Category: wonder

Back to Back

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We lie back to back. Curtains
lift and fall,
like the chest of someone sleeping.
Wind moves the leaves of the box elder;
they show their light undersides,
turning all at once
like a school of fish.
Suddenly I understand that I am happy.
For months this feeling
has been coming closer, stopping
for short visits, like a timid suitor.
~Jane Kenyon “The Suitor”

Andrew Wyeth – Wind from the Sea, 1947

Happiness can be an elusive suitor and is altogether undependable.

I too have had glimpses of it throughout my life – a fleeting “this is it.”
Then the clouds roll in and the ecstasy of the realization fades to mist.

I tend to trust the old reliable friends who show up regularly – like “hopeful” and “contented” and “being at peace” – plus moments when the sweetness of each breath brings tears of overwhelming joy.

Instead of pursuing happiness, (always a pursuit rather than a destination), I thrive on knowing I love deeply and am loved.
That knowledge is what gets me through the really tough times when happiness doesn’t always put in an appearance.

Love shows up.
Love has my back when I’m afraid and full of doubt.
Love persists through sadness.
Love doesn’t give up when everything hurts.
Love is sufficient.

Love is enough to bring those happy tears to my eyes…

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Love never fails.
1 Corinthians 13: 4-8a

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Not Just a Leaf

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holyleaf2

It’s just a leaf. A damaged leaf at that,
clinging to a filbert tree ravaged by blight.
The leaf turns partially back upon itself,
riddled with holes, the traumatic result
of voracious insect appetites.

Damaged does not accurately describe
this leaf, the color of rich burgundy wine,
deep purple veins that branch to the tips
of its serrated edge. The holes open the leaf
to light and air, forming a filigree of nature,
an exquisite fragile beauty.

It makes me think of our own traumas,
how they open us, raw and hurting, humble us,
soften and expand us to the pain of others
and when we are most vulnerable we hold on,
weakened, but not necessarily damaged.

Perhaps it is then our scars become beautiful
and an inner loveliness shines through.
~Lois Parker Edstrom “Fragile Beauty” (an ephrastic poem written about the picture below) from Almanac of Quiet Days

holyleaf1

Nature doth thus kindly heal every wound.
By the mediation of a thousand little mosses and fungi,
the most unsightly objects become radiant of beauty.
There seem to be two sides of this world,
presented us at different times,
as we see things in growth or dissolution, in life or death.
And seen with the eye of the poet,
as God sees them,
all things are alive and beautiful.
~Henry David Thoreau (journal)

holyleaf1-1

…writing was one way to let something of lasting value emerge
from the pains and fears of my little, quickly passing life.
Each time life required me to take a new step
into unknown spiritual territory,
I felt a deep, inner urge to tell my story to others–
Perhaps as a need for companionship but maybe, too,
out of an awareness that my deepest vocation
is to be a witness to the glimpses of God I have been allowed to catch.
~Henri Nouwen

As I stepped under a dripping birch tree on our farm on this rainy summer day, I ran head-long into a branch of leaves that appeared more lace than leaf.

They were filagreed nearly to invisibility, presumably by a leaf miner of some sort who chewed intricate designs as its leavings. The residual was left hanging, trying to make the best of things in the drizzle.

Though they are mostly eaten away, these leaves have nearly fulfilled their full season of growth in support of their home base tree. Instead of an ordinary summer of drying and coloring and dropping as a birch leaf must in another month or two, they instead manifest the creativity of our God who designed his creatures to interact in such a way that beauty could be found in the most unlikely places, slapping us full in the face.

God sees such intricate wounds in the leaf as beautiful.
God knows our visible and invisible scars are the way His Light illuminates our darkness.
I feel the deep urge to share this glimpse of such “holiness” with you.

Lyrics:
No star is o’er the lake,
Its pale watch keeping,
The moon is half awake,
Through grey mist creeping,
The last red leaves fall round
The porch of roses,
The clock hath ceased to sound,
The long day closes.
Sit by the silent hearth
In calm endeavour,
To count the sounds of mirth,
Now dumb for ever.
Heed not how hope believes
And fate disposes:
Shadow is round the eaves,
The long day closes.
The lighted windows dim
Are fading slowly.
The fire that was so trim
Now quivers lowly.
Go to the dreamless bed
Where grief reposes;
Thy book of toil is read,
The long day closes

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Like An Old Song With Minor Variations

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Just when you’d begun to feel
You could rely on the summer,
That each morning would deliver
The same mourning dove singing
From his station on the phone pole,
The same smell of bacon frying
Somewhere in the neighborhood,
The same sun burning off
The coastal fog by noon,
When you could reward yourself
For a good morning’s work
With lunch at the same little seaside cafe
With its shaded deck and iced tea,
The day’s routine finally down
Like an old song with minor variations,
There comes that morning when the light
Tilts ever so slightly on its track,
A cool gust out of nowhere
Whirlwinds a litter of dead grass
Across the sidewalk, the swimsuits
Are piled on the sale table,
And the back of your hand,
Which you thought you knew,
Has begun to look like an old leaf.
Or the back of someone else’s hand.
~George Bilgere “August” from The Good Kiss

I don’t recognize the back of my own hands – surely they belong to someone else.

How is it possible for my hands to now look like my mother’s did?

It’s only possible now that I’ve lived many summers.
Yet I’m not quite dried up like an old leaf. At least not yet.

This dry spell is over; this morning there is magic in the sound and smell of rain.
Like the old song:
“The bright blessed day
The dark sacred night
And I think to myself
What a wonderful world…”

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Every Cubic Inch of Space

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Why, who makes much of a miracle?

As to me I know of nothing else but miracles,
Whether I walk city streets,
Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky,
Or wade with naked feet along the beach just in the edge of the water,
Or stand under trees in the woods,
Or talk by day with any one I love,
or sleep in the bed at night with any one I love,
Or sit at table at dinner with the rest,
Or watch honey-bees busy around the hive of a summer forenoon,
Or animals feeding in the fields,
Or birds, or the wonderfulness of insects in the air,
Or the wonderfulness of the sundown, or of stars shining so quiet and bright,
Or the exquisite delicate thin curve of the new moon in spring;

These with the rest, one and all, are to me miracles,
The whole referring, yet each distinct and in its place.

To me every hour of the light and dark is a miracle,
Every cubic inch of space is a miracle,
Every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread with the same,
Every foot of the interior swarms with the same.
Every spear of grass — the frames, limbs, organs, of men and women,
and all that concerns them…

What stranger miracles are there?
~Walt Whitman from Leaves of Grass

Everywhere I turn, there is a miracle in the making. I know this deep in my bones, even when our days on this earth are short. I focus my camera to try to preserve it; I search for words to do it justice.

God touches every square inch of earth as if He owns the place, but these square inches are particularly marked by His artistry. It is a place to feel awed by His magnificence.

The strange miracle is that we are here at all: in an instant we are formed in all our unique potential, never having happened before and never to happen again—to become brain and heart and skin and arms and legs. We were allowed to be born, a miracle in itself in this modern age of conditional conception.

The strangest miracle of all is that we are still loved, corrupted as we are. We are still offered salvage, undeserving as we are. We are still gifted with the miracle of grace until our last breath.

How strange indeed. How utterly wondrous.

There is not a particle of life which does not bear poetry within it.
~Gustav Flaubert


There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, Mine!
~Abraham Kuyper

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Treading the Threshold Softly

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Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
~William Butler Yeats from “Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven“

I know for a while again,
the health of self-forgetfulness,
looking out at the sky through
a notch in the valley side,
the black woods wintry on
the hills, small clouds at sunset
passing across. And I know
that this is one of the thresholds
between Earth and Heaven,
from which I may even step
forth from myself and be free.
~ Wendell Berry, Sabbaths 2000

John O’Donohue gave voice to the connection between beauty and those edges of life — thresholds was the word he loved—
where the fullness of reality becomes more stark and more clear.

If you go back to the etymology of the word “threshold,” it comes from “threshing,” which is to separate the grain from the husk. So the threshold, in a way, is a place where you move into more critical and challenging and worthy fullness.

There are huge thresholds in every life.

You know that, for instance, if you are in the middle of your life in a busy evening, fifty things to do and you get a phone call that somebody you love is suddenly dying, it takes ten seconds to communicate that information.

But when you put the phone down, you are already standing in a different world. Suddenly everything that seems so important before is all gone and now you are thinking of this. So the given world that we think is there and the solid ground we are on is so tentative.

And a threshold is a line which separates two territories of spirit, and very often how we cross is the key thing.

When we cross a new threshold worthily, what we do is we heal the patterns of repetition that were in us that had us caught somewhere.
~John O’Donohue from an “On Being” interview with Krista Tippett on “Becoming Wise”

Over a decade ago, someone told me that my writing reflected a “sacramental” life —  touching and tasting the holiness of everyday moments, as if they are the cup and bread of God’s eternal grace and gift.

I allow those words to sit warmly beside me during the hours I struggle to know what to share here.

It is all too tempting to focus on sacrament over the sacrifice it represents.  As much as I love the world and the beauty in the moments I share here, we should explore the “thin places” between heaven and earth, through forgetting self, stepping forth through a holy threshold into something far greater.

I feel so unworthy — in fact, threshed to pieces most days, incapable of thinking of anything but how I feel reduced to fragments. Perhaps those fragments are like the droplets coming from a farm sprinkler at sunset, sparkling and golden despite waning light, bringing something essential to someone feeling dry, parched and dusty.

I may even step
forth from myself and be free.

Then we can walk each other home.

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The Serenity of the Rose

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The serene philosophy of the pink rose is steadying. 
Its fragrant, delicate petals open fully
and are ready to fall,
without regret or disillusion,
after only a day in the sun. 
It is so every summer. 
One can almost hear their pink, fragrant murmur
as they settle down upon the grass:
‘Summer, summer, it will always be summer.’
~Rachel Peden 

It will always be summer
if we let go in the midst of the brief brightness,
when all is glorious. 

No cold winds, no unending days of rain,
no mildew, no iced walkways,
no 18 hours of darkness,
no turning brown with mold and rot.

Let us be strong and serene through all seasons
rather than letting go at the height of summer. 

Let us thrive steady through the hard times
rather than withering at the peak of beauty.

Let us age, let us turn gray, let us wrinkle, and go bald.

It may always be summer — someday — but not yet. 

Not here. Not now.

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Resolving to Grow Again

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Through sere trees and beheaded
grasses the slow rain falls.
Hay fills the barn; only the rake
and one empty wagon are left
in the field. In the ditches
goldenrod bends to the ground.
Even at noon the house is dark.
In my room under the eaves
I hear the steady benevolence
of water washing dust
raised by the haying
from porch and car and garden
chair. We are shorn
and purified, as if tonsured.
The grass resolves to grow again,
receiving the rain to that end,
but my disordered soul thirsts
after something it cannot name.
~Jane Kenyon “August Rain, After Haying” from Collected Poems

August arrives in the dark

we are not even asleep and it is here
with a gust of rain rustling before it…

but in the stillness after the rain ends
nothing is to be heard but the drops falling
one at a time from the tips of the leaves
into the night and I lie in the dark
listening to what I remember
while the night flies on with us into itself
~W.S. Merwin from “Nocturne II” from The Shadow of Sirius

A long-awaited August rain arrives in the night
and like the ground and plants,
I look skyward
letting the clouds weep on me,
cleansing me of dust.

Will I restore like the
brown and dying blade of grass,
turning green and lush in a matter of days?

Is there enough benevolence from the sky
to cleanse and settle my grime,
yielding yet more harvest? 

I thirst for what I cannot name. 
The mystery is, when I’m drenched,
thirst and dust settled,
I’m aching for more.

AI image created for this post
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Weeds are Flowers Too…

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Weeds are flowers too, once you get to know them…
~A.A.Milne from Winnie the Pooh (Eeyore)

What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and wildness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wildness and wet;
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.
~Gerard Manley Hopkins from “Inversnaid”

A weed is a plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson from Fortune of the Republic   

I’ve always identified with weeds and wildflowers
more than cultivated blooms.
Even those which are thorny, bristly, spreading willy-nilly.

I too have undiscovered virtues –
I’m fluffy,
I thrive where I’m not necessarily wanted or needed,
I tend to be resilient through frost, drought or flood.  

The wild persistence of weeds inspires me
to just let most of them be, 
though stinging nettles, poison oak and ivy
need to keep to themselves.

Just as a wild beauty lies just beneath their weedy surface,
I try to keep flourishing in harsh surroundings,
a witness to a world bereft of softness.

O let them be left.
O let me be left.

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An Everlasting Party

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In the home of God, there is a never-ending festival…
~St. Augustine in Exposition on Psalm 42

Some small bone in your foot is longing for heaven
                          —Robert Bly

This twinge at first stir
too modest for throb,
more diffident
than tug,
not an itch,
not the most

incurious twitch
of a hook,
not a jerk,
but the tease
of brustle
of the fine, stiff pinions
of every curtained
saint and cherub.
~Hailey Leithauser “Some Small Bone,”

Even the smallest part of us
~each cell, each skin pore, each little bone~
longs to know what to believe about what comes next.

~perhaps heaven is as light and gentle
as a touch of a feather.

~maybe heaven is as rich as the glow
of a full blood moon.

~or heaven is like the ever-changing colors
of the northern lights illuminating the skies.

~certainly heaven is eternal felicity,
where we join an everlasting party.

yet despite the discomfort of
our questions, quandaries and doubts,
or perhaps, because of them…

it is the Lord in heaven who longs for,
and believes in,
us.

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Each Bright Drupelet

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I eat these
wild red raspberries
still warm from the sun
and smelling faintly of jewelweed
in memory of my father

tucking the napkin
under his chin and bending
over an ironstone bowl
of the bright drupelets
awash in cream

my father
with the sigh of a man
who has seen all and been redeemed
said time after time
as he lifted his spoon

men kill for this.
~Maxine Kumin “Appetite” from Selected Poems: 1960-1990

I’ve always wondered if there was a name
for the small round globe, part of an aggregate berry
like a thimbleberry, raspberry or blackberry –
each so smooth and perfectly formed,
each unique yet a homogenous part of the whole.
Yet if separated all by itself, nearly invisible.

Each is called a small drupe,
or more familiar and lovingly, a drupelet.

Despite such a plain name,
a little drupelet has its own smooth shiny beauty,
a drop of flavor to be savored, unforgotten,
made sweeter by being part of the whole –
even sweeter when redeemed and consumed.

Kind of like us –
each of us a small part of the whole of life –
each sacrificed for a taste of eternity.

Kind of like us…

photo by Nate Gibson

Lyrics: I am a small part of the world
I have a small hand which to hold
But if I stand by your side
And you put your hand in mine
Together we can be so strong and bold

I am a small part of the world
I have a small dream in my eyes
But if I tell you my dreams
And you add your dreams to mine
Together we can reach up to the skies

Hand in hand, dreams combine
Voice with voice, together for all time
Hand in hand, dreams combine
Voice with voice, for all time

I am a small part of the world
I have a small voice ringing clear
But if I sing out for freedom
And you add your voice to mine

Hand in hand, dreams combine
Voice with voice for all time
I am a small part of the world
Take my hand

Writer(s): Jay Althouse, Sally Albrecht

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