Category: gratitude

A Surprise No Longer

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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 “The Country”

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I must not forget my
astonishment
at the beauty around me
even on the grayest of days,
trudging the barnyard path
on dark nights to exhausted chores.
If ever I fail to see
what is right in front of me,
this grace-given gift
to my eyes and ears,
I do not deserve to put on boots
or hold a pitchfork.

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Humbly Take Heart

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Time out of mind
at this turn of the seasons
when the hardy oak leaves rustle in the wind
and the frost gives a tang to the air
and the dusk falls early
and the friendly evenings
lengthen under the heel of Orion,
it has seemed good to our people
to join together in praising the Creator and Preserver,
who has brought us by a way that we did not know
to the end of another year.
In observance of this custom,
I appoint Thursday, the twenty-sixth of November,
as a day of public Thanksgiving
for the blessings that have been our common lot
— for all the creature comforts:
the yield of the soil that has fed us
and the richer yield from labor of every kind
that has sustained our lives
— and for all those things,
as dear as breath to the body,
that nourish and strengthen our spirit
to do the great work still before us:
for the brotherly word and act;
for honor held above price;
for steadfast courage and zeal
in the long, long search after truth;
for liberty and for justice
freely granted by each to his fellow
and so as freely enjoyed;
and for the crowning glory and mercy of peace upon our land;
— that we may humbly take heart of these blessings
as we gather once again with solemn and festive rites
to keep our Harvest Home.
~Connecticut Governor Wilbur Cross — Thanksgiving Proclamation November 26, 1936

 

These words written almost 80 years ago this day still ring true.
Then a country crushed under the Great Depression,
now a country staggering under a Great Depression of the spirit~
ever more connected electronically,
yet more isolated from family, friends, faith,
more economically secure,
yet emotionally bankrupt.
May we humbly take heart
in the midst of creature comforts
we hardly acknowledge~
that we are able, in our abundance,
to care for others in need, just as
God, in His everlasting recognition
of our perpetual need of Him,
cares for us,
even when we don’t believe
we need Him.

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Late Revelers at Dawn

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Bending above the spicy woods which blaze,
Arch skies so blue they flash, and hold the sun
Immeasurably far; the waters run
Too slow, so freighted are the river-ways
With gold of elms and birches from the maze
Of forests. Chestnuts, clicking one by one,
Escape from satin burs; her fringes done,
The gentian spreads them out in sunny days,
And, like late revelers at dawn, the chance
Of one sweet, mad, last hour, all things assail,
And conquering, flush and spin; while, to enhance
The spell, by sunset door, wrapped in a veil
Of red and purple mists, the summer, pale,
Steals back alone for one more song and dance.
~Helen Hunt Jackson “October”

 

Summer is stretching long this fall,
with warm temperatures both day and night,
grass growing like spring
bushes blooming confused six months off
sun rises lit by flame that lick the sky.

I am eager for one more song and dance,
one more sweet hour,
each dawn bringing renewed revelry.

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Never Forgotten

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“All in all, it was a never-to-be-forgotten summer — one of those summers which come seldom into any life, but leave a rich heritage of beautiful memories in their going — one of those summers which, in a fortunate combination of delightful weather, delightful friends and delightful doing, come as near to perfection as anything can come in this world.” ~ L.M. Montgomery, Anne’s House of Dreams

Time lurches ahead in imprecisely measured chunks.  Sometimes the beginning and ending of seasons are the yardstick,  or celebrating a holiday or a birthday.  Memories tend to be stickiest surrounding a milestone event: a graduation, a move, a wedding, a birth, a road trip, a funeral.

But Summer needs nothing so remarkable to be memorable.  It simply stands on its own in all its extravagant abundance of light and warmth and growth and color stretching deep within the rising and setting horizons.  Each long day can feel like it must last forever, never ending, yet it does eventually wind down, spin itself out, darkening gradually into shadow.  We let go with reluctance; we feel as if no summer like it will ever come again.

Yet another will, somehow, somewhere, someday.  Surely a never-ending summer is what heaven itself will be.

Perfectly delightful and delightfully perfect.  We’ve already had a taste.

 

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A Meadow to Wander

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On days when there was a break in the fighting, the two of us drank hot tea.
We were rattled by the same passions.
Both of us looked upon the world as a meadow in May
over which women and horses wander.
~Isaac Babel “The Story of a Horse”

War and détente will go on, détente and renewed tearings asunder,
we can never break free from the dark and degrading past.
Let us see life again, nevertheless, in the words of Isaac Babel
as a meadow over which women and horses wander.
~Maxine Kumin “Women and Horses”
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I believe in the gift of the horse, which is magic,
their deep fear-snorts in play when the wind comes up,
and the ballet of nip and jostle, plunge and crow hop.

I trust them to run from me, necks arched in a full
swan’s S, tails cocked up over their backs
like plumes on a Cavalier’s hat. I trust them
to gallop back, skid to a stop, their nostrils

level with my mouth, asking for my human breath
that they may test its intent, taste the lure of it.
I believe in myself as their sanctuary
and in the earth with its summer plumes of carrots,

its clamber of peas, beans, masses of tendrils
as mine.
~Maxine Kumin from “Credo”

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So this is a picture of peacefulness,
the carelessness of a summer afternoon on horseback,
wandering along a hilltop
a gallop through a meadow,
a sharing of breath with an animal that chooses,
instead of running far away,
to circle around
and come back
again and yet again.

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Sacred Moments

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The sacred moments,
the moments of miracle,
are often the everyday moments.
~Frederick Buechner from The Magnificent Defeat

 

Morning breaks everyday
sacred, miraculous,
and leaves me breathless
and heart-full.

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A Thousand Colors

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Summer was our best season:
it was sleeping on the back screened porch in cots,
or trying to sleep in the tree house;
summer was everything good to eat;
it was a thousand colors in a parched landscape…
~Harper Lee from “To Kill a Mockingbird”

 

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Tread Softly

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Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
~W.B. Yeats

 

My dreams are petals soft as silk
under your feet,
tender enough to bruise,
but oh there are so many more
where those came from.

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Prepare for Joy: An Unlovely Thorn

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Christ … is a thorn in the brain.
Christ is God crying I am here,
and here not only in what exalts and completes and uplifts you,
but here in what appalls, offends, and degrades you,
here in what activates and exacerbates all that you would call not-God.
To walk through the fog of God
toward the clarity of Christ is difficult
because of how unlovely,
how ungodly that clarity often turns out to be.
~Christian Wiman from Image Journal “Varieties of Quiet”

We spent over 20 hours traveling yesterday, through two train stations, finding a crowded bus shuttle on the streets of New York City, then passing through four airports, enduring one cancellation and another delay.  It was a painfully difficult trial of endurance, something so ungodly and unlovely after experiencing wonderfully clarifying and nurturing visits with beloved family members.

Yet we made it home despite the long lines, the packed planes and trains, the noise, the security pat downs, the overpriced everything, the sea of humanity everywhere.

We would endure anything in order to be together with family — Christ endured so much more to bring us into His family, declaring “I am here for you!”   He leads us through the fog to come home to Him — even though the process may be appalling, offensive, degrading, and requiring painful endurance.

We are home, clearly one of His family.

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Just to Be

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Before the adults we call our children arrive with their children in tow
  for Thanksgiving,

we take our morning walk down the lane of oaks and hemlocks, mist
  a smell of rain by nightfall—underfoot,

the crunch of leathery leaves released by yesterday’s big wind.

You’re ahead of me, striding into the arch of oaks that opens onto the fields
  and stone walls of the road—

as a V of geese honk a path overhead, and you stop—

in an instant, without thought, raising your arms toward sky, your hands
  flapping from the wrists,

and I can read in the echo your body makes of these wild geese going
  where they must,

such joy, such wordless unity and delight, you are once again the child
  who knows by instinct, by birthright,

just to be is a blessing. In a fictional present, I write the moment down.
  You embodied it.
~Margaret Gibson “Moment” (featured today on The Writer’s Almanac)

 

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