The Intricate Texture of Things

silentweb
morningweb7

Here is a new light on the intricate texture of things in the world…: the way we the living are nibbled and nibbling — not held aloft on a cloud in the air but bumbling pitted and scarred and broken through a frayed and beautiful land.
~Annie Dillard in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

fogdrops3

The weather is getting brisker so the outdoor critters, some invited, some not,  are starting to move inside.  The cats scoot between our legs as we open the front door, heading straight for the fireplace to bask in the warmth rather than a cold wind. The pup comes in from the yard for a nightly snack and chew bone, and stretches out on the rug, acting every bit like a piece of furry furniture. And today there was another mouse in the trap under the sink. I almost thought we were mouse-free with three weeks of none sighted and none trapped, but there he was waiting for me in the morning, well fed and quite dead.  He became an opportune meal for a cat too lazy to go get himself a living breathing mouse.

From nibbling to nibbled.  It is a tough world, inside and out.

Our most numerous and ambitious visitors from outside are the spiders, appearing miraculously crawling futilely up the sides in the bathtub, or scurrying across the kitchen floor, or webbing themselves into a corner of the ceiling with little hope of catching anything but a stray house moth or two this time of year. Arachnids are certainly determined yet stationary predators, rebuilding their sticky traps as needed to ensure their victims won’t rip away, thereby destroying the web.

I don’t really mind sharing living quarters with another of God’s creatures, but I do prefer the ones that are officially invited into our space and not surprise guests. The rest are interlopers that I tolerate with grudging admiration for their instinctive ingenuity. I admit I’m much too large, inept, and bumbling to find my way into someone else’s abode through a barely perceptible crack, and I’m certainly incapable of weaving the intricate beauty of a symmetrical web placed just so in a high corner.

After all, I am just another creature in the same boat. There is something quite humbling about being actually invited into this frayed and beautiful, complex and broken world, “pitted and scarred” as I am. I’m grateful I’ve so far escaped capture in the various insidious traps of life,  not just the spring-loaded kind and the sticky filament kind.

So it is okay that I’m settled in, cozy in front of the fireplace, just a piece of the furniture. Just so long as I don’t startle anyone or nibble too much of what I shouldn’t, I just might be invited to stay awhile.

josecat
josehomer
homer3

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The Shadow of Joy

Today as the news from Selma and Saigon 
poisons the air like fallout, 
I come again to see 
the serene great picture that I love

Here space and time exist in light  the eye like the eye of faith believes. 
The seen, the known 
dissolve in iridescence, become 
illusive flesh of light 
that was not, was, forever is. 

O light beheld as through refracting tears. 
Here is the aura of that world 
each of us has lost. 
Here is the shadow of its joy. 

~Robert Hayden “Monet’s Waterlilies”

…The world
is flux, and light becomes what it touches,
becomes water, lilies on water,
above and below water,
becomes lilac and mauve and yellow
and white and cerulean lamps,
small fists passing sunlight
so quickly to one another
that it would take long, streaming hair
inside my brush to catch it.
To paint the speed of light!
Our weighted shapes, these verticals,
burn to mix with air
and change our bones, skin, clothes
to gases.  Doctor,
if only you could see
how heaven pulls earth into its arms
and how infinitely the heart expands
to claim this world, blue vapor without end.
~Lisel Mueller, “Monet Refuses the Operation” from Second Language

Monet’s Waterlilies, Art Institute of Chicago

“Heaven pulls earth into its arms…”

We see things differently, don’t we?
What seems ordinary to one person is extraordinary to another.

How might I learn to adjust my focus to see things as you do?
How might I help others to see the world as I do?

The world is flux; my delight and dismay flows from moment to moment, from object to absence, from light to darkness, from color to gray. Perhaps the blur from the figurative (or real) cataract impeding my vision creates a deeper understanding, as I use my imagination to fill in what I can’t discern.

My heart and mind expands to claim this world and all that beauty has to offer, while heaven – all this while – is pulling me into its arms.

In heaven, my focus will be clear. It will all be extraordinarily holy.

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A Halloween Forty Years Ago

In the quiet misty morning
When the moon has gone to bed
When the sparrows stop their singing
And the sky is clear and red
When the summer ceased it’s gleaming
When the corn is past its prime
When adventures lost its meaning
I’ll be homeward-bound in time
~Marta Keen from “Homeward Bound”

On Halloween day in 1985, I packed up a roll-up mattress pad, grabbed one lonely pumpkin from our small garden, locked our rental house door for the last time, then climbed in my car to head two hours north out of Seattle.

I don’t recall looking back in the rear view mirror at the skyline after nine years living in the city. My husband had moved to Whatcom County two months earlier to start his new job. I had stayed behind to wrap up my Group Health family practice in the Rainier Valley of central Seattle.

I was leaving the city for our new rural home and a very uncertain professional future.

I knew two things for sure: I was finally several months pregnant after a miscarriage and two years of trying to conceive, so our family was on its way, and we were going to live in our own house with a few acres and a barn.

A real (sort of) starter farm and starter family, a dream we both shared.
Our home sits in the midst of woods and corn fields, with deer strolling through the fields at dawn, coyotes howling at night, Canadian geese and trumpeter swans calling from overhead and salmon thriving in nearby streams. The snowy Cascades greet us in the morning to the east, the Canadian Coastal range majestic to the north and not far to the west, the Salish Sea/Puget Sound.

Since it wouldn’t be a farm without animals, I stopped at the first pet store I drove past and found two tortoise shell calico kitten sisters peering up at me, just waiting for new adventures in farmland. Their box was packed into the one spot left beside me in my little Mazda.

With that simple commitment to raise and nurture those kittens alongside the life growing inside me, life seemed very complete.

I will never forget the freedom I felt on that drive north. The highway seemed more open, the fall colors more vibrant, the wind more energizing, our baby kicking my belly, the kittens mewing from their box. There seemed so much potential even though I had just left behind the greatest family practice found in any urban setting (at the time, it was the most ethnically diverse zip code in the United States) with patients from all over the world: alongside the multi-racial inner city population living in subsidized housing developments, my patients included Muslim immigrants from the Middle East and Indonesia, Orthodox Jews, Italian Catholics, and refugees from Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam.

I will never know so much variety of ethnic background and perspective again. If I could have packed them all into my little car and driven them north with me, I would have.

Despite what I was leaving behind, there was certainly a feeling of freedom that rainy Halloween day as the big city disappeared in the rear view mirror.

No longer would I sit captive in freeway rush-hour bumper to bumper traffic jams. I traded that for a new rural commute winding through farm fields while watching eagles fly overhead. I could become part of a community in a way I never could manage in the city, visiting with friends at the grocery store, playing piano and teaching Sunday School at church and serving on various community boards.

After the new kittens, dubbed Nutmeg and Oregano, arrived on our farm, we added even more diversity: a Belgian Tervuren dog Tango, a Haflinger horse Greta, Toggenburg goats Tamsin and her kids, a few Toulouse geese, Araucana chickens, Fiona the Scottish Highland cow, then another Haflinger Hans and another, Tamara. I worked as a fill-in doctor in four different clinics before our first baby was born, then settled into part-time practice in several different clinics for most of my career.

With those new commitments, life was fulfilling and busy – we soon added a little brother and seven years later, a sister. Then it felt like our family was complete.

Forty years later, our children have grown and gone to homes of their own, all married to wonderful spouses, raising six delightful children for us to lavish love on.

Somehow life now feels even more complete.

A few cats, a Cardigan Corgi, and three ponies still live at the farm with us. Now retired from our professional lives “in town”, we enjoy the freedom of slower and quieter days, nurtured and nurturing.

It all started October 31, 1985 with two orange and black kittens and a pumpkin sitting beside me in a little Mazda, my husband awaiting my homecoming 100 miles north. Now, forty years later, we celebrate this Halloween anniversary of farm and family, still pregnant with the possibility that life is never truly complete when there is always a new day just around the corner.

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One Old Dog Has Gone Away

Two old dogs out doing chores.
One on two legs, one on four.
Side by side, they water and feed.
Caring for others daily need.

Two old dogs make their rounds
Well worn paths on familiar ground.
To greet the day or say goodnight
Side by side, their friendship tight.

Two old dogs with dish and pail.
Singing songs and wagging tail.
Slower now, than in the past
But that just makes the good time last.

Two old dogs, both muzzles grey.
Aging joints sometimes curb play.
Companionship a simple joy.
His old dad; Dad’s old boy.

Two old dogs, and then one day
One old dog has gone away.
The other left to carry on
Two legs to barn and field and pond.

One old dog, eyes full of tears
Can still feel his old friend walking near
A reminder in the morning dew.
Just one path, instead of two.

When one old dog has no more chores
And walks through heaven’s golden doors
He’ll see that face he can’t forget.
A kindred spirit, not just a pet.

So many old dogs, made whole; anew
Reunion of a loyal crew.
Never again to be apart.
Many souls. But just one heart.

~Jeff Pillars “Two Old Dogs”

I knew this day was coming. Samwise Gamgee, approaching age 14, had been hinting that he was getting ready to leave for the past couple weeks. He was much slower following me for chores, his appetite wasn’t quite as robust as usual, and his hearing was fading.

Life had become an effort when it had been a lark for 13+ years.

But yesterday morning, he perked up enough to do his usual rounds on the farm, poke around the stalls in the barn, check the cat dishes for morsels, and bark when a strange car drove in the driveway.
Then last night he ignored his supper, laid down and closed his eyes, having used up all his reserves.

This morning, he was gone, leaving only a furry shell with big ears behind.

He had joined us on the farm as company for our aged Cardigan Corgi Dylan Thomas, who died two years after Samwise arrived. Then Sam himself needed company, so another Cardigan corgi, Homer, arrived.
They became a happy Corgi team on the farm.

Sam had a great dog life, with the exception of getting lost once and one overnight visit to the emergency vet hospital for treatment from poisoning from ivermectin, the horse worming medicine he somehow managed to lap up quickly off the barn floor when a horse dripped the paste from her mouth. After that he promised to never need a vet again.

His peaceful passing is a reminder of our temporary stay on his soil.
He’s smelling the flowers and watching the sunrises and sunsets from the other side now.

I honor Samwise’s long life with the photos I have compiled over the years.

Till we meet again, old friend.

photo by Nate Gibson
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Longing to Be a Passenger Again

I want to be a passenger
in your car again
and shut my eyes
while you sit at the wheel,


awake and assured
in your own private world,
seeing all the lines
on the road ahead,


down a long stretch
of empty highway
without any other
faces in sight.

I want to be a passenger
in your car again
and put my life back
in your hands.
~Michael Miller “December”

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

Up north, the dashboard lights of the family car
gleam in memory, the radio
plays to itself as I drive
my father plied the highways
while my mother talked, she tried to hide
that low lilt, that Finnish brogue,
in the back seat, my sisters and I
our eyes always tied to the Big Dipper
I watch it still
on summer evenings, as the fireflies stream
above the ditches and moths smack
into the windshield and the wildlife’s
red eyes bore out from the dark forests
we flew by, then scattered like the last bit of star
light years before.
It’s like a different country, the past
we made wishes on unnamed falling stars
that I’ve forgotten, that maybe were granted
because I wished for love.

~Sheila PackaDriving At Night” from The Mother Tongue

The moon was like a full cup tonight,
too heavy, and sank in the mist
soon after dark, leaving for light

faint stars and the silver leaves
of milkweed beside the road,
gleaming before my car.

Yet I like driving at night
the brown road through the mist

of mountain-dark, among farms
so quiet
and the roadside willows
opening out where I saw

the cows. Always a shock
to remember them there, those
great breathings close in the dark.

I stopped, and took my flashlight
to the pasture fence. They turned
to me where they lay, sad

and beautiful faces in the dark,
and I counted them-forty
near and far in the pasture

I switched off my light.

But I did not want to go,
not yet, nor knew what to do
if I should stay, for how

in that great darkness could I explain
anything, anything at all.
I stood by the fence. And then

very gently it began to rain.
~Hayden Carruth from “The Cows at Night”

Some of my most cherished childhood memories come from long rides home in the car at night from holiday gatherings. My father always drove, my mother hummed “I See the Moon” in the front passenger seat, and we three kids sat in the back seat, drowsy and full of feasting.

The night world hypnotically passed by outside the car window. I wondered whether the rest of the world was as safe and content as I felt at that moment.

On clear nights, the moon followed us down the highway, shining a light on the road.

Now as a driver at night, transporting grandchildren from a family gathering, I want them to feel the same peaceful contentment that I did as a child. As an older driver, I don’t enjoy driving at night, especially dark rural roads in pouring rain. I understand the enormous responsibility I bear, transporting those whom I dearly love and want to keep safe.

In truth, I long to be a passenger again, with no worries or pressures – just along for the ride, watching the moon and the world drift by, knowing I’m well-cared for.

But of course, I fret about the immense burden I feel to make things right in this dark and troubled world.

I am a passenger on a planet that has a Driver who feels great responsibility and care for all He transports through the black night of the universe. He loves me and I can rest content in the knowledge that I am safe in His vigilant hands.

I am not the driver – He knows how to safely bring me home, even in the rain.

I see the moon, it’s shining from far away, Beckoning with ev‘ry beam.
And though all the start above cast down their light, Still the moon is all that I see
And it’s calling out, “Come run a way!
And we’ll sail with the clouds for our sea,
And we’ll travel on through the black of the night, ‘til we float back home on a dream!”
The moon approaches my window pane, stretching itself to the ground.
The moon sings softly and laughs and smiles, and yet never makes a sound!
I see the moon! I see the moon!
Part A
And it’s calling out, “Come run a way!
And we’ll sail with the clouds for our sea,
And we’ll travel on through the black of the night, ‘til we float back home on a dream!”
Part B
I see the moon, it’s shining from far away, Beckoning with ev‘ry beam.
And though all the stars above cast down their light, Still the moon is all that I see
~Douglas Beam

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The Glow of Ripeness

Love means to learn to look at yourself
The way one looks at distant things
For you are only one thing among many.
And whoever sees that way heals his heart,
Without knowing it, from various ills—
A bird and a tree say to him: Friend.

Then he wants to use himself and things
So that they stand in the glow of ripeness.
It doesn’t matter whether he knows what he serves:
Who serves best doesn’t always understand.
~Czeslaw Milosz “Love” from New and Collected Poems: 1931-2001

Let him kneel down, lower his face to the grass,
And look at light reflected by the ground.
There he will find everything we have lost…
~Czeslaw Milosz from “The Sun”

It’s not easy to subdue the needy ego and let the life-giving soul take control, even though doing so saves us grief and serves the world well. So if you see me on the street one day, quietly muttering, “Only one thing among many, only one thing among many…,” you’ll know I’m still working on it, or it’s still working on me.
~Parker Palmer “The Big Question: Does My Life Have Meaning?”

It is always tempting to be self-absorbed; since my heart stent placement nearly 8 months ago, I tend to analyze every sensation in my chest, fuss over how many steps I take daily, and get discouraged when the scale doesn’t register the sacrifices I think I’m making in my diet.

In other words, in my efforts to heal my physically-broken heart, I become the center of my attention, rather than just one among many things in the days/months/years I have left. I need to look at myself from a distance rather than under a microscope.

It is a skewed and futile perspective, seeking meaning and purpose in life by navel gazing.

Instead, I should be concentrating on the ripeness of each day. I’ve been given a second chance to recalibrate my journey through the time I have left, focusing outward, gazing at the wonders around me, sometimes getting down on my knees.

I don’t fully understand how I might serve others by what I share here online, or what I do in my local community with my hands and feet. I now know not to miss the moments basking in the glow of loving those around me, including you friends I may never meet on this side of the veil.

May you glow in ripeness as well.

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For a Moment, the World Wakes Up

                       1

Every October it becomes important, no, necessary
to see the leaves turning, to be surrounded
by leaves turning; it’s not just the symbolism,
to confront in the death of the year your death,
one blazing farewell appearance, though the irony
isn’t lost on you that nature is most seductive
when it’s about to die, flaunting the dazzle of its
incipient exit, an ending that at least so far
the effects of human progress (pollution, acid rain)
have not yet frightened you enough to make you believe
is real; that is, you know this ending is a deception
because of course nature is always renewing itself—

        the trees don’t die, they just pretend,
go out in style, and return in style: a new style.

                        3

You’ll be driving along depressed when suddenly
a cloud will move and the sun will muscle through
and ignite the hills. It may not last. Probably
won’t last. But for a moment the whole world
comes to. Wakes up. Proves it lives. It lives—
red, yellow, orange, brown, russet, ocher, vermilion,
gold. Flame and rust. Flame and rust, the permutations
of burning. You’re on fire. Your eyes are on fire.
It won’t last, you don’t want it to last. You
can’t stand any more. But you don’t want it to stop.
It’s what you’ve come for. It’s what you’ll
come back for. It won’t stay with you, but you’ll

        remember that it felt like nothing else you’ve felt
or something you’ve felt that also didn’t last.
~Lloyd Schwarz from “Leaves”

The world wakes up and comes to, with vivid, overwhelming color
for a moment before it dies.

The landscape is simply acting out its part, perhaps just pretending.
Nothing is really dying, just taking a nap under a brilliant blanket.

Rest well. See you next year.

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What I’ll Remember

old milk barn

The partly open hay barn door, white frame around the darkness,
the broken board, small enough for a child
to slip through.


Walking in the cornfields in late July, green tassels overhead,
the slap of flat leaves as we pass, silent
and invisible from any road.


Hollyhocks leaning against the stucco house, peonies heavy
as fruit, drooping their deep heads
on the dog house roof.


Lilac bushes between the lawn and the woods,
a tractor shifting from one gear into
the next, the throttle opened,


the smell of cut hay, rain coming across the river,
the drone of the hammer mill,
milk machines at dawn.

~Joyce Sutphen “The Last Things I’ll Remember” from First Words

I turn this seasonal corner, facing deep into autumn,
summer fading in the rear view mirror.

Even as the air bares chill, and the clouds sopping soak,
the riches of summer remain vivid.

Let me remember:
even if I too fade away, readying for the next turn.

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Love Without Hesitation

Every morning I walk through folds of fields
searching.

Slants of sun
sink through triangled bones of leaves:
bold cold refuted.

Sparrows flutter warm in given nests,
ungriefed,
caught,
sustained by common grace.

Faith is the tenderness of banked coals in a grate,
Braeburn apples on a windowsill,
winding crisp with possibility.
The steadiness of conversations embered over decades;
a fire that has never left off crackling –
on this my soul has warmed her hands.


Divine ardor:
too strong and sweet
for the many years I’ve walked on earth.

Love without hesitation has swept my floorboards for seasons.
Deep and longing in and out of time the soul reaches out –
and He, grasps entire.
Hold – and tender.
Incandescent.
~Claire Hellar “A Search in Autumn”

photo by Josh Scholten

This time of year a chill is in the air,
urging us to feed the embers still throwing heat.

Warmed while eating a meal
together with decades-long friends,
everything grown from our own farms and gardens,
prepared with care and gratitude.

A shared gathering of words and food
in the waning softness of autumn;
we grow older round the table,
incandescent with grace,
a blessed communion.

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Follow a Drop’s Path

For this you may see no need,
You may think my aim
Dead set on something

 
Devoid of conceivable value:
An Anthology of Rain,
A collection of voices

 
Telling someone somewhere
What it means to follow a drop
Traveling to its final place of rest.

 
By opening anywhere, a drop
And its story reappear
As air turns to water, water to air.
~Phyllis Levin – excerpt from “An Anthology of Rain”

A drop fell on the apple tree,
Another on the roof;
A half a dozen kissed the eaves,
And made the gables laugh.

A few went out to help the brook,
That went to help the sea.
Myself conjectured, Were they pearls,
What necklaces could be

~Emily Dickinson

At first glance, this soppiness is melancholic.

Yet, when studied up close,
rain droplets glisten like jewels.

The onset of rainy season isn’t all sadness~
there is solace in knowing
the landscape and I share
an inner world of change:
though sodden,
these are the promises of renewal
within our tears.

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