repeated the way a sunset plays every night in the fade to twilight the same scene over and over but never once lost in its sameness ~Juniper Klatt “some words need to be” from I was raised in a house of water
Out of the deep and the dark, A sparkling mystery, a shape, Something perfect, Comes like the stir of day: One whose breath is a fragrance, One whose eyes reveal the road to stars, The wind in his countenance, The glory of heaven upon his back. He steps like a vision hung in air, Diffusing the passion of eternity; His abode is the sunlight of morn, The music of eve his speech: In his sight, One shall turn from the dust of the grave, And move upward to the woodland. ~Yone Noguchi“The Poet”
Once in your life you pass Through a place so pure It becomes tainted even By your regard, a space Of trees and air where Dusk comes as perfect ripeness. Here the only sounds are Sighs of rain and snow, Small rustlings of plants As they unwrap in twilight. This is where you will go At last when coldness comes. It is something you realize When you first see it, But instantly forget. At the end of your life You remember and dwell in Its faultless light forever. ~Paul Zimmer “The Place” from Crossing to Sunlight Revisited.
I like the slants of light; I’m a collector. That’s a good one, I say… ~Annie Dillard from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
I won’t forget the glow on the hill as the sun drops, centering behind our sentinel tree. I won’t forget the rays coming through the branches, glistening on a tattered web and an evening primrose unwrapping. I won’t forget the way the air itself changes as the color spreads, like a fragrant scent carried on the wind.
The light is faultless but I am not. My collection of slants of light and words to describe them may fade with time.
Even so, it was – maybe just once – so perfect, so pure, so ripe. And I’ll remember I was there to witness it.
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…The world is flux, and light becomes what it touches, becomes water, lilies on water, above and below water, becomes lilac and mauve and yellow and white and cerulean lamps, small fists passing sunlight so quickly to one another that it would take long, streaming hair inside my brush to catch it. To paint the speed of light! Our weighted shapes, these verticals, burn to mix with air and change our bones, skin, clothes to gases. Doctor, if only you could see how heaven pulls earth into its arms and how infinitely the heart expands to claim this world, blue vapor without end. ~Lisel Mueller from “Monet Refuses the Operation” from Second Language
Monet’s corner of a lily pond (1918-1919)
“Heaven pulls earth into its arms…”
We all see things differently, don’t we? What seems ordinary to one is extraordinarily memorable to another.
How might I help others to see the world as I do? How might I learn to adjust my focus to see things as you do?
The world is in flux; my delight and dismay flows from moment to moment, from object to absence, from light to darkness, from color to muted.
Perhaps the blur from Monet’s cataracts also impedes my vision, creating a deeper understanding, as I use my imagination to fill in what I can’t quite discern.
My heart and mind expands exponentially to claim this world and all that beauty has to offer, while heaven – all this while – pulls me into its arms.
In heaven, my focus will be clear. All will be extraordinarily ordinary.
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There is always enough. My old cat of long years, who stayed all the months of his dying,
though, made sick by food, he refused to eat, till, long-stroked, he turned again to accept
another piece of dry catfood or spoonful of meat, a little water, another day through which
he purred, small engine losing heat—I made him nests of pillow and blanket, a curve of body
where he curled against my legs, and when the time came, he slipped out a loose door into the cold world whose abundance included the death of his choosing. ~Robin Chapman “Enough” from Abundance
\
I remember the long orange carp you once scooped from the neighbor’s pond, bounding beyond her swung broom, across summer lawns
to lay the fish on my stoop. Thanks for that. I’m not one to whom offerings often get made. You let me feel
how Christ might when I kneel, weeping in the dark over the usual maladies: love and its lack.
Only in tears do I speak directly to him and with such conviction. And only once you grew frail
did you finally slacken into me, dozing against my ribs like a child. You gave up the predatory flinch
that snapped the necks of so many birds and slow-moving rodents. Now your once powerful jaw
is malformed by black malignancies. It hurts to eat. So you surrender in the way I pray for: Lord, before my own death,
I have reposted these memories of José after learning of my farmer friend Zach’s recent loss of his 16 year old black farm cat friend Toby, after years of love, companionship, shenanigans and persistent doctoring…
When you look back, Zach, you’ll know Toby’s secret power was to always be enough to get you through the day…
José had been our front porch cat for years.
Not our garage cat, our upper barn cat, our lower barn cat or those that come and go on the farm because we’re a hospitable place where food is always on the table.
He was the king of the farm cats. No one questioned him (usually) and no one occupied his front porch bench/throne without his express permission. His Majesty showed mercy to any who showed proper submission, and every once in awhile, that included the dogs.
He trained every pup here over the years.
He was the official front porch farm greeter, rising from his throne cushion to investigate any newcomer walking up the sidewalk, mewing a cheerful little “chirp” of a meow in welcome. Then he turned around and returned to his perch.
José was a performance cat, having been trained in his younger years to ride on a bareback pad on our Haflingers, at walk, trot and over jumps (sorry, no pictures). This once again proved his ability to get any creature, large or small, to submit to his will.
The only love of his life was our daughter, Lea. As José arrived to our farm at an indeterminate age, we didn’t really know how many years he would be with us. Before Lea headed off to college, and when home on breaks, they had many happy snuggles together for nearly 15 years.
During our harsh winter storms, José would move to a warm farm building with all the necessary provisions until the storm was done, then reclaim his favorite spot on the front porch when he deemed it cozy enough to be worthy of him.
After one particularly nasty storm, when the cold northeast wind went away, José didn’t return from his hiding place.
I looked, I called, I left goodies out. But no José. No chirpy meow, no yellow-eyed gaze, no black velvet fur to stroke, no rumbly purr to vibrate in my lap. I think this tough cat chose a bad winter to leave for warmer quarters far far away.
I suspect – as I still keep an eye out for it — there must be a velvety black coat he abandoned somewhere here on the farm.
He simply didn’t need it any more and unafraid, he left it behind.
photo by Lea
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The night of the Perseid shower, thick fog descended but I would not be denied. I had put the children to bed, knelt with them, and later in the quiet kitchen as tall red candles burned on the table between us, I’d listened to my wife’s sweet imprecations, her entreaties to see a physician. But at the peak hour— after she had gone to bed, and neighboring houses stood solemn and dark— I felt no human obligation and went without hope into the yard. In the white mist beneath the soaked and dripping trees, I lifted my eyes into a blind nothingness of sky and shivered in a white robe. I couldn’t see the outline of the neighbor’s willows, much less the host of streaking meteorites no bigger than grains of sand blazing across the sky. I questioned the mind, my troubled thinking, and chided myself to go in, but looking up, I thought of the earth on which I stood, my own scanty plot of ground, and as the lights passed unseen I imagined glory beyond all measure. Then I turned to the lights in the windows— the children’s nightlights, and my wife’s reading lamp, still burning. ~Richard Jones “The Manifestation”
Perhaps as a child you had the chicken pox and your mother, to soothe you in your fever or to help you fall asleep, came into your room and read to you from some favorite book, Charlotte’s Web or Little House on the Prairie, a long story that she quietly took you through until your eyes became magnets for your shuttering lids and she saw your breathing go slow. And then she read on, this time silently and to herself, not because she didn’t know the story, it seemed to her that there had never been a time when she didn’t know this story—the young girl and her benevolence, the young girl in her sod house— but because she did not yet want to leave your side though she knew there was nothing more she could do for you. And you, not asleep but simply weak, listened to her turn the pages, still feeling the lamp warm against one cheek, knowing the shape of the rocking chair’s shadow as it slid across your chest. So that now, these many years later, when you are clenched in the damp fist of a hospital bed, or signing the papers that say you won’t love him anymore, when you are bent at your son’s gravesite or haunted by a war that makes you wake with the gun cocked in your hand, you would like to believe that such generosity comes from God, too, who now, when you have the strength to ask, might begin the story again, just as your mother would, from the place where you have both left off. ~Keetje Kuipers“Prayer”
Flung is too harsh a word for the rush of the world. Blown is more like it, but blown by a generous, unending breath. ~Annie Dillardfrom Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
How could it be possible?
The five year old me had a sudden terrifying revelation that I would some day cease to walk this earth.
The much older me is more afraid of the faster and faster rush of the days than of their end.
The world hurtles through space and time at a pace that leaves me breathless. Throughout my seventy-plus years, I have felt flung all too frequently, bruised and weary from hurry and hubbub.
I have need of Someone to stop me for a moment, sit down and begin the Story again with me, starting right where we left off.
Now, with retirement from daily work obligations: breathing space. I’m lifted lighter, drifting where I’m blown, less weighted down by the next thing to do and the next place to be.
Instead I can just be… part of the story to be told, part of the wonder. Blown by breath that loves, fills and nurtures, a generous promise hopeful and fulfilled.
I’m grateful for the opportunity to see, even in the dark, a manifestation of glory and love just beyond my vision, praying that one day I will see and know it clearly.
The old me ~ Blown upon.
If only the five year old me could have known.
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Have you ever seen anything in your life more wonderful
than the way the sun, every evening, relaxed and easy, floats toward the horizon
and into the clouds or the hills, or the rumpled sea, and is gone– and how it slides again
out of the blackness, every morning, on the other side of the world, like a red flower
streaming upward on its heavenly oils, say, on a morning in early summer, at its perfect imperial distance– and have you ever felt for anything such wild love– do you think there is anywhere, in any language, a word billowing enough for the pleasure
that fills you, as the sun reaches out, as it warms you
as you stand there, empty-handed– or have you too turned from this world–
or have you too gone crazy for power, for things? ~Mary Oliver “The Sun”
There is no word to describe its faithful return each day.
I struggle to hang on to it, unwilling to let this lambent light slip through my fingers~
Yet I remain empty-handed, too focused on things less illuminating.
Soon darkness will begin to claim our days again. So I grasp hold of this warmth and light and hold on as long as I’m able, burnishing my readiness for eternity.
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…I saw a mom take her raincoat off and give it to her young daughter when a storm took over the afternoon. My god, I thought, my whole life I’ve been under her raincoat thinking it was somehow a marvel that I never got wet. ~Ada Limón from “The Raincoat”
My mother, Elna Schmitz Polis, was born 106 years ago today in the lonely isolation of a Palouse wheat and lentil farm in eastern Washington. She drew her first breath in a two story white house located down a long poplar-lined lane and nestled in a draw between the undulating hills.
She attended a one room school house until 8th grade, located a mile away in the rural countryside, then moved in with her grandmother “in town” in Rosalia to attend high school, seeing her parents only a couple times a month.
It was a childhood which accustomed her to solitude and creative play inside her mind and heart – her only sibling, an older brother, was busy helping their father on the farm. All her life and especially in her later years, she would prefer the quiet of her own thoughts over the bustle of a room full of activities and conversation.
Her childhood was filled with exploration of the rolling hills, the barns and buildings where her father built and repaired farm equipment, and the chilly cellar where the fresh eggs were stored after she reached under cranky hens to gather them. She sat in the cool breeze of the picketed yard, watching the huge windmill turn and creak next to the house. She helped her weary mother feed farm crews who came for harvest time and then settled in the screened porch listening to the adults talk about lentil prices and bushel production. She woke to the mourning dove call in the mornings and heard the coyote yips and howls at night.
She nearly died at the age of 13 from a ruptured appendix, before antibiotics were an option. That near-miss haunted her life-long, filling her with worry that it was a mistake that she survived that episode at all. Yet she thrived despite the anxiety, and ended up, much to her surprise, living a long life full of family and faith, letting go at age 88 after fracturing a femur, which also broke her will to live.
As a young woman, she was ready to leave the wheat farm behind for college, devoting herself to the skills of speech, and the creativity of acting and directing in drama, later teaching rural high school students, including a future Pulitzer Prize winning poet, Carolyn Kizer. She loved words and the power and beauty they wielded.
Marrying my father was a brave and impulsive act, traveling by train to the east coast only a week before he shipped out for almost 3 years to the South Pacific to fight as a Marine in WWII. She must have wondered about the man who returned from war changed and undoubtedly scarred in ways she could not see or touch. They worked it out mostly in silence, as rocky as it must have been at times.
Her episode of Graves’ disease, before I was born, must have been agonizing for both of them and my older sister, as her storm of thyroid overactivity resulted in months of sleepless full time panic. Only thyroid removal saved her, but radical surgeries take their toll. Their marriage never fully recovered.
In their reconciliation after a painful divorce decades later, I finally could see the devotion and mutual respect between life companions who had finally found shared purpose and love.
As a wife and mother, she rediscovered her calling as a steward of the land and a tireless steward of her family, gardening and harvesting fruits, vegetables and us children. When I think of my mother, I most often think of her tending us children in the middle of the night whenever we were ill; her over-vigilance was undoubtedly due to her worry we might die in childhood, as she almost did.
She never did stop worrying until the last few months. As she became more dependent on others in her physical decline, she gave up the control she thought she had to maintain through her “worry energy” and became much more accepting about the control the Lord maintains over all we are and will become.
I know from where my shyness comes, my preference for birdsongs rather than radio music, my love of naps, and my tendency to be serious and straight-laced with a twinkle in my eye. This is my German-Palouse side–immersing in the quietness of solitude, thrilling to the sight of the spring wheat flowing like a green ocean wave in the breeze and appreciating the warmth of rich soil held in my hands.
My mother came from that heritage and it is the legacy she left with me. I am forever grateful for her unconditional love to the end of her life; her willingness to share the sunshine and warmth of her nest whenever we felt the need to fly back home and shelter, overprotected but safe nonetheless, under her wings.
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I will seek a letter at the mailbox’s red flag, how many more times? Walk this puddled gravel drive with the dog and cat, how many more times?
Dislike the sight, row of brown molehills risen like my own petty complaints? Be here to hear the just-before-spring birds tune up, how many more times?
My life, ordinary as unmown grass, tattered and dormant in fencerows…. Sons asleep upstairs under quilts pieced of castoff jeans, how many more times?
Witness sunrise over the barn, frost on the grass, deer by the pines? Think of “Jesus asking that man, Do you want to be made well? How many more times?
Think of Him asking me. Of walking back to the mailbox in late afternoon, of pulling it open, reaching in again, how many more times? ~Daye Phillippo “Ordinary Ghazal” from Thunderhead
…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
I tend to get complacent in my daily routines, confident in the knowledge that tomorrow will be very much like yesterday.
I look out on plenty of unmown grass.
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.
I am reminded to stop rushing, take a look around and actually revel in the quiet moments of daily work, chats, walks, meals, and sleep, and yes, lawn mowing. As both of us suffered, one after the other, through a spring cold which interrupted our plans and schedules, we still knew how remarkable it is to just be here living life together.
We are granted peace even, maybe especially, when not feeling well.
Christ came to earth to remind us to dwell richly in the experience of these moments, to live, wanting to be well, despite our limitations.
God knows, such is a foretaste of the heaven which is to come.
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In the morning, when I slide open the heavy old barn door on its track and step inside, pull the cord to let the chickens out, then turn again toward that open door, tall rectangle of light and ragged grass, trees and sky, the face of the other old barn at the right, its hand-hewn rafters where barn swallows nest, fly in and out through gaps made by neglect and the passage of time, the way the body falls into disrepair, I wonder if stepping from this life into the next will be like stepping through an aperture like this and I hope it’s true, ordinary morning like this. ~Daye Phillippo “Aperture” from Blue Between Owls: Blue Chore Coat and Other Collected Poems
Each ordinary morning, I’m aware how much our barn buildings have aged as I slide open sticky doors, walk past peeling paint, mossy roofs, and gaps in the siding.
Deterioration of the body is inevitable over the decades.
I know this about my own state of disrepair as I move about more carefully during my chores, staying aware of uneven footing, struggling to lift what used to seem lighter, finding the work, as gratifying as it has always been, more challenging.
Our over 100 year old red hay barn underwent a major renovation 5 years ago because it was threatening to fall down in one of our winter windstorms. Thanks to that investment, it is strong and hearty again with new foundation posts, siding, and roof.
Still, it won’t last forever.
I had a pretty major repair myself last year allowing me to continue to do this physical work that is so important to me. Yet, I won’t last forever.
I like to think when those heavy rolling doors open to heaven someday, it will feel just like this: leaving behind what is temporary and always needing repairs, to enter into the redeeming glory of the eternal and everlasting.
And there is absolutely nothing ordinary about that.
photo by Harry Rodenberger
video by Harry Rodenberger
sample of lyrics: Can’t touch my heart it’s not my time. Bust my bones and throw my body on the line Cause I’ve got love to fill me in I’ve family to help me re-begin
Old barns don’t tear down let ’em stand proud until they fall to the ground.
A strange feeling waking up to meet my Savior this whole bizarre ballet that I lived through but I’m not living all alone these wounds of mine will set me free
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This post is from April 14, 2025 – about a special mare who still lives in our hearts:
Marlee has gone home this morning, far sooner than we planned. She was only twenty two, born only two months after our daughter’s birth, much too young an age for a Haflinger to die.
But something dire was happening to her over the last two weeks — not eating much, an expanding girth, then shortness of breath, and last week it was confirmed she had untreatable lymphoma.
Her bright eyes were shining to the end so it was very hard to ask the vet to turn the light off. But the time had come.
Marlee M&B came to us as a six month old “runty orphan” baby by the lovely stallion Sterling Silver, but she was suddenly weaned at three days when her mama Melissa died of sepsis.
She never really weaned from her bottle/bucket feeding humans Stefan and Andrea Bundshuh at M&B Farm in Canada. From them she knew people’s behavior, learned their nonverbal language, and understood human subtleties that most horses never learn. This made her quite a handling challenge as a youngster as it also meant there was no natural reserve nor natural respect for people. She had no boundaries taught by a mother, so we tried to teach her the proper social cues.
When turned out with the herd as a youngster, she was completely clueless–she’d approach the dominant alpha mare incorrectly, without proper submission, get herself bitten and kicked and was the bottom of the social heap for years, a lonesome little filly with few friends and very few social skills. She had never learned submission with people either, and had to have many remedial lessons on her training path.
Once she was a mature working mare, her relationship with people markedly improved as there was structure to her work and predictability for her, and after having her own foals, she picked up cues and signals that helped her keep her foal safe, though she had always been one of our most relaxed “do whatever you need to do” mothers when we handled her foals as she simply never learned that she needed to be concerned.
Over the years, as the herd has changed, Marlee became the alpha mare, largely by default and seniority, so I don’t believe she really trusted her position as “real”. She tended to bully, and react too quickly out of her own insecurity about her inherited position. She was very skilled with her ears but she was also a master at the tail “whip” and the tensed upper lip–no teeth, just a slight wrinkling of the lip. The herd scattered when they saw her face change. The irony of it all is that when she was “on top” of the herd hierarchy, she was more lonely than when she was at the bottom and I think a whole lot less happy as she had few grooming partners any more.
She accompanied us to the fair for a week of display of our Haflingers year after year after year — she could be always counted on to greet the public and enjoy days of braiding and petting and kids sitting on her back.
The day she started formal under saddle training under Val Bash was when the light bulb went off in her head–this was a job she could do! This was constant communication and interaction with a human being, which she craved! This was what she was meant for! And she thrived under saddle, advancing quickly in her skills, almost too fast, as she wanted so much to please her trainer.
She had, at the time, an unequaled record among North American Haflingers. She was not only regional champion in her beginner novice division of eventing as a pregnant 5 year old, but also received USDF Horse of the Year awards in First and Second Level dressage that year as the highest scoring Haflinger.
With Jessica Heidemann she did a “bridleless” ride display in front of hundreds of people at the annual Haflinger event, and with Garyn Heidemann as instructor, she became an eventing pony for a young rider whose blonde hair matched Marlee’s. She galloped with abandon in the field on bareback rides with Emily Vander Haak and became our daughter Lea’s special riding horse over the last few years.
She had a career of mothering along with intermittent riding work, with 5 foals –Winterstraum, Marquisse, Myst, Wintermond, and Nordstrom—each from different stallions, and each very different from one another.
This mare had such a remarkable work ethic, was “fine-tuned” so perfectly with a sensitivity to cues–that our daughter said: “Mom, it’s going to make me such a better rider because I know she pays attention to everything I do with my body–whether my heels are down, whether I’m sitting up straight or not.”
Marlee was, to put it simply, trained to train her riders.
We will miss her high pitched whinny from the barn whenever she heard the back door to the house open. We will miss her pushy head butt on the stall door when it was time to close it up for the night. We will miss that beautiful unforgettable face and those large deep brown eyes where the light was on.
What a ride she had for twenty two years, that dear little orphan. What a ride she gave to many who trained her and who she trained over the years. Though I never climbed on her back, what joy she gave me, the surrogate mom who loved and fed her, unable to resist those bright eyes, which are now closed in peace.
Photo Montage by Emily Vander Haak
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And God held in his hand A small globe. Look, he said. The son looked. Far off, As through water, he saw A scorched land of fierce Colour. The light burned There; crusted buildings Cast their shadows; a bright Serpent, a river Uncoiled itself, radiant With slime. On a bare Hill a bare tree saddened The sky. Many people Held out their thin arms To it, as though waiting For a vanished April To return to its crossed Boughs. The son watched Them. Let me go there, he said. ~R.S. Thomas “The Coming”
…for each of us has known the pleasure of spring, the way it feels for something closed
to open: the soft, heavenly weather of arrival. ~Faith Shearin from “Geese” from Moving the Piano
Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, Or what’s a heaven for? ~Robert Browning from “Andrea del Sarto”
“Let me go there” And You did. Knowing what awaited You.
Your arms out wide to embrace us who try to grasp a heaven which eludes us.
This heaven, Your heaven You brought down to us, knowing our terrible need.
You wanted to come here, knowing all this.
Holding us firmly within your wounded grip, You the Son handed us back to heaven.
A sorrowful holy season of opening and emptying: from cloistered tight to reaching beyond our grasp. Or what’s a heaven for?
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