Category: calm

The Lines Went Flat…

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First of all, we’ve been using the wrong word all these years. It means without rhythm. The only arrhythmia is asystole, I tell my students. That’s the flat line accompanied by the clang of alarms in all the television dramas. There’s not much you can do about it; the patient is dead and usually stays dead. The correct word to describe all the ways a heart can dance and die is dysrhythmia, which means a disordered rhythm. There’s the soldiered march of ventricular tachycardia or the pirouette twirl of Torsades. Ventricular fibrillation simply quivers on the monitor. When these rhythms occur, the patient is pulseless and sometimes you give magnesium, usually shock, and always pump their chest to the beat of whatever song lives in your head. Once I was speaking with a man who stopped in the middle of a word, and I watched the rhythm on the monitor change. When I didn’t feel a pulse, I started CPR, and then we placed the paddles on his chest and shouted, Clear, just like in the movies. And it worked. He opened his eyes and looked at me and said, I don’t feel good. And I said, It’s okay, I’m going to get you better and smoothed the fair from his forehead, but then the alarms blared and the V tach returned, and we did it all over again—the drugs and compressions and shocks, and his eyes opened one more time and he mouthed I’m scared around the tube I’d placed in his throat, and I said, I’m here with you. But that was the last time he said anything. We didn’t stop for thirty minutes or more. He’d waved to his family when the medics loaded him into the ambulance with just a little chest pain, so they were shocked when I entered the small consult room to tell them he had died. His teenage son collapsed and landed on his knees and punched the ground and said, But we were fighting, and I think the last thing I said was I hate you.

All I’m trying to say is that it’s really important to use the right words.
~Rachel Mallalieu “A Brief History of Arrhythmia” from the journal PEMBROKE MAGAZINE

If you break
break going out not in.
How you live your life I don’t care
but I’ll sell my arms for you,
hold your secrets for ever.

If I speak of death
which you fear now, greatly,
it is without answers,
except that each
one we know is
in our blood.
Don’t recall graves.
Memory is permanent.
~Michael Ondaatje from “To a Sad Daughter”

I was still a kid
interning at State
he reminisces late in the meal—
It was a young red-headed woman
looked like my sister
when the lines went flat
I fell apart
shook
like a car with a broken axle
Went to the head surgeon
a fatherly man
Boy, he said, you got to fill a graveyard
before you know this business
and you just did row one, plot one.
~Alicia Suskin Ostriker, “The Surgeon” from The Book of Seventy

Like many other medical professionals who have worked in the trenches of frontline healthcare, I too am fascinated by the emergency room streaming drama “The Pitt.”

At first, I couldn’t watch without feeling I too should be working at the bedside alongside the ER team, trying my best to do the task assigned to me, responding to each new instruction, grateful when things go as hoped, crushed when nothing helps and the patient is lost.

The Pitt is the newest addition to the canon of medical dramas and feels like the real thing. All the technology is there, the medical terminology and procedures are real, in addition to the fraught interaction of professionals under stress. Most of all, it feels real because it shows patients and their families trying to cope with the worst day of their lives.

And medical miracles do happen, on TV and in real life.

Recently, a church friend was rescued in a drowning event, was unconscious on a ventilator for nearly a week, with much uncertainty about how much damage his brain had endured while under water. Several weeks later, he is now home, dealing with some memory gaps and muscle weakness, but improving strength daily.

Last week, I had the privilege of meeting a middle-aged pastor who was saved a few weeks ago when his heart stopped in his sleep. His wife started CPR, paramedics shocked his heart in the field more than once, he was stabilized in the ER, unconscious on a ventilator, cooled down to a lower body temperature to preserve his brain function.

His care team, along with family and friends, watched and waited and prayed, uncertain what would be the rest of his story.

When he was warmed up 24 hours later, he woke up, able to breathe on his own. Other than no memory for those brief hours of unconsciousness, he is still himself – living with a new awareness of his vulnerability and an immense gratitude, now with an implanted defibrillator in his chest.

The right words after being brought back from the dead?
The right words when we never know if they will be the last words we utter or the last we will ever hear?

I know what they would be for me. I carry them in my heart…

What is Left Undone Will Wait

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To rest before the sheaves are bound,
toss the scythes aside, bare the feet and sink
into the nearest haystack, release
the undone task and consent to sleep
while the brightest hour burns an arc
across its stretch of sky:
this is the body’s prayer, mid-day angelus
whispered in mingled breath while the limbs
stretch in thanksgiving and the body turns
toward the beloved.

This is the prayer of trust:
what’s left undone will wait. The unattended
child, the uncut acre, cracked wheel, broken
fence that are occupations of the waking mind
soften into shadow in the semi-darkness
of dream. All shall be well. Little depends on us.
The turning world is held and borne in love.
We give good measure in our toil and, meet and right,
obey the body when it calls us to rest.
~Marilyn Chandler McEntyre “Noon Rest (after Millet: 1890)” from “The Color of Light: Poems on Van Gogh’s Late Paintings”

Van Gogh: Noon Rest at Musée d’Orsay, Paris
Lying Man in Meijer Gardens

When you lie down, you will not be afraid;
when you lie down, your sleep will be sweet.
Proverbs 3:24

Thanks to retirement, I have learned to love mid-day naps.

After forty-plus years of 10 hour work days, then awakened with calls at night, I managed to semi-thrive on minimal sleep.

Not any more.

In my new reality, I have discovered that it is possible to leave things undone, something that was never possible during doctoring and patient care. Now it is okay to set a task aside and think about it later. All this hasn’t come naturally to me, but I’m learning.

So it is time to kick off my shoes, pull a quilt up to my chin and close my eyes, just for a little while.

All will be well. The world keeps turning, even when I’m not the one pedaling to keep it going.

Ready to Listen

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Every morning I sit across from you
at the same small table,
the sun all over the breakfast things—
curve of a blue-and-white pitcher,
a dish of berries—
me in a sweatshirt or robe,
you invisible.

Most days, we are suspended
over a deep pool of silence.
I stare straight through you
or look out the window at the garden,
the powerful sky,
a cloud passing behind a tree.

There is no need to pass the toast,
the pot of jam,
or pour you a cup of tea,
and I can hide behind the paper,
rotate in its drum of calamitous news.

But some days I may notice
a little door swinging open
in the morning air,
and maybe the tea leaves
of some dream will be stuck
to the china slope of the hour—
then I will lean forward,
elbows on the table,
with something to tell you,
and you look up, as always,
your spoon dripping milk, ready to listen.
~Billy Collins “A Portrait of the Reader With a Bowl of Cereal” from Picnic, Lightning

The smell of that buttered toast simply spoke to Toad,
and with no uncertain voice;
talked of warm kitchens,
of breakfasts on bright frosty mornings,
of cozy parlour firesides on winter evenings,
when one’s ramble was over
and slippered feet were propped on the fender;
of the purring of contented cats,
and the twitter of sleepy canaries.
~Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows

Some of what we do, we do
to make things happen,
the alarm to wake us up, the coffee to perc,
the car to start.

The rest of what we do, we do
trying to keep something from doing something
the skin from aging, the hoe from rusting,
the truth from getting out.

With yes and no like the poles of a battery
powering our passage through the days,
we move, as we call it, forward,
wanting to be wanted,
wanting not to lose the rain forest,
wanting the water to boil,
wanting not to have cancer,
wanting to be home by dark,
wanting not to run out of gas,

as each of us wants the other
watching at the end,
as both want not to leave the other alone,
as wanting to love beyond this meat and bone,
we gaze across breakfast and pretend.
~Miller Williams “Love Poem with Toast” from Some Jazz a While: Collected Poems

“Do you remember the Shire, Mr. Frodo? It’ll be spring soon. And the orchards will be in blossom. And the birds will be nesting in the hazel thicket. And they’ll be sowing the summer barley in the lower fields… and eating the first of the strawberries with cream. Do you remember the taste of strawberries?”
―  J.R.R. Tolkien from Lord of the Rings

In our despairing moments,
we hold on to memories most precious to us,
recalling what makes each moment,
indeed life itself, special and worthwhile.

It can be something so seemingly simple
becoming cherished and retrievable–
the aroma of cinnamon in a warm kitchen,
the splash of colors in a carefully tended garden spot,
the cooing of mourning doves as light begins to dawn,
the velvety soft of a newborn foal’s fur,
the embrace of welcoming arms.

This morning, dear reader,
I lean forward,
elbows on the table,
with something to tell you,
and you look up, as always,
in the middle of whatever you are doing,
ready to listen.

That is no small thing. Thank you.

…That, I Could Do

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“Be a lotus in the pond,” she said, “opening
slowly, no single energy tugging
against another but peacefully,
all together.”

I couldn’t even touch my toes.
“Feel your quadriceps stretching?” she asked.
Well, something was certainly stretching.

Standing impressively upright, she
raised one leg and placed it against
the other, then lifted her arms and
shook her hands like leaves. “Be a tree,” she said.

I lay on the floor, exhausted.
But to be a lotus in the pond
opening slowly, and very slowly rising–
that I could do.
Mary Oliver “First Yoga Lesson” from Blue Horses

After dinner, I try to digest
kale and cauliflower in my longing
to live longer, and a root-beer float
in case my world ends tomorrow.

I play the gamble game with exercise
and diet, reminded daily by obituaries
featuring people younger than me:
the impossible becoming likely.

I want to go out full, embraced by my life,
the grand quilt of being here. Yet memories
are remnants, and come one patch at a time.
And like moments, most fade unnoticed.

After a storm, I take a walk.
At the jasmine vine by my front door,
a raindrop, suspended on a stem, stops me.
What I want, what I can have, merge.
~Jeanie Greensfelder “What I Want and What I Can Have”  from I Got What I Came For

In spring there’s hope,
in fall the exquisite, necessary diminishing,
in winter I am as sleepy
as any beast in its leafy cave,
but in summer there is
everywhere the luminous sprawl of gifts,
the hospitality of the Lord
and my inadequate answers as
I row my beautiful, temporary body
through this water-lily world.
~Mary Oliver from “Six Recognitions of the Lord”

It is hard to accept my temporary status on this earth,
until face to face with the compounding limitations of aging.

Perhaps a life-time guarantee of flexibility would be lovely,
depending on the length of the lifetime.
But forget balancing like a contorted tree waving in the breeze.
Even in my prime, I never could manage it without tipping over.

And so I float, slowly opening, like a bouyant lily pad.
That I can do…

Even if I am slower to rise than I used to be, I am blessed
by the immense gift of the Lord’s hospitality, as long as I’m here.

Quietly Write Something Down…

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At the gate, I sit in a row of blue seats
with the possible company of my death,
this sprawling miscellany of people—
carry-on bags and paperbacks—

that could be gathered in a flash
into a band of pilgrims on the last open road.
Not that I think
if our plane crumpled into a mountain

we would all ascend together,
holding hands like a ring of skydivers,
into a sudden gasp of brightness,
or that there would be some common place

for us to reunite to jubilize the moment,
some spaceless, pillarless Greece
where we could, at the count of three,
toss our ashes into the sunny air.

It’s just that the way that man has his briefcase
so carefully arranged,
the way that girl is cooling her tea,
and the flow of the comb that woman

passes through her daughter’s hair . . .
and when you consider the altitude,
the secret parts of the engines,
and all the hard water and the deep canyons below . . .

well, I just think it would be good if one of us
maybe stood up and said a few words,
or, so as not to involve the police,
at least quietly wrote something down.
~Billy Collins “Passengers”

Tell us of a bypassed heart beating in 12C,
how the woman holds a stranger’s hand
to the battery sewn in beneath her collarbone,
and says feel this. Tell us of the man’s ear
listening across the aisle, hugging itself,
a fist long since blistered by blaze.
Outside, morning sun buckling up.
Inside, twitching bonesacks of bat, birdsong
erupting as light cracks the far jungle canopy.
Ten thousand feet below ours, a grey cat
tongues the morning’s butter left out to soft.
Last night we broke open the sweet folds
around two paper fortunes. One said variety.
One said caution. The woman in 12C would hold that
her heart needs its hidden spark, but the man shows
how some live the rest of their lives with half a face
remembering its before expression. Who was it
that said our souls know one another
by smell, like horses?
~Jenny Browne “Love Letter to a Stranger”

These days, I spend as little time as possible in airports and airplanes among strangers. As an introvert who prefers to read quietly and stay securely in my shell, I politely converse with the people next to me but prefer a book and silence.

It is always a wonder to me when seat partners across from me or in front of me will spend the trip finding out all about each other’s lives, destinations and feelings about the state of the world. 

Even so, like Billy Collins in his poem, I’m struck by the affinity I feel for my fellow passengers as we embark on a trip by air – so different from each of us independently traveling down a highway in our individual vehicles.

In an airplane, our fates are lashed together. What happens to one will happen to all.

Because we are bound together – sometimes randomly, sometimes not – I do believe that we should try to find kindred and sympathetic souls in a mysterious way when we are thrust among strangers.

We are created for connection, whether by smell or sight or spirit.

And perhaps, scrolling through the internet, as we all do at times, you ran across this Barnstorming blog…not expecting a connection to happen.

And here we are –connected because I wrote something quietly down.
One never knows how we may become bound together.

Remembering Who I Am

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All day I try to say nothing but thank you,
breathe the syllables in and out with every step I
take through the rooms of my house and outside into
a profusion of shaggy-headed dandelions in the garden
where the tulips’ black stamens shake in their crimson cups.

I am saying thank you, yes, to this burgeoning spring
and to the cold wind of its changes. Gratitude comes easy
after a hot shower, when my loosened muscles work,
when eyes and mind begin to clear and even unruly
hair combs into place.

Dialogue with the invisible can go on every minute,
and with surprising gaiety I am saying thank you as I
remember who I am, a woman learning to praise
something as small as dandelion petals floating on the
steaming surface of this bowl of vegetable soup,
my happy, savoring tongue.
~Jeanne Lohmann “To Say Nothing But Thank You”

Returned from long travel, I sit
in the familiar, sun-streaked pew, waiting
for the bread and wine of holy Communion.
The old comfort does not rise in me, only
apathy and bafflement.

What shall we do about this?” I asked
my God…
~Jane Kenyon from “Woman, Why Are You Weeping?”

Let the light of late afternoon
shine through chinks in the barn, moving
up the bales as the sun moves down.

Let the cricket take up chafing
as a woman takes up her needles
and her yarn. Let evening come.

Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned
in long grass. Let the stars appear
and the moon disclose her silver horn.

Let the fox go back to its sandy den.
Let the wind die down. Let the shed
go black inside. Let evening come.

To the bottle in the ditch, to the scoop
in the oats, to air in the lung
let evening come.

Let it come, as it will, and don’t
be afraid. God does not leave us
comfortless, so let evening come.
~Jane Kenyon “Let Evening Come”

We resist nightfall in our lives.

We fear the dark of violence and threats of war,
the suffering of innocent people who are harmed directly,
and those harmed by lack of resources
which go to bomb-making and dropping.

I wish I could remain forever sunshiny, vital and irreplaceable, living each moment with the energy I feel at dawn.

Yet I know that the forward momentum of time
inevitably winds me down to twilight.

We are not alone in our need to catch our breath,
to be still and grateful for each little thing –
each petal, each taste, each sun ray illuminating the dark.

What shall we do about this? we ask our God.

We savor what we will, with gratitude, as evening comes.
There is no stopping it as
our lungs fill with the breath of God, our Creator.

We are not left comfortless.

Bring to Light the Mystery: Palms Before His Feet

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The next day the large crowd that had come to the feast heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem.  So they took branches of palm trees and went out to meet him, crying out, “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, even the King of Israel!” 
 And Jesus found a young donkey and sat on it, just as it is written,

 “Fear not, daughter of Zion;
behold, your king is coming,
    sitting on a donkey’s colt!”
John 12: 12-15

On the outskirts of Jerusalem
the donkey waited.
Not especially brave, or filled with understanding,
he stood and waited.

How horses, turned out into the meadow,
   leap with delight!
How doves, released from their cages,
   clatter away, splashed with sunlight.

But the donkey, tied to a tree as usual, waited.
Then he let himself be led away.
Then he let the stranger mount.

Never had he seen such crowds!
And I wonder if he at all imagined what was to happen.
Still, he was what he had always been: small, dark, obedient.

I hope, finally, he felt brave.
I hope, finally, he loved the man who rode so lightly upon him,
as he lifted one dusty hoof and stepped, as he had to, forward.
~Mary Oliver “The Poet thinks about the donkey” from her book Thirst.

photo by Anna Blake

With monstrous head and sickening cry
And ears like errant wings…

The tattered outlaw of the earth,
Of ancient crooked will;
Starve, scourge, deride me: I am dumb,
I keep my secret still.

Fools! For I also had my hour;
One far fierce hour and sweet:
There was a shout about my ears,
And palms before my feet.
G. K. Chesterton from “The Donkey”

photo by Anna Blake, Infinity Farm

Palm Sunday is a day of dissonance and dichotomy in the church year, very much like the donkey who figured as a central character that day. 

Sadly, a donkey gets no respect, then or now – for his plain and awkward hairy looks, for his loud and inharmonious voice, for his apparent lack of strength — yet he was the chosen mode of transportation for an unlikely King riding to His death.

There was a motley parade to Jerusalem:
cloaks and palms at the feet of the donkey bearing the Son of God, disorderly shouts of adoration and blessings,
the rebuke of the Pharisees to quiet the people.

His response was “even the stones will cry out” about what is to come.

But the welcoming crowd waving palm branches, shouting sweet hosannas and laying down their cloaks did not understand the fierce transformation to come, did not know within days they would be a mob shouting words of derision and rejection and condemnation.

The donkey knew because he had been derided, rejected and condemned himself, yet still kept serving. Just as he was given voice and understanding centuries before to protect Balaam from going the wrong way, he could have opened his mouth to tell them, suffering beatings for his effort. 

Instead, just as he bore the unborn Jesus to Bethlehem,
stood over Him sleeping in the manger,
bore a mother and child all the way to Egypt to hide from Herod, 
the donkey keeps his secret well.  

Who, after all, would ever listen to a mere donkey?

Even so, we would do well to pay attention to this braying wisdom. 

The donkey knows – he’s a believer.

He bears the burden we have shirked. He treads with heavy heart over the palms and cloaks we lay down as meaningless symbols of honor. He is the ultimate servant to the Servant who laid aside His crown.

A day of dichotomy —
of honor and glory laid underfoot only to be stepped on, 
of blessings and praise turning to curses,
of the beginning of the end becoming a new beginning for us all.

And so Jesus wept, knowing all this. 
I suspect the donkey bearing Him wept as well, in his own simple, plain, and honest way, and I’m quite sure he kept it as his special secret.

Rejoice greatly, Daughter Zion! Shout, Daughter Jerusalem! See, your king comes to you, righteous and victorious, lowly and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.
Zechariah 9:9

I am reading slowly through the words in the Book of John over the next year alongside my church family. Once a week, I will invite you to “come and see” what those words might mean as we explore His promises together.

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…

Bring to Light the Mystery: To Discover the Secret of Life

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Days pass when I forget the mystery.
Problems insoluble and problems offering
their own ignored solutions
jostle for my attention…
And then once more the quiet mystery
is present to me, the throng’s clamor
recedes: the mystery
that there is anything, anything at all,
let alone cosmos, joy, memory, everything,
rather than void: and that, 0 Lord,
Creator, Hallowed one, You still,
hour by hour sustain it.
~Denise Levertov from Sands of the Well

Two girls discover
the secret of life
in a sudden line of
poetry.

I who don’t know the
secret wrote
the line. They
told me

(through a third person)
they had found it
but not what it was
not even

what line it was. No doubt
by now, more than a week
later, they have forgotten
the secret,

the line, the name of
the poem. I love them
for finding what
I can’t find,

and for loving me
for the line I wrote,
and for forgetting it
so that

a thousand times, till death
finds them, they may
discover it again, in other
lines

in other
happenings. And for
wanting to know it,
for

assuming there is
such a secret, yes,
for that
most of all.
~Denise Levertov “The Secret”
from O Taste and See

A voice cries: “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
Isaiah 40:3

This is the time of year when I tend to get off track,
lost and wandering in a wilderness of winter doldrums.

Winter clings like a chilly cement suit,
its deprivation gone on too long.
I yearn for respite.

I am bewildered by life much of the time. Anyone looking at these postings can see my struggle as I try each day to make this sad and suffering world a little bit better place.

I have little to offer a reader other than my own wrestling match with the mysteries we all face.

And so each day, I seek out a secret line, or a clue from the sky, or a voice crying out in the wilderness to prepare the way:

to look where I’m going,
to walk this path with a goal in mind,
to stop meandering meaninglessly,
searching for what actually lies right before my eyes.

My path, if straight and true, leads me to join others also harkening to the call, all of us searching for His Truth in the mess of this broken world.

I am not alone on this road. Nor are you. We travel together.

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…

Another sleepless night
I’m turning in my bed
Long before the red sun rises
In these early hours
I’m falling again
Into the river of my worries
When the river runs away
I find a shelter in your name

Jesus, only light on the shore
Only hope in the storm
Jesus, let me fly to your side
There I would hide, Jesus

Hear my anxious prayer
The beating of my heart
The pulse and the measure of my unbelief
Speak your words to me
Before I come apart
Help me believe in what I cannot see
Before the river runs away
I will call upon your name

Jesus, only light on the shore
Only hope in the storm
Jesus, let me fly to your side
There I would hide, Jesus
~Elaine Rubenstein, Fernando Ortega

Light after darkness, gain after loss,
Strength after weakness, crown after cross;
Sweet after bitter, hope after fears,
Home after wandering, praise after tears.
Alpha and Omega, beginning and the end,
He is making all things new.
Springs of living water shall wash away each tear,
He is making all things new. ​
Sight after mystery, sun after rain,
Joy after sorrow, peace after pain;
Near after distant, gleam after gloom,
Love after wandering, life after tomb.
~Frances Havergal

Bring to Light the Mystery: The Ineffable Effable

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I don’t know where prayers go,
or what they do.
Do cats pray, while they sleep
half-asleep in the sun?

Is a prayer a gift, or a petition,
or does it matter?
The sunflowers blaze, maybe that’s their way.
Maybe the cats are sound asleep. Maybe not.
~Mary Oliver from “I Happened to be Standing” from A Thousand Mornings

All that matters is to be at one with You, the living God;
to be a creature in Your house, O God of Life!
Like a cat asleep on a chair
at peace, in peace
at home, at home in the house of the living,
sleeping on the hearth, and yawning before the fire.

Sleeping on the hearth of the living world,
yawning at home before the fire of life
feeling the presence of You, the living God
like a great reassurance
a deep calm in the heart
a presence
as of a master, a mistress sitting on the board
in their own and greater being,
in the house of life.
~D.H. Lawrence “Pax”

When you notice a cat in profound meditation,
     The reason, I tell you, is always the same:
His mind is engaged in a rapt contemplation
     Of the thought, of the thought, of the thought of his name:
          His ineffable effable
          Effanineffable
Deep and inscrutable singular name.
~T.S. Eliot from The Naming of Cats

In peace I will both lie down and sleep;
for you alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety…
Psalm 4:8

Humanity longs for the peaceful untroubled rest promised in the Psalms.

Yet the world remains in turmoil; bombs continue to drop in countries at war, often killing the innocent. Homes, no longer a refuge of safety, become graves of destruction and devastation.

The Lord’s covenant with His people ensures the time will come when we shall rest in His house of life – in peace and security. His Son took on the brunt of the world’s hatred and violence, His sacrifice an atonement for the ongoing evil.

The Lord’s promise of peace and rest remains forever, His ineffable presence we long for, like a great reassurance, a deep calm in the heart…

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…

Bring to Light the Mystery: No Before or After

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Your dead shall live; their bodies shall rise.
You who dwell in the dust, awake and sing for joy!
For your dew is a dew of light…
Isaiah 26:19

Now in the blessed days of more and less
when the news about time is that each day
there is less of it I know none of that
as I walk out through the early garden
only the day and I are here with no
before or after and the dew looks up
without a number or a present age
~W. S. Merwin “Dew Light” from The Moon Before Morning

Dear March—Come in—
How glad I am—
I hoped for you before—
Put down your Hat—
You must have walked—
How out of Breath you are—
~Emily Dickinson

It seems I measure time by calendar page turns.

A “before” is turned under, covered up by what comes “after.”
Day follows day, week follows week, month follows month, for now…

What I am aware of is how diminishing time is, how I live more and more in the “after.”

Each new month seems to arrive “out of breath.”

So I look to the sky to watch the sun come and go,
as the moon rises and sets, knowing it will always be so.

The morning dew light blesses me now, no before or after.
It is sent by the Lord; I feel breathless as witness.

How can this not always be the way of things?

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…