All the art of living lies in a fine mingling of letting go and holding on. ~Henry Ellis
The trees are undressing, and fling in many places— On the gray road, the roof, the window-sill— Their radiant robes and ribbons and yellow laces; A leaf each second so is flung at will, Here, there, another and another, still and still.
A spider’s web has caught one while downcoming, That stays there dangling when the rest pass on; Like a suspended criminal hangs he, mumming In golden garb, while one yet green, high yon, Trembles, as fearing such a fate for himself anon. ~Thomas Hardy “Last Week in October”
Watching a dry leaf twirl in the wind, its stem still
tethered to the tree, I think of how stubborn I’ve been,
refusing to let go of what was never intended for me,
not knowing something better was waiting if I’d let myself lift
The builder who first bridged Niagara’s gorge, Before he swung his cable, shore to shore, Sent out across the gulf his venturing kite Bearing a slender cord for unseen hands To grasp upon the further cliff and draw A greater cord, and then a greater yet; Till at the last across the chasm swung The cable then the mighty bridge in air! So we may send our little timid thought Across the void, out to God’s reaching hands— Send out our love and faith to thread the deep— Thought after thought until the little cord Has greatened to a chain no chance can break, And we are anchored to the Infinite! ~Edwin Markham “Anchored to the Infinite”
I feel like the only one who failed to fall from the tree along with all the others, caught in an invisible silken strand, dangling suspended and helpless, twisting and turning in the storms of winter.
I wish I had the faith to trust in this slender thread bridging the chasm between heaven and earth, assured rescue will come as others pass me by ~~ another and another, still and still.
So I remain suspended in the void, anchored to God’s reaching hands.
I’ll never again be let go.
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Deep midwinter, the dark center of the year, Wake, O earth, awake, Out of the hills a star appears, Here lies the way for pilgrim kings, Three magi on an ancient path, Black hours begin their journeyings.
Their star has risen in our hearts, Empty thrones, abandoning fears, Out on the hills their journey starts, In dazzling darkness God appears. ~Judith Bingham “Epiphany”
It might have been just someone else’s story, Some chosen people get a special king. We leave them to their own peculiar glory, We don’t belong, it doesn’t mean a thing. But when these three arrive they bring us with them, Gentiles like us, their wisdom might be ours; A steady step that finds an inner rhythm, A pilgrim’s eye that sees beyond the stars. They did not know his name but still they sought him, They came from otherwhere but still they found; In temples they found those who sold and bought him, But in the filthy stable, hallowed ground. Their courage gives our questing hearts a voice To seek, to find, to worship, to rejoice. ~Malcolm Guite “Epiphany”
…the scent of frankincense and myrrh arrives on the wind, and I long to breathe deeply, to divine its trail. But I know their uses and cannot bring myself to breathe deeply enough to know whether what comes is the fragrant welcoming of birth or simply covers the stench of death. These hands coming toward me, is it swaddling they carry or shroud? ~Jan Richardson from Night Visions –searching the shadows of Advent and Christmas
Unclench your fists Hold out your hands. Take mine. Let us hold each other. Thus is his Glory Manifest. ~Madeleine L’Engle “Epiphany” from the Weather of the Heart
All this was a long time ago, I remember, And I would do it again, but set down This set down This: were we led all that way for Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death, But had thought they were different; this Birth was Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death. ~T.S. Eliot from “Journey of the Magi”
The Christmas season is a wrap, put away for another year. However, our hearts are not so easily boxed up and stored as the lights and decorations and ornaments of the season.
Our troubles and concerns go on; our frailty a daily reality. We can be distracted with holidays for a few weeks, but our time here slips away ever more quickly.
The Christmas story is not just about light and birth and joy to the world. It is about how swaddling clothes became a shroud that wrapped Him tight. There is not one without the other.
God came to be with us; Delivered so He could deliver. Planted on and in the earth. Born so He could die in our place To leave the linen strips behind, neatly folded.
Christmas: a dazzling unwrapping of glory to free us from darkness. Epiphany: the Seed of His Spirit takes root in our hearts.
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(Jesus said) I have come to bring fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! Luke 12:49
Earth’s crammed with heaven, and every common bush afire with God ~Elizabeth Barrett Browning from “Aurora Leigh”
It is difficult to undo our own damage… It is hard to desecrate a grove and change your mind. The very holy mountains are keeping mum. We doused the burning bush and cannot rekindle it; we are lighting matches in vain under every green tree. ~Annie Dillard from Teaching a Stone to Talk
Nine Kinds of Blindness 1. The one where your eyes do not work to see anything. 2. The one where your eyes do not work to see everything. 3. The one where your eyes work, but you cannot see what you have never seen before. 4. The one where your eyes work but you cannot see what is inconvenient. 5. The one where your eyes work but someone is keeping you from using them. 6. The one where your eyes work but you are angry. 7. The one where your eyes work but you are afraid. 8. The one where your eyes work but there is no light. 9. The one where your eyes work but there is nothing but light. ~Paul Pastor “Nine Kinds of Blindness” from Bower Lodge
I need to turn aside and look, blinded as I am, to see, as if for the first and last time, the kindled fire that illuminates even the darkest day and never dies away.
We are invited, by no less than God Himself, through the original burning bush that is never consumed to shed our shoes, to walk barefoot and vulnerable, and approach the bright and burning dawn, even when it is the darkest midnight, even when it is a babe in a manger who kindles a fire in each one of us.
Only then, only then can I say: “Here I am! Consume me!”
My 2025 Advent theme: On the threshold between day and night
On that day there will be neither sunlight nor cold, frosty darkness. It will be a unique day—a day known only to the Lord— with no distinction between day and night. When evening comes, there will be light. Zechariah 14:6-7
So once in Israel love came to us incarnate, stood in the doorway between two worlds, and we were all afraid. ~Annie Dillard in Teaching a Stone to Talk
Within our darkest night, you kindle the fire that never dies away, that never dies away. Within our darkest night, you kindle the fire that never dies away, that never dies away. ~Taize
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Everyone suddenly burst out singing; And I was filled with such delight As prisoned birds must find in freedom, Winging wildly across the white Orchards and dark-green fields; on—on—and out of sight.
Everyone’s voice was suddenly lifted; And beauty came like the setting sun: My heart was shaken with tears; and horror Drifted away. . . O, but Everyone Was a bird; and the song was wordless; the singing will never be done. ~Siegried Sassoon “Everyone Sang”
“Hope” is the thing with feathers – That perches in the soul – And sings the tune without the words – And never stops – at all –
And sweetest – in the Gale – is heard – And sore must be the storm – That could abash the little Bird That kept so many warm –
I’ve heard it in the chillest land – And on the strangest Sea – Yet – never – in Extremity, It asked a crumb – of me. ~Emily Dickinson “Hope is the thing with feathers”
When it feels like the world is rent in two, and the gulf into which we topple too wide and dark to climb without help, we can look to the sky and see the birds’ stitching and hear their wordless singing, the careful caring line of connection pulling us out of a hopeless hole, startled and grateful to be made whole. Hope borne on feathered wings: may we fly threaded and knitted to one another, singing.
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When you go home tell them of us and say – “For your tomorrow we gave our today” ~John Maxwell Edmonds from “The Kohima Epitaph”
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old: Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. At the going down of the sun and in the morning We will remember them. ~Lawrence Binyon from “For the Fallen” (1914)
We are the Dead. Short days ago We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, Loved and were loved, and now we lie In Flanders fields. ~LtCol (Dr.) John McCrae from “In Flanders Fields”
We who are left, how shall we look again Happily on the sun, or feel the rain, Without remembering how they who went Ungrudgingly, and spent Their all for us, loved, too, the sun and rain?
A bird upon the rain-wet lilac sings — But we, how shall we turn to little things And listen to the birds and winds and streams Made holy by their dreams, Nor feel the heartbreak in the heart of things? ~Wilfred Wilson Gibson “A Lament”
November pierces with its bleak remembrance Of all the bitterness and waste of war. Our silence tries but fails to make a semblance Of that lost peace they thought worth fighting for. Our silence seethes instead with wraiths and whispers, And all the restless rumour of new wars, The shells are falling all around our vespers, No moment is unscarred, there is no pause, In every instant bloodied innocence Falls to the weary earth ,and whilst we stand Quiescence ends again in acquiescence, And Abel’s blood still cries in every land One silence only might redeem that blood Only the silence of a dying God. ~Malcolm Guite “Silence: a Sonnet for Remembrance Day”
To our military veterans here and abroad – in deep appreciation and gratitude– for the freedoms you have defended on behalf of us all:
No one is left untouched and unscarred in the bitterness of war.
My father was one of the fortunate ones who came home, returning to a quiet farm life after three years serving in the Pacific with the Marines Corp from 1942 to 1945. Hundreds of thousands of his colleagues didn’t come home, dying on beaches and battlefields. Tens of thousands more came home forever marked, through physical or psychological injury, by the experience of war and witness of death and mayhem all around them.
No matter how one views wars our nation has fought and may be obligated to fight in the future, we must support and care for the men and women who have made, on our behalf, the commitment and sacrifice to be on the front line for freedom’s sake.
Even our God died so we could stop fighting each other (and Him). What a waste we have not stopped to listen and understand His sacrifice enough to finally lay down our weapons against one another forever.
In the quiet misty morning When the moon has gone to bed When the sparrows stop their singing And the sky is clear and red When the summer ceased it’s gleaming When the corn is past its prime When adventures lost its meaning I’ll be homeward-bound in time ~Marta Keen from “Homeward Bound”
On Halloween day in 1985, I packed up a roll-up mattress pad, grabbed one lonely pumpkin from our small garden, locked our rental house door for the last time, then climbed in my car to head two hours north out of Seattle.
I don’t recall looking back in the rear view mirror at the skyline after nine years living in the city. My husband had moved to Whatcom County two months earlier to start his new job. I had stayed behind to wrap up my Group Health family practice in the Rainier Valley of central Seattle.
I was leaving the city for our new rural home and a very uncertain professional future.
I knew two things for sure: I was finally several months pregnant after a miscarriage and two years of trying to conceive, so our family was on its way, and we were going to live in our own house with a few acres and a barn.
A real (sort of) starter farm and starter family, a dream we both shared. Our home sits in the midst of woods and corn fields, with deer strolling through the fields at dawn, coyotes howling at night, Canadian geese and trumpeter swans calling from overhead and salmon thriving in nearby streams. The snowy Cascades greet us in the morning to the east, the Canadian Coastal range majestic to the north and not far to the west, the Salish Sea/Puget Sound.
Since it wouldn’t be a farm without animals, I stopped at the first pet store I drove past and found two tortoise shell calico kitten sisters peering up at me, just waiting for new adventures in farmland. Their box was packed into the one spot left beside me in my little Mazda.
With that simple commitment to raise and nurture those kittens alongside the life growing inside me, life seemed very complete.
I will never forget the freedom I felt on that drive north. The highway seemed more open, the fall colors more vibrant, the wind more energizing, our baby kicking my belly, the kittens mewing from their box. There seemed so much potential even though I had just left behind the greatest family practice found in any urban setting (at the time, it was the most ethnically diverse zip code in the United States) with patients from all over the world: alongside the multi-racial inner city population living in subsidized housing developments, my patients included Muslim immigrants from the Middle East and Indonesia, Orthodox Jews, Italian Catholics, and refugees from Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam.
I will never know so much variety of ethnic background and perspective again. If I could have packed them all into my little car and driven them north with me, I would have.
Despite what I was leaving behind, there was certainly a feeling of freedom that rainy Halloween day as the big city disappeared in the rear view mirror.
No longer would I sit captive in freeway rush-hour bumper to bumper traffic jams. I traded that for a new rural commute winding through farm fields while watching eagles fly overhead. I could become part of a community in a way I never could manage in the city, visiting with friends at the grocery store, playing piano and teaching Sunday School at church and serving on various community boards.
After the new kittens, dubbed Nutmeg and Oregano, arrived on our farm, we added even more diversity: a Belgian Tervuren dog Tango, a Haflinger horse Greta, Toggenburg goats Tamsin and her kids, a few Toulouse geese, Araucana chickens, Fiona the Scottish Highland cow, then another Haflinger Hans and another, Tamara. I worked as a fill-in doctor in four different clinics before our first baby was born, then settled into part-time practice in several different clinics for most of my career.
With those new commitments, life was fulfilling and busy – we soon added a little brother and seven years later, a sister. Then it felt like our family was complete.
Forty years later, our children have grown and gone to homes of their own, all married to wonderful spouses, raising six delightful children for us to lavish love on.
Somehow life now feels even more complete.
A few cats, a Cardigan Corgi, and three ponies still live at the farm with us. Now retired from our professional lives “in town”, we enjoy the freedom of slower and quieter days, nurtured and nurturing.
It all started October 31, 1985 with two orange and black kittens and a pumpkin sitting beside me in a little Mazda, my husband awaiting my homecoming 100 miles north. Now, forty years later, we celebrate this Halloween anniversary of farm and family, still pregnant with the possibility that life is never truly complete when there is always a new day just around the corner.
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October’s bellowing anger breaks and cleaves The bronzed battalions of the stricken wood In whose lament I hear a voice that grieves For battle’s fruitless harvest, and the feud Of outraged men. Their lives are like the leaves Scattered in flocks of ruin, tossed and blown Along the westering furnace flaring red. O martyred youth and manhood overthrown, The burden of your wrongs is on my head. ~Siegfried Sassoon “Autumn”(about his time in the trenches in WWI)
Over more than a century, we have learned little about how to resolve the bellows of outraged men.
The fruitless harvest of battle, counting up each violent death, as warships gather for unsanctioned war games.
Lament the tossing and blowing of lives like October leaves, in a show of force as transient and arbitrary as the wind, merely to make a fruitless point…
to what end are the feuds of angry men?
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Now constantly there is the sound, quieter than rain, of the leaves falling.
Under their loosening bright gold, the sycamore limbs bleach whiter.
Now the only flowers are beeweed and aster, spray of their white and lavender over the brown leaves.
The calling of a crow sounds Loud — landmark — now that the life of summer falls silent, and the nights grow. ~Wendell Berry “October 10” from New Collected Poems.
Know’st thou not at the fall of the leaf How the heart feels a languid grief Laid on it for a covering, And how sleep seems a goodly thing In Autumn at the fall of the leaf?
And how the swift beat of the brain Falters because it is in vain, In Autumn at the fall of the leaf Knowest thou not? and how the chief Of joys seems — not to suffer pain?
Know’st thou not at the fall of the leaf How the soul feels like a dried sheaf Bound up at length for harvesting, And how death seems a comely thing In Autumn at the fall of the leaf? ~Dante Rossetti “Autumn Song”
If I were a color, I am green, turning to gold, turning to bronze, becoming dust.
If I were a sound, I patter like raindrops and children’s feet. If I were a smell, I would be dry earth soaking up rain. If I were a touch, I am a leaf letting go, landing softly. If I were a taste, I would be warm and bittersweet. If I were a season, I am the wistful goodbye hug of autumn.
But I am none of these, being enough for now; this is enough for now.
Singing in the falling leaves, I will come rejoicing, Singing in the leaves.
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It happens in an instant. My grandma used to say someone is walking on your grave.
It’s that moment when your life is suddenly strange to you as someone else’s coat
you have slipped on at a party by accident, and it is far too big or too tight for you.
Your life feels awkward, ill fitting. You remember why you came into this kitchen, but you
feel you don’t belong here. It scares you in a remote numb way. You fear that you—
whatever you means, this mind, this entity stuck into a name like mercury dropped into water—
have lost the ability to enter your self, a key that no longer works. Perhaps you will be locked
out here forever peering in at your body, if that self is really what you are. If you are at all. ~Marge Piercy “Dislocation” from The Crooked Inheritance
This Self—Hispanic, Latin, blond, black, olive-skinned, native and immigrant— dispersed far and wide was here with everyone, yesterday and again today;
I am large, I contain multitudes. They will not manage to deny me or ignore me or declare me undocumented: I am written in you, in all, as all are in me… ~Luis Alberto Ambroggio from We Are All Whitman: #2:Song of/to/My/Your/Self
Each of us a work of art, heaven-sent, called to reflect on our own creation, placed in this world to feel grace when we stumble, unsure where we are to go, who we are meant to be, as if we don’t really belong here, a feeling of jamais vu when the familiar becomes strange.
This is who we are: called to act out that grace – to praise goodness, to protest evil, to grapple with reality, to respond to injustice, to change the direction we’re heading fearing who we become if we don’t .
A traditional Catalan Song from Pablo Casals, a symbol of peace and freedom worldwide
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The rain falls and falls cool, bottomless, and prehistoric falls like night — not an ablution not a baptism just a small reason to remember all we know of Heaven to remember we are still here with our love songs and our wars…
Here too in the wet grass half a shell of a robin’s egg shimmers blue as a newborn star fragile as a world. ~Maria Popova from “Spell Against Indifference”
…I had sat down to rest with my back against a stump. Through accident I was concealed from the glade, although I could see into it perfectly.
The sun was warm there, and the murmurs of forest life blurred softly away into my sleep. When I awoke, dimly aware of some commotion and outcry in the clearing, the light was slanting down through the pines in such a way that the glade was lit like some vast cathedral. I could see the dust motes of wood pollen in the long shaft of light, and there on the extended branch sat an enormous raven with a red and squirming nestling in his beak.
The sound that awoke me was the outraged cries of the nestling’s parents, who flew helplessly in circles about the clearing. The sleek black monster was indifferent to them. He gulped, whetted his beak on the dead branch a moment, and sat still. Up to that point the little tragedy had followed the usual pattern.
But suddenly, out of all that area of woodland, a soft sound of complaint began to rise. Into the glade fluttered small birds of half a dozen varieties drawn by the anguished outcries of the tiny parents.
No one dared to attack the raven. But they cried there in some instinctive common misery, the bereaved and the unbereaved. The glade filled with their soft rustling and their cries. They fluttered as though to point their wings at the murderer. There was a dim intangible ethic he had violated, that they knew. He was a bird of death.
And he, the murderer, the black bird at the heart of life, sat on there, glistening in the common light, formidable, unmoving, unperturbed, untouchable.
The sighing died. It was then I saw the judgment. It was the judgment of life against death. I will never see it again so forcefully presented. I will never hear it again in notes so tragically prolonged.
For in the midst of protest, they forgot the violence.
There, in that clearing, the crystal note of a song sparrow lifted hesitantly in the hush. And finally, after painful fluttering, another took the song, and then another, the song passing from one bird to another, doubtfully at first, as though some evil thing were being slowly forgotten. Till suddenly they took heart and sang from many throats joyously together as birds are known to sing.
They sang because life is sweet and sunlight beautiful. They sang under the brooding shadow of the raven. In simple truth they had forgotten the raven, for they were the singers of life, and not of death. ~Loren Eiseley from The Star Thrower
Each of us at times are as vulnerable as a nestling, just hatched. The world is full of those who would eat us for lunch and do.
The world is also full of those who grieve and lament the violence that surrounds us, the tragedy of lives lost, the unending wars, the bullies and the bullied.
But the bird of death does not have the final word. He will soon be forgotten, forever sidelined as we reject what he and others like him represent.
Our cries of lament, our protests of violence transform into a celebration of life – we do not abandon all we have lost, but no longer allow any more to be stolen from us.
Only then may grief’s shadow be overwhelmed by joy.
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