In the morning, when I slide open the heavy old barn door on its track and step inside, pull the cord to let the chickens out, then turn again toward that open door, tall rectangle of light and ragged grass, trees and sky, the face of the other old barn at the right, its hand-hewn rafters where barn swallows nest, fly in and out through gaps made by neglect and the passage of time, the way the body falls into disrepair, I wonder if stepping from this life into the next will be like stepping through an aperture like this and I hope it’s true, ordinary morning like this. ~Daye Phillippo “Aperture” from Blue Between Owls: Blue Chore Coat and Other Collected Poems
Each ordinary morning, I’m aware how much our barn buildings have aged as I slide open sticky doors, walk past peeling paint, mossy roofs, and gaps in the siding.
Deterioration of the body is inevitable over the decades.
I know this about my own state of disrepair as I move about more carefully during my chores, staying aware of uneven footing, struggling to lift what used to seem lighter, finding the work, as gratifying as it has always been, more challenging.
Our over 100 year old red hay barn underwent a major renovation 5 years ago because it was threatening to fall down in one of our winter windstorms. Thanks to that investment, it is strong and hearty again with new foundation posts, siding, and roof.
Still, it won’t last forever.
I had a pretty major repair myself last year allowing me to continue to do this physical work that is so important to me. Yet, I won’t last forever.
I like to think when those heavy rolling doors open to heaven someday, it will feel just like this: leaving behind what is temporary and always needing repairs, to enter into the redeeming glory of the eternal and everlasting.
And there is absolutely nothing ordinary about that.
photo by Harry Rodenberger
video by Harry Rodenberger
sample of lyrics: Can’t touch my heart it’s not my time. Bust my bones and throw my body on the line Cause I’ve got love to fill me in I’ve family to help me re-begin
Old barns don’t tear down let ’em stand proud until they fall to the ground.
A strange feeling waking up to meet my Savior this whole bizarre ballet that I lived through but I’m not living all alone these wounds of mine will set me free
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“Be a lotus in the pond,” she said, “opening slowly, no single energy tugging against another but peacefully, all together.”
I couldn’t even touch my toes. “Feel your quadriceps stretching?” she asked. Well, something was certainly stretching.
Standing impressively upright, she raised one leg and placed it against the other, then lifted her arms and shook her hands like leaves. “Be a tree,” she said.
I lay on the floor, exhausted. But to be a lotus in the pond opening slowly, and very slowly rising– that I could do. Mary Oliver“First Yoga Lesson” from Blue Horses
After dinner, I try to digest kale and cauliflower in my longing to live longer, and a root-beer float in case my world ends tomorrow.
I play the gamble game with exercise and diet, reminded daily by obituaries featuring people younger than me: the impossible becoming likely.
I want to go out full, embraced by my life, the grand quilt of being here. Yet memories are remnants, and come one patch at a time. And like moments, most fade unnoticed.
After a storm, I take a walk. At the jasmine vine by my front door, a raindrop, suspended on a stem, stops me. What I want, what I can have, merge. ~Jeanie Greensfelder “What I Want and What I Can Have” from I Got What I Came For
In spring there’s hope, in fall the exquisite, necessary diminishing, in winter I am as sleepy as any beast in its leafy cave, but in summer there is everywhere the luminous sprawl of gifts, the hospitality of the Lord and my inadequate answers as I row my beautiful, temporary body through this water-lily world. ~Mary Oliver from “Six Recognitions of the Lord”
It is hard to accept my temporary status on this earth, until face to face with the compounding limitations of aging.
Perhaps a life-time guarantee of flexibility would be lovely, depending on the length of the lifetime. But forget balancing like a contorted tree waving in the breeze. Even in my prime, I never could manage it without tipping over.
And so I float, slowly opening, like a bouyant lily pad. That I can do…
Even if I am slower to rise than I used to be, I am blessed by the immense gift of the Lord’s hospitality, as long as I’m here.
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Resurrection of the little apple tree outside my window, leaf- light of late in the April called her eyes, forget forget— but how How does one go about dying? Who on earth is going to teach me— The world is filled with people who have never died ~Franz Wright “On Earth”from Walking to Martha’s Vineyard
The year Dylan’s mother died I picked sprays of apple blossom, wound its pink, off-white shades in raffia for you to take to him.
Every year it’s out I think of us, the children, how apples bring the tree so low, until they thud to the lawn, drumming the end
of summer. The blossom was heavy when Dylan’s mother was dying – old wood doing its best again – and he, like you, was so young. ~Jackie Wills “Apple Blossom”
Is there anything in Spring so fair As apple blossoms falling through the air?
When from a hill there comes a sudden breeze That blows freshly through all the orchard trees.
The petals drop in clouds of pink and white, Noiseless like snow and shining in the light.
Making beautiful an old stone wall, Scattering a rich fragrance as they fall.
There is nothing I know of to compare With apple blossoms falling through the air. ~Henry Adams Parker “Apple Blossoms”
Jesus, Apple of God’s eye, dangling solitaire on leafless tree, bursting red.
As he drops New Eden dawns and once again we Adams choose: God’s first fruit or death. ~Christine F. Nordquist “Eden Inversed”
But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead.
For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.But each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ. 1 Corinthians 15:20-23
The rain eased enough to allow blades of grass to stand back up refreshed, yet unsuspecting, primed for the mower’s next cutting swath.
Clusters of pink tinged blossoms sway in response to my mower’s pass. Apple buds bulge on snagging branches, showering me from their hidden raindrop reservoirs collected within each blushing petal cup.
My face anointed by perfumed apple tears when I tend to forget – forget– this first fruit is offered, not forbidden, hanging from the tree, broken so our hearts will drop too, bursting open red with Him.
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In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. John 1: 1 and John 1: 14
When your words came, I ate them; they were my joy and my heart’s delight, for I bear your name, Lord God Almighty. Jeremiah 15:16
At this the Jews there began to grumble about him because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” They said, “Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, ‘I came down from heaven’?”
“Stop grumbling among yourselves,” Jesus answered.“No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them, and I will raise them up at the last day.It is written in the Prophets: ‘They will all be taught by God.’ Everyone who has heard the Father and learned from him comes to me. No one has seen the Father except the one who is from God; only he has seen the Father. Very truly I tell you, the one who believes has eternal life.I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, yet they died.But here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which anyone may eat and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.”
Then the Jews began to argue sharply among themselves, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?”
Jesus said to them, “Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink.Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in them.Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me.This is the bread that came down from heaven. Your ancestors ate manna and died, but whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.” He said this while teaching in the synagogue in Capernaum. On hearing it, many of his disciples said, “This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?” John 6:41-60
He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your ancestors had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. Deuteronomy 8:3
Where to get bread? An ever-pressing question That trembles on the lips of anxious mothers, Bread for their families, bread for all these others; A whole world on the margin of exhaustion. And where that hunger has been satisfied Where to get bread? The question still returns In our abundance something starves and yearns We crave fulfillment, crave and are denied. And then comes One who speaks into our needs Who opens out the secret hopes we cherish Whose presence calls our hidden hearts to flourish Whose words unfold in us like living seeds Come to me, broken, hungry, incomplete, I Am the Bread of Life, break Me and eat. ~Malcolm Guite “I Am the Bread of Life”
Throughout his ministry, our Lord emphasized the idea of feeding as something intimately connected with his love and care for souls.
The mystery of the Eucharist does not stand alone. It is the crest of a great wave; a total sacramental disclosure of the dealings of the transcendent God with men. The hunger of the four thousand and five thousand are more than miracles of man is the matter of Christ’s first temptation. The feedings of practical compassion; we feel that in them something of deep significance is done, one of the mysteries of eternal life a little bit unveiled. So too in the supper at Emmaus, when the bread is broken the Holy One is known.
It is peculiar to Christianity, indeed part of the mystery of the Incarnation, that it constantly shows us this coming of God through and in homely and fugitive things and events; and puts the need and dependence of the creature at the very heart of prayer. ~Evelyn Underhill from “Abba”
Either secretly or sacramentally, all living Christians are perpetual penitents and perpetual communicants, there is no other way of carrying on. The Eucharist represents a perpetual pouring out of his very life to feed and enhance our small and feeble lives. ~Evelyn Underhill from “Light of Christ”
This is a hard teaching. No wonder the disciples were grumbling. Who can accept Christ offering His own flesh and blood as a meal?
Yet we are well prepared for the feast of God’s Words in the Old Testament; nevertheless God’s people are unsatisfied, wanting more.
As the Word become flesh, Jesus reminds us that it is our joy and privilege to eat the Word of God, to absorb it completely, allowing it to fulfill and nourish us.
As His body on earth, the church joins together regularly to eat this mystical meal, nourished by Words that give us eternal life.
It isn’t just a hard teaching. It is His incredible mysterious gift of Himself, to feed our flesh and our spirits.
I am reading slowly through the words in the Book of John over the next year alongside my church family. Once a week, I will invite you to “come and see” what those words might mean as we explore His promises together.
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This is the dawn I expected— the first day, whole and clean, where we emerge from the night and the silence. And free, we inhabit the substance of time ~Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen, trans. Scott Edward Anderson “25th of April” from Wine-Dark Sea: New & Selected Poems & Translations
Here in the time between snow and the bud of the rhododendron, we watch the robins, look into
the gray, and narrow our view to the patches of wild grasses coming green. The pile of ashes
in the fireplace, haphazard sticks on the paths and gardens, leaves tangled in the ivy and periwinkle
lie in wait against our will. This drawing near of renewal, of stems and blossoms, the hesitant return
of the anarchy of mud and seed says not yet to the blood’s crawl. When the deer along the stream
look back at us, we know again we have left them. We pull a blanket over us when we sleep.
As if living in a prayer, we say amen to the late arrival of red, the stun of green, the muted yellow
at the end of every twig. We will lift up our eyes unto the trees hoping to discover a gnarled nest within
When I take the chilly tools from the shed’s darkness, I come out to a world made new by heat and light.
Like a mad red brain the involute rhubarb leaf thinks its way up through loam. ~Jane Kenyon from “April Chores” from Collected Poems
…a pruning knife’s hooked blade biting through the stalks with a flick of her wrist and a quick snap.
The one time I tried this I sliced deep into my thumb knuckle at first swipe. We were both red inside, me, the rhubarb. That’s the stuff I didn’t really think about at ten, how everything bleeds; how everything must die somehow— the stupid ones poisoned, the hard workers heart-worn and wrecked.
We ate the rhubarb raw, stripped of all its leaves. Dipped in sugar, it still lingered bitter on our tongues as some inoculation against the worst of what was yet to come. ~Matthew Burns from “Rhubarb”
Over the last two weeks, the garden is slowly reviving, and rhubarb “brains” have been among the first to appear from the garden soil, wrinkled and folded, opening full of potential, “thinking” their way into the April sunlight.
Here I am, wishing my own brain could similarly rise brand new and tender every spring from the dust rather than leathery and weather-toughened, harboring the same old thoughts and patterns. Indeed, more wrinkles accumulate on the outside of my skull rather than the inside.
Still, I’m encouraged by my rhubarb cousin’s return every April. Like me, it may be a little sour in need of some sweetening, but its blood courses bright red and it is very very much alive.
and just because this is fun but has nothing to do with rhubarb…
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At the gate, I sit in a row of blue seats with the possible company of my death, this sprawling miscellany of people— carry-on bags and paperbacks—
that could be gathered in a flash into a band of pilgrims on the last open road. Not that I think if our plane crumpled into a mountain
we would all ascend together, holding hands like a ring of skydivers, into a sudden gasp of brightness, or that there would be some common place
for us to reunite to jubilize the moment, some spaceless, pillarless Greece where we could, at the count of three, toss our ashes into the sunny air.
It’s just that the way that man has his briefcase so carefully arranged, the way that girl is cooling her tea, and the flow of the comb that woman
passes through her daughter’s hair . . . and when you consider the altitude, the secret parts of the engines, and all the hard water and the deep canyons below . . .
well, I just think it would be good if one of us maybe stood up and said a few words, or, so as not to involve the police, at least quietly wrote something down. ~Billy Collins “Passengers”
Tell us of a bypassed heart beating in 12C, how the woman holds a stranger’s hand to the battery sewn in beneath her collarbone, and says feel this. Tell us of the man’s ear listening across the aisle, hugging itself, a fist long since blistered by blaze. Outside, morning sun buckling up. Inside, twitching bonesacks of bat, birdsong erupting as light cracks the far jungle canopy. Ten thousand feet below ours, a grey cat tongues the morning’s butter left out to soft. Last night we broke open the sweet folds around two paper fortunes. One said variety. One said caution. The woman in 12C would hold that her heart needs its hidden spark, but the man shows how some live the rest of their lives with half a face remembering its before expression. Who was it that said our souls know one another by smell, like horses? ~Jenny Browne “Love Letter to a Stranger”
These days, I spend as little time as possible in airports and airplanes among strangers. As an introvert who prefers to read quietly and stay securely in my shell, I politely converse with the people next to me but prefer a book and silence.
It is always a wonder to me when seat partners across from me or in front of me will spend the trip finding out all about each other’s lives, destinations and feelings about the state of the world.
Even so, like Billy Collins in his poem, I’m struck by the affinity I feel for my fellow passengers as we embark on a trip by air – so different from each of us independently traveling down a highway in our individual vehicles.
In an airplane, our fates are lashed together. What happens to one will happen to all.
Because we are bound together – sometimes randomly, sometimes not – I do believe that we should try to find kindred and sympathetic souls in a mysterious way when we are thrust among strangers.
We are created for connection, whether by smell or sight or spirit.
And perhaps, scrolling through the internet, as we all do at times, you ran across this Barnstorming blog…not expecting a connection to happen.
And here we are –connected because I wrote something quietly down. One never knows how we may become bound together.
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April is like the raggedy, wandering gypsy lad of the fairy tale. When he moves, streaks of gold show beneath his torn garments and you suspect that this elfin creature is actually a prince in disguise.
April is just that.
There are raggedy, cold days, dark black ones, but all through the month for a second, for an hour, or for three days at a stretch you glimpse pure gold.
The weeks pass and the rags slip away, a shred at a time. Toward the end of the month his royal highness stands before you. ~Jean Hersey from The Shape of a Year
I avoid spending much time in front of mirrors now. I’m thinning on top, thickening a bit lower, sagging and stretching, wrinkled and patched and, let’s face it…raggedy.
Still, if I look closely past the rags and sags, I see the same eyes as my younger self peering back at me.
There are some things that age does not disguise.
The lightness and freshness of youth might be covered up with the trappings of aging, but I’m overjoyed to still be here, just as I am.
Every once in awhile, I believe I glimpse a little gold under my wrinkly surface.
I’m no queen or princess in disguise, but breathing in the scents of certain perfumed days of April can make me feel like one.
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Again the woods are odorous, the lark Lifts on upsoaring wings the heaven gray That hung above the tree-tops, veiled and dark, Where branches bare disclosed the empty day.
After long rainy afternoons an hour Comes with its shafts of golden light and flings Them at the windows in a radiant shower, And rain drops beat the panes like timorous wings.
Then all is still. The stones are crooned to sleep By the soft sound of rain that slowly dies; And cradled in the branches, hidden deep In each bright bud, a slumbering silence lies. ~Rainer Maria Rilke, “In April” translated by Jessie Lamont
A Light exists in Spring Not present on the year At any other period – When March is scarcely here
A Color stands abroad On Solitary Hills That Science cannot overtake, But Human Nature feels. ~Emily Dickinson from 85- Part two: Nature
I do not know what gorgeous thing the bluebird keeps saying, his voice easing out of his throat, beak, body into the pink air of the early morning. I like it whatever it is. Sometimes it seems the only thing in the world that is without dark thoughts. Sometimes it seems the only thing in the world that is without questions that can’t and probably never will be answered, the only thing that is entirely content with the pink, then clear white morning and, gratefully, says so. ~Mary Oliver “What Gorgeous Thing” from Blue Horses
Maybe it is the particular tilt of the globe on its axis, or the suffusion of clouds mixing with the perpetually damp atmosphere, or perhaps the knowledge the darkness no longer claims us most of our waking time.
The light of gentle April has its own sacred whispering voice orchestrated with myriad birdsong.
We are immersed inside it for just a few weeks, yet it belongs framed on gallery walls for perpetuity to be admired at any time of the year, whenever we seek sweet slumber on a soft cushion of golden pastels.
Surrounded by such sacrament without and within, our recreated life in the Lord gently glows.
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Then Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.
But as I told you, you have seen me and still you do not believe.All those the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away.
For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all those he has given me, but raise them up at the last day.
For my Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day.” John 6: 35-40
Awake sad heart, whom sorrow ever drowns; Take up thine eyes, which feed on earth; Unfold thy forehead gather’d into frowns: Thy Saviour comes, and with him mirth: Awake, awake; And with a thankfull heart his comforts take. But thou dost still lament, and pine, and crie; And feel his death, but not his victorie.
Arise sad heart; if thou dost not withstand, Christs resurrection thine may be: Do not by hanging down break from the hand, Which as it riseth, raiseth thee: Arise, Arise; And with his buriall-linen drie thine eyes: Christ left his grave-clothes, that we might, when grief Draws tears, or blood, not want an handkerchief. ~George Herbert “The Dawning”
On my doubting days in this fraught world, too frequent and discouraging, I remember the risen Christ who awoke, left behind His folded grave clothes, so we could dry our tears of grief.
He reached out to place Thomas’s hand in His wounds, gently guiding Thomas to His reality, to become our new reality~ His open wounds called to Thomas’s mind and heart, His flesh and blood awakening a struggling faith by a simple touch.
Leave it God to know how to dry our tears when we grieve. Leave it to God to know how to raise the unreachable.
I am reading slowly through the words in the Book of John over the next year alongside my church family. Once a week, I will invite you to “come and see” what those words might mean as we explore His promises together.
Text by Mechthild of Magdeburg Effortlessly, Love flows from God into man, Like a bird Who rivers the air Without moving her wings. Thus we move in His world One in body and soul, Though outwardly separate in form. As the Source strikes the note, Humanity sings — The Holy Spirit is our harpist, And all strings Which are touched in Love Must sound.
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