To rest before the sheaves are bound, toss the scythes aside, bare the feet and sink into the nearest haystack, release the undone task and consent to sleep while the brightest hour burns an arc across its stretch of sky: this is the body’s prayer, mid-day angelus whispered in mingled breath while the limbs stretch in thanksgiving and the body turns toward the beloved.
This is the prayer of trust: what’s left undone will wait. The unattended child, the uncut acre, cracked wheel, broken fence that are occupations of the waking mind soften into shadow in the semi-darkness of dream. All shall be well. Little depends on us. The turning world is held and borne in love. We give good measure in our toil and, meet and right, obey the body when it calls us to rest. ~Marilyn Chandler McEntyre “Noon Rest (after Millet: 1890)” from “The Color of Light: Poems on Van Gogh’s Late Paintings”
When you lie down, you will not be afraid; when you lie down, your sleep will be sweet. Proverbs 3:24
Thanks to retirement, I have learned to love mid-day naps.
After forty-plus years of 10 hour work days, then awakened with calls at night, I managed to semi-thrive on minimal sleep.
Not any more.
In my new reality, I have discovered that it is possible to leave things undone, something that was never possible during doctoring and patient care. Now it is okay to set a task aside and think about it later. All this hasn’t come naturally to me, but I’m learning.
So it is time to kick off my shoes, pull a quilt up to my chin and close my eyes, just for a little while.
All will be well. The world keeps turning, even when I’m not the one pedaling to keep it going.
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Every morning I sit across from you at the same small table, the sun all over the breakfast things— curve of a blue-and-white pitcher, a dish of berries— me in a sweatshirt or robe, you invisible.
Most days, we are suspended over a deep pool of silence. I stare straight through you or look out the window at the garden, the powerful sky, a cloud passing behind a tree.
There is no need to pass the toast, the pot of jam, or pour you a cup of tea, and I can hide behind the paper, rotate in its drum of calamitous news.
But some days I may notice a little door swinging open in the morning air, and maybe the tea leaves of some dream will be stuck to the china slope of the hour— then I will lean forward, elbows on the table, with something to tell you, and you look up, as always, your spoon dripping milk, ready to listen. ~Billy Collins “A Portrait of the Reader With a Bowl of Cereal”from Picnic, Lightning
The smell of that buttered toast simply spoke to Toad, and with no uncertain voice; talked of warm kitchens, of breakfasts on bright frosty mornings, of cozy parlour firesides on winter evenings, when one’s ramble was over and slippered feet were propped on the fender; of the purring of contented cats, and the twitter of sleepy canaries. ~Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows
Some of what we do, we do to make things happen, the alarm to wake us up, the coffee to perc, the car to start.
The rest of what we do, we do trying to keep something from doing something the skin from aging, the hoe from rusting, the truth from getting out.
With yes and no like the poles of a battery powering our passage through the days, we move, as we call it, forward, wanting to be wanted, wanting not to lose the rain forest, wanting the water to boil, wanting not to have cancer, wanting to be home by dark, wanting not to run out of gas,
as each of us wants the other watching at the end, as both want not to leave the other alone, as wanting to love beyond this meat and bone, we gaze across breakfast and pretend. ~Miller Williams “Love Poem with Toast” from Some Jazz a While: Collected Poems
“Do you remember the Shire, Mr. Frodo? It’ll be spring soon. And the orchards will be in blossom. And the birds will be nesting in the hazel thicket. And they’ll be sowing the summer barley in the lower fields… and eating the first of the strawberries with cream. Do you remember the taste of strawberries?” ― J.R.R. Tolkienfrom Lord of the Rings
In our despairing moments, we hold on to memories most precious to us, recalling what makes each moment, indeed life itself, special and worthwhile.
It can be something so seemingly simple becoming cherished and retrievable– the aroma of cinnamon in a warm kitchen, the splash of colors in a carefully tended garden spot, the cooing of mourning doves as light begins to dawn, the velvety soft of a newborn foal’s fur, the embrace of welcoming arms.
This morning, dear reader, I lean forward, elbows on the table, with something to tell you, and you look up, as always, in the middle of whatever you are doing, ready to listen.
That is no small thing. Thank you.
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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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So what do I believe actually happened that morning on the third day after he died? …I speak very plainly here…
He got up. He said, “Don’t be afraid.”
Love is the victor. Death is not the end. The end is life. His life and our lives through him, in him. Existence has greater depths of beauty, mystery, and benediction than the wildest visionary has ever dared to dream. Christ our Lord has risen. ~Frederick Buechner from The Magnificent Defeat
Since this moment (the resurrection), the universe is no longer what it was; nature has received another meaning; history is transformed and you and I are no more, and should not be anymore, what we were before. ~Paul Tillich, theologian
Make no mistake: if He rose at all it was as His body; if the cells’ dissolution did not reverse, the molecules reknit, the amino acids rekindle, the Church will fall…
It was not as the flowers, each soft Spring recurrent; it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled eyes of the eleven apostles; it was as His Flesh: ours. ~John Updike from “Seven Stanzas at Easter”
Our flesh is so weak, so temporary, as ephemeral as a dew drop on a petal yet with our earthly vision it is all we know of ourselves and it is what we trust knowing of Him.
He was born as our flesh, from our flesh. He walked and hungered and thirsted and slept as our flesh. He died, His flesh hanging in tatters, blood spilling freely breath fading to nought speaking Words our ears can never forget.
And He rose again as His flesh: ours to walk and hunger and thirst alongside us and here on this hill we meet together, –flesh of His flesh– here among us He is risen –flesh of our flesh– married forever as the Church and its fragile, flawed and everlasting body.
The Lenten season is over; He is Risen! So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. 2 Corinthians 4: 18
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When evening came, his disciples went down to the sea,got into a boat, and started across the sea to Capernaum.
It was now dark, and Jesus had not yet come to them. The sea became rough because a strong wind was blowing.
When they had rowed about three or four miles, they saw Jesus walking on the sea and coming near the boat,
…and they were frightened.
But he said to them, “It is I; do not be afraid.”
Then they were glad to take him into the boat, and immediately the boat was at the land to which they were going. John 6: 16-21
So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand. ~Isaiah 41:10
Maybe, after the sermon, after the multitude was fed, one or two of them felt the soul slip forth like a tremor of pure sunlight before exhaustion, that wants to swallow everything, gripped their bones and left them miserable and sleepy, as they are now, forgetting how the wind tore at the sails before he rose and talked to it —
tender and luminous and demanding as he always was — a thousand times more frightening than the killer sea. ~Mary Oliver from “Maybe”
Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid. ~Frederich Buechner
Most days I depend on beauty to give me hope, knowing somewhere, it will show its face.
Sometimes, in fearsome times, I must search in unexpected places.
It is then I worry I’ll not ever see beauty in quite the same way again: perhaps Beauty itself frightens me…
Yet we are told, again and again and again so we might listen and believe:
“It is I; fear not.”
…do not be afraid do not be afraid… …do not be afraid…
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.
This year’s Barnstorming Lenten theme is Ephesians 3:9: …to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things…
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Days pass when I forget the mystery. Problems insoluble and problems offering their own ignored solutions jostle for my attention… And then once more the quiet mystery is present to me, the throng’s clamor recedes: the mystery that there is anything, anything at all, let alone cosmos, joy, memory, everything, rather than void: and that, 0 Lord, Creator, Hallowed one, You still, hour by hour sustain it. ~Denise Levertov from Sands of the Well
Two girls discover the secret of life in a sudden line of poetry.
I who don’t know the secret wrote the line. They told me
(through a third person) they had found it but not what it was not even what line it was. No doubt by now, more than a week later, they have forgotten the secret, the line, the name of the poem. I love them for finding what I can’t find,
and for loving me for the line I wrote, and for forgetting it so that a thousand times, till death finds them, they may discover it again, in other lines
in other happenings. And for wanting to know it, for
assuming there is such a secret, yes, for that most of all. ~Denise Levertov “The Secret” from O Taste and See
A voice cries: “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Isaiah 40:3
This is the time of year when I tend to get off track, lost and wandering in a wilderness of winter doldrums.
Winter clings like a chilly cement suit, its deprivation gone on too long. I yearn for respite.
I am bewildered by life much of the time. Anyone looking at these postings can see my struggle as I try each day to make this sad and suffering world a little bit better place.
I have little to offer a reader other than my own wrestling match with the mysteries we all face.
And so each day, I seek out a secret line, or a clue from the sky, or a voice crying out in the wilderness to prepare the way:
to look where I’m going, to walk this path with a goal in mind, to stop meandering meaninglessly, searching for what actually lies right before my eyes.
My path, if straight and true, leads me to join others also harkening to the call, all of us searching for His Truth in the mess of this broken world.
I am not alone on this road. Nor are you. We travel together.
This year’s Barnstorming Lenten theme is Ephesians 3:9:
…to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things…
Another sleepless night I’m turning in my bed Long before the red sun rises In these early hours I’m falling again Into the river of my worries When the river runs away I find a shelter in your name
Jesus, only light on the shore Only hope in the storm Jesus, let me fly to your side There I would hide, Jesus
Hear my anxious prayer The beating of my heart The pulse and the measure of my unbelief Speak your words to me Before I come apart Help me believe in what I cannot see Before the river runs away I will call upon your name
Jesus, only light on the shore Only hope in the storm Jesus, let me fly to your side There I would hide, Jesus ~Elaine Rubenstein, Fernando Ortega
Light after darkness, gain after loss, Strength after weakness, crown after cross; Sweet after bitter, hope after fears, Home after wandering, praise after tears. Alpha and Omega, beginning and the end, He is making all things new. Springs of living water shall wash away each tear, He is making all things new. Sight after mystery, sun after rain, Joy after sorrow, peace after pain; Near after distant, gleam after gloom, Love after wandering, life after tomb. ~Frances Havergal
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I don’t know where prayers go, or what they do. Do cats pray, while they sleep half-asleep in the sun?
Is a prayer a gift, or a petition, or does it matter? The sunflowers blaze, maybe that’s their way. Maybe the cats are sound asleep. Maybe not. ~Mary Oliver from “I Happened to be Standing” from A Thousand Mornings
All that matters is to be at one with You, the living God; to be a creature in Your house, O God of Life! Like a cat asleep on a chair at peace, in peace at home, at home in the house of the living, sleeping on the hearth, and yawning before the fire.
Sleeping on the hearth of the living world, yawning at home before the fire of life feeling the presence of You, the living God like a great reassurance a deep calm in the heart a presence as of a master, a mistress sitting on the board in their own and greater being, in the house of life. ~D.H. Lawrence “Pax”
When you notice a cat in profound meditation, The reason, I tell you, is always the same: His mind is engaged in a rapt contemplation Of the thought, of the thought, of the thought of his name: His ineffable effable Effanineffable Deep and inscrutable singular name. ~T.S. Eliot from The Naming of Cats
In peace I will both lie down and sleep; for you alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety… Psalm 4:8
Humanity longs for the peaceful untroubled rest promised in the Psalms.
Yet the world remains in turmoil; bombs continue to drop in countries at war, often killing the innocent. Homes, no longer a refuge of safety, become graves of destruction and devastation.
The Lord’s covenant with His people ensures the time will come when we shall rest in His house of life – in peace and security. His Son took on the brunt of the world’s hatred and violence, His sacrifice an atonement for the ongoing evil.
The Lord’s promise of peace and rest remains forever, His ineffable presence we long for, like a great reassurance, a deep calm in the heart…
This year’s Barnstorming Lenten theme is Ephesians 3:9: …to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things…
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Yesterday, running slowly in the gravel I saw a tiny bird feathered pulsating globe of white and gray on its back black pinprick eyes pointing up to the sky. I stooped down closely to peer. We stared at one another— creature to creature— for a small eternity. I scooped him into my hands and placed him gently an offering upright onto the grass whispering a prayer to the One who sees and knows each one every sparrow and every sorrow. ~Karen Swallow Prior “Creature to Creature”
Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? And not one of them is forgotten before God. Why, even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not; you are of more value than many sparrows. Luke 12:6-7
God of the sparrow, care for us, Speak in our sorrow, Lord of grief. Sing us Your music, lift our hearts, Pour out Your mercy, send relief. ~Craig Courtney (link to song below)
A little bird, with plumage brown, Beside my window flutters down, A moment chirps its little strain, Then taps upon my window-pane, And chirps again, and hops along, To call my notice to its song; But I work on, nor heed its lay, Till, in neglect, it flies away.
So birds of peace and hope and love Come fluttering earthward from above, To settle on life’s window-sills, And ease our load of earthly ills; But we, in traffic’s rush and din Too deep engaged to let them in, With deadened heart and sense plod on, Nor know our loss till they are gone. ~Paul Laurence Dunbar “The Sparrow”
The first thing I heard this morning was a soft, insistent rustle, the rapid flapping of wings against glass as it turned out,
a small bird rioting in the frame of a high window, trying to hurl itself through the enigma of transparency into the spacious light.
A noise in the throat of the cat hunkered on the rug told me how the bird had gotten inside, carried in the cold night through the flap in a basement door, and later released from the soft clench of teeth.
Up on a chair, I trapped its pulsations in a small towel and carried it to the door, so weightless it seemed to have vanished into the nest of cloth.
But outside, it burst from my uncupped hands into its element, dipping over the dormant garden in a spasm of wingbeats and disappearing over a tall row of hemlocks.
Still, for the rest of the day, I could feel its wild thrumming against my palms whenever I thought about the hours the bird must have spent pent in the shadows of that room, hidden in the spiky branches of our decorated tree, breathing there among metallic angels, ceramic apples, stars of yarn,
its eyes open, like mine as I lie here tonight picturing this rare, lucky sparrow tucked into a holly bush now, a light snow tumbling through the windless dark. ~Billy Collins “The Christmas Sparrow”from Aimless Love
Through the winter, I feed the sparrows, the woodpeckers and chickadees, the juncos and finches and towhees, and yes — even the starlings.
They all would be fine without my daily contribution to their well-being, but in return for my provision of seeds, I am able to enjoy their spirited liveliness and their gracious ability to share the bounty with one another.
These birds give back to me simply by showing up, without ever realizing what their presence means to me.
How much more does God lay out for me on a daily basis to sustain me even if I fail to show up for Him?
How oblivious am I to His gracious and profound gifts?
How willingly do I share these gifts with others?
Unlike the birds, I could never survive on my own without His watchful care.
When life feels overwhelming, when I am filled with worries, sorrow, regrets and pain, I seek out this God who cares even for sparrows. He knows how to quiet my troubles and strengthen my faith and perseverance, a comfort that extends far beyond sunflower seeds.
photo by Harry Rodenberger
This year’s Barnstorming Lenten theme is Ephesians 3:9:
…to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things…
God of the sparrow, sing through us Songs of deliv’rance, songs of peace. Helpless we seek You, God our joy, Quiet our troubles, bid them cease, Quiet our troubles, bid them cease. Alleluia.
God of the sparrow, God of hope, Tenderly guide us, be our song, God of affliction, pain and hurt, Comfort Your children, make us strong, Comfort Your children, make us strong. Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.
God of the sparrow, care for us, Speak in our sorrow, Lord of grief. Sing us Your music, lift our hearts, Pour out Your mercy, send relief.
God, like the sparrow, we abide In Your protection, love and grace. Just as the sparrow in Your care, May Your love keep us all our days, May Your love keep us all our days. Amen. ~Craig Courtney
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I am struck by the otherness of things rather than their same- ness. The way a tiny pile of snow perches in the crook of a branch in the tall pine, away by itself, high enough not to be noticed by people, out of reach of stray dogs. It leans against the scaly pine bark, busy at some existence that does not need me.
It is the differences of objects that I love, that lift me toward the rest of the universe, that amaze me. That each thing on earth has its own soul, its own life, that each tree, each clod is filled with the mud of its own star. I watch where I step and see that the fallen leaf, old broken grass, an icy stone are placed in exactly the right spot on the earth, carefully, royalty in their own country. ~Tom Hennen “Looking for the Differences” from Darkness Sticks to Everything.
We dwell so much on our differences rather than our similarities, especially during intense political times.
There is nothing wrong with “otherness” if each “other” is seen as God sees us.
We each are one of His precious and specially-made creations, worthy of existence even in our muddy, rocky, fragile state.
These days, although a “snowflake” is disparaged in the political banter of the day as weak and overly sensitive, there is nothing more uniquely “other” than an individual crystalline creation falling from heaven to the exact spot where it is intended to land. Something so unique becomes part of something far greater than it could be on its own, blending in, infinitely stronger, but never lost.
I am placed here, weak as I am, in the exact right spot, for reasons I continue to uncover and discover. I try every day, as best as I can, to not get lost and, of course, to manage to stay out of the mud.
This year’s Barnstorming Lenten theme is Ephesians 3:9:
…to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things…
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