God is at home, it’s we who have gone out for a walk. ~Meister Eckhart
Sometimes an excursion from home is more like a sprint, as far and as fast as possible.
Sometimes it is a spontaneous trek into the unknown, just to prove it can be done.
Sometimes it is a climb into the dark, with precipices and crumbling ledges under our feet.
Sometimes it is a tentative journey of curiosity to see what may be around the corner.
No matter why or where or how far we wander,
the path home shines just bright enough
to show us the way back
when we are ready.
He is there, waiting.
He keeps the light on for us.
A strain of the earth’s sweet being in the beginning ~Gerard Manley Hopkins from “Spring”
poplar row behind the apple orchard
Awake! Awake! for the earliest gleam Of golden sunlight shines On the rippling waves, that brightly flow Beneath the flowering vines. Awake! Awake! for the low, sweet chant Of the wild-birds’ morning hymn Comes floating by on the fragrant air, Through the forest cool and dim; Then spread each wing, And work, and sing, Through the long, bright sunny hours; O’er the pleasant earth We journey forth, For a day among the flowers.
~Louisa May Alcott Lily-Bell and Thistledown Song I
a favorite rhododendron
It was such a spring day as breathes into a man an ineffable yearning, a painful sweetness, a longing that makes him stand motionless, looking at the leaves or grass, and fling out his arms to embrace he knows not what. ~John Galsworthy
a happy day put out to pasture
At morn when light mine eyes unsealed
I gazed upon the open field;
The rain had fallen in the night —
The landscape in the new day’s light
A countenance of grace revealed
Upon the meadow, wood and height.
The sun’s light was a smile of gold,
Ere shut by sudden fold on fold
Of surging, showering clouds from view;
No sooner hid than it broke through
A tearful smile upon the wold
Where earth reflected heaven’s blue.
The sky was as a canvas spun
To paint the new spring’s nocturns on;
A blended melody of tints —
The sea’s hue, and the myriad hints
Of garden-closes, when the sun
Hath stamped the work of nature’s mints.
~William Stanley Braithwaite
a happy day put out to blue skies in the breezerosemary
Flesh and fleece, fur and feather, Grass and green world all together, Star-eyed strawberry breasted Throstle above Her nested
Cluster of bugle blue eggs thin Forms and warms the life within, And bird and blossom swell In sod or sheath or shell.” – Gerard Manley Hopkins, The May Magnificat
Kale going to seed
“A delicate fabric of bird song Floats in the air, The smell of wet wild earth Is everywhere. Oh I must pass nothing by Without loving it much, The raindrop try with my lips, The grass with my touch; For how can I be sure I shall see again The world on the first of May Shining after the rain?” – Sara Teasdale, May Day
grape hyacinth and tulips
“Every spring is the only spring – a perpetual astonishment.” – Ellis Peters
“Some will tell you crocuses are heralds true of spring Others say that tulips showing buds are just the thing Point to peonies, say when magnolia blossoms show I look forward to the sight of other flowers though Cultivate your roses, grow your orchids in the dark Plant your posies row on row and stink up the whole park The flower that’s my favourite kind is found throughout the land A wilting, yellow dandelion, clutched in a grubby hand.” – Larry Tilander, Springtime of My Soul
“Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers to-day; And give us not to think so far away As the uncertain harvest; keep us here All simply in the springing of the year.
Oh, give us pleasure in the orchard white, Like nothing else by day, like ghosts by night; And make us happy in the happy bees, The swarm dilating round the perfect trees.” – Robert Frost, A Prayer in Spring
skimmia
“Poetry is the silence and speech between a wet struggling root of a flower and a sunlit blossom of that flower.” – Carl Sandburg
yew pollen
“With the coming of spring, I am calm again. “ – Gustav Mahler
the first of dozens of peonies
The wealthy man is not he who has money, but he who has the means to live in the luxurious state of early spring.
~Anton Chekhov
Virginia Creeper starting to do its creeper thing
Canadian mountains to the north
“This spring as it comes bursts up in bonfires green, Wild puffing of emerald trees, and flame-filled bushes, Thorn-blossom lifting in wreaths of smoke between Where the wood fumes up and the watery, flickering rushes. I am amazed at this spring, this conflagration Of green fires lit on the soil of the earth, this blaze Of growing, and sparks that puff in wild gyration, Faces of people streaming across my gaze.” – D. H. Lawrence, The Enkindled Spring
“The sun was warm but the wind was chill. You know how it is with an April day. When the sun is out and the wind is still, You’re one month on in the middle of May. But if you so much as dare to speak, a cloud come over the sunlit arch, And wind comes off a frozen peak, And you’re two months back in the middle of March.” – Robert Frost
spring sunrise over Mt Baker
“Hark, I hear a robin calling! List, the wind is from the south! And the orchard-bloom is falling Sweet as kisses on the mouth.
Come and let us seek together Springtime lore of daffodils, Giving to the golden weather Greeting on the sun-warm hills.” – Lucy Maud Montgomery, Spring Song
“If you’ve never been thrilled to the very edges of your soul by a flower in spring bloom, maybe your soul has never been in bloom.” – Audra Foveo
Sam stops to smell the tulips
“It’s spring fever. That is what the name of it is. And when you’ve got it, you want – oh, you don’t quite know what it is you do want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so!” – Mark Twain
someone is looking his age….it was a rough winter
“Every year, back comes Spring, with nasty little birds yapping their fool heads off and the ground all mucked up with plants.” – Dorothy Parker 😉
photo taken to the north from the farm by Emily Gibson
All this he saw, for one moment breathless and intense, vivid on the morning sky; and still, as he looked, he lived; and still, as he lived, he wondered. ~Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows
Every time I open my eyes, I am reminded how precious is this moment, how intense is each breath and each heartbeat.
We are created for this. We are meant to wonder with ceasing.
Spring is the sun shining on the rain and the rain falling on the sunshine… ~ Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden
Some days, this time of year, the skies are gray with indecision and it doesn’t rain nor does the sun ever shine, a truly lukewarm day. The days that are most interesting, however, are those that declare themselves “clear” or “soaking wet” and then switch somewhere in the middle. The transition itself is stormy.
Yesterday started with pouring rain — no drizzle this — with no hope of clearing, no peek of blue sky, no mountains on the horizon as they were covered in gray cotton wool.
Then in a mighty switch around noon, a wind blew in and took the gray away with a sweep of the hand. The skies cleared, the mountains reappeared with even more snow cover than the day before, and everything around shone with the glistening wash that had taken place.
It is spring, when all things are reborn wet and shimmering, sun shining amid the rain and rain drenching irresistible light.
Spring has returned. The Earth is like a child that knows poems. – Rainer Maria Rilke
Thank God
the earth remembers the meter and rhythm of spring
and annually recites it from memory:
the tease of sun
warming cheeks,
a lapse back
into rain storms,
bulbs bursting
through frost,
surprised by snowflakes
maybe ice,
then a rainbow
through slanted light,
a few hardy buds
swell to blossom,
bees buzz sleepy,
all the while more rain,
painting green, always green
growing burgeoning flourishing.
The poem of earth reciting spring
declines to force a rhyme,
its buried words watered warm
to blossom just in time.
So what do I believe actually happened that morning on the third day after he died? …I speak very plainly here…
He got up. He said, “Don’t be afraid.”
Love is the victor. Death is not the end. The end is life. His life and our lives through him, in him. Existence has greater depths of beauty, mystery, and benediction than the wildest visionary has ever dared to dream. Christ our Lord has risen. ~Frederick Buechner
Since this moment (the resurrection), the universe is no longer what it was; nature has received another meaning; history is transformed and you and I are no more, and should not be anymore, what we were before. ~Paul Tillich
When we purchased Walnut Hill Farm from the Morton Lawrence family in 1990, part of the tradition of this farm was a hilltop non-denominational Easter sunrise service held here for the previous 10+ years. We have continued that tradition, with an open invitation to families from our surrounding rural neighborhood and communities, as well as our church family from Wiser Lake Chapel, to start Easter morning on our hill with a worship service of celebration of the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
At our annual Easter Sunrise Service in Whatcom County, we develop a different Easter theme each year through use of scripture readings and songs, led by Dan Gibson. We sit on hay bales on the hill for the worship service, followed by breakfast of cinnamon rolls, hot chocolate and coffee in our barn. As many of the people who attend come from some distance from all over the county, we try to conclude by 8 AM so they may have time to get to morning church services.
thank you to Chris Lovegren for the four photos above of Sunrise Service 2012
We invite all to come to our farm to participate in this traditional service of celebration. Please dress warmly with sturdy shoes as you will be walking through wet grass to reach the hilltop. Bring heavy blankets or sleeping bags to wrap up in if it is a chilly morning. In case of rain, we meet in the big red hay barn on the farm, so we never cancel this service.
If you would like more information and directions to our farm at 1613 Central Road, between Hannegan and Noon Road, please email us at emily@briarcroft.com
…Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on. Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers. Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting- over and over announcing your place in the family of things. ~Mary Oliver from “Wild Geese”
photo by Kathy Yates
photo by Josh Scholten
Snow geese are populating the Skagit flats and farm land, as numerous as the scores of colorful tulips which soon will fill nearby fields. The din of the flocks as they land and feed, then rise again in the air is astounding: a symphony of honks and hollers carried from one goose family to another in a ruckus of joyful abandon. Skagit is the New York City of snowgeese for a few weeks, never sleeping.
There are a few geese who wander further up north into Whatcom County to pepper our surrounding dormant cornfields like salt, sprinkled half a dozen here and there across the Nooksack river valley. When there are only a few together, their calling seems so melancholy, almost a disconsolate cry of abandonment carrying over the lonely countryside.
So too am I ensconced away from the clamorous masses, preferring to be part of an out-of-the-way rural landscape. There may be moments of melancholy, to be sure. Yet here, as nowhere else, I know my place in the family of things — of gray clouds, owl hoots, swampy wetlands, frog choruses, orange sunsets, pink sunrises, warm pony muzzles, budding snowdrops, and steaming manure piles. I give myself up to wild abandon in a world offering itself up to my imagination instead of leaving nothing to the imagination.
Let the cities clamor and clang in their excitement. They do just fine without me.
Instead I celebrate the relative silence allowing me to seek the words to fit the music singing in my soul.
Some unwonted, taught pride diverts us from our original intent, which is to explore the neighborhood, view the landscape, to discover at least where it is that we have been so startlingly set down, if we can’t learn why. ~Annie Dillard from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
As much as I want to know how and why of my life, I must settle for what and where. As I grow older, more and more I dwell on who.
I am here to explore, to notice what happens around me and to me, to record it in words that will live beyond my time, to express unceasing gratitude to who has done this wondrous thing I am witness to.
It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood (thanks, Fred Rogers).
I came here to study hard things – rock mountain and salt sea – and to temper my spirit on their edges. “Teach me thy ways, O Lord” is, like all prayers, a rash one, and one I cannot but recommend. These mountains — Mount Baker and the Sisters and Shuksan, the Canadian Coastal Range and the Olympics on the peninsula — are surely the edge of the known and comprehended world…. That they bear their own unimaginable masses and weathers aloft, holding them up in the sky for anyone to see plain, makes them, as Chesterton said of the Eucharist, only the more mysterious by their very visibility and absence of secrecy. ~Annie Dillard from Holy the Firm
God is at home, it’s we who have gone out for a walk.
Barnstorming 