Harry in his backyard, admiring a rainbow he never forgotRainbow at 3R FarmsHarry (L) giving my husband Dan a driving lesson with stallion Midnight van de Edelweissphoto by Harry Rodenbergerphoto by Harry Rodenberger
Harry was at home in the house he and his wife Terry had built for his final retirement years, a house that had been encircled by a remarkable rainbow soon after they moved in. They both knew he lived on borrowed time thanks to a defibrillator in his chest that brought him back from the brink of death more times than his doctors could count. The rainbow brought a promise that Harry had not yet finished with his work here.
He was in that house last night when the Lord called him home, after so many near misses. Harry liked to say, “The Lord keeps taking the hook out and throwing me back in.”
This time the Lord kept hold and cradled him.
There is so much to say about a man who was a retired firefighter, a horse and beef farmer, a brother, a friend to scores of people, a father, grandfather and great-grandfather, and a husband to a loving and determined RN wife who single-handedly helped him reach nearly 82 years old.
Harry was always looking for the beautiful and the unusual in his field and garden and would send me photos to use on my blog – I gratefully have used his contributions many times and share them here with my deep appreciation for his eye for wonder in the ordinary. He also took great joy in being someone who would find faces in every-day objects – a skill called “facial pareidolia.”
I always wondered whose face he was seeking.
Now I know. Today he sees the face of God in all His glory, no longer hidden in common objects and no longer mysterious.
You no longer have to keep looking, dear friend. Fulfilling His rainbow promise of a few more years of life and love for you, God has brought you back home.
photo by Harry Rodenberger
photo by Harry Rodenbergerphoto by Harry Rodenbergerphoto of supermoon by Harry Rodenbergerphoto by Harry Rodenbergerphoto by Harry Rodenbergerphoto by Harry Rodenbergerphoto by Harry Rodenbergerphoto by Harry Rodenbergerphoto by Harry Rodenberger
video by Harry Rodenberger
“To love another person is to see the face of God…”
and look at the sky. Suddenly: orange, red, pink, blue, green, purple, yellow, gray, all at once and everywhere.
I pause in this moment at the beginning of my old age and I say a prayer of gratitude for getting to this evening
a prayer for being here, today, now, alive in this life, in this evening, under this sky. ~David Budbill from Winter: Tonight: Sunset
Write as if you were dying. At the same time, assume you write for an audience consisting solely of terminal patients. That is, after all, the case. ~Annie Dillard from “Write Till You Drop”
At its best, the sensation of writing is that of any unmerited grace.
It is handed to you, but only if you look for it. You search, you break your fists, your back, your brain, and then – and only then – it is handed to you. From the corner of your eye you see motion. Something is moving through the air and headed your way. It is a parcel bound in ribbons and bows; it has two white wings.
It flies directly at you; you can read your name on it. If it were a baseball, you would hit it out of the park. It is that one pitch in a thousand you see in slow motion; its wings beat slowly as a hawk’s. ~Annie Dillard from “Write Till You Drop”
I began to write regularly after September 11, 2001 because that day it became obvious to me I was dying too, though more slowly than the thousands who vanished in fire and ash, their voices obliterated with their bodies. So, nearly each day since, while I still have voice and a new dawn to greet, I speak through my fingers to others dying around me.
We are, after all, terminal patients, some of us more prepared than others to move on, as if our readiness has anything to do with the timing. Once, when our small church lost one of its most senior members to metastatic cancer, he announced his readiness once the doctor gave him the dire news (he liked to say he never bought green bananas as he wasn’t sure he’d be around to use them), but God had different plans and kept him among us for several years beyond his diagnosis.
Each day I too get a little closer to the end, but I write in order to feel a little more ready. Each day I detach just a little bit, leaving a trace of my voice behind. Eventually, through unmerited grace, so much of me will be left on the page there won’t be anything or anyone left to do the typing. I will be far out of the park, far beyond here.
Not a moment, not a sunrise, not a sunset, and not a word to waste.
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I like the slants of light; I’m a collector. That’s a good one, I say… ~Annie Dillard from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
How valuable it is in these short days, threading through empty maple branches, the lacy-needled sugar pines.
Its glint off sheets of ice tells the story of Death’s brightness, her bitter cold.
We can make do with so little, just the hint of warmth, the slanted light... ~Molly Fisk, “Winter Sun” from The More Difficult Beauty
There’s a certain Slant of light On winter afternoons — That oppresses, like the Heft of cathedral tunes. When it comes, the Landscape listens — Shadows hold their breath — When it goes, ’tis like the Distance On the look of Death. ~Emily Dickinson
During our northwest winters, there is usually so little sunlight on gray cloudy days that I routinely turn on the two light bulbs in the big hay barn any time I need to fetch hay bales for the horses. This is so I avoid falling into the holes that inevitably develop in the hay stack between bales. Winter murky lighting tends to hide the dark shadows of the leg-swallowing pits among the bales, something that is particularly hazardous when attempting to move a 60 pound hay bale.
Yesterday when I went to grab hay bales for the horses at sunset, before I flipped the light switch, I could see light already blazing in the big barn. The last of the day’s sun rays were at a precise winter slant, streaming through the barn slat openings, ricocheting off the roof timbers onto the bales, casting an almost fiery glow onto the hay. The barn was ignited and ablaze without fire and smoke — the last things one would ever want in a hay barn.
Thanks to late afternoon winter light, I could scramble among the bales without worry.
It seems as I age I have been running into more dark holes. Even when I know where they lie and how deep they are, some days I will manage to step right in anyway. Each time it knocks the breath out of me, makes me cry out, makes me want to quit trying to lift the loads which need carrying. It leaves me fearful to venture where the footing is uncertain.
Then, on the darkest of days, light comes from the most unexpected of places, blazing a trail to help me see where to step, what to avoid, how to navigate the hazards to avoid collapsing on my face. I’m redirected, inspired anew, granted grace, gratefully calmed and comforted amid my fears. Even though the light fades, and the darkness descends again, it is only until tomorrow. Then it reignites again.
Yet another slant of light for my collection…
The Light always returns so I can climb out of any dark holes that want to swallow me whole.
Tell all the truth but tell it slant — Success in Circuit lies Too bright for our infirm Delight The Truth’s superb surprise As Lightning to the Children eased With explanation kind The Truth must dazzle gradually Or every man be blind — ~Emily Dickinson
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Sometimes I just sit like this at the window and watch the darkness come. If I’m smart, I’ll put on Bach.
I’m thinking now of how far it always seems there is to go. Maybe it is too easy that I speak so often
of late last light on a December day, of that stubborn grass that somehow still remains green
behind the broken chain link fence on the corner. But the need is so great for the way light looks
as it takes its leave of us. We say what we can to each other of these things,
we who are such thieves, stealing first one breath and then the next. Bach, keep going
just this slowly, show me the way to believe that what matters in this world has already happened
and will go on happening forever. The way light falls on the last
of the stricken leaves of the copper beech at the end of the block is something to behold. ~Jim Moore “The Need Is So Great”
No matter No matter what happens between the sunrise and the sunset No matter what happens between the sunset and the sunrise It is something to behold.
To witness the return of light: the rise and the set the set and the rise
it keeps coming and going through troubles and sickness joy and heartbreak birth and death loss and gain it keeps coming and going something to behold
the earth continues to turn to grant a new start a new day something to behold
then settles serenely a quiet night a respite from light
which matters so much more than anything in between so much more to behold so much so
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Tonight at sunset walking on the snowy road, my shoes crunching on the frozen gravel, first
through the woods, then out into the open fields past a couple of trailers and some pickup trucks, I stop
and look at the sky. Suddenly: orange, red, pink, blue, green, purple, yellow, gray, all at once and everywhere.
I pause in this moment at the beginning of my old age and I say a prayer of gratitude for getting to this evening
a prayer for being here, today, now, alive in this life, in this evening, under this sky. ~David Budbill “Winter: Tonight: Sunset”from While We’ve Still Got Feet
I thank you God for most this amazing day For the leaping greenly spirits of trees And a blue true dream of sky And for everything that is natural, which is infinite, which is yes I who have died am alive again today And this is the sun’s birthday This is the birth day of life and of love and wings And of the gay great happening illimitably earth How should tasting, touching, hearing, seeing, breathing any Lifted from the no of all nothing Human merely being doubt unimaginable You? Now the ears of my ears awake And now the eyes of my eyes are opened ~E. E. Cummings~
Each day, no matter how things feel, no matter how tired or distracted I am, no matter how empty or discouraged, no matter how worried, or fearful or heartsick:
it is up to me to distill my very existence down to this moment of beauty that will never come again; I’m given the unimaginable opportunity to be loving with every cell of my being.
One breath, one blink, one pause, one whispered word again and again: thanks, thanks, thanks be to God.
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Thank you for visiting this page often, with your heart open to the ever-changing seasons. Your encouragement keeps me looking for beauty in words and images to share each day.
Here’s to another year passed by and yet another to come, full of blessings yet to be discovered…
Previous collections of “Best of Barnstorming” photos:
Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock. “Now they are all on their knees,” An elder said as we sat in a flock By the embers in hearthside ease. We pictured the meek mild creatures where They dwelt in their strawy pen, Nor did it occur to one of us there To doubt they were kneeling then.
So fair a fancy few would weave In these years! Yet, I feel, If someone said on Christmas Eve, “Come; see the oxen kneel, “In the lonely barton by yonder coomb Our childhood used to know,” I should go with him in the gloom, Hoping it might be so. ~Thomas Hardy “The Oxen”
Says a country legend told every year: Go to the barn on Christmas Eve and see what the creatures do as that long night tips over. Down on their knees they will go, the fire of an old memory whistling through their minds!
So I went. Wrapped to my eyes against the cold I creaked back the barn door and peered in. From town the church bells spilled their midnight music, and the beasts listened – yet they lay in their stalls like stone.
Oh the heretics! Not to remember Bethlehem, or the star as bright as a sun, or the child born on a bed of straw! To know only of the dissolving Now!
Still they drowsed on – citizens of the pure, the physical world, they loomed in the dark: powerful of body, peaceful of mind, innocent of history.
Brothers! I whispered. It is Christmas! And you are no heretics, but a miracle, immaculate still as when you thundered forth on the morning of creation! As for Bethlehem, that blazing star still sailed the dark, but only looked for me. Caught in its light, listening again to its story, I curled against some sleepy beast, who nuzzled my hair as though I were a child, and warmed me the best it could all night. ~Mary Oliver“Christmas Poem” from Goodness and Light
The winds were scornful, Passing by; And gathering Angels Wondered why
A burdened Mother Did not mind That only animals Were kind.
For who in all the world Could guess That God would search out Loneliness. ~Sr. M. Chrysostom, O.S.B. “The Stable”
Growing up on my childhood farm, remembering the magic of Christmas eve night, I bundled myself up to stay warm in our barn, to witness an unbelievable sight.
At midnight we knew the animals knelt down, speaking words we could all understand, to worship a Child born in Bethlehem town, in a barn, long ago in a far away land.
They were there that night, to see and to hear, the blessings that came from the sky. They patiently stood watch at the manger near, in a barn, while shepherds and kings stopped by.
My trips to the barn were always too late, our cows would be chewing, our chickens asleep, our horses breathing softly, cats climbing the gate, in our barn, there was never a neigh, moo or peep.
But I knew they had done it, I just missed it again! They were plainly so calm, well-fed and at peace in the sweet smelling straw, all snug in their pens, in a barn, a mystery, once more, took place.
Even now, I still bundle to go out Christmas eve, in the hope I’ll catch them just once more this time. Though I’m older and grayer, I still firmly believe in the barn, a Birth happened amid cobwebs and grime.
Our horses sigh low as they hear me come near, that tells me the time I hope for is now, they will drop to their knees without any fear in our barn, as worship, all living things bow.
I wonder anew at God’s immense trust for His creatures so sheltered that darkening night – the mystery of why of all places, His Son must begin life in a barn: a welcoming most holy and right. ~ “In the Barn” (written Christmas Eve 1999)
Latin text O magnum mysterium, et admirabile sacramentum, ut animalia viderent Dominum natum, iacentem in praesepio! Beata Virgo, cujus viscera meruerunt portare Dominum Iesum Christum. Alleluia!
English translation O great mystery, and wonderful sacrament, that animals should see the newborn Lord, lying in a manger! Blessed is the virgin whose womb was worthy to bear the Lord, Jesus Christ. Alleluia!
Jesus our brother, strong and good Was humbly born in a stable rude And the friendly beasts around him stood Jesus our brother, strong and good “I, ” said the donkey, shaggy and brown “I carried his mother up hill and down I carried his mother to Bethlehem town” “I, ” said the donkey, shaggy and brown “I, ” said the cow, all white and red “I gave him my manger for his bed I gave him my hay to pillow his head” “I, ” said the cow, all white and red “I, ” said the sheep with curly horn “I gave him my wool for his blanket warm He wore my coat on Christmas morn” “I, ” said the sheep with curly horn “I, ” said the dove from the rafters high “I cooed him to sleep so he would not cry We cooed him to sleep, my mate and I” “I, ” said the dove from rafters high Thus every beast by some good spell In the stable dark was glad to tell Of the gifts they gave Emmanuel Of the gifts they gave Emmanuel
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”
I watched her cooking, from my chair. She pressed her lips Together, reached for kitchenware, And tasted sauce from her fingertips.
“It’s ready now. Come on,” she said. “You light the candle.” We ate, and talked, and went to bed, And slept. It was a miracle. ~Donald Hall from “Summer Kitchen” in The Selected Poems of Donald Hall.
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 so that I lose touch with what miracles are happening in the here and now.
The reality is there is nothing ordinary about the events of this day or any other – it might have been otherwise and some day it will be otherwise.
Advent is an opportunity to stop the rushing, take a look around and actually revel in the quiet moments of daily work, chats, walks, meals, and sleep. Even the current constant of someone in the family being sick with one or more viruses, interrupting plans and schedules, can’t interrupt how remarkable it is to just be here together.
We are granted peace despite the stress of illness.
Jane Kenyon wrote much of her best poetry with the knowledge she was dying of leukemia. Her work reminds me that I don’t need a terminal diagnosis to appreciate the blessings of each ordinary moment. Her poet husband, Donald Hall, wrote verse from his perspective of cherishing the time he had left with his wife, living as if each day were his last day with her.
Like Jane’s “paintings on the walls,” on foggy gray days like today, I can gaze at our landscape paintings by local artist Randy Van Beek depicting an idealized serenity that I only sometimes feel. They depict the blessings just outside my windows.
I simply need to pay attention.
Christ came to earth to remind us to dwell richly in the experience of these moments, those sweet peaches and cream of daily life, while they are happening. God knows, the little miracles are a foretaste of the heaven which is to come.
This year’s Advent theme “Dawn on our Darkness” is taken from this 19th century Christmas hymn:
Brightest and best of the sons of the morning, dawn on our darkness and lend us your aid. Star of the east, the horizon adorning, guide where our infant Redeemer is laid. ~Reginald Heber -from “Brightest and Best”
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When, in the cavern darkness, the child first opened his mouth (even before his eyes widened to see the supple world his lungs had breathed into being), could he have known that breathing trumps seeing? Did he love the way air sighs as it brushes in and out through flesh to sustain the tiny heart’s iambic beating, tramping the crossroads of the brain like donkey tracks, the blood dazzling and invisible, the corpuscles skittering to the earlobes and toenails? Did he have any idea it would take all his breath to speak in stories that would change the world? ~Luci Shaw “Breath” from Accompanied By Angels: Poems of the Incarnation
Blue homespun and the bend of my breast keep warm this small hot naked star fallen to my arms. (Rest… you who have had so far to come.) Now nearness satisfies the body of God sweetly. Quiet he lies whose vigor hurled a universe. He sleeps whose eyelids have not closed before. His breath (so light it seems no breath at all) once ruffled the dark deeps to sprout a world. Charmed by doves’ voices, the whisper of straw, he dreams, hearing no music from his other spheres. Breath, mouth, ears, eyes he is curtailed who overflowed all skies, all years. Older than eternity, now he is new. Now native to earth as I am, nailed to my poor planet, caught that I might be free, blind in my womb to know my darkness ended, brought to this birth for me to be new-born, and for him to see me mended I must see him torn. ~Luci Shaw “Mary’s Song” from Accompanied By Angels: Poems of the Incarnation
This is the irrational season When love blooms bright and wild. Had Mary been filled with reason There’d have been no room for the child. ~Madeleine L’Engle “After Annunciation” from A Cry Like A Bell
He who has come to men dwells where we cannot tell nor sight reveal him, until the hour has struck when the small heart does break with hunger for him;
those who do merit least, those whom no tongue does praise the first to know him, and on the face of the earth the poorest village street blossoming for him. ~Jane Tyson Clement from Watch for the Light
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” from Rose.
To think that the original Breath stirring the dust into man led to this moment?
This mystery of God becoming human, growing within woman, feeding from her breast, being wounded and bleeding to save the one who delivered him, emptying himself completely to deliver all of us as newborns, sliding slippery into our new life, a new existence, a transformed heaven and earth.
So we gasp for breath, our nostrils no longer breathing dust, but filled with the fragrance of forgiveness and grace.
Through His sacrifice, we too impossibly blossom, bursting forth into bloom.
This year’s Advent theme “Dawn on our Darkness” is taken from this 19th century Christmas hymn:
Brightest and best of the sons of the morning, dawn on our darkness and lend us your aid. Star of the east, the horizon adorning, guide where our infant Redeemer is laid. ~Reginald Heber -from “Brightest and Best”
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Prayer the church’s banquet, angel’s age, God’s breath in man returning to his birth, The soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage, The Christian plummet sounding heav’n and earth Engine against th’ Almighty, sinner’s tow’r, Reversed thunder, Christ-side-piercing spear, The six-days world transposing in an hour, A kind of tune, which all things hear and fear; Softness, and peace, and joy, and love, and bliss, Exalted manna, gladness of the best, Heaven in ordinary, man well drest, The milky way, the bird of Paradise, Church-bells beyond the stars heard, the soul’s blood, The land of spices; something understood. ~George Herbert “Prayer”
A kind of tune, a music everywhere And nowhere. Love’s long lovely undersong, A trace in time, a grace-note in the air, Borne to us from the place where we belong On every passing breeze and in the breath Of every creature. All things hear and fear, For faintly, through our fall, we too may hear The strong song of the Son that undoes death.
And one day we will hear it unimpaired: The joy of all the sorrowful, the song Of all the saints who cry “how long,” The hidden hope of all who have despaired. He sang it to his mother in the womb And now it echoes from his empty tomb. ~Malcolm Guite “A Kind of Tune”
When the sky is painted in pastels and the air is brisk with breath and movement, I sense a kind of tune leading me back to thankfulness and wonder rather than worry and fretfulness.
Even in ordinary times of stress – yet especially when we are drowning in sadness reaching for any rescue at hand, the song Christ sings to us is the prayer He taught us to pray – Thy will be done.
“How long, O Lord, how long,” will be answered in the fullness of time – in a manger, in a tomb, in the skies of heaven. Heaven is found in the ordinary but with God and His gift of His son, nothing, but nothing will be ordinary.
For Thine is the glory forever…
This year’s Advent theme “Dawn on our Darkness” is taken from this 19th century Christmas hymn:
Brightest and best of the sons of the morning, dawn on our darkness and lend us your aid. Star of the east, the horizon adorning, guide where our infant Redeemer is laid. ~Reginald Heber -from “Brightest and Best”
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