Summer ends now; now, barbarous in beauty, the stooks rise Around; up above, what wind-walks! what lovely behaviour Of silk-sack clouds! has wilder, wilful-wavier Meal-drift moulded ever and melted across skies?
I walk, I lift up, I lift up heart, eyes, Down all that glory in the heavens to glean our Saviour; And eyes, heart, what looks, what lips yet give you a Rapturous love’s greeting of realer, of rounder replies?
And the azurous hung hills are his world-wielding shoulder Majestic – as a stallion stalwart, very-violet-sweet! – These things, these things were here and but the beholder Wanting; which two when they once meet, The heart rears wings bold and bolder And hurls for him, O half hurls earth for him off under his feet. ~Gerard Manley Hopkins “Hurrahing in Harvest”
This poem is (in Hopkin’s own words) “the outcome of half an hour of extreme enthusiasm as I walked home alone one day from fishing in the [River] Elwy.”
This afternoon was the colour of water falling through sunlight; The trees glittered with the tumbling of leaves; The sidewalks shone like alleys of dropped maple leaves, And the houses ran along them laughing out of square, open windows. Under a tree in the park, Two little boys, lying flat on their faces, Were carefully gathering red berries To put in a pasteboard box.
Some day there will be no war, Then I shall take out this afternoon And turn it in my fingers, And remark the sweet taste of it upon my palate, And note the crisp variety of its flights of leaves. To-day I can only gather it And put it into my lunch-box, For I have time for nothing But the endeavour to balance myself Upon a broken world. ~Amy Lowell from “September 1918”
There is no point in seeing without responding; there is no way to respond without seeing.
Christian life and practice require both faith (the sight of the heart) and works (the lurch of the heart toward him in obedience). ~Kathleen Mulhern from “A Christ Sighting” from Dry Bones
Am I the only one who awoke this morning praying today might be a day of healing between peoples, when the barbarous becomes beautiful and we seek to become balanced rather than broken?
A day of no drone missiles being launched, no threats of annihilation and winner takes all, no one gunned down in the street, no vehicles used as weapons, no harsh and angry words spoken, no child misused, no one sold into slavery, no one overdosing, abandoned, homeless and starving.
Am I the only one who awakes and only seeks to watch the clouds to praise the heavens to see the leaves turn color to take out this one day and taste it and find that it is good, then put it away for self-keeping to share when and if I find someone else as hungry for grace and mercy as I am,
so as to balance myself somehow in the beauty of this world while teetering on its brokenness?
God empties himself into the earth like a cloud. God takes the substance, contours of a man, and keeps them, dying, rising, walking, and still walking wherever there is motion. Annie Dillard from “Feast Days” in Tickets for a Prayer Wheel
Divinity is not playful. The universe was not made in jest but in solemn incomprehensible earnest. By a power that is unfathomably secret, and holy, and fleet. There is nothing to be done about it, but ignore it, or see. ~Annie Dillard from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
What does it feel like to be alive? Living, you stand under a waterfall… It is time pounding at you, time. Knowing you are alive is watching on every side your generation’s short time falling away as fast as rivers drop through air, and feeling it hit.
I had hopes for my rough edges. I wanted to use them as a can opener, to cut myself a hole in the world’s surface, and exit through it. ~Annie Dillard from An American Childhood
What I have been after all along is not an explanation but a picture. This is the way the world is, altar and cup, lit by the fire from a star that has only begun to die. My rage and shock at the pain and death of individuals of my kind is the old, old mystery, as old as man but forever fresh, and completely unanswerable. ~Annie Dillard from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
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.
The Cascade Range, in these high latitudes, backs almost into the water. There is only a narrow strip, an afterthought of foothills and farms sixty miles wide, between the snowy mountains and the sea. 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
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
The shadow’s the thing. If I no longer see shadows as “dark marks,”as do the newly sighted, then I see them as making some sort of sense of the light. They give the light distance;they put it in its place. They inform my eyes of my location here, here O Israel, here in the world’s flawed sculpture, here in the flickering shade of the nothingness between me and the light. ~Annie Dillard from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
We are here to abet creation and to witness it, to notice each thing so each thing gets noticed. Together we notice not only each mountain shadow and each stone on the beach but we notice each other’s beautiful face and complex nature so that creation need not play to an empty house. ~Annie Dillard from The Meaning of Life (1991 Life Magazine)
But time is one thing we have been given, and we have been given to time. Time gives us a whirl. We keep waking from a dream we can’t recall, looking around in surprise, and lapsing back, for years on end. All I want to do is stay awake, keep my head up, prop my eyes open, with toothpicks, with trees. … You don’t run down the present… You wait for it, empty-handed, and you are filled. ~Annie Dillard from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
An infant is a pucker of the earth’s thin skin; so are we. We arise like budding yeasts and break off; we forget our beginnings. A mammal swells and circles and lays him down. You and I have finished swelling; our circling periods are playing out, but we can still leave footprints in a trail whose end we do know. ~Annie Dillard from For the Time Being
The world is wilder in all directions, more dangerous and bitter, more extravagant and bright. We are making hay when we should be making whoopee; we are raising tomatoes when we should be raising Cain or Lazarus. ~Annie Dillard from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
Why are we reading, if not in hope of beauty laid bare, life heightened and its deepest mystery probed?
Can the writer isolate and vivify all in experience that most deeply engages our intellects and our hearts?
Why are we reading, if not in hope that the writer will magnify and dramatize our days, will illuminate and inspire us with wisdom, courage and the hope of meaningfulness, and press upon our minds the deepest mysteries, so we may feel again their majesty and power?
What do we ever know that is higher than that power which, from time to time, seizes our lives, and which reveals us startlingly to ourselves as creatures set down here bewildered?
Why does death so catch us by surprise, and why love?
Annie Dillard passed into glory yesterday at age 81, finally witnessing firsthand the holy and sacred mysteries she pondered in her writings.
Since 1974,I have been indebted to her God-given gifts of observation and unique ability to share precisely perfect words to describe how she felt about what she saw. In 1976, she did a reading locally – I was amazed at herinsistence that we all have the power to open our eyes to this place we have been set down, to witness all that is secret, holy and fleet in our existence…
She indeed left her mark while living, teaching and writing here in Whatcom County for a time nearly fifty years ago…
All the photos on this page are from my collection of pictures I’ve taken here in Whatcom County, as I can imagine this scenery inspired Annie in her writing while she was here.
We are invited by Christ Himself to “come and see.” (John 1:39)
We weren’t conceived by random happenstance –
We are here because we were earnestly needed and wanted, by a power and divinity with a capacity for love and compassion beyond anything we are capable of.
We aren’t a cosmic joke, or random couplings of DNA. We aren’t pawns in the universe’s chess game.
We have the capacity to see the image of God in one another, as well as in the mirror, yet we ignore with our own eyes, His shimmering reflection.
…beauty and grace are performed whether or not we will or sense them. The least we can do is try to be there… ~Annie Dillard from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
Mountains are giant, restful, absorbent. You can heave your spirit into a mountain and the mountain will keep it, folded, and not throw it back as some creeks will. The creeks are the world with all its stimulus and beauty; I live there. But the mountains are home. ~Annie Dillard from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
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Autumn begins to be inferred By millinery of the cloud, Or deeper color in the shawl That wraps the everlasting hill. ~Emily Dickinson from “Summer Begins to Have the Look”
The passing of the summer fills again my heart with strange sweet sorrow, and I find the very moments precious in my palm. Each dawn I did not see, each night the stars in spangled pattern shone, unknown to me, are counted out against me by my God, who charges me to see all lovely things… ~Jane Tyson Clement from “The Passing of Summer”
September’s Baccalaureate A combination is Of Crickets — Crows — and Retrospects And a dissembling Breeze That hints without assuming — An Innuendo sear That makes the Heart put up its Fun And turn Philosopher. ~Emily Dickinson“September’s Baccalaureate”
There’s something in my very blood that owns Bare hills, cold silver on a sky of slate A thread of water, churned to milky spate Streaming through slanted pastures fenced with stones. ~Elinor Wylie from “Wild Peaches”
Summer now is waning and wistful; it has the look of packing up, and moving on without bidding adieu or looking back over its shoulder.
Cooling winds have carried in darkening clouds with a hint of spit from the sky as I gaze upward to see (and smell) the change.
A decent rain is long overdue yet there is temptation to bargain for a little more time. Though we are in need of a good drenching there are still onions and potatoes to pull from the ground, berries to pick before they mold on the vine, tomatoes not yet ripened, corn cobs just too skinny to pick.
I’m not quite ready to wave goodbye to sun-soaked clear skies.
The overhead overcast is heavily burdened with clues of what is coming: earlier dusk, the feel of moisture, the deepening graying hues, the briskness of breezes.
There is no negotiation possible. I need to steel myself and get ready, wrapping myself in the soft shawl of inevitability.
So autumn advances with the clouds, taking up residence where summer has left off. Though there is still clean up of the overabundance left behind, autumn will bring its own unique plans for display of a delicious palette of hues.
The truth is we’ve seen nothing yet.
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Would you believe I’ve been looking for rain, here, with few days remaining in this fleeting season of summer? Our days are numbered that we might share with the sun in a clear blue sky and the hours growing warmer, and I have kept an eye out for the clouds. Only I wish for the conditions and doubt that might send us all deep inside our dark homes to sleep and read and pray in preparation for the coming colder days. Would you believe that the sight of slate gray spanning horizon to zenith and down is one I am quite taken with? ~David K. Wheeler “The Cold Season” from Contingency Plans
My mother, who hates thunder storms, Holds up each summer day and shakes It out suspiciously, lest swarms Of grape-dark clouds are lurking there; But when the August weather breaks And rains begin, and brittle frost Sharpens the bird-abandoned air, Her worried summer look is lost,
And I her son, though summer-born And summer-loving, none the less Am easier when the leaves are gone Too often summer days appear Emblems of perfect happiness I can’t confront: I must await A time less bold, less rich, less clear: An autumn more appropriate. ~Philip Larkin “Mother, Summer, I”
Summer grass aches and whispers.
It wants something; it calls and sings; it pours out wishes to the overhead stars.
The rain hears; the rain answers; the rain is slow coming; the rain wets the face of the grass. ~Carl Sandberg “Summer Grass”
August rushes by like desert rainfall, A flood of frenzied upheaval, Expected, But still catching me unprepared. Like a match flame Bursting on the scene, Heat and haze of crimson sunsets. Like a dream Of moon and dark barely recalled, A moment, Shadows caught in a blink. Like a quick kiss; One wishes for more But it suddenly turns to leave, Dragging summer away. – Elizabeth Maua Taylor“August”
The endless clear skies of August now broken with exuberant clouds, rain falling in warm gusts, leaves landing on browned ground.
This summer ended up being simply too much – an excess of everything bright and beautiful, meant to make us joyful, yet bold and exhausting in its riches.
From endless hours of daylight, to high rising temperatures and wildfires, to palettes of smoke-filled landscapes to fruitfulness and abundant blooms.
While summer always fills a void after enduring cold spare dark days the rest of the year, I still depend on autumn returning.
I welcome darkening times back, knowing how much I miss those drear twilight months of longing for the overwhelming fullness of summer.
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It’s ripe, the melon by our sink. Yellow, bee-bitten, soft, it perfumes the house too sweetly. At five I wake, the air mournful in its quiet. My wife’s eyes swim calmly under their lids, her mouth and jaw relaxed, different. What is happening in the silence of this house? Curtains hang heavily from their rods. Ficus leaves tremble at my footsteps. Yet the colors outside are perfect– orange geranium, blue lobelia. I wander from room to room like a man in a museum: wife, children, books, flowers, melon. Such still air. Soon the mid-morning breeze will float in like tepid water, then hot. How do I start this day, I who am unsure of how my life has happened or how to proceed amid this warm and steady sweetness? ~Albert Garcia “August Morning” from Skunk Talk
I know I am getting old and I say so, but I don’t think of myself as an old man. I think of myself as a young man with unforeseen debilities. Time is neither young nor old, but simply new, always counting, the only apocalypse. And the clouds —no mere measure or geometry, no cubism, can account for clouds or, satisfactorily, for bodies. There is no science for this, or art either. Even the old body is new—who has known it before?—and no sooner new than gone, to be replaced by a body yet older and again new. The clouds are rarely absent from our sky over this humid valley, and there is a sycamore that I watch as, growing on the riverbank, it forecloses the horizon, like the years of an old man. And you, who are as old almost as I am, I love as I loved you young, except that, old, I am astonished at such a possibility, and am duly grateful. ~ Wendell Berry “VII.” from Leavings.
…today, the unseen was everything. The unknown, the only real fact of life. 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
How do I start this day when I am unsure of the immense unknown?
I begin by looking. I live with wonder and astonishment; yet another morning has been gifted to me.
Even if sleep proved elusive, the air through the windows still warm at midnight. When even a melon-colored sky looks dry along with everything beneath it.
When wildfire smoke still drifts in on waves from the north and east, both obscuring and rounding the sharp edges of mountain peaks.
I wonder, grateful, for the sweetness on this tepid summer morning offering itself to me.
I’m here. I look, I live, I wonder. Let the day begin, opening up into the immense unknown.
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When it snows, he stands at the back door or wanders around the house to each window in turn and watches the weather like a lover. O farm boy, I waited years for you to look at me that way. Now we’re old enough to stop waiting for random looks or touches or words, so I find myself watching you watching the weather, and we wait together to discover whatever the sky might bring. ~Patricia Traxler “Weather Man”
My father was a skywatcher, cloud-noter, wind-gauger,
trained since birth to check the weather first thing and last. In those last
dim years when all else had left mind and memory, he’d still stare keenly out the car window
as I drove him to neurologist or podiatrist, and exclaim with joy and
satisfaction: Look at those clouds! And I knew right then that watching the sky
was a good way to conduct a life– that reading the outlines of clouds,
lifting a finger to the pulse of breeze coming your way,
is what can hold you close, clasp you tight to the thrum. ~Wendy Ingersoll “Weatherman”
My farm boy still looks at me that way, wondering if today will bring a storm, or a scorcher, or a deluge, and I reassure him as best I can, because he knows me so well in our many years together:
today, like nearly every other day, will be mostly cloudy with occasional sun breaks.
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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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Some of the people of Jerusalem therefore said, “Is not this the man whom they seek to kill? And here he is, speaking openly, and they say nothing to him! Can it be that the authorities really know that this is the Christ? But we know where this man comes from, and when the Christ appears, no one will know where he comes from.”
So Jesus proclaimed, as he taught in the temple, “You know me, and you know where I come from. But I have not come of my own accord. He who sent me is true, and him you do not know. I know him, for I come from him, and he sent me.”
So they were seeking to arrest him, but no one laid a hand on him, because his hour had not yet come.Yet many of the people believed in him. They said, “When the Christ appears, will he do more signs than this man has done?”
The Pharisees heard the crowd muttering these things about him, and the chief priests and Pharisees sent officers to arrest him. Jesus then said, “I will be with you a little longer, and then I am going to him who sent me.You will seek me and you will not find me. Where I am you cannot come.”
The Jews said to one another, “Where does this man intend to go that we will not find him? Does he intend to go to the Dispersion among the Greeks and teach the Greeks?
What does he mean by saying, ‘You will seek me and you will not find me,’ and, ‘Where I am you cannot come’?” John 7:25-36
Where is my God ? what hidden place Conceals Thee still? What covert dare eclipse Thy face? Is it Thy will?
O let not that of anything; Let rather brass, Or steel, or mountains be Thy ring, And I will pass.
Thy will such a strange distance is, As that to it East and West touch, the poles do kiss, And parallels meet. ~George Herbert from “The Search”
I try to find you, yet you are not here. I’ve studied absence, fought to fill it in – courage comes easier with a grasp of why.
A secret’s camouflaged when unconcealed. I chose to not see/saw the thing too near? Absence turns thicker, muscled by its strain.
A moon in daylight, whitest blue on blue, surprises briefly, to appear surreal until it slips to rights…
… plain sight goes blind through chasing clarity. I looked for you, so couldn’t see you gone.
I sensed your not-there in its burning life. I listened out to feel its silence beat. It does not speak with any human mouth. ~Denise Riley from “Hiding in Plain Sight” from Say Something Back
Jesus arrived in Jerusalem in plain sight to the people there, but they did not trust what they saw Him do nor trust His Words, unable to fathom He could be the long-awaited Christ.
Their partial understanding of who they believe the Christ would be blinds them to the Christ who is right before their eyes.
Later on, the resurrected Jesus – appearing as a gardener, a stranger on the road to Emmaus, a figure cooking fish over a charcoal fire on the beach – is the Christ hidden in plain sight.
Jesus’ presence among us – a paradox from beginning to end. Our limited vision and knowledge challenge us to accept His divinity when we see only the man. Yet He is so much more…
The veil pulls back to show us who He is.
I am reading slowly through the words in the Book of John over the next year alongside my church family. Once a week, I will invite you to “come and see” what those words might mean as we explore His promises together.
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There is weather on the day you are born and weather on the day you die. There is the year of drought, and the year of floods, when everything rises and swells, the year when winter will not stop falling, and the year when summer lightning burns the prairie, makes it disappear. There are the weathervanes, dizzy on top of farmhouses, hurricanes curled like cats on a map of sky: there are cows under the trees outlined in flies. There is the weather that blows a stranger into town and the weather that changes suddenly: an argument, a sickness, a baby born too soon. Crops fail and a field becomes a study in hunger; storm clouds billow over the sea; tornadoes appear like the drunk trunks of elephants. People talking about weather are people who don’t know what to say and yet the weather is what happens to all of us: the blizzard that makes our neighborhoods strange, the flood that carries away our plans. We are getting ready for the weather, or cleaning up after the weather, or enduring the weather. We are drenched in rain or sweat: we are looking for an umbrella, a second mitten; we are gathering wood to build a fire. ~Faith Shearin “Weather” from Orpheus, Turning.
On the planet the winds are blowing: the polar easterlies, the westerlies, the northeast and southeast trades… Lick a finger, feel the now. ~Annie Dillard from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
I’m still discovering, right up to this moment, that it is only by living completely in this world that one learns to have faith. I mean living unreservedly in life’s duties, problems, successes and failures, experiences and perplexities. In so doing, we throw ourselves completely into the arms of God. ~Dietrich Bonhoeffer from The Cost of Discipleship
Never before in the history of humanity have we had the ability to pull the weather forecast out of our pocket and know not only what to anticipate in the next 24 hours or 10 days, but even what is happening right now.
Prior to phone apps, we scanned the skies, checked the barometer, looked at where the weather vane points, monitored the thermometer, and put a licked finger up to test the wind direction.
As obsolete as those measures seem now, I confess they still make sense to me.
It’s a little silly if my phone says it is raining at “my location” and I can’t find a single cloud.
I want to know what is happening around me from my own observation, trust my own eyes, feel my own sweat in the heat, my chilly goose bumps in the cold, my wet head in the rain, my hair messy in the wind.
I want to know we’re all in this together, right now.
I want to live completely in this world, living now, finger held to the wind.
Then, having the information I need, I throw myself completely into the arms of God.
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April is like the raggedy, wandering gypsy lad of the fairy tale. When he moves, streaks of gold show beneath his torn garments and you suspect that this elfin creature is actually a prince in disguise.
April is just that.
There are raggedy, cold days, dark black ones, but all through the month for a second, for an hour, or for three days at a stretch you glimpse pure gold.
The weeks pass and the rags slip away, a shred at a time. Toward the end of the month his royal highness stands before you. ~Jean Hersey from The Shape of a Year
I avoid spending much time in front of mirrors now. I’m thinning on top, thickening a bit lower, sagging and stretching, wrinkled and patched and, let’s face it…raggedy.
Still, if I look closely past the rags and sags, I see the same eyes as my younger self peering back at me.
There are some things that age does not disguise.
The lightness and freshness of youth might be covered up with the trappings of aging, but I’m overjoyed to still be here, just as I am.
Every once in awhile, I believe I glimpse a little gold under my wrinkly surface.
I’m no queen or princess in disguise, but breathing in the scents of certain perfumed days of April can make me feel like one.
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