The way the trees empty themselves of leaves, let drop their ponderous fruit, the way the turtle abandons the sun-warmed log, the way even the late-blooming aster succumbs to the power of frost—
this is not a new story. Still, on this morning, the hollowness of the season startles, filling the rooms of your house, filling the world with impossible light, improbable hope.
And so, what else can you do but let yourself be broken and emptied? What else is there but waiting in the autumn sun? ~Carolyn Locke “What Else?” from The Place We Become
So this is how life goes:
we are sowed, set down roots, bud and grow and flower and bloom and fruit and flourish,
then dry and change and wither and empty and break away to be carried off beyond this air and water and soil.
We thrive where we are planted, do what we could with a little nurture, then transcend the here and now.
So shall we plant the next generation in healthy soil. May we weed and water and feed as needed. May we never seek to overshadow the sun but step aside so its light fully shines on whoever comes next.
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At times these days I think of the way the sun would set on the farmland around our small house in the autumn.
A view of the horizon, the entire circle of it, if you turned, the sun setting behind you, the sky in front becoming pink and soft, then slightly blue again, as though it could not stop going on in its beauty, then the land closest to the setting sun would get dark, almost black against the orange line of the horizon, but if you turn around, the land is still available to the eye with such softness, the few trees, the quiet fields of cover crops already turned, and the sky lingering, lingering, then finally dark.
As though the soul can be quiet for those moments. All life amazes me. ~Elizabeth Strout, from My Name is Lucy Barton
I have learned, from those much wiser than I am, to recognize moments meant for quieting.
The news of the world constantly rushes past; there is suffering beyond imagining in the lives of a few I know well and for millions I don’t know at all.
What little can I do to make a difference? So much need lies beyond my short reach.
Instead of feeling abandoned on the shores of overwhelm, I seek out the familiar, the routine, and the ordinary, lingering immersed in the recurring patterns of the day and night as the world keeps on spinning on its axis.
I too turn around to witness that which surrounds me, and in so doing, my soul is quieted. And amazed.
One year ago, my teacher and mentor Jane Goodall passed into eternity, leaving behind this message for us all…
They work with herbs and penicillin. They work with gentleness and the scalpel. They dig out the cancer, close an incision and say a prayer to the poverty of the skin. They are not Gods though they would like to be; they are only human trying to fix up a human. Many humans die. They die like the tender, palpitating berries in November. But all along the doctors remember: First do no harm. They would kiss if it would heal. It would not heal.
If the doctors cure then the sun sees it. If the doctors kill then the earth hides it. The doctors should fear arrogance more than cardiac arrest. If they are too proud, and some are, then they leave home on horseback but God returns them on foot. ~Anne Sexton “Doctors” from The Awful Rowing Toward God.
The only wisdom we can hope to acquire is the wisdom of humility; humility is endless. ~T.S. Eliot from East Coker
Let me never forget how humbling it was to provide care for hurting people and not be 100% certain what I do would actually work, though I was trusted to recommend the best option…
which could include a tincture of time, just wait and see, try this or that.
Or witnessing a vaccine-preventable illness gallop through a university population, taking weeks to safely harness and control.
Not unlike other physicians who tumbled off while racing a pathogen, losing their balance between overconfidence and humility, I sometimes found myself unseated and stranded, having to return on foot to retrace my steps, reframe my words and hopes and do no harm – to try once again to make a difference.
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Thereis something about the outside of a horse that is good for the inside of a man… ~Long time equestrian wisdom attributed to many famous riders
Twenty-five years ago today, two days before the world changed forever, I helped organize a gathering of Haflinger horse owners from western Canada and the United States in our nearby town of Lynden, Washington. We enjoyed an annual meet-up at the local fairgrounds to enjoy our horses together for a few days doing breed demonstrations for the public, riding, jumping, dressage, driving in teams, vaulting – a little of everything with our versatile horses.
We received permission from Lynden City Hall to have a Haflinger parade on a quiet Sunday morning while local folks were worshipping in the many churches in town. We wanted to be sure to begin from the fairgrounds after services had started, do a two mile route through town and back to the fairgrounds before the traffic increased later.
It was a remarkable sunny morning of over ninety Haflingers and their people – some riding, driving, or leading their horses — all enjoying the quiet peace of a Sabbath morning in a friendly little town. Some of the owners and their horses had been in local parades in their home towns, but none had the experience of being an “all Haflingers” troop through a downtown.
It all went smoothly without a hitch. Well, actually there were several “hitches” in the parade: carts and wagons being pulled by our golden friends.
Everyone returned safely home before September 11, 2001. Life hasn’t felt as peaceful or calm in the same way ever since. This 2001 Haflinger parade was the one and only time it happened in our part of the world.
This is to remember those few days we spent together — the insides of us enjoying the outsides of our Haflingers.
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Last night we were laying in bed when my husband rolled over and said, “Do you hear birds?” I said I heard the laundry dragging itself along the inside of the dryer as it turned.
My grandparents’ neighbor, Doris, once said she heard birds in the chimney. Her in-home helper confessed they weren’t birds— she’d had a baby in the night without knowing she was pregnant.
Poems are like that, insisting on being born, heard, making themselves known as soon as we’re quiet and still. We hear birdsong in the ordinary, and it sings us awake in the dark until the mundane becomes miraculous. ~Elizabeth Wickland “Do You Hear Birds?”
Like people or dogs, each day is unique and has its own personality quirks which can easily be seen if you look closely. But there are so few days as compared to people, not to mention dogs, that it would be surprising if a day were not a hundred times more interesting than most people.
But usually they just pass, mostly unnoticed, unless they are wildly nice, like autumn ones full of red maple trees and hazy sunlight, or if they are grimly awful ones in a winter blizzard that kills the lost traveler and bunches of cattle.
For some reason we like to see days pass, even though most of us claim we don’t want to reach our last one for a long time.
We examine each day before us with barely a glance and say,no,this isn’t one I’ve been looking for, and wait in a bored sort of way for the next, when we are convinced, our lives will start for real.
Meanwhile, this day is going by perfectly well-adjusted, as some days are, with the right amounts of sunlight and shade, and a light breeze scented with a perfume made from the mixture of fallen apples, corn stubble, dry oak leaves, and the faint odor of last night’s meandering skunk. ~Tom Hennen“The Life of a Day”
Age concentrates the mind. The moment you realize you will no longer do something you’ve done all your life. The moment you realize that you will now need to do something you’ve never had to do before. The moment you realize that what used to be will never be the same. Some of this could lend itself to melancholy. But there is also a bigness to such moments that allows for wonder. A sense that you can’t quite comprehend it all.
Like any life, mine has had its pain, yet from the outset it seems to have been graced by unbelievable people and events.
I am ashamed to admit I squander time shamelessly, blind and deaf to what is happening around me, waiting for that particularly special day I always dreamed of, tossing off mundane yet irreplaceable moments as somehow not measuring up nor exciting enough.
The shock is: there have been nearly 40 years of such ordinary days on this farm, one passing by after another, emerging fresh each morning from the mundane duff and stuff of life, and wouldn’t you know… every single one has ended up being exactly what I’m looking for.
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To look into the eye of a horse is to see a reflection of yourself that you might’ve forgotten. No grief was big enough not to be washed clean in your horse’s eye. ~Gillian Mears from Foal’s Bread
(i do not know what it is about you that closes and opens; only something in me understands
…whenever you mark a horse, or a dog, with a peculiarly mild, calm, deep-seated eye, be sure he is an Aristotle or a Kant, tranquilly speculating upon the mysteries in man. No philosophers so thoroughly comprehend us as dogs and horses. They see through us at a glance. But there is a touch of divinity …. and a special halo about a horse… ~Herman Melville from Redburn: His First Voyage
Two whistles, one for each, and familiar sounds draw close in darkness— cadence of hoof on hardened bottomland, twinned blowing of air through nostrils curious, flared. They come deepened and muscular movements conjured out of sleep: each small noise and scent heavy with earth, simple beyond communion…
…and in the night, their mares’ eyes shine, reflecting stars, the entire, outer light of the world here. ~Jane Hirschfield from “After Work”
There is a moment after you move your eye away when you forget where you are because you’ve been living, it seems, somewhere else, in the silence of the night sky.
You’ve stopped being here in the world. You’re in a different place, a place where human life has no meaning.
You’re not a creature in a body. You exist as the stars exist, participating in their stillness, their immensity. ~Louise Glück from “Telescope” in Averno
It’s tempting to fall headfirst into each eye’s fathomless well – These eyes rivet me as they search my own: a retinal magnet drawing me into such incalculable depths.
Yet I am merely reflected like starlight; only dancing on this shining mirrored surface when I long to dive deep to understand what they see in me: so lost I long to be found.
Now Naaman was commander of the army of the king of Aram. He was a great man in the sight of his master and highly regarded, because through him the Lord had given victory to Aram. He was a valiant soldier, but he had leprosy.
Naaman went with his horses and chariots and stopped at the door of Elisha’s house. Elisha sent a messenger to say to him, “Go, wash yourself seven times in the Jordan, and your flesh will be restored and you will be cleansed.”
But Naaman went away angry and said, “I thought that he would surely come out to me and stand and call on the name of the Lord his God, wave his hand over the spot and cure me of my leprosy.Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? Couldn’t I wash in them and be cleansed?” So he turned and went off in a rage.
Naaman’s servants went to him and said, “My father, if the prophet had told you to do some great thing, would you not have done it? How much more, then, when he tells you, ‘Wash and be cleansed’!” So he went down and dipped himself in the Jordan seven times, as the man of God had told him, and his flesh was restored and became clean like that of a young boy. 2Kings 5: 1, 9-14
He that is down needs fear no fall, He that is low, no pride; He that is humble ever shall Have God to be his guide. ~John Bunyan from The Pilgrim’s Progress
Source: Pilgrim’s Progress,
Perhaps it was his plain talk about the Word of God. Perhaps it was his folksy stories tying that Word to our lives. Perhaps it was because he was, like the rest of us, so fully a flawed and forgiven human being.
Pastor Bruce Hemple ministered to thousands over his lifetime of service, yet the simple act of climbing the steps up to the pulpit at Wiser Lake Chapel was nearly impossible for him.
Bruce had one leg. The other was lost to an above the knee amputation due to severe diabetes. He wore an ill-fitting prosthetic leg that never allowed a normal stride and certainly proved a challenge when ascending stairs. He would come early to the sanctuary to climb the several steps to the chair behind the pulpit so he would not have to struggle in front of the congregation at the start of the service. As we would enter to find our pew seats, he would be deep in thought and prayer, already seated by the pulpit.
He often said he knew he was a difficult person to live with because of his constant pain and health problems. His family confirmed that was indeed true, but what crankiness he exhibited through much of the week evaporated once he was at the pulpit. Standing there balanced on his good leg with his prosthesis acting as a brace, he was transformed and blessed with clarity of thought and expression.
His pain was left behind.
He came to our church after many years of military chaplaincy, having served in Korea and Vietnam and a number of stateside assignments. He liked to say he “learned to meet people where they were” rather than where he thought they needed to be. His work brought him face to face with thousands of soldiers from diverse faiths and backgrounds, or in many cases, no faith at all, yet he ministered to each one in the way that was needed at that moment. He helped some as they lay dying and others who suffered so profoundly they wished they would die. He was there for them all and he was there for us.
One of his memorable sermons came from 2Kings 5:1-19 about the healing of the great and proud warrior Naaman who was afflicted with leprosy. Pastor Bruce clearly identified with Naaman and emphasized the message humility with obedience to God as the key to Naaman’s healing. Like Naaman, no one would desire “Seven Ducks in a Muddy Pond” but once Naaman was obedient despite his pride and doubts, he was cured of the incurable by bathing in the muddy Jordan River.
Even upon his retirement, Bruce continued to preach when churches needed a fill in pastor, and he took a part time job managing a community food and clothing bank, connecting with people who needed his words of encouragement. He was called regularly to officiate at weddings and funerals, especially for those without a church. He would oblige as his time and health allowed.
His last sermon was delivered on a freezing windy December day at a graveside service for a young suicide victim he had never known personally. Pastor Bruce was standing at the head of the casket and having concluded his message, he bowed his head to pray, continued to bend forward, appeared to embrace the casket and breathed his last.
He was gone, just like that.
He was not standing up high at the pulpit the day he died. He was obediently getting muddy in the muck and mess of life, and waiting, hoping, as we all are, for the moment he’d be washed clean.
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I have never been fishing on the Susquehanna or on any river for that matter to be perfectly honest.
Not in July or any month have I had the pleasure — if it is a pleasure — of fishing on the Susquehanna.
I am more likely to be found in a quiet room like this one — a painting of a woman on the wall, a bowl of tangerines on the table — trying to manufacture the sensation of fishing on the Susquehanna.
There is little doubt that others have been fishing on the Susquehanna,
rowing upstream in a wooden boat, sliding the oars under the water then raising them to drip in the light. But the nearest I have ever come to fishing on the Susquehanna was one afternoon in a museum in Philadelphia,
when I balanced a little egg of time in front of a painting in which that river curled around a bend
under a blue cloud-ruffled sky, dense trees along the banks, and a fellow with a red bandana
sitting in a small, green flat-bottom boat holding the thin whip of a pole.
That is something I am unlikely ever to do, I remember saying to myself and the person next to me.
Then I blinked and moved on to other American scenes of haystacks, water whitening over rocks,
even one of a brown hare who seemed so wired with alertness I imagined him springing right out of the frame. ~Billy Collins Fishing On The Susquehanna In July
The difficulty to think at the end of day, When the shapeless shadow covers the sun And nothing is left except light on your fur—
….and August the most peaceful month.
To be, in the grass, in the peacefullest time, And to feel that the light is a rabbit-light In which everything is meant for you And nothing need be explained;
I live a quiet life in a quiet place. There are many experiences not on my bucket list that I’m simply content to just imagine others doing.
I’m not a rock climber or a zip liner nor willing to jump out of an airplane. I won’t ride a horse over a four foot jump nor race one around a track. Not for me waterskis or unicycles or motorcycles.
I’m grateful there are adventurers who seek out the extremes of life so the rest of us can admire their courage and applaud their explorations.
My imagination is powerful enough, thanks to the words and pictures of others – sometimes too vivid.
I contentedly explore the corners of my quiet places, both inside and outside, to see what I can build from what’s here.
When the light is just right, what I see in my mind seems ready to spring right out of the frame.
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Master, how serene Are all the hours We waste If, as we waste them, We place them in a vase Like flowers.
There are no sorrows In our lives Nor joys either. Let us learn then, Innocent sages, Not to live life,
But to pass through it, Tranquil, serene, Taking children As our teachers, Eyes full Of Nature . . .
Beside a river, Beside a road, Wherever we are, Living life With the same Light ease.
Let us gather flowers. Let us bathe our hands In the calm rivers, And from them Learn their calm.
[12 June, 1914] ~Fernando Pessoa from “Ode 1” translated from Portuguese by Margaret Jull Costa & Patricio Ferrari
How fresh, oh Lord, how sweet and clean Are thy returns! even as the flowers in spring; To which, besides their own demean, The late-past frosts tributes of pleasure bring. Grief melts away Like snow in May, As if there were no such cold thing.
Who would have thought my shriveled heart Could have recovered greenness? It was gone Quite underground; as flowers depart To see their mother-root, when they have blown, Where they together All the hard weather Dead to the world, keep house unknown.
These are thy wonders, Lord of power, Killing and quickening, bringing down to hell And up to heaven in an hour; Making a chiming of a passing-bell. We say amiss This or that is: Thy word is all, if we could spell.
Oh that I once past changing were, Fast in thy Paradise, where no flower can wither! Many a spring I shoot up fair, Offering at heaven, growing and groaning thither; Nor doth my flower Want a spring shower, My sins and I joining together.
But while I grow in a straight line, Still upwards bent, as if heaven were mine own, Thy anger comes, and I decline: What frost to that? what pole is not the zone Where all things burn, When thou dost turn, And the least frown of thine is shown?
And now in age I bud again, After so many deaths I live and write; I once more smell the dew and rain, And relish versing. Oh, my only light, It cannot be That I am he On whom thy tempests fell all night.
These are thy wonders, Lord of love, To make us see we are but flowers that glide; Which when we once can find and prove, Thou hast a garden for us where to bide; Who would be more, Swelling through store, Forfeit their Paradise by their pride. ~George Herbert “The Flower”
There are days we live as if death were nowhere in the background; from joy to joy to joy, from wing to wing, from blossom to blossom to impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom. ~Li-Young Lee from “From Blossoms”
Our small church has a couple of gracious and kind gardeners who share the produce from their yards and fields each week to provide a fresh bouquet to sit on the table in front of our humble wooden pulpit.
It is a special treat to walk into church and see what they brought to the altar to share with us all on Sunday morning. I keep a photo album of these very unique Sunday “pulpit posies” our keepers of gardens share.
Why are these arrangements special? After all, almost every church displays a floral arrangement every Sunday.
These are special as many of these flowers are seeded, watered, fertilized and nurtured by one of our own, grown with love and caring, just as God cares for each of His children.
These are special as some are considered simple weeds, and are gleaned from ditches and hedges. They are part of God’s creation and have a wild beauty that can be as breathtaking as a hothouse orchid.
These are special because they often go home with a congregant or visitor who will enjoy their loveliness for many more days, as if they represent the manifestation of God’s Word itself.
Some of us are dahlias, zinnias and roses. Some of us are rare gardenias and orchids. Most of us are dandelions, sagebrush, Queen Anne’s lace, fireweed, burdock, and daisies thriving in the crevasses, ditches and hedgerows of life.
No matter which roots we sprout from, or where, we are the wonders of our loving gardening God. He created us to take care of His creation.
Each week, we bud afresh for Him.
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The fate of unborn Millions will now depend, under God, on the Courage and Conduct of this army—Let us therefore rely upon the goodness of the Cause, and the aid of the supreme Being, in whose hands Victory is, to animate and encourage us to great and noble Actions—The Eyes of all our Countrymen are now upon us, and we shall have their blessings, and praises, if happily we are the instruments of saving them from the Tyranny meditated against them. Let us therefore animate and encourage each other, and shew the whole world, that a Freeman contending for Liberty on his own ground is superior to any slavish mercenary on earth. ~George Washington to his troops July 2, 1776
The God who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time: the hand of force may destroy, but cannot disjoin them. –Thomas Jefferson, in “A Summary View of the Rights of British America” Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice can not sleep forever… ― Thomas Jefferson, in Notes on the State of Virginia on the need for abolition of slavery
Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history. We of this Congress and this administration, will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance, or insignificance, can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass, will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation.
We say we are for the Union. The world will not forget that we say this. We know how to save the Union. The world knows we do know how to save it.
We — even we here — hold the power, and bear the responsibility. In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free — honorable alike in what we give, and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth. Other means may succeed; this could not fail.
The way is plain, peaceful, generous, just — a way which, if followed, the world will forever applaud, and God must forever bless. ~Abraham Lincoln in his 1862 address to Congress
This country will not be a good place for any of us to live in unless we make it a good place for all of us to live in. ~ Theodore Roosevelt
If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. ~James Madison
Fifty years ago this week, I was impatiently marking time as a new college graduate awaiting my first day of medical school to commence. I was too self-absorbed to pay much attention to the significance of the 200th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence from British rule.
That changed when two British student friends arrived in my home town on a summer Greyhound Bus tour of the U.S. right before the 4th. They were most gracious watching the extravagant folderol of a community’s traditional Fourth of July patriotism and fireworks. It was a curiosity to them, given their visitor perspective, coming from “historical enemy” territory.
Their perception was: the U.S. as a broiling work in progress, still much unsettled and somewhat unsettling.
I wonder if Thomas Jefferson, architect of the words we celebrate today, would still be trembling for his country?
I believe he would, considering his views were radical in his day, his religious convictions unconventional, and his plantation managed by slaves of African descent. He personally understood the moral quicksand on which he tenuously stood–the conflict he felt was as close as the maintenance of his home and his own mixed-race children. He would mourn the modern abuse of our liberties secured through the blood of our forefathers, our brothers, sisters and children.
Today we are sinking deeply in that same quicksand, having done no better than Jefferson at forging a personal and moral foundation on which to firmly stand. We have squandered our autonomy with selfishness rather than a selflessness borne of gratitude for the gift of freedom.
Some in leadership want to exponentially increase and secure what they consider their personal due, before considering, out of humility, others who have greater needs first. We use up land and animals and water without regard to those who will come after us, failing to be stewards of the garden so generously given to our care.
History as recorded in the Word and elsewhere shows when everyone does as they see fit, there is no immunity from judgment and wrath:
In those days there was no king in Israel, but every man did that which was right in his own eyes. Judges 17:6
And how well is that working out for us with the attitudes of our current leadership? We continue unsettled and unsettling, a country of paradoxical perspective about what true freedom means.
In Biblical times, it took a true servant King sacrificing Himself to save us from destroying ourselves. Even now, He continues to try, awaiting our sincere repentance and response.
We should be trembling…
partial lyrics: And I don’t know a soul who’s not been battered I don’t have a friend who feels at ease I don’t know a dream that’s not been shattered Or driven to its knees
But it’s alright, it’s alright For we lived so well so long Still, when I think of the Road we’re traveling on I wonder what’s gone wrong I can’t help it, I wonder what has gone wrong
Lyrics: This is my song, O God of all the nations, A song of peace for lands afar and mine. This is my home, the country where my heart is, Here are my hopes, my dreams, my holy shrine. But other hearts in other lands are beating, With hopes and dreams as true and high as mine.
My country’s skies are bluer than the ocean, And sunlight beams on cloverleaf and pine. But other lands have sunlight too, and clover, And skies are everywhere as blue as mine. This is my song, O God of all the nations, A song of peace for their land and for mine.
So let us raise this melody together, Beneath the stars that guide us through the night; If we choose love, each storm we’ll learn to weather, Until true peace and harmony we find, This is our song, a hymn we raise together; A dream of peace, uniting humankind.
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