Category: clouds

A Slumbering Silence

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Again the woods are odorous, the lark
Lifts on upsoaring wings the heaven gray
That hung above the tree-tops, veiled and dark,
Where branches bare disclosed the empty day.

After long rainy afternoons an hour
Comes with its shafts of golden light and flings
Them at the windows in a radiant shower,
And rain drops beat the panes like timorous wings.

Then all is still. The stones are crooned to sleep
By the soft sound of rain that slowly dies;
And cradled in the branches, hidden deep
In each bright bud, a slumbering silence lies.
~Rainer Maria Rilke, “In April” translated by Jessie Lamont

A Light exists in Spring
Not present on the year
At any other period –
When March is scarcely here

A Color stands abroad
On Solitary Hills
That Science cannot overtake,
But Human Nature feels.
~Emily Dickinson from 85- Part two: Nature

sunrise410143

I do not know what gorgeous thing
the bluebird keeps saying,
his voice easing out of his throat,
beak, body into the pink air
of the early morning. I like it
whatever it is. Sometimes
it seems the only thing in the world
that is without dark thoughts.
Sometimes it seems the only thing
in the world that is without
questions that can’t and probably
never will be answered, the
only thing that is entirely content
with the pink, then clear white
morning and, gratefully, says so.
~Mary Oliver “What Gorgeous Thing” from Blue Horses 

Maybe it is the particular tilt of the globe on its axis,
or the suffusion of clouds mixing
with the perpetually damp atmosphere,
or perhaps the knowledge
the darkness no longer claims us
most of our waking time.

The light of gentle April
has its own sacred whispering voice
orchestrated with myriad birdsong.

We are immersed inside it for just a few weeks,
yet it belongs framed on gallery walls for perpetuity
to be admired at any time of the year,
whenever we seek sweet slumber on
a soft cushion of golden pastels.

Surrounded by such sacrament
without and within,
our recreated life in the Lord
gently glows.

Bring to Light the Mystery: Blown Away

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Like a storm
of hornets, the
little white planets
layer and relayer
as they whip around
in their high orbits,
getting more and
more dense before
they crash against
our crust. A maelstrom
of ferocious little
fists and punches,
so hard to believe
once it’s past.
~Kay Ryan “Hailstorm”

Several years ago, a brief and unexpected Palm Sunday storm blew through with gusts of southerly winds, thunder, horizontal rain and noisy hale. I had left the north/south center aisle doors wide open after morning chores, so the storm also blew through the barn. Hay, empty buckets, horse halters and cat food were strewn about. The Haflinger horses stood wide-eyed and fretful in their stalls as the hail on the metal roof hammered away.

Once I got the doors closed and secured, all was soon made right. The horses relaxed and got back to their meals and things felt normal again.

Today, Holy Monday morning, all seems calm but nevertheless, somewhat beaten up. The barn is still there, the roof still on, the horses where they belong and all seems to be as it was before the barnstorming wind. Or so it might appear.

This wind heralds another storm beginning this week that hits with such force that I’m knocked off my feet, blown away, and left bruised and breathless. No latches, locks, or barricades are strong enough to protect me from what will come over the next few days.

Yesterday he rode in on a donkey softly, humbly, and wept at what he knew must come.

Today, he overturns the tables in his fury.

Tomorrow he describes the destruction that is to happen, yet no one understands.

Wednesday, a woman boldly anoints him with precious oil, as preparation, ignoring his disciples’ rebukes.

On Thursday, he kneels before his friends, pours water over their dusty feet, presides over a simple meal, and later, abandoned, sweats blood in agonized prayer.

By Friday, all culminates in a most perfect storm, transforming everything in its path, leaving nothing untouched, the curtain torn, the veil removed.

The silence on Saturday is deafening.

Next Sunday, the Son rises, sheds his shroud and neatly folds what is no longer needed. He is nearly unrecognizable in his glory.

He calls my name, my heart burns within me at his words and I can never be the same again.

I am, once again and always, barnstormed to the depths of my soul. Doors flung open wide, my roof pulled off, everything of no consequence blown away and now replaced, renewed and reconciled.

May it be done this week as he has said, again and yet again, year after year, life after life.

another barnstorming

This year’s Barnstorming Lenten theme is Ephesians 3:9:

…to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things…

1. Courage, my soul, and let us journey on,
Tho’ the night is dark, it won’t be very long.
Thanks be to God, the morning light appears,
And the storm is passing over, Hallelujah!

Chorus: Hallelujah! Hallelujah! The storm is passing over, Hallelujah!

2. Billows rolling high, and thunder shakes the ground,
Lightnings flash, and tempest all around,
Jesus walks the sea and calms the angry waves,
And the storm is passing over, Hallelujah! [Chorus]

3. The stars have disappeared, and distant lights are dim,
My soul is filled with fears, the seas are breaking in.
I hear the Master cry, “Be not afraid, ’tis I,”
And the storm is passing over, Hallelujah!
[Chorus]

4. Soon we shall reach the distant shining shore,
Free from all the storms, we’ll rest forevermore.
Safe within the veil, we’ll furl the riven sail,
And the storm will all be over, Hallelujah! [Chorus]

And With Ah! Bright Wings

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The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
~Gerard Manley Hopkins “God’s Grandeur”

Whom thou conceivst, conceived; yea thou art now
Thy Maker’s maker, and thy Father’s mother;
Thou hast light in dark, and shutst in little room,
Immensity cloistered in thy dear womb. 
~John Donne from “Annunciation”

I know this sound, first birds of morning.
As a child, I waited for hours for the drape
of night to roll up again. Leaning into the first
hint of the fresh day, the fragile lace of hesitant
light, the receding darkness dappled with bird song,
able at last to close my eyes.
I know this sound, some kind of redemption,
waking me from scattered sleep, a healing fragment
even as the work of the previous day marks my bones
in notches. Night leaves its small fur as the dawn
pushes, as the birds persist, and morning unfurls
like a promise you hoped someone would keep.
~Susan Moorhead “First Light” from Carry Darkness, Carry Light

Our February farm sunrises have always been full of promise over the three decades we’ve been here. The birds are waking earlier each day and when mornings are soaked, dripping with light and color, the air itself is alive.

Nothing though quite matches the phenomenon in February 2015 (top photo) when a fall streak hole or “key hole” cloud formed over nearby foothills.

It looked to me as if angels were bursting through an unfurling break in heaven’s moving veil. Though it didn’t last long, it was seen for miles around us.

When morning breaks the night, it is like the first morning which came into being with His Words:

“Let there be light” — and there continues to be the most amazing light…

A Thousand Thoughts

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Yes, I know my mind is a fickle little bee
doting on a thousand thoughts, but I’m getting
better at chasing my mind back to the moment

so I can see the spiderwebs making hammocks
the color of the moon. My son tries to photograph
a rainbow outside the car window. It’s impossible,

of course, this wonder, the trying to hold it.
But I do what I can. I’ve stopped waiting to enjoy
the cinnamon tea. I take deeper breaths and listen

to the flutter of strings floating down from café
speakers. I don’t want to be a pilgrim of memory
anymore. I want to pop the champagne and salute

this now, and this one with soft brie, dried apricots,
and the sunset celebration another anniversary
of light while I eat fists of grapes the same shade

and sweetness of night. Congratulations, Time. Look
at you and your gorgeous minutes full of everything.
Three cheers for the temp agency that hired this

particular day, these particular clouds, this set
of honking geese migrating through it. I want to be
better at being alive, so I’ve been picturing my heart

as a fox—which means wild and nocturnal, not
terrorizing the neighbor’s chickens. My love says
most equations in quantum field theory give infinity

as an answer, which is not meaningful because all
infinities are the same. In that case, let’s stop reaching
so hard for it. I’ll take this infinity’s morning where

my son and I confused falling leaves for monarchs.
Every time we thought we saw a butterfly, it was
just a leaf with the gentlest falling. We laughed at

every mistake, and he said, That was a beautiful
confusion. Sometimes when the moment doesn’t offer
a praying mantis on the porch or a charismatic sky,

I imagine my heart is my son’s face, and I am back
in love with the day, its astonishments like hot-air
balloons, and the daily present of power lines strung

with starlings like dozens of music notes. Let me
be more bound to my living in each moment, be held
by this hum, that cloud, this breath, that shroud.
~Traci Brimhall “This Beautiful Confusion” from Love Prodigal

Some Monday mornings, my mind is going in a thousand different directions. So I follow, knowing there will never be another Monday morning quite like this one. I hope there will be a few hundred more Monday mornings to come.

I want to be better at being alive,
noticing, remembering, connecting,
and grateful to be breathing.

Perhaps you are here because — you do too…

our sons – 1990

A Lingering Pain

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I have left my wife at the airport,
flying out to help our daughter
whose baby will not eat.
And I am driving on to Kent
to hear some poets read tonight.

I don’t know what to do with myself
when she leaves me like this.
An old friend has decided to
end our friendship. Another
is breaking it off with his wife.

I don’t know what to say
to any of this-Life’s hard.
And I say it aloud to myself,
Living is hard, and drive further
into the darkness, my headlights
only going so far.

I sense my own tense breath, this fear
we call stress, making it something else,
hiding from all that is real.

As I glide past Twin Lakes,
flat bodies of water under stars,
I hold the wheel gently, slowing my
body to the road, and know again that
this is just living, not a trauma
nor dying, but a lingering pain
reminding us that we are alive.
~Larry Smith “Following the Road” from A River Remains

The grace of God means something like:
Here is your life.
You might never have been, but you are because
the party wouldn’t have been complete without you.
Here is the world.
Beautiful and terrible things will happen.
Don’t be afraid. I am with you.
Nothing can ever separate us.
It’s for you I created the universe.
I love you. 
There’s only one catch.
Like any other gift, the gift of grace can be yours
only if you’ll reach out and take it. 
Maybe being able to reach out and take it is a gift too. 
~Frederich Buechner from Wishful Thinking 

You get out of bed, wash and dress;
eat breakfast, say goodbye and go away
never maybe, to return for all you know,
to work, talk, lust, pray, dawdle and do,
and at the end of the day, if your luck holds,
you come home again, home again.
Then night again. Bed. The little death of sleep, sleep of death. Morning, afternoon, evening—
the hours of the day, of any day, of your day and my day.
The alphabet of grace.
If there is a God who speaks anywhere, surely he speaks here:
through waking up and working,
through going away and coming back again,
through people you read and books you meet,
through falling asleep in the dark.
Life is grace. Sleep is forgiveness. The night absolves.
Darkness wipes the slate clean, not spotless to be sure,
but clean enough for another day’s chalking.
~Frederich Buechner from “The Alphabet of Grace

Our six year old grandson, hoping to calm his older sister’s melt-down:
“Life is life – it’ll be okay tomorrow…“

So tomorrow –
move forward to leave a mark on a new day
after tonight’s erasing rest.

No matter what took place this day,
no matter the misgivings,
no matter what should have been left unsaid,
no matter how hard the heart,
no matter the lingering pain,
there is another day to make it right.

Forgiveness finds a foothold in the dark,
when eyelids close,
thoughts quietly open,
voices hush in prayers
of praise, petition and gratitude.

And so now
simply sleep on it
knowing his grace
abounds in blameless dreams.

Morning will come
awash in new light,
another chance
freely given.

An Advent Threshold: This Widening Flood of Stillness

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I know this happiness
is provisional:

the looming presences –
great suffering, great fear –

withdraw only
into peripheral vision:

but ineluctable this shimmering
of wind in the blue leaves:

this flood of stillness
widening the lake of sky:

this need to dance,
this need to kneel:

this mystery:
~Denise Levertov “Of Being” from The Stream and the Sapphire

December rains have arrived in torrents in the Pacific Northwest,
swept in with widespread regional floods and wind,
leaving a mess of sorrow and silt in its wake.

There is still much to be thankful for
despite the powerlessness,
pain of loss and effort of recovery.
December is a frequent reminder
of our fragility and need for shelter
from the storms of life.

Blown off course, swept away,
drenched to the marrow,
pining for the light lost until solstice,
we hunker down in place,
burrowing in for a dark wet winter.

It is coming,
this veil of tears.
It is coming,
these night winds blowing away
our shield and protection.
It is coming,
these rushing waters,
taking us nowhere we wish to go.
It is coming,
this new moon forgetting how to shine.

Even so.
Our Light arrived powered from within,
ignited and irrepressible,
fueled by an overflowing abundance
of gentle loving and tender mercies.

Love spills like a flood from His broken Incarnate Heart,
promising the world a rainbow of undeserved Grace.

AI image created for this post

My 2025 Advent theme:
On the threshold between day and night

On that day there will be neither sunlight nor cold, frosty darkness. 
It will be a unique day—a day known only to the Lord—
with no distinction between day and night. 
When evening comes, there will be light.
Zechariah 14:6-7

So once in Israel love came to us incarnate, stood in the doorway between two worlds, and we were all afraid.
~Annie Dillard in Teaching a Stone to Talk

Lyrics: Could’ve come like a mighty storm
with all the strength of a hurricane
You could’ve come like a forest fire
with the power of heaven in your flame

But you came like a winter snow
quiet and soft and slow
Falling from the sky in the night
to the earth below

Could’ve swept in like a tidal wave
or an ocean to ravish our hearts
You could have come through like a roaring flood
to wipe away the things we’ve scarred

No, your voice wasn’t in a bush burning
No, your voice wasn’t in a rushing wind
It was still, it was small, it was hidden
by Audrey Assad

Come and See: Make Straight the Way

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And this is the testimony of John, when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, “Who are you?”  He confessed, and did not deny, but confessed, “I am not the Christ.” 

And they asked him, “What then? Are you Elijah?”
He said, “I am not.” “Are you the Prophet?”
And he answered, “No.” 
 So they said to him, “Who are you? We need to give an answer to those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?” 
 He said, “I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord,’ as the prophet Isaiah said.”

(Now they had been sent from the Pharisees.) They asked him, “Then why are you baptizing, if you are neither the Christ, nor Elijah, nor the Prophet?” 

John answered them, “I baptize with water, but among you stands one you do not know, even he who comes after me, the strap of whose sandal I am not worthy to untie.” These things took place in Bethany across the Jordan, where John was baptizing.
John 1:19-28

We grow accustomed to the Dark —
When Light is put away —
As when the Neighbor holds the Lamp
To witness her Good bye —

A Moment — We Uncertain step
For newness of the night —
Then — fit our Vision to the Dark —
And meet the Road — erect —

And so of larger — Darknesses —
Those Evenings of the Brain —
When not a Moon disclose a sign —
Or Star — come out — within —

The Bravest — grope a little —
And sometimes hit a Tree
Directly in the Forehead —
But as they learn to see —

Either the Darkness alters —
Or something in the sight
Adjusts itself to Midnight —
And Life steps almost straight.
~Emily Dickinson

I admit that I’ve been stumbling about in the dark,
bearing the bruises and scrapes of
random collisions with objects hidden in the night.

My eyes must slowly adjust to such bare illumination,
as the Lamp sometimes is carried away.
I must feel my way along the road of life.

I know there are fellow darkness travelers
who also have lost their way and their Light,
giving what they can and sometimes more.

And so, blinded as we each are,
we run forehead-first into the Tree
which has always been there and always will be.

Because of who we are and Who loves us,
we, now free and forgiven,
follow a darkened road guaranteed straight, all the way Home.

I am reading slowly through the words in the Book of John over the next year. Each week, I will invite you to “come and see” what those words might mean as we explore His promises together.

Watch with Awe as it Unfolds…

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People are just as wonderful as sunsets if you let them be.
When I look at a sunset, I don’t find myself saying,
“Soften the orange a bit on the right hand corner.”
I don’t try to control a sunset.
I watch with awe as it unfolds.
~Carl Rogers from A Way of Being

Once I saw a chimpanzee gaze at a particularly beautiful sunset
for a full 15 minutes,
watching the changing colors
[and then] retire to the forest without picking a pawpaw for supper.
~Adriaan Krotlandt, Dutch ethologist in Scientific American (1962)

There is much about this life we cannot control.
We like to think we can.
We even try.

We are mere witness to changes wrought by the Creator,
how He reaches deep in a person or
how He paints in the skies.

Watch in awe.

To the Dappled Damson West

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I kiss my hand 
To the stars, lovely-asunder 
Starlight, wafting him out of it; and 
Glow, glory in thunder; 
Kiss my hand to the dappled-with-damson west: 
Since, tho’ he is under the world’s splendour and wonder, 
His mystery must be instressed, stressed; 
For I greet him the days I meet him, and bless when I understand. 
~Gerard Manley Hopkins from The Wreck of the Deutschland

I greet Him when I meet Him
as the plum color of the evening sky
spills as tipped paint
far fleeting across the horizon,
cleaned up and gone before grasped,
I kiss my hand
to the drama played out before the sun sets.

I greet Him when I meet Him
as starlight speckles
the overhead ceiling,
each touching infinity
where it begins
and never ends.

I greet Him when I meet Him
in glowing cloud mountains
sparking lightning
and clapping thunder,
applause for His
resplendent magnificence.

I greet Him when
He is hidden
mysterious
unknown
and unknowable,
waiting for the blessing
of understanding
wafting from Him
in royal color, in glistening speckle,
in enduring glow, in inspiring spark,
in appreciative applause
for His splendor
wrapped in wonder.

Wet from the Start

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On a rainy day in Seattle stumble into any coffee shop
and look wounded by the rain.

Say Last time I was in I left my black umbrella here.
A waitress in a blue beret will pull a black umbrella

from behind the counter and surrender it to you
like a sword at your knighting.

Unlike New Englanders, she’ll never ask you
to describe it, never ask what day you came in,

she’s intimate with rain and its appointments.
Look positively reunited with this black umbrella

and proceed to Belltown and Pike Place.
Sip cappuccino at the Cowgirl Luncheonette on First Ave.

Visit Buster selling tin salmon silhouettes
undulant in the wind, nosing ever into the oncoming,

meandering watery worlds, like you and the black umbrella,
the one you will lose on purpose at the day’s end

so you can go the way you came
into the world, wet looking.
~Rick Agran “Black Umbrellas” from Crow Milk

rainy day from a Starbucks shop in Edinburgh Scotland
Pike Street Market in Seattle
anywhere today in western Washington

Anyone using an umbrella in the Pacific Northwest must have come from somewhere else where rain drenches. In the northwest, we have at least 5 kinds of gray drizzle, none of which usually requires an umbrella.

This is embarrassing, but in my archive of over 20,000 photos, there is not one umbrella. I don’t even own one, having lived here for over 70 years.

We’re all about hooded jackets or going bare-headed if necessary.

Don’t ask me why, but it is a stubborn cultural “I’m a native” thing and umbrellas seem like too much of a bother, a sign of weakness.

I appreciated my visits to Japan which can have torrential but brief rainstorms, and almost every shop had a bucket of umbrellas at the door that you could “borrow” and then drop off at your next stop. No keeping track. Very civilized.

But not here.

I think Washingtonians just like to be rebaptized, over and over…
Maybe that’s why.