Category: contentment

What I’m Still Learning…

June 10, 2026 barnstormingblogLeave a comment

I’ve learned that no matter what happens, or how bad it seems today, life does go on, and it will be better tomorrow.

I’ve learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way he/she handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights.

I’ve learned that regardless of your relationship with your parents, you’ll miss them when they’re gone from your life.

I’ve learned that making a ‘living’ is not the same thing as making a ‘life.’

I’ve learned that life sometimes gives you a second chance.

I’ve learned that you shouldn’t go through life with a catcher’s mitt on both hands; you need to be able to throw something back.

I’ve learned that whenever I decide something with an open heart, I usually make the right decision.

I’ve learned that even when I have pains, I don’t have to be one.

I’ve learned that every day you should reach out and touch someone. People love a warm hug, or just a friendly pat on the back.

I’ve learned that I still have a lot to learn.

I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.
~Maya Angelou

…think of all the things you’ve learned over the years—
the hard and the holy,
the mysteries that will always remain mysterious,
the clean edges of truth,
the soft edges of every kindness given or received,
the way trouble and wonder will continue to show up, sometimes leaving us beached and breathless with uncontainable joy or unutterable sorrow.
I think of all the times I was knocked to my knees by a beautiful and brilliant flash of the completely obvious.
~Carrie Newcomer from A Gathering of Spirits

I learned from my mother how to love
the living, to have plenty of vases on hand
in case you have to rush to the hospital
with peonies cut from the lawn, black ants
still stuck to the buds. I learned to save jars
large enough to hold fruit salad for a whole
grieving household, to cube home-canned pears
and peaches, to slice through maroon grape skins
and flick out the sexual seeds with a knife point.
I learned to attend viewings even if I didn’t know
the deceased, to press the moist hands
of the living, to look in their eyes and offer
sympathy, as though I understood loss even then.
I learned that whatever we say means nothing,
what anyone will remember is that we came.
I learned to believe I had the power to ease
awful pains materially like an angel.
Like a doctor, I learned to create
from another’s suffering my own usefulness, and once
you know how to do this, you can never refuse.
To every house you enter, you must offer
healing: a chocolate cake you baked yourself,
the blessing of your voice, your chaste touch.
~Julie Kasdorf– “What I Learned from my Mother”

Five years ago today, I wrapped up 45 years of uninterrupted medical training and doctoring.

Even while bearing three children and going through a few surgeries myself, I was not away from patient care for more than twenty consecutive days at any one time. This was primarily out of my concern that, even after a few weeks, I would forget all that I’d ever known.

Indeed, half of what I learned in medical school and residency nearly fifty years ago has evolved, thanks to new discoveries and clarifying research. I worried if I actually stepped away from doctoring for an extended time, then return to see patients again, I would be masquerading as a physician rather than be the real thing.

I couldn’t fathom a day when I could actually investigate a medical dilemma by typing a few words in a search engine on a computer screen. Instead, I researched through opening my encyclopedic collection of reference textbooks along with huge notebooks of “Scientific American Updates,” a monthly process of throwing out old articles to be replaced by newly discovered data. That is how I kept learning before the computer replaced books and pen and paper…

If being truly honest, even now, those who spend their professional lives providing medical care to others always share this concern: if a patient only knew how much we don’t know and will never know, despite everything we DO know, there would really be no trust left for us at all.

With so much rapidly changing medical information at everyone’s fingertips and computer screens, who needs a trained physician when there are so many other resources – many sketchy and opportunistic – for seeking health care advice?

Yet, I am convinced most patients really do want doctors to share the best information they have available at any point in time rather than rely on the latest internet algorithm and so-called “experts.”

I know over forty years of clinical experience gave me an eye and an ear for the subtle signs and symptoms that no googled website or AI app or virtual doc-in-the-box can discern: the avoidance of eye contact, the tremble of the lip as they spoke, the barely palpable rash, the hardly discernible extra heart sound, the fullness over an ovary, the slight squeak in a lung base. These are things I was privileged to see and hear, about which I made decisions together with my patients.

The work I did over four decades was a reflection of a continual learning process; out of my natural caution, I was honest when I didn’t know what the diagnosis was, nor the best treatment, but committed to doing my best to find out.

Continual learning – what I was trained to do for thousands of days and many more thousands of patients during my professional life, while passing a comprehensive certification examination every few years to prove my study and changing fund of knowledge.

Since retiring, the help I offer no longer means writing a prescription for a medication, or performing a minor surgery. I have to simply offer up me for what it’s worth, without a stethoscope.

Now I aim to be the best mom and grandma and friend I can be.
I can press my hand into another’s, hug when needed, smile and listen and nod and sometimes weep when someone has something they need to say. No advanced degree or certification required.

Someday, hopefully not too soon, I will die happy knowing I chose this with my life: still learning and still caring.

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The Sweet Ache of Memories

June 9, 2026June 9, 2026 barnstormingblog4 Comments

All day the stars watch from long ago
my mother said I am going now
when you are alone you will be all right
whether or not you know you will know
look at the old house in the dawn rain
all the flowers are forms of water
the sun reminds them through a white cloud
touches the patchwork spread on the hill
the washed colors of the afterlife
that lived there long before you were born
see how they wake without a question
even though the whole world is burning
~W.S. Merwin “Rain Light”

Well-away and be it so,
To the stranger let them go.
Even cheerfully I yield
Pasture, orchard, mowing-field,
Yea and wish him all the gain
I required of them in vain.
Yea and I can yield him house,
Barn, and shed, with rat and mouse
To dispute possession of.
These I can unlearn to love.
Since I cannot help it? Good!
Only be it understood,
It shall be no trespassing
If I come again some spring
In the grey disguise of years,
Seeking ache of memory here.
~Robert Frost from “On the Sale of My Farm”

the farm where I grew up in east Stanwood

From the road, each of the two small farms where I grew up in western Washington state (Stanwood and Olympia) look nothing like they did in my childhood. When I drive past now, whether on Google Earth virtually or for real, the outbuildings have changed and are unfamiliar, fences pulled down, the trees exponentially taller or gone altogether, the fields no longer well-tended. Instead the familiarity is in the road to get there, the lean into the curves, the acceleration in and out of dips, the landscape which triggers a simultaneous comfort and disquiet deep in my DNA.

Though my brother once stopped and got permission to look around our long-ago childhood home, and sent me pictures that looked barely recognizable, I myself have never stopped to knock; instead I have driven slowly past to sense if I feel what I used to feel in these places. My memories are indeed triggered but feel a bit as if they must have happened to someone else.

I have the same feeling when driving past my parents’ childhood farms on Similk Bay on Fidalgo Island and in the Palouse wheat fields. Part of me belongs to these places even though they have never been truly “mine” – only part of sweet memories from my own childhood.

the driveway to my mother’s Palouse farm where she grew up

my mother’s childhood home in Spring Valley, the Palouse

One clinic day years ago, I glanced at the home address of a young man I was about to see for a medical issue and I realized he now lived in my childhood home located over 100 miles away. When I greeted him I told him we had something in common: we had grown up under the same roof, inside the same walls, though children of two different generations.

He was curious but seemed skeptical — how could this gray-haired middle aged woman know anything about his home? He told me a bit about the house, the barn, the fields, the garden and how he experienced it felt altogether strange to me. He and I had shared nothing but a patch of real estate — our recollections were so completely disparate.

The two daughters of the family who sold our current farm to us over thirty years ago have been back to visit a time or two, and have driven by whenever they are in the area. Many things remain familiar to them but also too much has changed – it is not quite the same farm they remember from their childhood. I know it aches to visit here but they do let me know when a photo I post has a particular sweet memory for them.

I worry for the fearsome ache if someday, due to age or finances, we must sell this farm we cherish ~ this beloved place our children were raised, animals bred and cared for, fruit picked from an ancient orchard, plants tended and soil turned over. It will remain on the map surely as the other two farms of my past, visible as we pass by slowly on the road, but primarily preserved in the words and photos I harvest here.

Only be it understood,
It shall be no trespassing
If I come again some spring
In the grey disguise of years,
Seeking ache of memory here.

There will always be hoping something will still remain familiar on the map of my memory. After all, there is no such beauty as the place where I belonged – now and forever ago.

Tell me, where is the road
I can call my own
That I left, that I lost
So long ago?
All these years I have wandered
Oh, when will I know
There’s a way, there’s a road
That will lead me home

After wind, after rain
When the dark is done
As I wake from a dream
In the gold of day
Through the air there’s a calling
From far away
There’s a voice I can hear
That will lead me home

Rise up, follow me
Come away, is the call
With the love in your heart
As the only song
There is no such beauty
As where you belong
Rise up, follow me
I will lead you home
~Michael Dennis Browne

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Gift of a Day

June 5, 2026 barnstormingblogLeave a comment

A hundred thousand birds salute the day:–
        One solitary bird salutes the night:
Its mellow grieving wiles our grief away,
        And tunes our weary watches to delight;
It seems to sing the thoughts we cannot say,
        To know and sing them, and to set them right;
Until we feel once more that May is May,
        And hope some buds may bloom without a blight.
This solitary bird outweighs, outvies,
        The hundred thousand merry-making birds
Whose innocent warblings yet might make us wise
Would we but follow when they bid us rise,
        Would we but set their notes of praise to words
And launch our hearts up with them to the skies.
~Christina Rossetti “A Hundred Thousand Birds”

Every day is perfect, if
when you wake, you hear birds
in the garden, in the yard. Birds

up and down, ushering in one more day
in all the houses on Shaker Way. Birds
on telephone lines, light posts. Birds

twit, twittering on trees
hailing fellow birds
with a nod of beak—gray kingbird;

top-hatted, streamertail
tuxedoed, doctor bird—
busy-bodied hummingbird

tucking in, out, of pink, red ixoras
punch-drunk in love. Birds
preening for, chatting up other birds—

the oriole, the grass quit, in mid-song
on the lawn, in a dance of birds
an all-day-long conference of bird;

red-headed woodpecker
—drummer boy, or girl bird
in this daily symphony of birds

—an orchestra on Shaker Way
in serenade of each perfect day with birds—
from the very first mockingbird

heralding, in solo warble
one more day, filled with birds—
brightened, lightened, trilled by birds:

precious, diamond-throated
sweet song, miracle-toting birds
the-gift-of-day-is-here birds.

Bird, bird, bird. Hello bird.
You lift me up bird.
You sing the day beautiful, bird.
~Ann-Margaret Lim “Birdsong of Shaker Way”

Birds afloat in air’s current,
sacred breath? No, not breath of God,
it seems, but God
the air enveloping the whole
globe of being.
It’s we who breathe, in, out, in, the sacred,
leaves astir, our wings
rising, ruffled—but only saints
take flight…
But storm or still,
numb or poised in attention,
we inhale, exhale, inhale,
encompassed, encompassed.
~Denise Levertov from “In Whom We Live and Move and Have Our Being” from The Stream and the Sapphire

As if reluctant to let go the setting sun last night,
one lone bird still sang a twilight song,
long after the others fell asleep,
their heads tucked neatly under their wings.

This lone bird had not yet finished the day,
breathing in and out its plaintive melody,
articulating what my own thoughts could not say.

And before a hint of light this June morning,
I am swept from my dreams at 4:30 AM
by a full chorus singing from the same tree,
no longer a lone voice, but hundreds.

Although my day is launched early by warbling songs,
I cannot forget twilight’s one reluctant bird
who fought back the impending darkness using only its voice.

I too resist the darkness with what I write here,
if only I can keep it at bay:
inhaling, exhaling, encompassed in holy Breath.

I want to sing out light and love to Light:
encompassed by no darkness here.

I hear a bird chirping, up in the sky
I’d like to be free like that spread my wings so high I
see the river flowing water running by
I’d like to be that river, see what I might find

I feel the wind a blowin’, slowly changing time
I’d like to be that wind, I’d swirl and the shape sky
I smell the flowers blooming, opening for spring
I’d like to be those flowers, open to everything

I feel the seasons change, the leaves, the snow and sun
I’d like to be those seasons, made up and undone
I taste the living earth, the seeds that grow within
I’d like to be that earth, a home where life begins

I see the moon a risin’, reaching into night
I’d like to be that moon, a knowing glowing light
I know the silence as the world begins to wake
I’d like to be that silence as the morning breaks

He doesn’t know the world at all
Who stays in his nest and doesn’t go out.
He doesn’t know what birds know best
Nor what I sing about, Nor what I sing about, Nor what sing about:
That the world is full of loveliness.

When dew-drops sparkle in the grass
And earth is aflood with morning light. light
A blackbird sings upon a bush
To greet the dawning after night,
the dawning after night,
the dawning after night.
Then I know how fine it is to live.

Hey, try to open your heart to beauty;
Go to the woods someday
And weave a wreath of memory there.
Then if tears obscure your way
You’ll know how wonderful it is
To be alive.
~Paul Read

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Always Enough

June 1, 2026 barnstormingblog1 Comment

There is always enough.
       My old cat of long years, who
              stayed all the months of his dying,

though, made sick by food,
       he refused to eat, till, long-stroked,
              he turned again to accept

another piece of dry catfood
       or spoonful of meat, a little water,
              another day through which

he purred, small engine
       losing heat—I made him nests
              of pillow and blanket, a curve of body

where he curled against my legs,
       and when the time came, he slipped out
              a loose door into the cold world

whose abundance included
              the death of his choosing.
~Robin Chapman “Enough” from Abundance

I remember the long orange carp you once scooped
from the neighbor’s pond, bounding beyond
her swung broom, across summer lawns

to lay the fish on my stoop. Thanks
for that. I’m not one to whom offerings
often get made. You let me feel

how Christ might when I kneel,
weeping in the dark
over the usual maladies: love and its lack.

Only in tears do I speak
directly to him and with such
conviction. And only once you grew frail

did you finally slacken into me,
dozing against my ribs like a child.
You gave up the predatory flinch

that snapped the necks of so many
birds and slow-moving rodents.
Now your once powerful jaw

is malformed by black malignancies.
It hurts to eat. So you surrender in the way
I pray for: Lord, before my own death,

let me learn from this animal’s deep release
into my arms. Let me cease to fear
the embrace that seeks to still me.
~Mary Karr “For a Dying Tomcat Who’s Relinquished His Former Hissing and Predatory Nature”

I have reposted these memories of José after learning of my farmer friend Zach’s recent loss of his 16 year old black farm cat friend Toby, after years of love, companionship, shenanigans and persistent doctoring…

When you look back, Zach, you’ll know Toby’s secret power was to always be enough to get you through the day…

José had been our front porch cat for years.

Not our garage cat, our upper barn cat, our lower barn cat or those that come and go on the farm because we’re a hospitable place where food is always on the table.

He was the king of the farm cats. No one questioned him (usually) and no one occupied his front porch bench/throne without his express permission. His Majesty showed mercy to any who showed proper submission, and every once in awhile, that included the dogs.

He trained every pup here over the years.

He was the official front porch farm greeter, rising from his throne cushion to investigate any newcomer walking up the sidewalk, mewing a cheerful little “chirp” of a meow in welcome. Then he turned around and returned to his perch.

José was a performance cat, having been trained in his younger years to ride on a bareback pad on our Haflingers, at walk, trot and over jumps (sorry, no pictures). This once again proved his ability to get any creature, large or small, to submit to his will.

The only love of his life was our daughter, Lea. As José arrived to our farm at an indeterminate age, we didn’t really know how many years he would be with us. Before Lea headed off to college, and when home on breaks, they had many happy snuggles together for nearly 15 years.

During our harsh winter storms, José would move to a warm farm building with all the necessary provisions until the storm was done, then reclaim his favorite spot on the front porch when he deemed it cozy enough to be worthy of him.

After one particularly nasty storm, when the cold northeast wind went away, José didn’t return from his hiding place.

I looked, I called, I left goodies out. But no José. No chirpy meow, no yellow-eyed gaze, no black velvet fur to stroke, no rumbly purr to vibrate in my lap. I think this tough cat chose a bad winter to leave for warmer quarters far far away.

I suspect – as I still keep an eye out for it — there must be a velvety black coat he abandoned somewhere here on the farm.

He simply didn’t need it any more and unafraid, he left it behind.

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Imagining Glory Beyond Measure

May 28, 2026 barnstormingblog2 Comments

The night of the Perseid shower,
thick fog descended
but I would not be denied.
I had put the children to bed,
knelt with them,
and later
in the quiet kitchen
as tall red candles
burned on the table between us,
I’d listened to my wife’s sweet imprecations,
her entreaties to see a physician.
But at the peak hour—
after she had gone to bed,
and neighboring houses
stood solemn and dark—
I felt no human obligation
and went without hope into the yard.
In the white mist
beneath the soaked and dripping trees,
I lifted my eyes
into a blind nothingness of sky
and shivered in a white robe.
I couldn’t see the outline
of the neighbor’s willows,
much less the host of streaking meteorites
no bigger than grains of sand
blazing across the sky.
I questioned the mind, my troubled thinking,
and chided myself to go in,
but looking up,
I thought of the earth
on which I stood,
my own
scanty plot of ground,
and as the lights passed unseen
I imagined glory beyond all measure.
Then I turned to the lights in the windows—
the children’s nightlights,
and my wife’s reading lamp, still burning.
~Richard Jones “The Manifestation”

Perhaps as a child you had the chicken pox
and your mother, to soothe you in your fever
or to help you fall asleep, came into your room
and read to you from some favorite book,
Charlotte’s Web or Little House on the Prairie,
a long story that she quietly took you through
until your eyes became magnets for your shuttering
lids and she saw your breathing go slow. And then
she read on, this time silently and to herself,
not because she didn’t know the story,
it seemed to her that there had never been a time
when she didn’t know this story—the young girl
and her benevolence, the young girl in her sod house—
but because she did not yet want to leave your side
though she knew there was nothing more
she could do for you. And you, not asleep but simply weak,
listened to her turn the pages, still feeling
the lamp warm against one cheek, knowing the shape
of the rocking chair’s shadow as it slid across
your chest. So that now, these many years later,
when you are clenched in the damp fist of a hospital bed,
or signing the papers that say you won’t love him anymore,
when you are bent at your son’s gravesite or haunted
by a war that makes you wake with the gun
cocked in your hand, you would like to believe
that such generosity comes from God, too,
who now, when you have the strength to ask, might begin
the story again, just as your mother would,
from the place where you have both left off.
~Keetje Kuipers “Prayer”

Flung is too harsh a word for the rush of the world.
Blown is more like it, but blown by a generous, unending breath.
~Annie Dillard from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

How could it be possible?

The five year old me had a sudden terrifying revelation that I would some day cease to walk this earth.

The much older me is more afraid of the faster and faster rush of the days than of their end.

The world hurtles through space and time at a pace that leaves me breathless. Throughout my seventy-plus years, I have felt flung all too frequently, bruised and weary from hurry and hubbub.

I have need of Someone to stop me for a moment, sit down and begin the Story again with me, starting right where we left off.

Now, with retirement from daily work obligations: breathing space.
I’m lifted lighter, drifting where I’m blown, less weighted down
by the next thing to do and the next place to be.

Instead I can just be…
part of the story to be told,
part of the wonder.
Blown by breath that loves,
fills and nurtures,
a generous promise hopeful and fulfilled.

I’m grateful for the opportunity to see, even in the dark,
a manifestation of glory and love just beyond my vision,
praying that one day I will see and know it clearly.

The old me ~
Blown upon.

If only the five year old me could have known.

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A Glass Filled With Our Lives

May 21, 2026 barnstormingblogLeave a comment

How swiftly the strained honey
of afternoon light
flows into darkness

and the closed bud shrugs off
its special mystery
in order to break into blossom:

as if what exists, exists
so that it can be lost
and become precious.
~Lisel Mueller “In Passing” from Alive Together

He may become like a glass filled with a clean light for eyes to see that can.
~J.R.R. Tolkien – Gandalf speaks of Frodo after his injuries – in The Lord of the Rings

…what (does) it mean to bear Christ in the midst of a world that feels somehow even more chaotic and violent than usual. What does it mean to be saved and healed by him when we linger and ache, here in the darkened realm of the still-broken world?
…in this passage I return again, again, to the astonishing recollection of God in his love, who takes what evil meant to be our destruction (pain, loneliness, loss), and makes it the place of his arrival.
The man of sorrows,
bearing our pain so that no sorrow may ever end the story again.
Where we grieve, he arrives to heal.
Where we ache, he bears our load.
Where we cry aloud, he answers.
So that our need becomes the very ground of our renewal.
And the clear light of his love shines through the glass of our lives.

Eventually.
For those who can see.
I know people like that.
I want to become a soul like that.
~Sarah Clarkson writing about the above Tolkien quote here

Each one of us, like a swelling bud hanging heavy,
waits on the stem —
already but not quite yet.

Such is the late afternoon light of a mid-spring day~
~ an air of mystery in a honeyed moment of illumination ~
knowing something more is coming.

Not just letting go of what we cannot yet understand.
Not just peering through a glass darkly.
Not just giving up and dropping away.

Breaking from bud into blossom means opening fully,
glowing with transparent ripeness in the glass of our lives.
Becoming light itself.

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The Bee-Loud Glade

May 16, 2026 barnstormingblogLeave a comment

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.
~William Butler Yeats “The Lake Isle of Innisfree”

O gentle bees, I have come to say
That grandfather fell to sleep to-day.
And we know by the smile on grandfather’s face.
He has found his dear one’s biding place.
So, bees, sing soft, and, bees, sing low.
As over the honey-fields you sweep,—
To the trees a-bloom and the flowers a-blow
Sing of grandfather fast asleep;
And ever beneath these orchard trees
Find cheer and shelter, gentle bees.
~Eugene Field from “Telling the Bees”

Here is the place; right over the hill
Runs the path I took;
You can see the gap in the old wall still,
And the stepping-stones in the shallow brook.

There is the house, with the gate red-barred,
And the poplars tall;
And the barn’s brown length, and the cattle-yard,
And the white horns tossing above the wall.

There are the beehives ranged in the sun;
And down by the brink
Of the brook are her poor flowers, weed-o’errun,
Pansy and daffodil, rose and pink.

A year has gone, as the tortoise goes,
Heavy and slow;
And the same rose blows, and the same sun glows,
And the same brook sings of a year ago.

I can see it all now,—the slantwise rain
Of light through the leaves,
The sundown’s blaze on her window-pane,
The bloom of her roses under the eaves.

Just the same as a month before,—
The house and the trees,
The barn’s brown gable, the vine by the door,—
Nothing changed but the hives of bees.

Before them, under the garden wall,
Forward and back,
Went drearily singing the chore-girl small,
Draping each hive with a shred of black.

Trembling, I listened: the summer sun
Had the chill of snow;
For I knew she was telling the bees of one
Gone on the journey we all must go!
~John Greenleaf Whittier from “Telling the Bees”

If you talk to him,
he will not pretend to be
an ordinary man.
He won’t let on
he is one who isn’t afraid to hold
in his outstretched hands
the buzzing gold.

He won’t tell you he is the man who keeps farmers
warm in their livelihood,
or the man who keeps the grocery shelves
full, then adds, simply for good measure,
jars of his shining honey.
He won’t explain that he is the one
who sets his suffering neighbors
free from their pain
with gifts of jars that sting.

He won’t let on to be the lifegiver or a god.
He will pretend he is just an old man with sand-colored hair,
a blue truck heavy with breezy hives,
and a comb-spinner in his cellar.
~Sidney Hall Jr., from This Understated Land

…The world was really one bee yard,
and the same rules work fine in both places.
Don’t be afraid, as no life-loving bee wants to sting you.
Still, don’t be an idiot; wear long sleeves and pants.
Don’t swat. Don’t even think about swatting.
If you feel angry, whistle.
Anger agitates while whistling melts a bee’s temper.
Act like you know what you’re doing, even if you don’t.
Above all, send the bees love. Every little thing wants to be loved.
~Sue Monk Kidd from The Secret Life of Bees

He calls the honeybees his girls although
he tells me they’re ungendered workers
who never produce offspring. Some hour drops,
the bees shut off. In the long, cool slant of sun,
spent flowers fold into cups. He asks me if I’ve ever
seen a Solitary Bee where it sleeps. I say I’ve not.
The nearest bud’s a long-throated peach hollyhock.
He cradles it in his palm, holds it up so I spy
the intimacy of the sleeping bee. Little life safe in a petal,
little girl, your few furious buzzings as you stir
stay with me all winter, remind me of my work undone.
~Heid E. Erdrich, from “Intimate Detail” from The Mother’s Tongue

It was just like I was telling the bees last night. I saw two of them asleep inside the cup of a hollyhock, covered in pollen, just holding each other’s feet, just sleeping in the flower waiting for the sun to warm them so they could fly off. To see two of them curled up like that, it was very sweet.
~Diana Gabaldon/Matt Roberts from the final episode of Outlander TV series

A beekeeper must be a loving and patient person; the bees know who loves them, and who will always be there to care for them.

An old Celtic tradition necessitates sharing any news from the household with the farm’s bee hives, whether cheery like a new birth or a wedding celebration or sad like a family death. This ensures the hives’ well-being and continued connection to home and community – the bees are kept in the loop, so to speak, so they stay at home, not swarm and move on to a more hospitable place.

Each little life safe at home, each little life with work still undone.

Good news seems always easy to share; we tend to keep bad news to ourselves so this tradition helps remind us that what affects one of us, affects us all.

These days, with instant news at our fingertips at any moment, bad news is constantly bombarding us. Like the bees in the hives of the field, we want to flee from it and find a more hospitable home.

Our Creator (the ultimate Beekeeper) says personally to each of us:
“Here is what has happened. All will be well, dear one. We will navigate your life together.”

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A Speechless Receptacle

May 14, 2026 barnstormingblog1 Comment

It doesn’t have to be the blue iris,
it could be weeds
in a vacant lot,
or a few small stones;
just pay attention, then patch  
a few words together
and don’t try to make them elaborate.
This isn’t a contest but the doorway  
into thanks, and a silence
in which another voice may speak.
~Mary Oliver “Praying” from Thirst

Now that I’m free to be myself, who am I?
Can’t fly, can’t run, and see how slowly I walk.
Well, I think, I can read books.

Well, I can write down words, like these, softly.

It doesn’t happen all of a sudden, you know.

“Doesn’t it?” says the wind, and breaks open, releasing
distillation of blue iris.

And my heart panics not to be, as I long to be,
the empty, waiting, pure, speechless receptacle.
~Mary Oliver from The Blue Iris

To plunge headlong into
the heart of a blossom, its amber eyes
inscrutably focusing on your own,
magnified by a lens of dew.
Whose scent, invisible,
drowns you in opulence, and for which
you can find nothing adequate to say.

You sense that you are loved wholly,
yet are quite unable to understand why.
But then, you lift your face,
creased with the ordinary, to a heaven
that is breaking into blue,
and find your contentment utterly beyond
telling, unspeakable, uncontained.
~Luci Shaw from “Speechless” from Sea Glass

Now that I’m free to be myself,
I’m also free to tell about how
creased with the ordinary,
I notice things I passed by before.

Fleeting moments become more precious,
as I long to be –
while time pours through my fingers.

It doesn’t have to be the blue iris,
it doesn’t have to be glistening raindrops,
but today it is both…

I fall headlong into their depths,
through a doorway into thanks,
lost in their earthbound ethereal beauty,
to a heaven that is breaking into blue.

Oh, and so grateful to Mary and Luci,
I am no longer a speechless receptacle without words…

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The Humblest of Things

May 13, 2026 barnstormingblog1 Comment

The power of finding beauty in the humblest things makes home happy and life lovely.
~Louisa May Alcott

And as you sit on the hillside, or lie prone under the trees of the forest, or sprawl wet-legged on the shingly beach of a mountain stream, the great door, that does not look like a door, opens.
~Stephen Graham from The Gentle Art of Tramping

That great door opens on the present, illuminates it as with a multitude of flashing torches.
~Annie Dillard (in response to the above quote) from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

About living in the country?
…peace can deafen one, beauty surprise
No longer. There is only the thud
Of the slow foot up the long lane
At morning and back at night.
~R.S. Thomas

Ever since I started noticing
how beautiful are the most humble things
and the most humble people,
I realized a great door was opened to me:
the door to my own soul
and my own happiness.
I need go no further than my own back yard.

I must not forget my
astonishment
at the beauty around me
even on the grayest of days,
trudging the barnyard path
to exhausted chores.

If ever I fail to see
what is right in front of me,
this Lord’s grace-given gift
to my eyes and ears and arms,
I do not deserve to put on boots
or hold a pitchfork.

Lyrics
Praise to the Lord of the small broken things
Who sees the poor sparrow that cannot take wing
Who loves the lame child and the wretch in the street
Who comforts their sorrows and washes their feet

Praise to the Lord of the faint and afraid
Who girds them with courage and lends them His aid
He pours out his spirit on vessels so weak
That the timid can serve and the silent can speak

Praise to the Lord of the frail and the ill
Who heals their afflictions or carries them till
They leave this tired frame and to paradise fly
To never be sick and never to die
Never die

Praise him, O praise Him all ye who live
Who’ve been given so much and can so little give
Our frail lisping praise God will never despise
He sees His dear children through mercy-filled eyes

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