It’s like so many other things in life to which you must say no or yes. So you take your car to the new mechanic. Sometimes the best thing to do is trust.
The package left with the disreputable-looking clerk, the check gulped by the night deposit, the envelope passed by dozens of strangers— all show up at their intended destinations.
The theft that could have happened doesn’t. Wind finally gets where it was going through the snowy trees, and the river, even when frozen, arrives at the right place.
And sometimes you sense how faithfully your life is delivered, even though you can’t read the address. ~Thomas R. Smith “Trust” from Waking Before Dawn
I know now, Lord, why you utter no answer. You are yourself the answer. Before your face questions die away. ~C.S. Lewis from Till We Have Faces
I always have lots of questions when I’m uncertain about a decision. I carefully consider whether I should do this or do that, go here or go there, say something or remain silent.
My questions become a prayer seeking clarity – how? why? and what if?
Before the face of God, these questions fall away.
We who worry are not trusting a Creator who is ever-present in His care for us, even when we may think He is not listening. He knows where we are headed, even if we’re unsure of the destination ourselves.
He makes sure we get there. We’ll be delivered to the right place at the right time.
I must trust Him. He’s on it.
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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? Does the opossum pray as it crosses the street? The sunflowers? The old black oak growing older every year? I know I can walk through the world, along the shore or under the trees, with my mind filled with things of little importance, in full self-attendance. A condition I can’t really call being alive. 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.
While I was thinking this I happened to be standing just outside my door, with my notebook open, which is the way I begin every morning. Then a wren in the privet began to sing. He was positively drenched in enthusiasm, I don’t know why. And yet, why not. I wouldn’t persuade you from whatever you believe or whatever you don’t. That’s your business. But I thought, of the wren’s singing, what could this be if it isn’t a prayer? So I just listened, my pen in the air. ~Mary Oliver “I Happened to be Standing” from A Thousand Mornings
Each morning, I say a prayer that I might find something of value to share here.
Maybe what I offer is a bit of glue to help heal a broken heart, or a balm to soothe a worried mind, or it touches a place of pain so it might hurt less.
Maybe a song becomes a poignant reminder, or an image might capture the eye.
What might the beauty in the world and in words be but a kind of prayer offered to our Creator? Why not listen, even for a moment, to the purring cat and the singing wren to hear a prayer of thanks and joy they offer in their own way?
Prayer is breath combined with need.
We are capable of just such a silent dialogue with God, breathed out in thanksgiving and breathed in deep during desperate times.
I too know about worry, and hurting, and the need for glue. Within prayer is a trace of peace. So I listen, waiting.
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When it snows, he stands atthe back door or wanders around the house to each window in turn and watches the weather like a lover. O farm boy, I waited years for you to look at me that way. Now we’re old enough to stop waiting for random looks or touches or words, so I find myself watching you watching the weather, and we wait together to discover whatever the sky might bring. ~Patricia Traxler “Weather Man”
My farm boy does still look at me that way, wondering if today will bring frost, a wind storm, maybe fog or mist, a scorcher, or a deluge.
I reassure him as best I can, because he knows me so well in our many years together:
today, like most other days, I predict I will be partly cloudy with a chance of showers, and as always, occasional sun breaks.
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To clasp the hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world. ~Karl Barth
Ah — a resting place, where we come to understand it is not required of us to wrestle constantly and passionately with our God — nor pursue relentlessly all God’s decrees as we understand them, but only that we listen and wonder and hope and pray, that we might, perhaps, make just a little difference, one quiet grey day. ~Edwina Gateley “Just a Little Difference”
There is much shouting and gnashing of teeth going on in our country in the midst of a bitter “rerun” election battle ahead. Some of the noise is coming from political rallies, some from computer keyboards and TV screens, and some from the hallowed halls of courthouses and legislative buildings.
If only the nastiness could cease. Instead, it is time to clasp hands together in prayer.
Prayer is always easier for the youngest among us. It is amazingly spontaneous for kids — an outright exclamation of joy, a crying plea for help, a word of unprompted gratitude. As a child I can remember making up my own songs and monologues to God as I wandered alone in our farm’s woods, enjoying His company in my semi-solitude. I’m not sure when I began to silence myself out of self-conscious embarrassment, but I stayed silent for many years, unwilling to put voice to the prayers that rattled in my head. In my childhood, prayer in public schools had been hushed into a mere and meaningless moment of silence, and intuitively I knew silence never changed anything. The world became more and more disorderly in the 60’s and 70’s and in my increasingly indoctrinated mind, there was no prayer I could say that could possibly make a difference.
How wrong could I and my education be? Nothing can right the world until we are right with God through talking to Him from our depth of need and fear. Nothing can right the world until we submit ourselves wholly, bowed low, hands clasped, eyes closed, articulating the joy, the thanks, and the petitions weighing on our hearts.
An uprising is only possible when our voices come alive, unashamed, unselfconscious, rising up from within us, uttering words that beseech and thank and praise. To rise up with hands clasped together calls upon a power that claims no political party affiliation ~ only the Word ~ to overcome and overwhelm the shambles left of our world.
Nothing can be more victorious than the Amen, our Amen, at the end.
So be it and so shall it be.
Amen, and Amen again.
Whatever happens. Whatever what is is is what I want. Only that. But that. ~Galway Kinnell “Prayer”
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White cat Winter prowls the farm, tiptoes soft through withered corn, creeps along low walls of stone, falls asleep beside the barn. ~Tony Johnson “White Cat Winter”
Salt shining behind its glass cylinder. Milk in a blue bowl. The yellow linoleum. The cat stretching her black body from the pillow. The way she makes her curvaceous response to the small, kind gesture. Then laps the bowl clean. Then wants to go out into the world where she leaps lightly and for no apparent reason across the lawn, then sits, perfectly still, in the grass. I watch her a little while, thinking: what more could I do with wild words? I stand in the cold kitchen, bowing down to her. I stand in the cold kitchen, everything wonderful around me. ~Mary Oliver, New and Selected Poems
Cat, if you go outdoors, you must walk in the snow. You will come back with little white shoes on your feet, little white shoes of snow that have heels of sleet. Stay by the fire, my Cat. Lie still, do not go. See how the flames are leaping and hissing low, I will bring you a saucer of milk like a marguerite, so white and so smooth, so spherical and so sweet – stay with me, Cat. Outdoors the wild winds blow.
Outdoors the wild winds blow, Mistress, and dark is the night, strange voices cry in the trees, intoning strange lore, and more than cats move, lit by our eyes green light, on silent feet where the meadow grasses hang hoar – Mistress, there are portents abroad of magic and might, and things that are yet to be done. Open the door! ~Elizabeth Coatsworth“On a Night of Snow”
I know folks who worry about our farm cats’ well-being during the recent harsh winter weather. Our farm cats don’t know what it is like to live in a house, and certainly know nothing about the use of kitty litter boxes. They are independent souls, used to being on outdoor patrol and never question the conditions of their employment to manage all aspects of vermin control.
The cats own the barns, pure and simple. This is not a matter for debate among the farm dogs (who also live in the barns during very cold weather) or from the horses, or from us farmers who come and go doing the feeding and watering and cleaning. We all bow down to the cats’ supremacy. Four farm cats distribute themselves among several buildings according to who they like and who they don’t like and then settle in for the duration. They scoot in and out as they please as we open and close the big barn doors against the chill winds and happily lap up whatever treats we bring them.
So please don’t worry. Our cats and other critters are doing just fine this winter. It’s the two humans here who are creakier while we navigate the snow and ice and must bundle up head to toe to face the northeast wind.
As wonderful as farm living can be, it is always more challenging in the winter, especially since it is up to us to supply our own treats…
photo by Nate Gibson
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When all the others were away at Mass I was all hers as we peeled potatoes. They broke the silence, let fall one by one Like solder weeping off the soldering iron: Cold comforts set between us, things to share Gleaming in a bucket of clean water. And again let fall. Little pleasant splashes From each other’s work would bring us to our senses.
So while the parish priest at her bedside Went hammer and tongs at the prayers for the dying And some were responding and some crying I remembered her head bent towards my head, Her breath in mine, our fluent dipping knives— Never closer the whole rest of our lives. ~Seamus Heaney “Clearances -3”
April 2008 – Vigil at Mom’s Bedside
Lying still, your mouth gapes open as I wonder if you breathe your last. Your hair a white cloud Your skin baby soft No washing, digging, planting gardens, peeling potatoes, Or raising children Anymore.
Where do your dreams take you? At times you wake in your childhood home of Rolling wheat fields, boundless days of freedom. Other naps take you to your student and teaching days Grammar and drama, speech and essays. Yesterday you were a young mother again Juggling babies, farm and your wistful dreams.
Today you looked about your empty nest Disguised as hospital bed, Wondering aloud about Children grown, flown. You still control through worry and tell me: Travel safely Get a good night’s sleep Take time to eat Call me when you get there
I dress you as you dressed me I clean you as you cleaned me I love you as you loved me You try my patience as I tried yours. I wonder if I have the strength to Mother my mother For as long as she needs.
When I tell you the truth Your brow furrows as it used to do When I disappointed you~ This cannot be A bed in a room in a sterile place Waiting for death Waiting for heaven Waiting
And I tell you: Travel safely Eat, please eat Sleep well Call me when you get there.
______________
Now that I am a grandmother, I seek those tiny, daily, apparently meaningless opportunities to create memories that my grandchildren may warmly recall decades from now, knowing they were all mine, if only for a few minutes at the kitchen sink.
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It is a kind of love, is it not? How the cup holds the tea, How the chair stands sturdy and foursquare, How the floor receives the bottoms of shoes Or toes. How soles of feet know Where they’re supposed to be. I’ve been thinking about the patience Of ordinary things, how clothes Wait respectfully in closets And soap dries quietly in the dish, And towels drink the wet From the skin of the back. And the lovely repetition of stairs. And what is more generous than a window? ~Pat Schneider “The Patience of Ordinary Things”
…leave me a little love, A voice to speak to me in the day end, A hand to touch me in the dark room Breaking the long loneliness. In the dusk of day-shapes Blurring the sunset, One little wandering, western star Thrust out from the changing shores of shadow. Let me go to the window, Watch there the day-shapes of dusk And wait and know the coming Of a little love. ~Carl Sandburg from “At a Window”
Everything looks a little different when framed by a window, especially in the winter when protected from the weather. I am set apart, looking out, rather than immersed within the icy snowy landscape myself.
With that separation, I feel as though I could be looking at the past, the present or the future.
It is not unlike being in an art museum, walking past masterpieces that offer a framed view into another time and place, populated with people I don’t know and will never meet.
So I go to the windows, moving through the house and peering out at the life that awaits beyond the frame. But rather than simply admire the view, protected as I am from the chill wind, I find the courage to walk out the door into whatever awaits beyond the glass.
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Just a piano playing plainly, not even for long, and yet I suddenly think of fields of timothy and how a cow and I once studied each other over a fence while the car ticked and cooled behind me. When I turned around I was surprised that it had not sprouted tall grass from its hood, I had been gone so long. Time passes in crooked ways in some tales, and though the cow and I were relatively young when we started our watching, we looked a bit younger when I left. The cow had downed a good steady meal and was full of milk for the barn. I drove away convinced of nothing I had been so sure of before, with arms full of splinters from leaning on the fence. There was no music— I was not even humming—but just now the piano played the exact sound of that drive. ~Annie Lighthart “The Sound of It” from Iron String.
Our brains remember the past in odd ways – from a smell, a sound, a bit of music, a taste - it is as if we are teleported to another place.
Senses can distort time passage and slant the present moment: Smelling cinnamon, I find myself in my grandmother’s kitchen with her apple pie. Hearing the sad “cooing” of mourning doves, I’m waking up in my cousins’ farmhouse during a summer visit in the Palouse. Listening to Joni Mitchell’s “River,” I’m deep in thick books in my study carrel at the library, melancholy and wishing myself to be anywhere else.
As our children were growing up on this farm, I wanted to intentionally “imprint” home on them in similar ways, with familiar smells and tastes and sounds, hoping they would mentally find their way back in myriad ways over the course of their lives. Now I find myself wanting to create the same brain memories for our visiting grandchildren. Perhaps this is why I invite them out to the barn with me as I clean stalls and throw hay and fill water buckets. I want them to never forget the smells and sounds and feelings of taking care of animals dependent on our care.
Which reminds me of long-ago sensations when I was four years old: sitting on top of a bony Guernsey cow’s back as she chewed her grain, listening to the shush shush shush of milk being squirted into a metal bucket as my dad milked her, the rich smell of the warm milk froth, clucking hens searching the barn floor for dropped pieces of corn.
Every day, there is so much to see, to smell, to hear, to taste, to feel – all of which is worthy of space in our brain. I have been gone so long, thinking how much I’ve forgotten, yet it just takes a trick of time and sensation to bring it back and experience it anew.
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Writer Luci Shaw turned 95 yesterday. A life-long poet and essayist in addition to being a wife, mother, publisher, gardener and outdoor enthusiast, Luci is a child of God who is continually living out and articulating the questions of faith, grace, and belief.
It is my privilege to know her as a neighbor in nearby Bellingham. Her books grace my shelves and I cherish her personal words of encouragement and mentoring.
Luci has gifted the world for decades with beauty and honesty, composing enriching poetic observations with heavenly anticipation.
Below is only a small sample of her work, some published as recently as two weeks ago – more of her writing and many books can be found at www.lucishaw.com.
Happy Birthday, Luci! You are beloved and blessed!
Luci Shaw -virtual presentation for Calvin Festival of Faith and Writing 2022
Last night I lay awake and practiced getting old. Not difficult,
but I needed to teach myself to love my destination before I arrive.
I feel the earth shifting under me. My writing hand shakes—its rubbery nudges clumsy,
my mind going slack, the way a day will lose its light and give itself to darkness,
and that long, nocturnal pause of inquiry— What next? And how long before light
reopens her blue eye? And will I need to learn a new language to converse with my Creator?
So, I am a questioner, one who waits, still, to arrive somewhere, some bright nest where
a new language breeds that I can learn to speak, unhindered, into heaven’s air,
somewhere I can live a long time, and never have to look back. ~Luci Shaw “December the 95th Year”
Luci Shaw at a Bellingham reading at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church -2017
In time of drought, let us be thankful for this very gentle rain, a gift not to be disdained though it is little and brief, reaching no great depth, barely kissing the leaves’ lips. Think of it as mercy. Other minor blessings may show up—tweezers for splinters, change for the parking meter, a green light at the intersection, a cool wind that lifts away summer’s suffocating heat. An apology after a harsh comment. A word that opens an unfinished poem like a key in a lock. ~Luci Shaw “Signs” from Eye of the Beholder.
Luci at a Bellingham reading of her poetry at Village Books in 2016
These still December mornings… Outside everything’s tinted rose, grape, turquoise, silver–the stones by the path, the skin of the sun
on the pond ice, at the night the aureola of a pregnant moon, like me, iridescent, almost full term with light. ~Luci Shaw from “Advent Visitation“in Accompanied by Angels
Today, in Bellingham, even the sidewalks gleam. Small change glints from the creases in the lady’s mantle and the hostas after the rain that falls, like grace, unmerited. My pockets are full, spilling over. ~Luci Shaw from “Small Change”
I love driving in Bellingham in the spring. In spite of the chilly weather, all the fruit trees are ‘springing,’ singing themselves into being in magnificent displays of pink and white–apricot, plum, apple, peach, cherry–undiscouraged by the darkly looming clouds today. Soon each twig will display its bridal bouquet grown for this spring wedding. I know this from years of observation! Next, they’ll grow so full and heavy with blossoms they’ll be ready to throw their bouquets to the crowd, and I’ll be watching for the petals to drop like wedding confetti, filling the gutters and swirling over sidewalks with their largesse. ~Luci Shaw
Out of the shame of spittle, the scratch of dirt, he made an anointing.
Oh, it was an agony-the gravel in the eye, the rude slime, the brittle clay caked on the lid.
But with the hurt light came leaping; in the shock and shine, abstracts took flesh and flew;
winged words like view and space, shape and shade and green and sky, bird and horizon and sun,
What next, she wonders, with the angel disappearing, and her room suddenly gone dark.
The loneliness of her news possesses her. She ponders how to tell her mother.
Still, the secret at her heart burns like a sun rising. How to hold it in— that which cannot be contained.
She nestles into herself, half-convinced it was some kind of good dream, she its visionary.
But then, part dazzled, part prescient— she hugs her body, a pod with a seed that will split her. ~Luci Shaw “Mary Considers Her Situation”
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
Down he came from up, and in from out, and here from there. A long leap, an incandescent fall from magnificent to naked, frail, small, through space, between stars, into our chill night air, shrunk, in infant grace, to our damp, cramped earthy place among all the shivering sheep.
And now, after all, there he lies, fast asleep. ~Luci Shaw “Descent” from Accompanied By Angels
Blue homespun and the bend of my breast keep warm this small hot naked star fallen to my arms. (Rest … you who have had so far to come.) Now nearness satisfies the body of God sweetly. 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. Older than eternity, now he is new. Now native to earth as I am, nailed to my poor planet, caught that I might be free, blind in my womb to know my darkness ended, brought to this birth for me to be new-born, and for him to see me mended I must see him torn. ~Luci Shaw “Mary’s Song”
one small crystal that gleams clear colours out of transparency.
I need more.
I break off a fragment to send to you.
Please take this grain of a grain of hope so that mine won’t shrink.
Please share your fragment so that yours will grow.
Only so, by division, will hope increase,
like a clump of irises, which will cease to flower unless you distribute the clustered roots, unlikely source– clumsy and earth-covered– of grace. ~Denise Levertov “For the New Year, 1981”
As this year draws to its end, We give thanks for the gifts it brought And how they became inlaid within Where neither time nor tide can touch them.
The days when the veil lifted And the soul could see delight; When a quiver caressed the heart In the sheer exuberance of being here.
Surprises that came awake In forgotten corners of old fields Where expectation seemed to have quenched.
The slow, brooding times When all was awkward And the wave in the mind Pierced every sore with salt.
The darkened days that stopped The confidence of the dawn.
Days when beloved faces shone brighter With light from beyond themselves; And from the granite of some secret sorrow A stream of buried tears loosened.
We bless this year for all we learned, For all we loved and lost And for the quiet way it brought us Nearer to our invisible destination. ~John O’Donohue “At the End of the Year” from To Bless The Space Between
Sculpture by Artist Albert Gyorgy
Truly, we live with mysteries too marvelous to be understood.
How grass can be nourishing in the mouths of the lambs.
How rivers and stones are forever in allegiance with gravity, while we ourselves dream of rising.
How two hands touch and the bonds will never be broken.
How people come, from delight or the scars of damage, to the comfort of a poem.
Let me keep my distance, always, from those who think they have the answers.
Let me keep company always with those who say “Look!” And laugh in astonishment and bow their heads. ~Mary Oliver “Mysteries, Yes”from Evidence: Poems
photo by Nate Gibson
Each day, for nearly twenty years, I break off a grain of hope from these dirt-covered, humble roots I have dug up to share.
I hand off a grain of hope to you here, as it will grow through your nurture, a tiny marvel you break off someday to hand on to someone else.
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