Category: certainty

Taking Time to Stand and Stare

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What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows.

No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.

No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night.

No time to turn at Beauty’s glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance.

No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began.

A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.
~W.H.Davies “Leisure”

…I believe there are certain habits that, if practiced, will stimulate the growth of humble roots in our lives. One of those is a habit of awe and wonder.

By awe and wonder, I mean the regular practice of paying careful attention to the world around us. Not merely seeing but observing. Perceiving. Considering. Asking thoughtful questions about what we see, smell, hear, touch, taste. In other words, attending with love and curiosity to what our senses sense. (How often do we eat without tasting? How often do we look without seeing? Hear without listening?) Admiring, imagining, receiving the beauty of the world around us in a regular, intentional way: this is the habit of a wonder-filled person. And it leads to humility.

A regular habit of awe and wonder de-centers us. It opens a window in our imaginations, beckoning us to climb out of our own opinions and experiences and to consider things greater and beyond our own lives. It strengthens our curiosity, which in turn lowers the volume on our anxieties and grows our ability to empathize. Over time, we become less self-focused and can admit without embarrassment what we don’t know. In short, we grow more humble.
~Kelly Givens from “Teaching Children to See” from Mere Orthodoxy

This would be a poor life indeed
if I didn’t take time
to stand and stare
at all that is displayed before me.

The golden cast at the beginning and endings of the days,
the light dancing in streams like stars,
simply staring at God’s creatures
who stare back at me,
each wondering what the other is thinking.

We don’t dare blink…

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Astonishingly Free

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It’s an early summer day, going to be a hot one.
I’m away from home, I’m working; the sky is solidly blue
with just a chalk smear of clouds. So why this melancholy?
Why these blues? Nothing I’ve done seems to matter; I
could leave tomorrow and no one would notice, that’s how
invisible I feel. But look, there’s a pair of cardinals
on the weathered table, pecking at sunflower seeds
which I’ve brought from home. They don’t seem
particularly grateful. Neither does the sky, no matter
how I transcribe it. I wanted to do more in this life,
not the elusive prizes, but poems that astonish. A big flashy jay
lands on the table, scattering seeds and smaller birds.
They regroup, continue to hunt and peck on the lawn.
~Barbara Crooker, “Melancholia” from Some Glad Morning

photo by Josh Scholten

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the green heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
~Wendell Berry “The Peace of Wild Things” from The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry

Three years ago, I laid awake thinking about our son and his family’s ten hour overnight flight from Tokyo in progress. Our two young grandchildren were arriving here after 30 months of pandemic separation – to them, we were just faces on a screen.

They said a sorrowful sayonara to their grandparents and family there, arriving here to a new life thanks to my daughter-in-law’s newly issued green card after two years of waiting, new jobs, new language, new everything, with all their worldly belongings in suitcases.

From the largest city in the world to our little corner of the middle of nowhere.

Over the past three years,
I have watched them discover for themselves
the joys and sorrows of this part of the world.
When I look at things through their eyes,
I am reminded of the light beyond the darkness I fear,
there is peace amid the chaos,
there is a smile behind the tears,
there is stillness within the noisiness
there is rest despite our restlessness,
there is grace as we who are older give way to the younger.

I have given up on astonishing others.
Instead, astonishing is happening all around me;
I need only be a witness.

Measure me, sky!
    Tell me I reach by a song
Nearer the stars;
    I have been little so long.

Weigh me, high wind!
    What will your wild scales record?
Profit of pain,
    Joy by the weight of a word.

Horizon, reach out!
    Catch at my hands, stretch me taut,
Rim of the world:
    Widen my eyes by a thought.

Sky, be my depth,
    Wind, be my width and my height,
World, my heart’s span;
    Loveliness, wings for my flight.
~Leonora Speyer “Measure Me, Sky”

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What to Say Next

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I’ve placed her favorites—
fresh raspberries, string cheese,
a glass of milk in the giraffe cup—
on her highchair tray.

As she munches away,
swinging her short legs,
she asks thoughtfully,
Grandma, are you
pooping?

I continue my bite of oatmeal,
take a sip of coffee,
respond—No darling.
How about you?

She isn’t either—
as we both wonder
what to say next.
~Laura Foley “Breakfast Conversation” from It’s This

I heard an old man speak once,
someone who had been sober for fifty years,
a very prominent doctor.
He said that he’d finally figured out a few years ago
that his profound sense of control,
in the world and over his life,
is another addiction and a total illusion.
He said that when he sees little kids sitting in the back seat of cars,
in those car seats that have steering wheels,
with grim expressions of concentration on their faces,
clearly convinced that their efforts are causing the car
to do whatever it is doing,
he thinks of himself
and his relationship with God:
God who drives along silently,
gently amused,
in the real driver’s seat.
~Anne Lamott from Operating Instructions

The conversations I have with my grandchildren
are the most unexpected and creative I have with anyone.

They lead, and I follow.
Just to see where they are going to take me next.

They are curious what I think about things.
And I want to know what they’ll say and do next,
today and in the decades to come.

All the while, God, always in control, smiles at all He has made…

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A Sight Unsought

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I awoke in the Midsummer not to call night,
in the white and the walk of the morning:
The moon, dwindled and thinned to the fringe
of a finger-nail held to the candle,
Or paring of paradisaïcal fruit,
lovely in waning but lustreless,
Stepped from the stool,
drew back from the barrow,
of dark Maenefa the mountain;
A cusp still clasped him,
a fluke yet fanged him,
entangled him, not quit utterly.
This was the prized, the desirable sight,
unsought, presented so easily,
Parted me leaf and leaf, divided me,
eyelid and eyelid of slumber.
~Gerard Manley Hopkins “Moonrise” June 19, 1876

how you can never reach it, no matter how hard you try,
walking as fast as you can, but getting nowhere,
arms and legs pumping, sweat drizzling in rivulets;
each year, a little slower, more creaks and aches, less breath.
Ah, but these soft nights, air like a warm bath, the dusky wings
of bats careening crazily overhead, and you’d think the road
goes on forever. Apollinaire wrote, “What isn’t given to love
is so much wasted,” and I wonder what I haven’t given yet.
A thin comma moon rises orange, a skinny slice of melon,
so delicious I could drown in its sweetness. Or eat the whole
thing, down to the rind. Always, this hunger for more.
~Barbara Crooker “How the Trees on Summer Nights Turn into a Dark River,” from More

The secret of seeing is,
then the pearl of great price. 
If I thought he could teach me to find it and keep it forever 
I would stagger barefoot
across a hundred deserts
after any lunatic at all. 
But although the pearl may be found,
it may not be sought.

The literature of illumination reveals this above all: 
although it comes to those who wait for it, 
it is always, even to the most practiced and adept, 
a gift and a total surprise.

I return from one walk 
knowing where the killdeer nests in the field by the creek
and the hour the laurel blooms. 
I return from the same walk a day later
scarcely knowing my own name.

Litanies hum in my ears; 
my tongue flaps in my mouth. 
Ailinon, alleluia!
~Annie Dillard from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

photo by Josh Scholten

The greatest gift is the one I stumble upon
rather than having desired, sought out, fought for.
Sometimes I don’t even know what I’m missing,
so oblivious to being surrounded by hidden treasures.

Surprise me, dear Lord. 

Though I regularly lament in the shadows,
though I try to hide under the blankets each morning,
slumbering through the tragic, the painful, the sorrow,
you send your gentle crescent light to awaken me.

So I lift my voice in praise and gratitude for your unexpected gift
that I didn’t know I needed, would never had thought to seek, 
the pearl of great price held out for me to take each day.

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As Gloom and Brightness Meet

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In the grey summer garden I shall find you 
With day-break and the morning hills behind you. 
There will be rain-wet roses; stir of wings; 
And down the wood a thrush that wakes and sings. 
Not from the past you’ll come, but from that deep
Where beauty murmurs to the soul asleep: 
And I shall know the sense of life re-born 
From dreams into the mystery of morn 
Where gloom and brightness meet. And standing there 
Till that calm song is done, at last we’ll share
The league-spread, quiring symphonies that are 
Joy in the world, and peace, and dawn’s one star. 
~Siegfried Sassoon “Idyll”

Seventy-one years ago today was a difficult day for both my mother and me.

She remembered it was a particularly hot July 4 with the garden coming on gangbusters and she having quite a time keeping up with summer farm chores. With three weeks to go in her pregnancy, her puffy legs were aching and she wasn’t sleeping well.

She was almost done gestating, with the planned C-section scheduled a few days before my due date of August 1.

She and my dad and my sister had waited eight long years for this pregnancy, having given up hope, having already chosen an infant boy to adopt, the papers signed and waiting on the court for the final approval. They were ready to bring him home when she discovered she was pregnant and the adoption agency gave him to another family.

I’ve always wondered where that little boy ended up, his life trajectory suddenly changed by my unexpected conception. I feel responsible, hoping and praying his life was blessed in another adoptive home.

Every subsequent July 4, my mother would tell me about July 4, 1954 when I was curled upside down inside her impatiently kicking her ribs in my attempts to stretch, hiccuping when she tried to nap, and dozing as she cooked the picnic meal they took to eat while waiting for the local fireworks show to start.

As I grew up, she would remind me as I cringed and covered my ears as fireworks shells boomed overhead, that in 1954 I leapt, startled, inside her with each explosion. She wondered if I might jump right out of her, so she held onto her belly tight, trying to calm and reassure me. Perhaps I was justifiably fearful about what chaos was booming on the outside, as I remained securely inside until the doctor opened Mom up three weeks later.

Now I know I am meant for quieter things, greeting the mystery of each morning with as much calm as I can muster. I still cringe and jump at fireworks and recognize I was blessed to be born to a family who wanted me and waited for me, in a country that had just fought a terrible war. Each child born in those post-war years was a testament to the survival of the American spirit and hope for the future.

Our country now has lost its way in caring first and foremost
for the poor, the ill, the hungry, the helpless, the homeless,
not only within our borders, but as an outreach beyond our shores to those countries where our help has saved millions of lives.

Will there ever come a day when a baby born in this world will not be threatened with starvation, potentially fatal yet preventable pathogens, or the devastation of war?

Where gloom and brightness meet:
defining the drawn lines and borders
around and within our country right now…

partial lyrics:
And I don’t know a soul who’s not been battered
I don’t have a friend who feels at ease
I don’t know a dream that’s not been shattered
Or driven to its knees

But it’s alright, it’s alright
For we lived so well so long
Still, when I think of the
Road we’re traveling on
I wonder what’s gone wrong
I can’t help it, I wonder what has gone wrong

Text: Where charity and love are, God is there.

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Something Is Calling…

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Something is calling to me
from the corners of fields,
where the leftover fence wire
suns its loose coils, and stones
thrown out of the furrow
sleep in warm litters;
where the gray faces
of old No Hunting signs
mutter into the wind,
and dry horse tanks
spout fountains of sunflowers;
where a moth
flutters in from the pasture,
harried by sparrows,
and alights on a post,
so sure of its life
that it peacefully opens its wings.
~Ted Kooser “In the Corners of Fields” from Flying at Night.


I am a visitor here,
even though we’ve lived here
for more than 30 years.

There is something to be discovered in the field
each day if I make an effort to look and listen.

My Merlin app on my phone tells me
the birds I hear around me.
A photo of a wildflower or weed
is identified by Google.
The jet flight tracks overhead
are pinpointed by another app
saying who is flying where.

Yet I’m placed right here by my Maker.
He knows where I am at all times,
the words I write,
the thoughts I pray.

I try to be at peace in these turbulent times:
to be sure of this life I’m given,
to be sure to Whom I belong,
to simply open my wings to the light,
to be ready to fly when my time comes.

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Warned By Wild Things

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Frightening the foliage from its sleep, we travel along
the Quinault Lake Loop in our big red truck.

Roofed by dank rainforest, we know
we are not alone, though we see no bird, no beast.

You say, It’s beautiful, but do we really belong here
where creatures hide? Then an elk herd stomps across

the dirt road, and you brake, shocked. The fattest turns
to stare over his long beard. To know or warn us.

Yes, my love, we belong, but on soil-stained knees,
asking for each wild thing’s consent to stand.
~Lauren Davis, Home Beneath the Church 

I’ve been to the temperate rainforest on the Olympic Peninsula,
only a short ferry ride and two hour drive away,
where 300 year old trees tethered to one another
with connecting crepe of dangling moss,
hiding the creatures within,
taking all down with them
if they someday fall to the wind,
lying still, nursing the growth of the next generation’s seeds
from long rotting trunks.

We can only pass through this place,
having been banished from the Garden.

We are not to dwell or cut or shoot or burn or slash,
at risk of being ensnared by reaching fingers of moss
seeking yet another woody heart to soften

Whispering grassfeet
steal through us
fir-fingers touch one another
where the paths meet
thick dripping resin
glues us together
summer-greedy woodpeckers
hammer at hardy
seed-hiding hearts
~Inger Christensen  trans. Susanna Nied

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Written as with a Sunbeam

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The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for,
among old parchments, or musty records.
They are written, as with a sun beam,
in the whole volume of human nature,
by the hand of the divinity itself;
and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power.
~Alexander Hamilton, from  “The Farmer Refuted”

What sparkling flashes of God’s wit and brilliance—
His coruscations—
have caused your mind today to
run back up the sunbeam to the sun and given you cause
to give thanks and to worship the Lord?
~C.S. Lewis from Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer

photo by Nate Gibson

God illuminates through His Word,
not once but twice. 

In the beginning, He created
the sun and the moon to shine
upon bodies, hearts, and souls. 

Then, He came to light the world
from below as well as from above
so we could be saved from darkness.

By His descent to us,
because He leaves heaven’s light
to be in our arms and by our sides-
He illuminates us
so we reflect the light He brings:
loved
saved
despite all our efforts
to remain in the dark.

photo by Nate Gibson
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The Dangerous Business of Going Out Your Door

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Roads go ever ever on,
Over rock and under tree,
By caves where never sun has shone,
By streams that never find the sea;
Over snow by winter sown,
And through the merry flowers of June,
Over grass and over stone,
And under mountains in the moon.

Roads go ever ever on,
Under cloud and under star.
Yet feet that wandering have gone
Turn at last to home afar.
Eyes that fire and sword have seen,
And horror in the halls of stone
Look at last on meadows green,
And trees and hills they long have known.

The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with weary feet,
Until it joins some larger way,
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say.

The Road goes ever on and on
Out from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone.
Let others follow, if they can!
Let them a journey new begin.
But I at last with weary feet
Will turn towards the lighted inn,
My evening-rest and sleep to meet.

Still ’round the corner there may wait
A new road or secret gate;
And though I oft have passed them by,
A day will come at last when I
Shall take the hidden paths that run
West of the Moon, East of the Sun.
~J.R.R. Tolkien “Bilbo’s Walking Song”

It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out of your door. You step into the Road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off too.
~J.R.R. Tolkien – Bilbo to Frodo in Fellowship of the Rings

I love these country roads in June, at dawn or dusk,
the light and shadow playing over the path,
promising summer breezes and simple joys.

When we walk these roads,
we pass by deep ditches,
hop the potholes and avoid the bumps.

Still it’s a dangerous business,
walking out the front door into life,
not knowing just where we may be swept off to.

Passing by secret gates and overgrown paths,
I take the familiar route that leads me home,
following the Master Guide so I don’t lose my way.

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A Shimmering Evening Chorus

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Evening, and all the birds
In a chorus of shimmering sound
Are easing their hearts of joy
For miles around.

The air is blue and sweet,
The few first stars are white,–
Oh let me like the birds
Sing before night.
~Sara Teasdale “Dusk in June”

I am half agony, half hope…
~Jane Austen from Persuasion

Sure on this shining night
Of star made shadows round,
Kindness must watch for me
This side the ground. 
The late year lies down the north.
All is healed, all is health.
High summer holds the earth. 
Hearts all whole.
Sure on this shining night I weep for wonder
wand’ring far alone
Of shadows on the stars.
~James Agee “Sure on this Shining Night”

This time of uncertainty holds the earth captive;
our hearts fearful of war in a shimmering summer dusk.

I weep for wonder in hope for a healing peace,
at this time, at this place, singing under these stars.

May we rest assured, on another shining night,
sometime, we know not when, we know not how,
we will lay down arms and live without threat of war.

Amen and Amen.

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