Category: peace

Sometimes God Only Knows…

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Sometimes when day after day we have cloudless blue skies,
warm temperatures, colorful trees and brilliant sun, when
it seems like all this will go on forever,

when I harvest vegetables from the garden all day,
then drink tea and doze in the late afternoon sun,
and in the evening one night make pickled beets
and green tomato chutney, the next red tomato chutney,
and the day after that pick the fruits of my arbor
and make grape jam,

when we walk in the woods every evening over fallen leaves,
through yellow light, when nights are cool, and days warm,

when I am so happy I am afraid I might explode or disappear
or somehow be taken away from all this,

at those times when I feel so happy, so good, so alive, so in love
with the world, with my own sensuous, beautiful life, suddenly

I think about all the suffering and pain in the world, the agony
and dying. I think about all those people being tortured, right now,
in my name. But I still feel happy and good, alive and in love with
the world and with my lucky, guilty, sensuous, beautiful life because,

I know in the next minute or tomorrow all this may be
taken from me, and therefore I’ve got to say, right now,
what I feel and know and see, I’ve got to say, right now,
how beautiful and sweet this world can be.
~David Budbill “Sometimes”

This is a beautiful, wonderful, terrific day to vote.

Normally election days are filled with stressful anticipation about what storms and floods will arrive next due to the ever-changing political climate.

Yet today, as I fill out my ballot, along with millions of others in my country, no matter how erratic our leadership, how corrupt its political machinations, we together have the ability to change course through the sacred privilege and responsibility of voting.

Over two centuries of great sacrifice has bought us this right and freedom. I am proud to exercise it, no matter the result. Too many people in the world do not know this privilege, so I do not take it lightly.

Sometime, and God only knows when, we’ll find ourselves united more than divided, working together to harvest the best we can grow.

Then what a wonderful world this will be…

A Latticework of Bones

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And then in the falling comes a rising,
as of the bass coming up for autumn’s last insects
struggling amid the mosaic of leaves on the lake’s surface.
We express it as the season of lacking, but what is this nakedness
— the unharvested corn frost-shriveled but still a little golden
under the diffuse light of a foggy sky,
the pin oak’s newly stark web of barbs, the woodbine’s vines
shriven of their scarlet and left askew in the air
like the tangle of threads on the wall’s side
of the castle tapestry—what is it but greater intimacy,
the world slackening its grip on the veils, letting them slump
to the floor in a heap of sodden colors, and saying,
this is me, this is my skeletal muscle,
my latticework of bones, my barren winter skin,
this is it and if you love me, know that this is what you love.
~Laura Fargas “October Struck” from Animal of the Sixth Day

octevening293

Something about the emerging nakedness of autumn reassures;
we are loved even when stripped down to our bones.

While making quite a show of shedding our coverings,
our bits and pieces fluttering down to rejoin the soil,
what is left is meager lattice.

But when the light is just right,
we simmer gold,
illuminated and illuminating,
even if barely there.

octevening291
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And What if?

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What if you slept
And what if
In your sleep
You dreamed
And what if
In your dream
You went to heaven
And there plucked a strange and beautiful flower
And what if
When you awoke
You had that flower in your hand
Ah, what then?
~Samuel Taylor Coleridge “What if you slept…”

What might our dreams tell us of heaven?

The last few nights I dreamed of those with whom I once had a warm friendship but no longer do.

My dreams were of grace and reconciliation, of walking and talking together and rediscovering our common goals and beliefs rather than dwelling on estrangement and sadness as we’ve gone our separate ways.

Upon waking, I wondered what vision of heaven this suggests: finding the lost treasure of connection that I allowed to let go.

Restoring a friendship is like waking, holding a strange and beautiful flower plucked in a dream. I cradle it gently in my hand as the precious gem it is.

What then is still possible? And what might I do with this flower now?

What Else is There?

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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.

The Lingering Sky

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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…

Having to Return on Foot

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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.

harvestmoon

The only wisdom we can hope to acquire is the wisdom of humility; humility is endless.
~T.S. Eliot from East Coker

cloudsandponies2

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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sunsetnatetomomi

There’s Something About the Outside of a Horse

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There is 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.

The Mundane Becomes Miraculous

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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.

An anthology of miracles.
~Roger Rosenblatt from “The World is a Room with a Piano Waiting to be Played”

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.

The Eyes Have It

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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

the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
~e.e.cummings from “somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond”

…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.

Ducks in a Muddy Pond

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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,
duckchelan2

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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