Category: heaven

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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Strung With Care

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In none of her other ages had she noted
her age or its burden and bounty of expectations.
The future was as flexible as the past,
and, in between, moments like unstrung pearls
strewn across velvet grieved and gladdened her
and always astonished her with their perfection.
There was no nothingness: there was only being.

Slowly she wakes from what had seemed a dream
to realize that this is her final age—
of indeterminate length and quality.
Things are ending, or have ended, or will end.
The pearls are strung with care, it is quite clear.
There is no nothingness—but she can almost,
some days, picture the world without her in it.
~Jane Greer “In none of her other ages”
(Jane died after a short illness last week at the age of 72)

I have always been well aware
we each arrive here with an expiration date
hidden from view.

We may live for decades assuming
the circled length of our own string of pearls
will continue indefinitely
with the latch closed and tight.

A few months ago,
my clasp opened unexpectedly,
my finite days of carefully strung pearls
threatening to spill, forever lost to me.

I realized things could end
without any hugged goodbyes.

Later, having been emergently restrung,
at least for the time being,
the look in my eyes
prompted the surgeon to say
“now you can live out your full life span.”

What I wanted to ask him
but couldn’t:
“and just how long might that be?”
knowing he had no true reassurance
for something only God can promise:

There is no nothingness.

By grace and a surgeon’s skill,
I gained nearly six months of pearls.
I’m still here, looking back
at the carefully strung
hours and days and weeks
behind and before me.

Right now I remain clasped tight,
hugging and held secure,
though one day I know
it will be time
to let go.

There we shall rest and we shall see;
we shall see and we shall love;
we shall love and we shall praise.
Behold what shall be in the end and shall not end.
~Augustine of Hippo from The City of God, Bk. XXII, Chap. 30

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I Borrowed This Dust

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Instructions for living a life:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.
~Mary Oliver “Sometimes” from Red Bird

Getting older:

The first surprise: I like it.
Whatever happens now, some things
that used to terrify have not:

I didn’t die young, for instance. Or lose
my only love. My three children
never had to run away from anyone.

Don’t tell me this gratitude is complacent.
We all approach the edge of the same blackness
which for me is silent.

Knowing as much sharpens
my delight in January freesia,
hot coffee, winter sunlight. So we say

as we lie close on some gentle occasion:
every day won from such
darkness is a celebration.
~ Elaine Feinstein, “Getting Older” from The Clinic, Memory

Maybe
it’s time for me to practice
growing old… I only
borrowed this dust.
~Stanley Kunitz from “Passing Through” from Collected Poems

To do the useful thing,
to say the courageous thing,
to contemplate the beautiful thing:
that is enough for one man’s life.
― T.S. Eliot, The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism

I am astonished at living over seven decades,
despite my faltering dust.

Amazed by joys and sometimes by sorrows,
I hope to see much more before I’m done,
trying in my own way to tell about it.

I am grateful, so very grateful
to still be here,
living out the time left to me
learning:
how love can heal,
how tears are dried,
and most astonishing of all,
how God came here
to loan us His dust –
until the day He carries us,
all dusty,
back home.

photo by Tomomi Gibson

Lyrics from Carrie Newcomer:
I’ve been looking for beauty
In these broken times
By making some beauty
In the world that I find
Some say it′s too late
It′s too much to brave
But I believe there’s so much
Worth being saved

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What is Waiting Behind the Wall

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If ever we see those gardens again,
The summer will be gone—at least our summer.
Some other mockingbird will concertize
Among the mulberries, and other vines
Will climb the high brick wall to disappear.

How many footpaths crossed the old estate—
The gracious acreage of a grander age—
So many trees to kiss or argue under,
And greenery enough for any mood.
What pleasure to be sad in such surroundings.

At least in retrospect. For even sorrow
Seems bearable when studied at a distance,
And if we speak of private suffering,
The pain becomes part of a well-turned tale
Describing someone else who shares our name.

Still, thinking of you, I sometimes play a game.
What if we had walked a different path one day,
Would some small incident have nudged us elsewhere
The way a pebble tossed into a brook
Might change the course a hundred miles downstream?

The trick is making memory a blessing,
To learn by loss the cool subtraction of desire,
Of wanting nothing more than what has been,
To know the past forever lost, yet seeing
Behind the wall a garden still in blossom.
~Dana Gioia “The Lost Garden” from Interrogations at Noon.

At present we are on the outside of the world,
the wrong side of the door. . . .
We cannot mingle with the splendours we see.
But all the leaves of the New Testament are rustling
with the rumour that it will not always be so.
Some day, God willing, we shall get in.
C.S. Lewis from The Weight of Glory

Memory can play tricks,
either smoothing over
the many potholes in the road of life,
or digging the holes so deep,
I fall in and am lost.

Whenever I am feeling regret
for the things I have done,
or all that I have left undone,
I remember I have walked on
paths of beauty beyond imagining.

I wouldn’t change much about what has been,
knowing there is much more beauty to come.

I remember gates and doors I could not open.
Just a peek told me all I needed to know:
there is a hidden, lost garden just waiting,
still blooming, still inspiring, still brimming
full of everything any of us could ever need.

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Where His Happiness Has Been

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Now a red, sleepy sun above the rim
Of twilight stares along the quiet weald,
And the kind, simple country shines revealed
In solitudes of peace, no longer dim.
The old horse lifts his face and thanks the light,
Then stretches down his head to crop the green.
All things that he has loved are in his sight;
The places where his happiness has been
Are in his eyes, his heart, and they are good.
~Siegfried Sassoon from “Break of Day”

My husband and I grow old along with our horses – we are now past 70, just as a couple of our horses in “horse” years.

None of us, horses or humans, need to climb in the harness or put on the saddle to pull or carry the heavy loads of our former work lives.

It is a good life – each day treasured for its ordinariness.

Our retired horses feel the morning sun on their withers and the green blades under their feet, they scan the pasture for the sweetest tender patch to munch in the fields they know and love so well. They nap more now than in their younger years, taking breaks to let their heads hang relaxed and nodding, their tails slowly swishing at flies.

This morning was not so ordinary.

Waldheer van de Wortel (Wally), imported from Holland as a foal 27 years ago to be our herd stallion, let me know he wasn’t feeling well. He repeatedly pawed at the ground and the pasture gates, biting at his flank, trying to lie down and then get back up, not eating – clearly experiencing colicky belly pain that was getting worse.

I wondered if Wally’s time had come to bid him farewell. I had made a promise to my geriatric horses that I would not allow them to live in pain just because I didn’t want to let them go.

The vet came quickly and we talked about Wally’s options. She remarked about how he didn’t look his age, was holding weight well, his coat so sleek and shiny, his long-lashed eyes still bright and curious. But she said an older horse could often have repeated bouts of colic before the end, even if they temporarily improve with medical treatment.

I decided it was the right time to let him go to Haflinger heaven on a sunny summer morning, nibbling a mouthful of clover I offered him.

He was laid to sleep where he had lived nearly three decades.

He leaves behind two sons who were his pasture buddies, a couple dozen offspring scattered around the country, and people who loved his ambassadorship for the Haflinger breed. In his younger days, he was an enthusiastic eventer in the northwest region, ridden by his trainer Jessica Heidemann. They both had an enthusiastic fan-following.

In his later years, Wally was patient and loving with our grandchildren and with us. He lived a good life in his place of happiness. I wanted him to die peacefully at home, without a worry.

It just doesn’t get much better than that.

Waldheer van de Wortel, 1998 foal in Holland
27 year old Wally
Art work made by a fan of Waldheer
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While the World Tilts Toward Sleep

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The cat calls for her dinner.
On the porch I bend and pour
brown soy stars into her bowl,
stroke her dark fur.
It’s not quite night.
Pinpricks of light in the eastern sky.
Above my neighbor’s roof, a transparent
moon, a pink rag of cloud.
Inside my house are those who love me.
My daughter dusts biscuit dough.
And there’s a man who will lift my hair
in his hands, brush it
until it throws sparks.
Everything is just as I’ve left it.
Dinner simmers on the stove.
Glass bowls wait to be filled
with gold broth. Sprigs of parsley
on the cutting board.
I want to smell this rich soup, the air
around me going dark, as stars press
their simple shapes into the sky.
I want to stay on the back porch
while the world tilts
toward sleep, until what I love
misses me, and calls me in.
~Dorianne Laux “On the Back Porch” from Awake

They sit together on the porch, the dark
Almost fallen, the house behind them dark.
Their supper done with, they have washed and dried
The dishes–only two plates now, two glasses,
Two knives, two forks, two spoons–small work for two.
She sits with her hands folded in her lap,
At rest. He smokes his pipe. They do not speak,
And when they speak at last it is to say
What each one knows the other knows. They have
One mind between them, now, that finally
For all its knowing will not exactly know
Which one goes first through the dark doorway, bidding
Goodnight, and which sits on a while alone.
~Wendell Berry “They Sit Together on the Porch” from A Timbered Choir

If just for a moment,
when the world feels like it is tilting so far
I just might fall off,
there is a need to pause
to look at where I’ve been
and get my feet back under me.

The porch is a good place to start:
a bridge to observe “out there”
without completely leaving the safety of “in here.”

I am outside looking squarely at uncertainty
yet still hear and smell and taste
the love that dwells just inside these walls.

What do any of us want more
than to be missed if we were to step away
or be taken from this life?

Our voice, our words, our heart, our touch
never to be replaced,
its absence a hole impossible to fill?

When we are called back inside to the Love
that made us who we are,
may we leave behind the outside world
more beautiful because we were part of it.

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Holding a Memory of Cherries

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We used to pick cherries over the hill
where we paid to climb wooden ladders
into the bright haven above our heads, the fruit
dangling earthward. Dark, twinned bells
ringing in some good fortune just beyond
our sight. I have lived on earth long enough
to know good luck arrives only on its way
to someone else, for it must leave you to the miracle
of your own misfortune, lest you grow weary
of harvest, of cherries falling from the crown of sky
in mid-summer, of hours of idle. Let there be
a stone of suffering. Let the fruit taste of sweetness
and dust. Let grief split your heart so precisely
you must hold, somehow, a memory of cherries—
tart talismans of pleasure—in the rucksack
of your soul. Taut skin, sharp blessing.

Luminous, ordinary and acute.
~Danusha Laméris “U-Pick Orchards”

Life is not a bowl of cherries,
unless you count the ones
that aren’t yet ripe, or are over-ripe,
or have a squirrel- or bird-bite taken,
or have shriveled to raisins on the tree.

Yes, there are perfect cherries
that shine in the dark, glistening with promise,
tempting us to climb high to pick them.

Those we really want usually are out of reach.

How can we know what perfection is
unless we experience where life falls short?

The lingering taste of grief,
the agony of waiting for word in a tragedy,
the gnawing emptiness of indescribable loss.

Only the memory of what was nearly perfect,
remembering what could have been
knowing what will someday be our reality
can ease the bitter pit of suffering now.

May the families of those swept away in flooding,
those who live in the path of war and violence,
those who hunger for justice, or starving for food,
those who struggle with life-threatening and chronic illness
somehow know the comfort of God’s perfection awaits them.
The Light and Goodness is there for us to taste,
yet just beyond our reach.

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Written as with a Sunbeam

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The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for,
among old parchments, or musty records.
They are written, as with a sun beam,
in the whole volume of human nature,
by the hand of the divinity itself;
and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power.
~Alexander Hamilton, from  “The Farmer Refuted”

What sparkling flashes of God’s wit and brilliance—
His coruscations—
have caused your mind today to
run back up the sunbeam to the sun and given you cause
to give thanks and to worship the Lord?
~C.S. Lewis from Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer

photo by Nate Gibson

God illuminates through His Word,
not once but twice. 

In the beginning, He created
the sun and the moon to shine
upon bodies, hearts, and souls. 

Then, He came to light the world
from below as well as from above
so we could be saved from darkness.

By His descent to us,
because He leaves heaven’s light
to be in our arms and by our sides-
He illuminates us
so we reflect the light He brings:
loved
saved
despite all our efforts
to remain in the dark.

photo by Nate Gibson
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The Seasons, They Go Round and Round

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It’s deep time here, this barrow grave five thousand years old,
where we follow like sheep behind the guide to the heart
of its cruciform center.

I’ve never been in a space so dark.
What was it like to fear that the sun would not return,
that crops would wither, deer flee,
that night’s dark cloak was all there was?

But miraculously, on the lip of the solstice,
the light returned, liquid and golden,
ran down the narrow corridor,
hit the back wall, splashed in the stone basin,
and they knew summer would come back, run to fruit.
Light, dark, freeze, thaw, seedtime,
harvest, wheel of the year, the spiral dance.

What would they make of our device-laden lives,
fossil-fueled cars, over-stocked larders?
Who stands in the dark and listens now, gaping at the stars?
— Barbara Crooker, “Newgrange” from The Book of Kells

Finnis Soutterain underground

Finnis Soutterain underground

There is nothing so dark as centuries-old underground tunnels and portal tombs, some positioned with an opening to capture a beam of light exactly at either the winter or summer solstice, illuminating what dwells in blackness the rest of the year.

The more recent ninth century soutterain tunnels were refuge for Christians hiding from invaders, keeping whole villages safe from capture.

The dolmens and portal graves are Neolithic structures built before the pyramids. They still exist today as they were constructed to last by people serious about their beliefs.Though those people are long dust, the stones and tunnels remain as they were, to protect the spirits of the departed.

What would they think now of our extravagance,
our plethora of goods and foods,
our ways of crippling others remotely
using weapons dropped from the sky,
but also the weapons of internet disinformation and hacking,
hallucinations and lies from artificial intelligence?

Our ways make stealing, pillaging, raping and enslaving strangers
seem so… messy.

We mustn’t fool ourselves. We are still messy.

We moderns are lost in our over-abundance of light year round, scarcely noting the calendar or the passing of the longest and shortest days.

I bow my head to the remarkable people of strength who have preceded us, who sought mightily to preserve the significance of a Light returning to penetrate their darkness.

Legananny Dolmen, Northern Ireland
Legananny dolmen
Kilfeaghan Dolmen
AI image created for this post

Lyrics:
Daylight comes and nighttime goes, nighttime falls, day flies
Round and round the cycle goes,
we live and then we die and then we live and then we die.
The seasons of my life go round, the sunshine and the rain
The fallow and the fruitful days,
the joy and then the pain and then the joy and then the pain.
As light below, so light above, so light in all we see

The light is in the act of love, the light that sets us free,
yes, it’s the light that sets free.
Daylight comes…

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Never Forgotten

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Our memories are, at best,
so limited, so finite,
that it is impossible for us to envisage
an unlimited, infinite memory, the memory of God.

It is something I want to believe in:
that no atom of creation is ever forgotten by him;
always is;
cared for;
developing;
loved. 
~Madeleine L’Engle from The Summer of the Great-Grandmother

…a friend told me a story about a little girl who wanted time alone with her infant brother. Her parents were suspicious of her motives. What if she did something to harm the baby? The big sister was so persistent that her mom and dad finally decided to allow her ten minutes alone with him in his room. After they closed the door, they listened quietly.

They felt chills when they heard their daughter say,
“Baby tell me what heaven is like. I’m starting to forget.”
~Sue Shanahan from “Fresh from Heaven”

He of strength and hope,
of infinite memory and everlasting love:

He knows us down to our very atoms ~~
even we who are weak, broken, and undeserving.

He causes us to burst into bloom
in remembrance of having been in His presence.

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