Category: contentment

A Brief Moment of Exchange

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I’ve been thinking about the way, when you walk
down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs
to let you by. Or how strangers still say “bless you”
when someone sneezes, a leftover
from the Bubonic plague. “Don’t die,” we are saying.
And sometimes, when you spill lemons
from your grocery bag, someone else will help you
pick them up. Mostly, we don’t want to harm each other.
We want to be handed our cup of coffee hot,
and to say thank you to the person handing it. To smile
at them and for them to smile back. For the waitress
to call us honey when she sets down the bowl of clam chowder,
and for the driver in the red pick-up truck to let us pass.
We have so little of each other, now. So far
from tribe and fire. Only these brief moments of exchange.
What if they are the true dwelling of the holy, these
fleeting temples we make together when we say, “Here,
have my seat,” “Go ahead — you first,” “I like your hat.”
~Danusha Laméris “Small Kindnesses”

There is true holiness in moments of kindness: I notice it now more than ever. I am given infinite daily opportunities to show kindness to others and when I’m preoccupied, too inside my own head, or feeling too injured myself, I usually walk by without even trying.

Yet when kindness is shown to me, I don’t forget it – it permeates me like a homespun apple pie fragrance that lingers around me, comforting and welcoming me home when I feel alone and a stranger in the world.

I remember all the kindnesses shown to me over the years and always carry them with me. When I have an opportunity in a brief encounter to show kindness, I want to help make someone else feel noticed and special. I want them feel like they belong, right in that moment.

This daily sharing of words and photos is one way I try to give back what I have been gifted over the years. During the two or three minutes of someone looking at what I offer here daily, I want you to know:

you belong here
I am forever grateful for you
your words enrich me with your gift of kindness.

Thank you for being here.

(today I am sharing all the different stages of one special hydrangea bush on our farm)

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A book of beauty in words and photography, available to order here:

Gems of Love

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Watch the dewdrops in the morning,
   Shake their little diamond heads,
Sparkling, flashing, ever moving,
   From their silent little beds.
 
See the grass! Each blade is brightened,
   Roots are strengthened by their stay;
Like the dewdrops, let us scatter
   Gems of love along the way.
 ~Myra Viola Wilds, author of Thoughts of Idle Hours

The dew of autumn is not a summer dew;
these are sticky, frosty gems,
clinging for dear life
before being swept away by cruel winds.

I too am enveloped by the chill,
yet so illuminated by each drop
that I am overwhelmed by such treasure
given so freely on this dark November day.

A book of beauty in words and photography, available to order here:

The Glowing of Such Fire

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That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin’d choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.

In me thou see’st the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death’s second self, that seals up all in rest.

In me thou see’st the glowing of such fire
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire,
Consum’d with that which it was nourish’d by.

This thou perceiv’st, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.
~William Shakespeare Sonnet 73

I may think youth has it all
– strength, beauty, energy-
but now I know better.

There is treasure in slowing down,
this leisurely leave-taking;
the finite becoming infinite
and a limitlessness loving.

Without our aging
we’d never change up
who we are
to become so much more:

enriched, vibrant,
shining passionately
until the very last moment.

To love well
To love strong
To love as if
nothing else matters.

This book of beauty in words and photography, available to order here:

A Moment of Marvel

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On this first day of November
it is cold as a cave,
the sky the color
of neutral third parties.
I am cutting carrots
for the chicken soup.
Knife against carrot
again and again
sends a plop of pennies
into the pan.
These cents,
when held to the gray light,
hold no noble president,
only stills
of some kaleidoscope
caught being pensive…
and beautiful,
in the eye of this beholder,
who did not expect
this moment of marvel
while making an early supper
for the hungry children.
~Cindy Gregg, “Monday” from Suddenly Autumn.

I wasn’t prepared for November to begin on this chilly Monday morning.

Throwing on my barn coat and boots, I pulled up some of the last carrots from the garden, cut them up, added some already harvested beans, peas and corn from the freezer, threw in some baby potatoes to make a crockpot of beef bone soup.

When we return home hungry from our community work tonight, we will be tired but well fed.

There is a moment of marvel in preparing a meal from one’s own garden bounty, remembering the small seeds put in the ground 6 months ago, and now washed and cut and simmering in a pot in our kitchen.

The start of November isn’t so chilly after all. We are warmed by the work done through the spring and summer, the sun and rain that grew these vegetables, and the Creator God who provides, even in the cold and dark months of the year.

We’ll make it through this first Monday of November, anticipating the marvels to come.

A book of beauty in words and photography, available to order here:

On the Outside of the World

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At present we are on the outside of the world,
the wrong side of the door.
We discern the freshness and purity of morning,
but they do not make us fresh and pure.
We cannot mingle with the splendours we see.
But all the leaves of the New Testament are rustling with the rumour
that it will not always be so.
Some day, God willing, we shall get in.
~C.S. Lewis, from The Weight of Glory

Sometimes I’m on the outside looking in,
other times I’m on the inside looking out,
wondering where I should be,
knowing where I want to be,
longing for something I can’t quite reach.

We see through a glass darkly,
waiting for the day when all will be clear,
waiting to be invited into the purity
of where God dwells richly.

A book of beauty in words and photography, available for order here:

Simply Glad

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I shall open my eyes and ears.
Once every day I shall simply stare
at a tree, a flower, a cloud, or a person.
I shall not then be concerned at all to ask what they are
but simply be glad that they are.
I shall joyfully allow them the mystery of what C.S. Lewis calls
their “divine, magical, terrifying and ecstatic” existence.
~Clyde Kilby in “Amazed in the Ordinary”

An open heart is alive to wonder, to the sheer marvel of “isness.”
It is remarkable that the world is,
that we are here,
that we can experience it.
This world is not ordinary.
Indeed, what is remarkable is that
it could ever look ordinary to us.

An open heart knows “radical amazement.”
An open heart and gratitude go together.
We can feel this in our bodies.
In the moments in my life
when I have been most grateful,
I have felt a swelling,
almost a bursting in my chest.
~Marcus Borg from The Heart of Christianity

photo by Nicole Moore
photo by Nicole Moore
photo by Nicole Moore
photo by Nicole Moore

Most of the time I’m sleep walking through each day, oblivious, as if in dense fog with unseeing wide-open eyes.  There is a slow motion quality to time as it flows from one hour to the next to the next. I stumble through life asleep, the path indiscernible, my future uncertain, my purpose illusive.

Am I continually dozing or shall I rouse to the radical amazement of each moment?

When I’m simply glad, everything becomes more vivid, as in a dream — the sounds of geese flying overhead, the smell of the farm, the layers of a foggy landscape, the taste of an autumn apple right from the tree, the string of fog-drop pearls on a spider web, the intensity of every breath, the purpose for being.

So wake me -please- to dream some more.   
I want to chew on it again and again, simply savoring and simply glad.

A book of beauty in words and photography, available to order here:

Sparkled and Blazed

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How late I came to love you,
O Beauty so ancient and so fresh,
how late I came to love you.

You were within me,
yet I had gone outside to seek you.

Unlovely myself,
I rushed toward all those lovely things you had made.
And always you were with me.
I was not with you.

All those beauties kept me far from you –
although they would not have existed at all
unless they had their being in you.

You called,
you cried,
you shattered my deafness.

You sparkled,
you blazed,
you drove away my blindness.

You shed your Fragrance,
and I drew in my breath and I pant for you,
I tasted and now I hunger and thirst.
You touched me, and now I burn with longing.
~St. Augustine in Confessions

God spoke in His Word
but I didn’t listen.
God fed me
but I chose junk food.
God showed me beauty
but I couldn’t see Him.
God smelled like the finest rose
but I turned away.
God touched me
but I was numb.

So He sent His Son
as Word and food,
beauty and fragrance,
sparkling and blazing,
reaching out broken hands
so I would know
my hunger and thirst
is only and always
for Him alone.

A book of beauty in word and photography, available for order here:

Listen for Returning Feet

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I sit beside the fire and think of all that I have seen,
of meadow-flowers and butterflies in summers that have been;
Of yellow leaves and gossamer in autumns that there were,
with morning mist and silver sun and wind upon my hair.
I sit beside the fire and think of how the world will be
when winter comes without a spring that I shall ever see.

For still there are so many things that I have never seen:
in every wood in every spring there is a different green.
I sit beside the fire and think of people long ago,
and people who will see a world that I shall never know.
But all the while I sit and think of times there were before,
I listen for returning feet and voices at the door.
~J.R.R. Tolkien “Bilbo’s Song” from The Lord of the Rings

The shortening days make me greedy
for what is left of daylight –
watching the sky change by the hour,
brown summer fields
greening from rain,
webs clinging when I pass.

More than anything, I hunker down,
waiting for winter, knowing the quiet nights
by the fire will restore me –
hoping I’ll hear visitors at the door,
those I love coming home to spend what time is left.

A dichotomy of sweet peas and pumpkins in October

The perfect book for an autumn evening by the fire, available to order here:

Eavesdropping on Private Voices

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When I opened the door
I found the vine leaves
speaking among themselves in abundant
whispers.
                   My presence made them
hush their green breath,
embarrassed, the way
humans stand up, buttoning their jackets,
acting as if they were leaving anyway, as if
the conversation had ended
just before you arrived.
                                               I liked
the glimpse I had, though,
of their obscure
gestures. I liked the sound
of such private voices. Next time
I’ll move like cautious sunlight, open
the door by fractions, eavesdrop
peacefully.
~Denise Levertov, “Aware” from This Great Unknowing.

I need to be cautious or I also would be swallowed up inch by inch by a variety of vines surrounding our home and farm buildings. Between the ivy, Virginia creeper and our opportunistic ubiquitous blackberry vines, I’m mere audience to their varied plans of expansive world domination.

As part of generations of human creep, I can’t indict the vines as aggressive interlopers for going where no vine has gone before. Much human migration has been out of necessity due to inadequate food sources or inhospitable circumstances. Some is due to a spirit of adventure and desire for new places to explore. Nevertheless, we human vines end up dominating places where we may not be really welcome.

So we human vines whisper together conspiratorially about where to send out our tendrils next, never asking permission, only sometimes asking for forgiveness later.

I can’t help but listen to those private voices – one of which is my own – who feel discontented with the “here and now” — we suspect somewhere else may be better. Rather than choose to stay and flourish in place, we keep creeping and overwhelming our surroundings.

Dear human vines: creep gently with sensitivity for the ground you occupy. Don’t block the sun from others or quench yourself while others thirst. Be kind and make the spot you cover more beautiful than it was before.https://barnstorming.blog/new-book-available-almanac-of-quiet-days/

A book of beauty in words and photography

To Be Quiet in Heart

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Horseback on Sunday morning,
harvest over, we taste persimmon
and wild grape, sharp sweet
of summer’s end. In time’s maze
over fall fields, we name names
that went west from here, names
that rest on graves. We open
a persimmon seed to find the tree
that stands in promise,
pale, in the seed’s marrow.
Geese appear high over us,
pass, and the sky closes. Abandon,
as in love or sleep, holds
them to their way, clear,
in the ancient faith: what we need
is here. And we pray, not
for new earth or heaven, but to be
quiet in heart, and in eye
clear. What we need is here.
~Wendell Berry “Wild Geese” from Collected Poems 1957-1982

I hear them coming before I see them:
the wild geese flying overhead,
noisily honking their way across an autumn sky,
drawn to the harvested cornfields
to glean after the machinery has left.

Soon they will leave altogether,
pulled to be content somewhere else.

I remain as witness
rather than move on,
reminding myself,
my heart quiet, my eye clear,
what I need is here
until it is my turn to leave.

A book of beautiful words and photography, available to order here: