to see the latest research reported today demonstrating the ability of a flowering plant, like a snapdragon in the study, to “hear” (through vibro-acoustic signals) the buzz of an approaching pollinator, responding instantly by increasing its nectar volume and sweetness. The postulated feedback mechanism is that pollinators will be more attracted to a plant that “rewards” their visit, thereby increasing the likelihood of ongoing pollination visits and survival of further generations of both creatures.
This world depends on a revery of communication we can only begin to understand – between plant to plant, plant to insect — a daydream of connections bringing the spicy smell of pollen from a million flowers to the lowly feet of the bee, which generates more of both as well as honey for you and me. May it be, may it be, may it bee…
May we know such reverie.
AI image created for this post
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
As we walk into words that have waited for us to enter them, so the meadow, muddy with dreams, is gathering itself together
and trying, with difficulty, to remember how to make wildflowers. Imperceptibly heaving with the old impatience, it knows
for certain that two horses walk upon it, weary of hay. The horses, sway-backed and self important, cannot design
how the small white pony mysteriously escapes the fence everyday. This is the miracle just beyond their heavy-headed grasp,
and they turn from his nuzzling with irritation. Everything is crying out. Two crows, rising from the hill, fight
and caw-cry in mid-flight, then fall and light on the meadow grass bewildered by their weight. A dozen wasps drone, tiny prop planes,
sputtering into a field the farmer has not yet plowed, and what I thought was a phone, turned down and ringing,
is the knock of a woodpecker for food or warning, I can’t say. I want to add my cry to those who would speak for the sound alone.
But in this world, where something is always listening, even murmuring has meaning, as in the next room you moan
in your sleep, turning into late morning. My love, this might be all we know of forgiveness, this small time when you can forget
what you are. There will come a day when the meadow will think suddenly, water, root, blossom, through no fault of its own, and the horses will lie down in daisies and clover. Bedeviled, human, your plight, in waking, is to choose from the words
that even now sleep on your tongue, and to know that tangled among them and terribly new is the sentence that could change your life. ~Marie Howe “The Meadow”from The Good Thief
I am constantly looking for the sentence that will change my life.
I search high and low: in books, on tape, in sermons, and in everyday conversation.
I listen.
I realize it will not be a brand new revelation. Instead, it is a very very old sentence:
“I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” John 8:12
I look for the Light in the most unexpected places, and if I find it, I always try to share it here…
What is a sentence that has changed your life?
AI image created for this post
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
I know what you planned, what you meant to do, teaching me to love the world, making it impossible to turn away completely, to shut it out completely ever again – it is everywhere; when I close my eyes, birdsong, scent of lilac in early spring, scent of summer roses: you mean to take it away, each flower, each connection with earth – why would you wound me, why would you want me desolate in the end, unless you wanted me so starved for hope I would refuse to see that finally nothing was left to me, and would believe instead in the end you were left to me. ~Louise Glück “Vespers”(one of ten Vespers poems)
I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I hope; ~Psalm 130:5
Mid-spring days like this: bright, so promising with potential, birdsong constantly in the air, scent of orchard blossoms, lilacs, early roses and a flush of color everywhere…
how can we not love the world so much we never want to leave it?
Yet we must hold this loosely.
It is but a tiny show of the glories to come, of what You have waiting for us next.
I am wounded knowing I must eventually let this go.
I am hungry for hope that isn’t found in all this beauty and lushness, the fulfilling hope that is only You as my Father and Creator.
You provide only a taste here. I know what I starve for, so starved with hope for what You have in store.
I will wait for you I will wait for you in the end You were left for me.
Amen and Amen.
AI image created for this post
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
It is at the edge of a petal that love waits. ― William Carlos Williams
All the field’s a hymn! All trilliums unfold white flames above their trinities of leaves…
now make of our hearts a field to raise your praise ~Luci Shaw from “Spring song, very early morning”from The Green Earth: Poems of Creation
The flaw is no more noticeable, even to me, than a new moth-hole in my sweater, or a very bald spot on the fabric of my velvet vest.
Yet when I hold the cloth up to the window the sunlight bleeds through. ~Luci Shaw “Defect”
The trillium only thrives where death has been. The mulch of hundreds of autumns fluffs the bed where trillium bulbs sleep, quietly content through most of the year.
When the frost is giving way to dew, the trillium leaves peek out, curious, testing the air. A few stray rays of sun filtering through the overgrowth and canopy encourage the shoots to rise, spread and unfurl.
In the middle, a white bud appears in humility, almost embarrassed to be seen at all.
In a matter of days, the petals spread wide and bold so briefly, curl purplish, wilt and return aground. Leaves wither and fall unnoticed, becoming dust once again.
Then, beauty will rise from decay. Death gives way to pure triune perfection.
This year’s Lenten theme:
…where you go I will go… Ruth 1:16
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
Forfeit their Paradise by their pride. ~George Herbert “The Flower”
Our small church has several gracious and kind gardeners who share the produce from their yards each week to provide a fresh bouquet to sit on the table in front of our humble wooden pulpit.
It is a treat to walk into church and see what has been brought to the altar on Sunday morning. I have started to keep a photo album of these very special Sunday “pulpit posies.”
Why are these special? After all, almost every church displays a floral arrangement every Sunday.
These are special as most of these flowers are seeded, watered, fertilized and nurtured by one of our own, grown with love and caring, just as God cares for each of His children.
These are special as some are considered simple weeds, and are picked from ditches and hedges. They are still part of God’s creation and have a wild beauty that can be as breathtaking as a hothouse orchid.
These are special because they often go home with a congregant or visitor who will enjoy their loveliness for many more days, as if they represent the manifestation of God’s Word itself.
Some of us are dahlias, zinnias and roses. Some of us are rare gardenias and orchids. Most of us are dandelions, sagebrush, fireweed, burdock, and daisies populating the ditches.
No matter which roots we sprout from, or where, we are the wonders of this gardening God of love.
As we age, we bud afresh for Him.
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
Morning glories, pale as a mist drying, fade from the heat of the day, but already hunchback bees in pirate pants and with peg-leg hooks have found and are boarding them.
This could do for the sack of the imaginary fleet. The raiders loot the galleons even as they one by one vanish and leave still real only what has been snatched out of the spell.
I’ve never seen bees more purposeful except when the hive is threatened. They know the good of it must be grabbed and hauled before the whole feast wisps off.
They swarm in light and, fast, dive in, then drone out, slow, their pantaloons heavy with gold and sunlight. The line of them, like thin smoke, wafts over the hedge.
And back again to find the fleet gone. Well, they got this day’s good of it. Off they cruise to what stays open longer. Nothing green gives honey. And by now
Happiness is like a morning glory: yesterday’s won’t bloom again; tomorrow’s hasn’t opened yet. Only today’s flower can be enjoyed today. Be happy this very moment, and you’ll learn how to be happy always. ~ Goswami Kriyananda
I am alive — I guess — The Branches on my Hand Are full of Morning Glory — ~Emily Dickinson
Now I’m at seventy, no longer defined by ambition or career, I open up misty every morning with a new bloom, aware what I’ve left undone before wilting away.
A daily unfurling is a chance to: Start afresh. Welcome visitors. Hold hearts gently. Hum as I walk. Sometimes just sit in awed silence. Watch out the window. Feed those who look hungry.
Each new opening, each new day, so to leave a little less left undone.
AI image created for this post
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
One wading a Fall meadow finds on all sides The Queen Anne’s Lace lying like lilies On water; it glides So from the walker, it turns Dry grass to a lake, as the slightest shade of you Valleys my mind in fabulous blue Lucernes.
The beautiful changes as a forest is changed By a chameleon’s tuning his skin to it; As a mantis, arranged On a green leaf, grows Into it, makes the leaf leafier, and proves Any greenness is deeper than anyone knows.
Your hands hold roses always in a way that says They are not only yours; the beautiful changes In such kind ways, Wishing ever to sunder Things and things’ selves for a second finding, to lose For a moment all that it touches back to wonder. ~Richard Wilbur “The Beautiful Changes”
I am changed again, as I blend into autumn.
We can’t help but be transformed by everything around us, you know.
Beautiful is the dying meadow, the shedding of dry reddened leaves, the tidal wave of wildflowers nodding goodbye until next summer.
Beauty is beheld with wonder and then lost to the ages. We cannot change what we see, but treasure its transience, as we cherish our own brief moments here.
We hold on lightly, ready to let go when the time comes. What comes next is beautiful beyond imagining.
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
See, the grass is full of stars, Fallen in their brightness; Hearts they have of shining gold, Rays of shining whiteness.
Buttercups have honeyed hearts, Bees they love the clover, But I love the daisies’ dance All the meadow over.
Blow, O blow, you happy winds, Singing summer’s praises, Up the field and down the field A-dancing with the daisies. ~Marjorie Pickthall “Daisy Time”
I still can’t say what life is for, but it can’t be to pretend that every part of it is knowable, or that what appears to be to the naked eye or in the middle ground or documented on paper approximates a person any better than a daisy does our sun.
When at a loss for what I am, I know I must be feeling it deep in the layers, where a turbulence gives rise to clouds so massive they collapse in a bliss of gravity, condensing into this music I can daisy into morning as it daisies me into morning. ~Timothy Donnelly from “Habitable Nebula”
It is possible, I suppose that sometime we will learn everything there is to learn: what the world is, for example, and what it means. I think this as I am crossing from one field to another…
At my feet the white-petalled daisies display the small suns of their center piece, their – if you don’t mind my saying so – their hearts. Of course I could be wrong, perhaps their hearts are pale and narrow and hidden in the roots. What do I know? But this: it is heaven itself to take what is given, to see what is plain; what the sun lights up willingly; for example – I think this as I reach down, not to pick but merely to touch – the suitability of the field for the daisies, and the daisies for the field. ~Mary Oliver from “Daisies”
I realize I can’t understand what all this world means.
No, I will remain in the dark until I cross from this daisy-strewn field to the next. I have to wait for heaven itself to see why we are illuminated by the Sun.
It is all cloud-covered mystery in the meantime, and sometimes a mean and joyless mystery – with pain and heartbreak and suffering, but just enough loving sacrifice to make it worthwhile.
How are we different from that stone, or that tree or that daisy?
We are breathed on.
God’s breath surges within us, as we laugh out loud, weep mightily and sing out His Words – struggling to be suitable for this field of stars, so often trampled and broken, but with plans to flourish under the illuminating stars created by the Son of heaven.
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
Sometimes I think all the best poems have been written already, and no one has time to read them, so why try to write more?
At other times though, I remember how one flower in a meadow already full of flowers somehow adds to the general fireworks effect
as you get to the top of a hill in Colorado, say, in high summer and just look down at all that brimming color. I also try to convince myself
that the smallest note of the smallest instrument in the band, the triangle for instance, is important to the conductor
who stands there, pointing his finger in the direction of the percussions, demanding that one silvery ping. And I decide not to stop trying,
at least not for a while, though in truth I’d rather just sit here reading how someone else has been acquainted with the night already, and perfectly. ~Linda Pastan“Rereading Frost” from Queen of a Rainy Country.
I have been one acquainted with the night. I have walked out in rain—and back in rain. I have outwalked the furthest city light.
I have looked down the saddest city lane. I have passed by the watchman on his beat And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.
I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet When far away an interrupted cry Came over houses from another street,
But not to call me back or say good-bye; And further still at an unearthly height, One luminary clock against the sky
Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right. I have been one acquainted with the night. ~Robert Frost “Acquainted with the Night”
I want to write with quiet hands. I want to write while crossing the fields that are fresh with daisies and everlasting and the ordinary grass. I want to make poems while thinking of the bread of heaven and the cup of astonishment; let them be
songs in which nothing is neglected, not a hope, not a promise. I want to make poems that look into the earth and the heavens and see the unseeable. I want them to honor both the heart of faith, and the light of the world; the gladness that says, without any words, everything. ~Mary Oliver “Everything”from New and Selected Poems: Volume Two
Some of you ask why I post poems by other authors when I could be writing more original work myself.
My answer, like poet Linda Pastan above is:
Sometimes I think all the best poems have been written already, and no one has time to read them, so why try to write more?
Yet, like Linda, I’ve decided not to stop trying. Since I’ve committed myself to being here every day to share something that may help me and someone else breathe in the fragrance of words and the world – I try to be the necessary and eloquent silver ping when the Conductor points at me at precisely the right moment in time.
More often, I’m the “clang” creating a ruckus ringing the farm triangle bringing in everyone from all over the barnyard for lunch.
Even when my words feel broken, or I say again what another has already said yet I feel it bears emphasis — I do try to write with quiet hands, in reverence and awe for what unseeable, unspeakable gifts God has granted us all.
I try to celebrate by illuminating words and pictures with a unique “ping” all of my own.
AI image created for this post
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
Barnstorming 