In winter, the earth remembers its hidden life; a silence deepens that is not emptiness but preparation. ~Rowan Williams
When, in the middle of the night, you wake with the certainty you’ve done it all wrong, when you wake and see clearly all the places you’ve failed, in that moment, when dreams will not return, this is the chance for your most gentle voice— the one you reserve for those you love most— to say to you quietly, oh sweetheart, this is not yet the end of the story. Sleep will not come, but somehow, in that wide-awake moment there is peace— the kind that does not need everything to be right before it arrives. The kind that comes from not fighting what is real. The peace that rises in the dark on its sure dark wings and flies true with no moon, no stars. ~Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer “With Astonishing Tenderness” from The Unfolding
Peaceful sleep has been elusive over the last 10 nights.
I realize a significant number of people are resting more easily. They celebrate an overwhelming number of rapid changes instituted by a new government administration over a few days.
I’m not among them.
Sweetheart, this is not yet the end of the story. It never is.
AI image created for this post
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
I got out of bed on two strong legs. It might have been otherwise. I ate cereal, sweet milk, ripe, flawless peach. It might have been otherwise. I took the dog uphill to the birch wood. All morning I did the work I love. At noon I lay down with my mate. It might have been otherwise. We ate dinner together at a table with silver candlesticks. It might have been otherwise. I slept in a bed in a room with paintings on the walls, and planned another day just like this day. But one day, I know, it will be otherwise. ~Jane Kenyon “Otherwise”
…this has been a day of grace in the dead of winter, the hard knuckle of the year, a day that unwrapped itself like an unexpected gift, and the stars turn on, order themselves into the winter night. ~Barbara Crooker from “Ordinary Life” in Barbara Crooker: Selected Poems
…it’s easy to forget that the ordinary is just the extraordinary that’s happened over and over again. Sometimes the beauty of your life is apparent. Sometimes you have to go looking for it. And just because you have to look for it doesn’t mean it’s not there. God, grant me the grace of a normal day. ~Billy Coffey
…there is no such thing as a charmed life, not for any of us, no matter where we live or how mindfully we attend to the tasks at hand. But there are charmed moments, all the time, in every life and in every day, if we are only awake enough to experience them when they come and wise enough to appreciate them. ~Katrina Kenison from The Gift of an Ordinary Day
These dead of winter days are lengthening, slowly and surely. I’m thankful I’m retired now so I no longer I leave the farm in darkness to head to work in town, and return in darkness at the end of the workday. I’m able to do my barn chores at either end of the day as the sun is rising to chase away the moon, and later as the sun is chased away by starlight.
I tend to get complacent in my daily routines, confident in the knowledge that tomorrow will be very much like yesterday. The distinct blessings of an ordinary day are lost in the rush of moving forward to whatever comes next. Poet Jane Kenyon wrote her poem with the knowledge she was dying of leukemia, which meant each ordinary day was precious indeed.
The reality is there is nothing ordinary about the events of each day. It might have been otherwise and some day it will be otherwise. That is the hard knuckle of the days we are given, each a gift, each peaches and cream.
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
I would permit no man to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him. ~Booker T. Washington from Up from Slavery
Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction…. The chain reaction of evil — hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars — must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation. ~Martin Luther King Jr. from Strength to Love
Do not be overwhelmed with evil but overcome evil with good. Romans 12:21
The goal of this life is to live with love and compassion for others, even those who try to pull us deep into the abyss of hatred.
Each of us, whether president, prince or pauper, is called to give up our own selfish agendas and consider the dignity of others and their greater good.
Cherish life: all lives – as is crystal clear from Christ’s example on the cross – including those who do hateful things and want to harm us. Let us not be pulled down to their level, spewing angry vindictive words rather than words of grace and peace.
Our only defense against evil is God’s love as sacrifice; only He can lead us to “where everything sad will come untrue”, where tears are no longer shed in anger, sorrow, and fear.
The light beam of His love finds us in the dark abyss. The great shadow of meanness and hatefulness departs.
photo by Josh ScholtenAI image created for this post
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
Oh the starving Winter-lapse! Ice-bound, hunger-pinched and dim; Dormant roots recall their saps, Empty nests show black and grim, Short-lived sunshine gives no heat, Undue buds are nipped by frost, Snow sets forth a winding-sheet, And all hope of life seems lost. ~Christina Rossetti “Winter” from “Seasons”
I sought the wood in winter When every leaf was dead; Behind the wind-whipped branches The winter sun set red. The coldest star was rising To greet that bitter air, The oaks were writhen giants; Nor bud nor bloom was there. The birches, white and slender, In deathless marble stood, The brook, a white immortal, Slept silent in the wood. ~Willa Cather from “I Sought the Wood in Winter”
A wintry soul can be a cold and empty place.
I appeal to my Creator who knows my struggle.
He asks me to keep my promises because He keeps His promises. His buds of hope and light and warmth still grace my bare branches.
He brings me out of the dark night’s chill, into the freshness of a frosty dawn, to finish what He brought me here to do.
AI image created for this post
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
How granular they feel—grief and regret, arriving, as they do, in the sharp particularities of distress. Inserting themselves— cunning, intricate, subversive—into our discourse.
In the long night, grievances seem to multiply. Old dreams mingling with new. Disappointment and regret bludgeon the soul, your best imaginings bruised, your hopes ragged.
Yet wait, watch. From the skylight the room is filling with soft early sun, slowly sifting its light on the bed, on your head, a shower of fine particles. How welcome. And how reliable. ~Luci Shaw“Sorrow”
(In my sleep I dreamed this poem)
Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness.
We are given a box full of darkness by someone who loves us, and we can’t help but open it, weeping.
It takes a lifetime to understand, if we ever do, we will inevitably hand off this gift to others we love.
Opening the box allows the Light in where none existed before.
Light pours into our brokenness.
Sorrow ends up shining through our tears: we reach out from a deep well of need. Because we are loved so thoroughly, we too love deeply beyond ourselves.
AI image created for this post
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
Make a monthly donation
Make a yearly donation
Choose an amount
$10.00
$25.00
$50.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00
Or enter a custom amount
$
Your contribution is deeply appreciated to help offset the costs of maintaining an ad-free website.
Yesterday it was still January and I drove home and the roads were wet and the fields were wet and a palette knife had spread a slab of dark blue forestry across the hill. A splashed white van appeared from a side road then turned off and I drove on into the drab morning which was mudded and plain and there was a kind of weary happiness that nothing was trying to be anything much and nothing was being suggested. I don’t know how else to explain the calm of this grey wetness with hardly a glimmer of light or life, only my car tyres swishing the lying water, and the crows balanced and rocking on the windy lines. ~Kerry Hardie “Acceptance”
For some time I thought there was time and that there would always be time for what I had a mind to do and what I could imagine going back to and finding it as I had found it the first time but by this time I do not know what I thought when I thought back then
there is no time yet it grows less there is the sound of rain at night arriving unknown in the leaves once without before or after then I hear the thrush waking at daybreak singing the new song ~W.S.Merwin “The New Song” from The Moon Before Morning, 2014
I leant upon a coppice gate When Frost was spectre-gray, And Winter’s dregs made desolate The weakening eye of day. The tangled bine-stems scored the sky Like strings of broken lyres, And all mankind that haunted nigh Had sought their household fires.
The land’s sharp features seemed to be The Century’s corpse outleant, His crypt the cloudy canopy, The wind his death-lament. The ancient pulse of germ and birth Was shrunken hard and dry, And every spirit upon earth Seemed fervourless as I.
At once a voice arose among The bleak twigs overhead In a full-hearted evensong Of joy illimited; An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small, In blast-beruffled plume, Had chosen thus to fling his soul Upon the growing gloom.
So little cause for carolings Of such ecstatic sound Was written on terrestrial things Afar or nigh around, That I could think there trembled through His happy good-night air Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew And I was unaware. ~Thomas Hardy “The Darkling Thrush”
I need reminding that what I offer up from my own heart predicts what I receive there.
If I’m grumbling and falling apart like a dying vine instead of a vibrant green tree~~~ coming up empty and hollow with discouragement, entangled in the soppy cobwebs and mildew of worry, only grumbling and grousing~~~ then no singing bird will come.
It is so much better to nurture the singers of joy and gladness with a heart budding with grace and gratitude, anticipatory and expectant.
I’ve swept my welcome mat; it is out and waiting. The symphony can begin any time now…
AI image created for this post
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
How can I feel so warm Here in the dead center of January? I can Scarcely believe it, and yet I have to, this is The only life I have. ~James Wright from “A Winter Daybreak Above Vence”
Once I saw a chimpanzee gaze at a particularly beautiful sunset for a full 15 minutes, watching the changing colors [and then] retire to the forest without picking a pawpaw for supper. ~Adriaan Krotlandt, Dutch ethologist in Scientific American (1962)
To-day I shall be strong, No more shall yield to wrong, Shall squander life no more; Days lost, I know not how, I shall retrieve them now; Now I shall keep the vow I never kept before.
Ensanguining the skies How heavily it dies Into the west away; Past touch and sight and sound Not further to be found, How hopeless under ground Falls the remorseful day. ~A.E. Houseman from “How Clear, How Lovely Bright”
to the northwest
It was like a church to me. I entered it on soft foot, Breath held like a cap in the hand. It was quiet. What God there was made himself felt, Not listened to, in clean colours That brought a moistening of the eye, In a movement of the wind over grass. There were no prayers said. But stillness Of the heart’s passions — that was praise Enough; and the mind’s cession Of its kingdom. I walked on, Simple and poor, while the air crumbled And broke on me generously as bread. ~ R.S. Thomas “The Moor”
The dead center of January here in the Pacific Northwest is usually pouring-rain gray-skies monochrome-mist.
But at times, mid-January sunsets are an evolving array of crimson and purple color and patterns, streaks and swirls, gradation and gradual decline.
It all takes place in silence. No bird song, no wind, no spoken prayer. Yet communion takes place – the air breaks and feeds us like manna from heaven.
Filled to the brim with a reminder:
May I squander my life no more and treasure each moment.
May I vow to cherish God, church, family, friends, alongside those unknown and struggling in my community.
May I witness to the winter’s bleeding out at the last light of day.
AI image created for this post
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
Make a monthly donation
Make a yearly donation
Choose an amount
$10.00
$25.00
$50.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00
Or enter a custom amount
$
Your contribution is deeply appreciated to help offset the cost of maintaining an ad-free website.
How many times each day do I wonder at the miracle that is each breath, each step, each meal, each good night’s sleep, each wakening, each song, each hug?
That it happens at all is a miracle, I tell you.
And why do we notice it most when it is no longer a given – when we have suddenly lost the daily gifts we take for granted.
So we who wake on an ordinary Sunday today, our home and church and family not in the path of a fire, our communities not in danger, we thank God for His daily miracles and pray that His people will help comfort and care for those who weep.
It is precisely because we are weary, and poor in spirit, that God can touch us with hope. This is not an easy truth. It means that we do accept our common lot, and take up our share of the cross. It means that we do not gloss over the evils we confront every day, both within ourselves and without. Our sacrifices may be great.
But as the martyred archbishop of El Salvador, Oscar Romero, once said, it is only the poor and hungry, those who know they need someone to come on their behalf, who can celebrate Christmas. We can ask for courage, however, and trust that God has not led us into this new land only to abandon us there. ~Kathleen Norrisfrom God With Us
photo by Joel DeWaard
On Epiphany day, we are still the people walking. We are still people in the dark, and the darkness looms large around us, beset as we are by fear, anxiety, brutality, violence, loss — a dozen alienations that we cannot manage.
We are — we could be — people of your light. So we pray for the light of your glorious presence as we wait for your appearing; we pray for the light of your wondrous grace as we exhaust our coping capacity; we pray for your gift of newness that will override our weariness; we pray that we may see and know and hear and trust in your good rule.
That we may have energy, courage, and freedom to enact your rule through the demands of this day. We submit our day to you and to your rule, with deep joy and high hope. ~Walter Brueggemann from Prayers for a Privileged People
When the song of the angels is stilled, when the star in the sky is gone, when the kings and princes are home, when the shepherds are back with their flocks, the work of Christmas begins: to find the lost, to heal the broken, to feed the hungry, to release the prisoner, to rebuild the nations, to bring peace among the people, to make music in the heart. ~Howard Thurman from The Mood of Christmas & Other Celebrations
O God, who am I now? Once, I was secure
in familiar territory in my sense of belonging
unquestioning of
the norms of my culture the assumptions built into my language the values shared by my society.
But now you have called me out and away from home and I do not know where you are leading. I am empty, unsure, uncomfortable. I have only a beckoning star to follow.
Journeying God, pitch your tent with mine so that I may not become deterred by hardship, strangeness, doubt. Show me the movement I must make
toward a wealth not dependent on possessions toward a wisdom not based on books toward a strength not bolstered by might toward a God not confined to heaven
All the Advent anticipation is over, Christmas and New Years are now past. Today is Epiphany, when I regret my energy and courage is waning just as the work of Christmas must begin.
I’ve swept up the last of the fir needles that dropped to the floor from a lovely Christmas tree that I watered faithfully in the house for over two weeks. But no amount of water could sustain what is rootless.
So it is with us.
I too am drying up, parts of me left behind for others to sweep up. I too must have roots of faith to survive in a troubled world.
The real work of Christmas is year-long — often very hard intensive work, not always the fun stuff of the last month, yet needed in the brokenness of hunger, disease, conflict, war and random violence, poverty, addictions, depression and pain.
We don’t need full stockings on the hearth, Christmas villages on the side table, or a blinking star on the top of the tree to reflect on the comfort of God’s care and the astounding beauty of His creation, all available to us without batteries, electrical plug ins, or the need of a ladder.
The real work of Christmas is God manifest on earth – “scandalously earthed” – in our own lives. We recognize Him in the homeless and forgotten. We are made alive to the possibility that we can make a difference in His name, to walk in others’ shoes, just as He walks in ours.
Every day. Twelve months. Life long.
Are we ready?
Unclench your fists Hold out your hands. Take mine. Let us hold each other. Thus is his Glory Manifest. ~Madeleine L’Engle “Epiphany”
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
Make a monthly donation
Make a yearly donation
Choose an amount
$10.00
$25.00
$50.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00
Or enter a custom amount
$
Your contribution is deeply appreciated to help offset the costs of maintaining an ad-free website.
May it be a light to you in dark places, when all other lights go out. ~J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring
This is a song in praise of hard, dark nights: no firelight, no afterglow, but the sliver of a crescent moon and a few stray stars flung out into the wilderness, calling you into the great Alone with your animal self, falling down on tired knees broken against the ground. Then prostrate— cross-like— face down and stretched to the end of yourself by how wrong you’ve been— because, of course, this is the end.
But there is still some warmth coming up from the Earth, and a humming in the sweet black air— some great vibration of life that goes out before you. And though you can’t see them, the birchwood and pines rustle inside the wind’s divine pull— in a dance of wills— and somewhere, a great horned owl bellows his clear, determined hoot like a psalm across the land.
So, you learn to breathe, again, with his heralding— a rhythm that beats electric blue like a pulse: “It’s not the end— it’s not the end—”
No, this is not the end— hardly an end, but a hard beginning. There will always be a morning— a rebirth.
So, here in the dark— in a night bleaker than bleak— in a time outside of time— there is a mark on the Holy map of your soul where you found your Maker in the hard, dark night— and then lived to see the light of dawn. ~Kimberly Phinney “An Ode to Hard, Dark Nights”
So many seem lost without a map, unable to find their way in the dark, wrecked and wandering, weeping and wretched, believing they have come to the end.
Yet this is not the end, only the beginning. A hard start – all rebirths are hard.
As I have been shown mercy, so I must become mercy, be loving where others show hate, be giving when others take away, build up while others tear down.
We walk together in the emerging light – it’s right there – on God’s holy map of your soul.
AI image created for this post
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
Barnstorming 