Than these November skies Is no sky lovelier. The clouds are deep; Into their grey the subtle spies Of colour creep, Changing that high austerity to delight, Till ev’n the leaden interfolds are bright. And, where the cloud breaks, faint far azure peers Ere a thin flushing cloud again Shuts up that loveliness, or shares. The huge great clouds move slowly, gently, as Reluctant the quick sun should shine in vain, Holding in bright caprice their rain. And when of colours none, Not rose, nor amber, nor the scarce late green, Is truly seen, — In all the myriad grey, In silver height and dusky deep, remain The loveliest, Faint purple flushes of the unvanquished sun. ~John Freeman “November Skies”
November is usually a barren landscape peasant-bare and farmer-plain. Even so, this austere month is sometimes offset by a royal light show in the skies with golden and purple hues painted by the rising and setting sun.
The sky has subtlety and nuance, not unlike what we see in a beloved and aging face. Indeed, a remembered beauty becomes liminal beyond the myriad gray. The horizon’s folds, lines and wrinkles glow with lambent light and depth.
Despite these darkening days, our sun is never vanquished. May we also be illuminated like these incredible skies, our grayness enrobed in royal golds and purples.
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
When he had gone out, Jesus said, “Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him. If God is glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself, and glorify him at once. Little children, yet a little while I am with you. You will seek me, and just as I said to the Jews, so now I also say to you, ‘Where I am going you cannot come.’
“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
Simon Peter said to him, “Lord, where are you going?” Jesus answered him, “Where I am going you cannot follow me now, but you will follow afterward.”
Peter said to him, “Lord, why can I not follow you now? I will lay down my life for you.”
Jesus answered, “Will you lay down your life for me? Truly, truly, I say to you, the rooster will not crow till you have denied me three times. John 13: 31-38
Here is the source of every sacrament, The all-transforming presence of the Lord, Replenishing our every element Remaking us in his creative Word. For here the earth herself gives bread and wine, The air delights to bear his Spirit’s speech, The fire dances where the candles shine, The waters cleanse us with His gentle touch. And here He shows the full extent of love To us whose love is always incomplete, In vain we search the heavens high above, The God of love is kneeling at our feet. Though we betray Him, though it is the night. He meets us here and loves us into light. ~Malcolm Guite “Maundy Thursday”
because we are all betrayers, taking silver and eating body and blood and asking (guilty) is it I and hearing him say yes it would be simple for us all to rush out and hang ourselves but if we find grace to weep and wait after the voice of morning has crowed in our ears clearly enough to break our hearts he will be there to ask us each again do you love me ~Luci Shaw “Judas, Peter” from Polishing the Petoskey Stone
The blessed John the Evangelist lived in Ephesus until extreme old age. His disciples could barely carry him to church and he could not muster the voice to speak many words.
During individual gatherings he usually said nothing but, “Little children, love one another.”
The disciples and brothers in attendance, annoyed because they always heard the same words, finally said, “Teacher, why do you always say this?” He replied with a line worthy of John:
“Because it is the Lord’s commandment and if it alone is kept, it is sufficient.” He said this because of the Apostle’s present mandate: “Let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the household of faith.” ~from Jerome, Commentary on Galatians
He calls us to draw near Him, to gather together among the hungry and thirsty to the Supper He has prepared.
He washes the dirt off our feet; we look away, mortified. He serves us from Himself; we fret about whether we are worthy.
We are not.
He tells us the truth: we cannot follow Him now, we will deny we know Him out of fear, a failing to love as commanded.
Starving and parched, grimy and weary, self-absorbed and fearful, barely presentable to be guests at His table.
We are made worthy only because He loves us so.
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.
Lyrics: I, your Lord and Master, Now become your servant. I who made the moon and stars Will kneel to wash your feet. This is My commandment: To love as I have loved you.
Kneel to wash each other’s feet As I have done for you. All the world will know You are My disciples By the love that you offer, The kindness you show. You have heard the voice of God In the words that I have spoken. You beheld Heaven’s glory And have seen the face of God.
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
And when light comes from nowhere I can see, when my soul is clothed in golden bandages, ribbons of grace, how can I tell you? Or even tell myself so I can write it down? No words are bright enough to catch those fingerprints of radiance that flicker on my wall. ~Luci Shaw from “I Say Light, Thinking”in Harvesting Fog
That afternoon, the air’s large hand took hold of their backyard apricot tree, the one that had fruited, bountifully, a lush yield in late summer, caught it in a downdraft of chill, shook it lightly, again, again, loosening each leaf from its thumb of stem. For two days I watched the leaves’ pale, ground-ward drift, each leaf singly, in its gentle shedding, among all the glints of gold, each crumpled flick of fiber from its stem’s thumb a departure, a declaration. An announcement, God saying, gently, Thank You for a lovely job. Now, time to let go. ~Luci Shaw “Loewy’s Apricot Tree, Fall 2022”
Here God lives, burrowing among the petals, cross- pollinating. Here is Christ’s mind juiced, joined, fleshed, celled.
Here is the clash, the roil, an invasion, not gentle as dew; the rose is unfurled violently until the scent explodes and detonates in the air
I awake with my mind as askew as my hair, brushing away the cobwebs of dreams, smoothing down worries ever present, curling the whiff of memories long forgotten.
And I realize these same molecules transmitting my thoughts also carried Christ’s while He walked this earth; the earthbound thoughts of God Himself, borne by His integration of chemistry with ions, in millions of electrical explosions per second.
My own mind trembles with the thought of it:
here God lives and shines His Light, here He leaves His radiant fingerprints, here He thinks in Words I understand, here He loves, catching me when I let go…
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
a calling out to the others to see if they’re there; ~Dermot Healy from A Fool’s Errand
We are here to witness the creation and abet it. We are here to notice each thing so each thing gets noticed. Together we notice not only each mountain shadow and each stone on the beach but, especially, we notice the beautiful faces and complex natures of each other. We are here to bring to consciousness the beauty and power that are around us and to praise the people who are here with us. We witness our generation and our times. We watch the weather. Otherwise, creation would be playing to an empty house. ~Annie Dillard from The Meaning of Life edited by David Friend
Over the past week, the cacophony from the constant calling of migrating geese has been deafening at times. They pass overhead by the hundreds on their way to their winter homes, sometimes landing in nearby harvested cornfields for a snack.
Soon they are on their way again. Their voices call out, commanding my full attention during the brief time they are here: going home, going home, I am going home.
I can’t help but notice; they are calling out to anyone who will listen.
It reminds me of my past doctoring work in my clinic; at times I felt overwhelmed by the amount of “noticing” I needed to do as part of my job. Each patient – and there were so many – deserved my full attention for the few minutes we are together.
I would start my clinical evaluation the moment I walked into the exam room, taking in all the complex verbal and non-verbal clues sometimes offered by another human being.
How and why are they reaching out to me? What do they want and need me to notice and understand? I must listen carefully.
I become audience and a witness; even more, I must understand it in order to best assist them. I must rise to the occasion of taking in another person, offering them the gift of being noticed and being there for them, just them.
The doctoring work I did became its own kind of love: the patient became the entire focus for a few moments. I was grateful to be watching and listening.
As my patients called out to me, on their own life journey, may they never have felt they were playing to an empty house.
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
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.
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support Barnstorming daily posts
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…
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
In the season leaves should love, since it gives them leave to move through the wind, towards the ground they were watching while they hung, legend says there is a seam stitching darkness like a name.
Now when dying grasses veil earth from the sky in one last pale wave, as autumn dies to bring winter back, and then the spring, we who die ourselves can peel back another kind of veil
that hangs among us like thick smoke. Tonight at last I feel it shake. I feel the nights stretching away thousands long behind the days till they reach the darkness where all of me is ancestor. ~Annie Finch, from “Samhain” in Eve
Let’s go our old way by the stream, and kick the leaves as we always did, to make the rhythm of breaking waves.
This day draws no breath – shows no colour anywhere except for the leaves – in their death brilliant as never before.
Ah, but you were always leaf-light. And you so seldom talk as we go. But there at my side through the bright leaves you walk.
And yet – touch my hand that I may be quite without fear, for it seems as if a mist descends, and the leaves where you walk do not stir. ~Francis Bellerby from “All Souls’ Day”
And blessèd are the ones we overlook; The faithful servers on the coffee rota, The ones who hold no candle, bell or book But keep the books and tally up the quota,
The gentle souls who come to ‘do the flowers’, The quiet ones who organise the fete, Church sitters who give up their weekday hours, Doorkeepers who may open heaven’s gate.
God knows the depths that often go unspoken Amongst the shy, the quiet, and the kind, Or the slow healing of a heart long broken Placing each flower so for a year’s mind.
Invisible on earth, without a voice, In heaven their angels glory and rejoice. ~Malcolm Guite “The Last Beattitude”
There is no denying I am composed of all of the thousands of my ancestors, carrying their DNA in every cell of my body. Their traits and characteristics pulse continuously in my blood even when at times I wish they didn’t.
On All Souls’ Day, we remember those from whom we come — all those spirited ghosts within our cells who shake and rattle a bit louder this time of year in the foggy darkness.
I wave at them warily from my perch in the 21st century.
I come from somber folk. That explains a lot.
I feel great kinship to the peasant farmers I descend from though I wish I could turn off the genes that lead me to eat too much, and worry too much and my tendency toward the melancholy rather than the jocular. Somehow I have suppressed the tendency to drink too much and curse too much. I do come from a long line of believers in ghosts, so these days of Samhain and All Hallows’ tend to open those creaky doors of shivers and chills, so I avoid anything even remotely scary. It only encourages those more tenuous strands of my DNA.
I am indeed made up of all-ancestor bits and pieces, and can’t deny it.
There is some comfort in realizing there is nothing really brand new about me, so I try not to make a fool of myself on behalf of the hosts of others sitting tidily wrapped up in my nuclei. There is additional comfort knowing a small part of me will continue in my descendants, who will ponder their family tree wondering which great-great-great-great grandparent passed down which annoying characteristic.
I wave hopefully from the 21st century to those generations to come, to remind them not to forget those of us who came before. If there are spirits that come to visit on Samhain, I promise to be a friendly ghost.
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
Though Satan breaks our dark glass into shards Each shard still shines with Christ’s reflected light, It glances from the eyes, kindles the words Of all his unknown saints. The dark is bright With quiet lives and steady lights undimmed, The witness of the ones we shunned and shamed. Plain in our sight and far beyond our seeing He weaves them with us in the web of being They stand beside us even as we grieve, The lone and left behind whom no one claimed, Unnumbered multitudes, he lifts above The shadow of the gibbet and the grave, To triumph where all saints are known and named; The gathered glories of His wounded love. ~Malcolm Guite “All Saints’ Day”
The ordinary saints, the ones we know, Our too-familiar family and friends, When shall we see them? Who can truly show Whilst still rough-hewn, the God who shapes our ends? Who will unveil the presence, glimpse the gold That is and always was our common ground, Stretch out a finger, feel, along the fold To find the flaw, to touch and search that wound From which the light we never noticed fell Into our lives? Remember how we turned To look at them, and they looked back? That full- -eyed love unselved us, and we turned around, Unready for the wrench and reach of grace. But one day we will see them face to face. ~Malcom Guite “Ordinary Saints”
As grains of sand, as stars, as drops of dew, Numbered and treasured by the Almighty Hand, The Saints triumphant throng that holy land Where all things and Jerusalem are new.
We know not half they sing or half they do, But this we know, they rest and understand; While like a conflagration freshly fanned, Their love glows upward, outward, through and through.
Lo! like a stream of incense launched on flame Fresh Saints stream up from death to life above, To shine among those others and rejoice.
What matters tribulation whence they came? All love, and only love, can find a voice Where God makes glad His Saints, for God is Love. ~Christina Rossetti “As Grains of Sand“
At almost four in the afternoon, the wind picks up and sifts through the golden woods.
The tree trunks bronze and redden, branches on fire in the heavy sky that flickers
with the disappearing sun. I wonder what I owe the fading day, why I keep
my place at this dark desk by the window measuring the force of the wind, gauging
how long a certain cloud will hold that pink edge that even now has slipped into gray?
Quickly the lights are appearing, a lamp in every window and nests of stars
We are created to reflect the Light sent from above, whether we are the smallest dewdrop, a grain of sand on an infinite beach, or the first rung on a ladder set for heaven.
We are here today due to sacrifices of ordinary saints who came before: the parents who stayed up all night with our high fever measles, the grandparents who nurtured us when our parents were too weary, the church members who prayed over us when we went astray.
We are who we are today because of people who invested in our surviving, who bore arms in foreign lands far from home, who strived to keep water and air clean, who grew good food not knowing who would benefit.
We are gifted from the reach of common grace that emanates from common people; grace such as this wrenches us away from caring only for ourselves and thrusts us into the lives of others.
We are all created in the image of a very personal God who knows our very folds and inner and outer flaws, but loves us nonetheless, reminding us to sacrifice self for the sake of the other, to reflect His Light no matter where He sends us.
We are unselved by the saints today: loved for who we are yet created to love those we’ll never know.
Lyrics: All around us and within us And yet it’s only at times we notice As real as rain, and soft as stardust We know deep down, what nobody told us. Chorus: Can’t you feel it ever closer We breathe it in and we then we exhale We touch both sides and now eternal Standing closer to the veil
Now is just a, moving image Not a ribbon, a start and end There is a bird, a hidden singer That calls and listens, and calls again
Centered down and moving outward Sometimes almost, to sweet to bare There are endless ways to reach home Just keep walking and I’ll meet you there
Standing closer to the veil There’s a blurring of the borders And I swear that I heard voices But every act of, simple kindness Calls the kingdom down and all around us
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
Even now this landscape is assembling. The hills darken. The oxen sleep in their blue yoke, the fields having been picked clean, the sheaves bound evenly and piled at the roadside among cinquefoil, as the toothed moon rises:
This is the barrenness of harvest or pestilence.
And the wife leaning out the window with her hand extended, as in payment, and the seeds distinct, gold, calling Come here Come here, little one
And the soul creeps out of the tree. ~Louise Glück “All Hallows”
All houses wherein men have lived and died Are haunted houses. Through the open doors The harmless phantoms on their errands glide, With feet that make no sound upon the floors.
We meet them at the door-way, on the stair, Along the passages they come and go, Impalpable impressions on the air, A sense of something moving to and fro.
There are more guests at table than the hosts Invited; the illuminated hall Is thronged with quiet, inoffensive ghosts, As silent as the pictures on the wall.
The stranger at my fireside cannot see The forms I see, nor hear the sounds I hear; He but perceives what is; while unto me All that has been is visible and clear…
…So from the world of spirits there descends A bridge of light, connecting it with this, O’er whose unsteady floor, that sways and bends, Wander our thoughts above the dark abyss. ~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow from “Haunted Houses”
Most of the apples have already fallen. The sunflowers turn into dusty spiked balls. But what if my land is the land of the living? The bird from the dust takes flight Then turns multiple—
A handful of birds rising in the dead sky Opened to receive them. But my loves for now are here and living, and I want more of them. Like the bird on the ground I pick what I need from the dust. ~Lindsay Turner from Halloween
The old trees on this farm have souls, bearing fruit for all to enjoy, the deer, the raccoons, the birds, our family.
Rarely, when one topples in a windstorm, its 100-plus years of fruitfulness abruptly ended, I sense its soul’s return to the dust beneath, sinking back to the roots which held firm through many storms, its hollow trunk now a telescope to the beyond.
Goodbye, sweet broken soul. To dust we someday return until called back to fruitfulness…
When great trees fall in forests, small things recoil into silence, their senses eroded beyond fear.
When great souls die, the air around us becomes light, rare, sterile. We breathe, briefly. Our eyes, briefly, see with a hurtful clarity. Our memory, suddenly sharpened, examines, gnaws on kind words unsaid, promised walks never taken.
And when great souls die, after a period peace blooms, slowly and always irregularly. Spaces fill with a kind of soothing electric vibration. 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”
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
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.
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
