The first week of August hangs at the very top of summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning.
The weeks that come before are only a climb from balmy spring, and those that follow a drop to the chill of autumn, but the first week of August is motionless, and hot.
It is curiously silent, too, with blank white dawns and glaring noons, and sunsets smeared with too much color. ~Natalie Babbitt from Tuck Everlasting
After an early summer of moderate temperatures and occasional rains, we’re adjusting to temperatures in the nineties. No one asked me if enduring heat, humidity, and smoky skies was a reasonable way to conclude the first week of August.
So I sit silently rocking and sweating in the highest vantage point of this summer’s ferris wheel ride so far, hanging breathlessly mid-air, a brief pause in the endless cycle of sunny days.
Having just arrived at the top, I venture to look down, knowing I am simply along for the ride, and Someone else is at the controls. I might as well enjoy the view of all that is behind, alongside and in front of me, but especially what is below, holding me up in thin air.
All too quickly will come the rapid descent into autumn, my stomach leaping into my chest with the lurch forward into the unknown. As the climb to get here took so long, I am not quite ready for this inevitable drop back into the chill.
Hot or not, it’s best to celebrate August for all it’s splashiness and shining illumination necessitating sunglasses. At least I’m swinging in what little breeze there is, endeavoring to capture this moment, and every moment, forever.
Lyrics from poem by James Agee: Sure on this shining night Of starmade shadows round Kindness must watch for me This side the ground On this shining night This shining night
Sure on this shining night Of starmade shadows round Kindness must watch for me This side the ground On this shining night This shining night
The late year lies down the north All is healed, all is health High summer holds the earth Hearts all whole
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 Sure on this shining night
Sure on this shining night I weep for wonder Wandering far alone Of shadows on the stars
Sure on this shining night Of starmade shadows round Kindness must watch for me This side the ground
Oh, this shining night This shining night The shining night Sure on this shining night
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Light splashed this morning on the shell-pink anemones swaying on their tall stems; down blue-spiked veronica light flowed in rivulets over the humps of the honeybees; this morning I saw light kiss the silk of the roses in their second flowering, my late bloomers flushed with their brandy. A curious gladness shook me. So I have shut the doors of my house, so I have trudged downstairs to my cell, so I am sitting in semi-dark hunched over my desk with nothing for a view to tempt me but a bloated compost heap, steamy old stinkpile, under my window; and I pick my notebook up and I start to read aloud and still-wet words I scribbled on the blotted page: “Light splashed…”
It is too easy to be ground to a pulp by the various irritations of the day – aggravations are too easily expressed, worries never seem to wane – all of it sucks gladness out of me.
When my feelings become four-dimensional and surround and drown me, I lose all perspective on what got me out of bed to begin the day.
God is in these intricate details, whether the splash of light on a petal or the smell of rotting compost; it is my job to notice this. It is tempting to look past His ubiquitous presence in all things, to seek out only the elegant grandeur of creation and bypass the plain and smelly and homely.
Yet even what lacks beauty from my limited perspective is worthy of His divine attention. He knows the value and purpose of each thing He created, including me and the things that aggravate me no end – like mosquitos.
The time has come to be refreshed and renewed even when surrounded by decay. His care is revealed in the tiniest way. He is worthy of my attention because I am constantly worthy of His.
If I rise early enough, I can see each new day’s light splash everything awake. By the time I come in to sit down to record my words and photos, I’m thoroughly washed by a fresh dawn. I can scarcely wait to take on what this day will bring.
I can scarcely wait till tomorrow when a new life begins for me, as it does each day, as it does each day.
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Light wakes us – there’s the sun climbing the mountains’ rim, spilling across the valley, finding our faces. It is July, between the hay and harvest, a time at arm’s length from all other time, the roads ragged with meadowsweet and mallow, with splays of seedheads, slubbed and coarse, rough linen. The fields above the house, clotted with sheep all spring, are empty now and froth with flowering grasses, still in the morning light. Birds move around the leafy fields, the leafy garden.
It is the time to set aside all vigil, good or ill, to loosen the fixed gaze of our attention as dandelions let seedlings to the wind. Wake with the light. Get up and go about the day and watch its surfaces that brighten with the sun.
And later, when the light is drowsed and heavy go find the burdened fruit trees where the shade lies splashed and opened-out across the ground. Spread over it a quilt worn soft by other bodies, then curl and fall down into sleep at light.
Awaken to a world of long, loose grass-stems, and leaves above, and birds, breaking out of the leaves. ~Kerry Hardie from “Sleep in Summer”
Saying good-bye to July last week meant admitting summer is already half-baked and so are we–
we who are still doughy, not nearly done enough.
The rush to autumn is breathless. We want to hold on tight to our longish days, fall asleep in the grasses, endure sweaty nights for just a little while longer…
Please, oh please grant us unending light and steady us for the task of getting ready for letting go.
A new series of summer photo notecards from our farm is now available as a thank you gift to you for your financial support of Barnstorming — details here
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“For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I may take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This charge I have received from my Father.”
There was again a division among the Jews because of these words.Many of them said, “He has a demon, and is insane; why listen to him?” Others said, “These are not the words of one who is oppressed by a demon. Can a demon open the eyes of the blind?”
At that time the Feast of Dedication took place at Jerusalem. It was winter,and Jesus was walking in the temple, in the colonnade of Solomon.So the Jews gathered around him and said to him, “How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Christ, tell us plainly.”
Jesus answered them, “I told you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in my Father’s name bear witness about me, but you do not believe because you are not among my sheep.My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand.My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand.I and the Father are one.”
The Jews picked up stones again to stone him.Jesus answered them, “I have shown you many good works from the Father; for which of them are you going to stone me?”The Jews answered him, “It is not for a good work that we are going to stone you but for blasphemy, because you, being a man, make yourself God.” Jesus answered them, “Is it not written in your Law, ‘I said, you are gods’?If he called them gods to whom the word of God came—and Scripture cannot be broken—do you say of him whom the Father consecrated and sent into the world, ‘You are blaspheming,’ because I said, ‘I am the Son of God’?If I am not doing the works of my Father, then do not believe me;but if I do them, even though you do not believe me, believe the works, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me and I am in the Father.”Again they sought to arrest him, but he escaped from their hands.
He went away again across the Jordan to the place where John had been baptizing at first, and there he remained. And many came to him. And they said, “John did no sign, but everything that John said about this man was true.” And many believed in him there. John 10: 17-42
Quiet he lies whose vigor hurled a universe. He sleeps whose eyelids have not closed before. His breath (so slight it seems no breath at all) once ruffled the dark deeps to sprout a world. Charmed by doves’ voices, the whisper of straw, he dreams, hearing no music from his other spheres. Breath, mouth, ears, eyes he is curtailed who overflowed all skies, all years. ~Luci Shaw from “Mary’s Song”from Accompanied by Angels: Poems of the Incarnation
When, in the cavern darkness, Jesus opened his small, bleating mouth (even before his eyes widened to the supple world his lungs had sighed into being), did he intuit how hungrily the lungs gasp? Did he begin, then, to love the way air sighs as it brushes in and out through the portals of tissue to sustain the tiny heart’s iambic beating? And how, fueled by air, the dazzling blood tramps the crossroads of the brain like donkey tracks, corpuscles skittering to the earlobes and toenails?
Bottle of the breath of God, speaking in stories, shouting across wild, obedient water, his voice was stoppered only by inquisition, unfaith and anguish. Did he know that he would, in the end, leak all his blood, heave a final groan and throw his breath, oxygen for the world, back to its Source before the next dark cave? ~Luci Shaw“Breath” from Accompanied by Angels: Poems of the Incarnation
Greater than all – Creator of breath and sky and dust – yet came to us as helpless baby.
He who is the air we need – resides in our cells, our blood, our lungs, our heart.
He who lays down His life for us – then picks it up again – we are made in His image.
Listen for Him – watch Him change the sky – know He fills us wholly with His Words and Breath.
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.
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I have never been fishing on the Susquehanna or on any river for that matter to be perfectly honest.
Not in July or any month have I had the pleasure — if it is a pleasure — of fishing on the Susquehanna.
I am more likely to be found in a quiet room like this one — a painting of a woman on the wall, a bowl of tangerines on the table — trying to manufacture the sensation of fishing on the Susquehanna.
There is little doubt that others have been fishing on the Susquehanna,
rowing upstream in a wooden boat, sliding the oars under the water then raising them to drip in the light. But the nearest I have ever come to fishing on the Susquehanna was one afternoon in a museum in Philadelphia,
when I balanced a little egg of time in front of a painting in which that river curled around a bend
under a blue cloud-ruffled sky, dense trees along the banks, and a fellow with a red bandana
sitting in a small, green flat-bottom boat holding the thin whip of a pole.
That is something I am unlikely ever to do, I remember saying to myself and the person next to me.
Then I blinked and moved on to other American scenes of haystacks, water whitening over rocks,
even one of a brown hare who seemed so wired with alertness I imagined him springing right out of the frame. ~Billy Collins Fishing On The Susquehanna In July
The difficulty to think at the end of day, When the shapeless shadow covers the sun And nothing is left except light on your fur—
….and August the most peaceful month.
To be, in the grass, in the peacefullest time, And to feel that the light is a rabbit-light In which everything is meant for you And nothing need be explained;
I live a quiet life in a quiet place. There are many experiences not on my bucket list that I’m simply content to just imagine others doing.
I’m not a rock climber or a zip liner nor willing to jump out of an airplane. I won’t ride a horse over a four foot jump nor race one around a track. Not for me waterskis or unicycles or motorcycles.
I’m grateful there are adventurers who seek out the extremes of life so the rest of us can admire their courage and applaud their explorations.
My imagination is powerful enough, thanks to the words and pictures of others – sometimes too vivid.
I contentedly explore the corners of my quiet places, both inside and outside, to see what I can build from what’s here.
When the light is just right, what I see in my mind seems ready to spring right out of the frame.
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Hours and hours of taffy pulled and stretched to the furthest reaches of neighborhood lawns, universe of grasses cool and tickling, cushions for our bodies somersaulting and cartwheeling, tagging you’re it, while somewhere above us
the dimmer switch of Heaven would be turning down to lavender rose and deeper rose, and then the voices of the mothers streaming in through the darkening air to come home, come home. ~Andrea Potos “Summer, Childhood” from Her Joy Becomes
Once when we were playing hide-and-seek and it was time to go home, the rest gave up on the game before it was done and forgot I was still hiding. I remained hidden as a matter of honor until the moon rose. ~Galway Kinnell “Hide-and-Seek 1933” from Strong Is Your Hold.
We all long for home.
As the day wanes, the sky dims to pastels, the breezes pick up, I want to be called home: to warmth, to a good evening meal, to hugs and cozy bed.
No matter what excitement exists outside the four walls of home, I am eager for the comfort of finding my way home.
In the villages and towns all across Japan, there is a traditional folk song played daily in the early evening over loudspeakers in the streets – a reminder to the children of the neighborhood that it is time to give up their games and head home. They stream out of the parks and streets, each to their own house or apartment.
The song that thousands of U.S. soccer fans belted out after the World Cup soccer games was “Take me home, country roads.”
Last night, as I left an evening meeting at our local homeless mission shelter, I passed through the huge room housing over a hundred sleeping people on cots and floor mattresses. The overhead lights had been dimmed, each person safe, warm, fed, and welcome – no longer invisible and hidden away in the woods or alleys.
May we all know how it is to be welcomed home, when overwhelming darkness comes, knowing the Light always returns.
We have not yet encountered any god who is as merciful as a man who flicks a beetle over on its feet. ~Annie Dillard from The Force That Drives the Flower
What inference might one draw about the nature of God from a study of his works? An inordinate fondness for beetles. The Creator would appear as endowed with a passion for stars, on the one hand, and for beetles on the other. ~ J.B.S. Haldane, British biologist
Indeed, we stranded folk do encounter a God who saves us by flipping us back onto our feet as we lie helplessly waving our arms and legs in the air, so stuck and pitiful.
God knows all about the helplessness of suffering and hears our cry for mercy.
Once we are righted back to our feet, we walk forth forever changed – restored to the world, ready to help anyone we encounter who finds themselves stuck upside down in their misery.
When beetles fight these battles in a bottle with their paddles and the bottle’s on a poodle and the poodle’s eating noodles… …they call this a muddle puddle tweetle poodle beetle noodle bottle paddle battle. ~ Dr. Seuss from Fox in Socks
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At dusk, everything blurs and softens. From here out over the long valley, the fields and hills pull up the first slight sheets of evening, as, over the next hour, heavier, darker ones will follow.
Quieted roads, predictable deer browsing in a neighbor’s field, another’s herd of heifers, the kitchen lights starting in many windows. On horseback I take it in, neither visitor nor intruder, but kin passing, closer and closer to night, its cold streams rising in the sugarbush and hollow.
Half-aloud, I say to the horse, or myself, or whoever: let fire not come to this house, nor that barn, nor lightning strike the cattle. Let dogs not gain the gravid doe, let the lights of the rooms convey what they seem to.
And who is to say it is useless or foolish to ride out in the falling light alone, wishing, or praying, for particular good to particular beings, on one small road in a huge world?
The horse bears me along, like grace, making me better than what I am, and what I think or say or see is whole in these moments, is neither small nor broken. For up, out of the inscrutable earth, have come my body and the separate body of the mare: flawed and aching and wronged. Who then is better made to say be well, be glad,
or who to long that we, as one, might course over the entire valley, over all valleys, as a bird in a great embrace of flight, who presses against her breast, in grief and tenderness, the whole weeping body of the world? ~ Linda McCarriston, “Riding Out at Evening” fromTalking Soft Dutch
photo by Emily Vander Haak
On this, my 72nd birthday, I pray for this troubled world, reminding myself: be well, be glad…
I’m still here by the grace of God who carries not just me on His back through each day, but all earthly burdens.
I pray like a bird embracing the air which lifts its wings, tenderly holding to its breast a soaring freedom to transcend the weeping world.
I have seen so much goodness over 72 years, sometimes through tears of sorrow. I know there will be more joy and sadness before I’m done.
I am grateful, so very grateful to have lived all these years seeing tears shed, then dried, learning how love heals, knowing the only thing to last forever is God’s covenant promise to always carry us home.
photo by Brandon Dielemanphoto by Brandon Dieleman
video by Peter Tamminga
Whilst the world is weeping, let us do our bit. We have the time to sympathise, to listen and to sit. No needless thoughts, of the things we cannot do. But appreciate all the good bits and look at them anew.
The warmth and comfort of our homes, the food we have to eat. The family and friends we have, although we cannot meet. The village that we live in, and the community we share. So precious to us right now, so sit and think and care.
Whilst the world is full of sadness, anxiety and pain, It’s hard to imagine our lives ever carefree again. But nothing lasts forever, the clouds will always clear. Let’s heal the world with love, so the sunshine can appear. ~Sandra Rickman
Lyrics: Drop, drop, slow tears, and bathe those beauteous feet, which brought from heaven the news and Prince of Peace. Cease not, wet eyes, his mercies to entreat; to cry for vengeance sin doth never cease. In your deep floods drown all my faults and fears; nor let his eye see sin, but through my tears.
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“Truly, truly, I say to you, he who does not enter the sheepfold by the door but climbs in by another way, that man is a thief and a robber.But he who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep.To him the gatekeeper opens. The sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.
When he has brought out all his own, he goes before them, and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice. A stranger they will not follow, but they will flee from him, for they do not know the voice of strangers.“
This figure of speech Jesus used with them, but they did not understand what he was saying to them.
So Jesus again said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep.All who came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them.I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.
I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. He who is a hired hand and not a shepherd, who does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees, and the wolf snatches them and scatters them.He flees because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep.
I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep.And I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice.
So there will be one flock, one shepherd.“ John 10: 1-16
Not one that’s gently hinged or deftly hung, Not like the ones you planed at Joseph’s place, Not like the well-oiled openings that swung So easily for Pilate’s practiced pace, Not like the ones that closed in Mary’s face From house to house in brimming Bethlehem, Not like the one that no man may assail, The dreadful curtain, The forbidding veil That waits your breaking in Jerusalem. Not one you made but one you have become: Load-bearing, balancing, a weighted beam To bridge the gap, to bring us within reach Of your high pasture. Calling us by name, You lay your body down across the breach, Yourself the door that opens into home. ~Malcolm Guite “I Am the Door of the Sheepfold” from Parable and Paradox
The fence was down. Led by their bellwether bellies, the sheep had toddled astray. The neighbor farmer’s woods or coyotes might have got them, or the far road. I remember the night, the moon-colored grass we waded through to look for them, the oaks tangled and dark, like starting a story midway. We gazed over seed heads to the barn toppled in the homestead orchard. Then we saw the weather of white wool, a cloud in the blue moving without sound as if charmed by the moon beholding them out of bounds. Time has not tightened the wire or righted the barn. The unpruned orchard rots in its meadow and the story unravels, the sunlight creeping back like a song with nobody left to hear it. ~David Mason from “Mending Time” in The Sound: New and Selected Poems
When so much shepherding has gone so wrong, So many pastors hopelessly astray, The weak so often preyed on by the strong, So many bruised and broken on the way, The very name of shepherd seems besmeared, The fold and flock themselves are torn in half, The lambs we left to face all we have feared Are caught between the wasters and the wolf. Good Shepherd now your flock has need of you, One finds the fold and ninety-nine are lost Out in the darkness and the icy dew, And no one knows how long this night will last. Restore us; call us back to you by name, And by your life laid down, redeem our shame. ~Malcolm Guite “I Am the Good Shepherd” from Parable and Paradox
On the surface, a sheep’s life looks pretty easy – grazing in beautiful pastoral settings, blending in as a member of a flock, with the primary job being prolific in wool and lamb production.
Sounds pretty swell, all in all.
Yet it can be a hard-scrabble existence with not enough food or water in rocky terrain that is steep and tough to traverse. The wool coat can be incredibly burdensome and hooves can get too long or too short and watch out for the “bloat.”
And then there are the enemies: just ready to pounce, eager to pick off the too young or too old or anyone just not paying attention. That’s why a Shepherd is so critical to our survival because they pay attention to threats and needs and are there to defend the defenseless.
I’ve been labeled a sheep for unquestioningly following directions given to me, preferring to blend in, and appreciating the wisdom of the Shepherd. I don’t consider being considered a sheep an insult. I know I don’t know everything, nor am I capable of finding everything I need when I need it and I’m certainly not strong enough to fend off my worst enemies.
How often do we, like sheep, wander astray – out of the broken down barn, or through the fallen fence, into the orchards of rotting delights?
And Someone, always Someone, comes looking for us, lost and always hungering and endangered. Someone, always Someone, lays down in the doorway to become the breach we need to stay safe and whole.
We need our Shepherd. We know His voice. He leads us home.
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.
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Whence comes Solace?—Not from seeing What is doing, suffering, being, Not from noting Life’s conditions, Nor from heeding Time’s monitions; But in cleaving to the Dream, And in gazing at the gleam Whereby gray things golden seem.
II
Thus do I this heyday, holding Shadows but as lights unfolding, As no specious show this moment With its irised embowment; But as nothing other than Part of a benignant plan; Proof that earth was made for man. ~Thomas Hardy “On a Fine Morning”
Whence comes Solace? Cleaving to the dream, gazing at the gleam…
nothing other than Part of a benignant plan; Proof that earth was made for man.
I had to look up “benignant” – it is like being told a concerning tumor is “benign” – granting gracious kindness and beneficence in the midst of deep-seated worry.
A new lease on life.
We forget our original task of caring for the Garden. Having soiled our own nest, we can’t abandon earth for another greener, brighter, happier planet. Of all the planetary options in this infinite universe, we were placed right here for good reason, and here we remain.
Our solace: all that ordinarily seems gray gleams golden illuminated by the Light shining down on our shadowy selves.
Even when the news headlines are dismal, when our individual struggles are great, when human history seems to keep repeating itself, our Creation is purposeful, eternally preserved through divine sacrifice.
The solace of gray shadows melts to gold: as part of the overall “benignant plan” we have been given our life back.
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