Mid-January and still the last amaryllis refuses. Planted in October, it just now raises a green bud tip to the bright window. Inside the plain package waits a blaring red, the flower furled, held like breath in the trumpeter’s body. ~Francesca Bell “Late Blooming” from What Small Sound
Sometimes when you’re in a dark place you think you’ve been buried, but actually you’ve been planted. ~Christine Caine
It came home with me over a month ago, a non-descript bulb with a green sword-blade shoot emerging shyly from the top.
Its care and feeding was a lot of “watch and wait” and just a little water. It has been our winter morning entertainment as we munched down cereal, gauging how many centimeters it rose over night.
It took over the kitchen table~ two tall stalks topped with tight-fisted buds which opened oh-so-slowly over several days like a drowsy student after Christmas break, not yet ready to meet and greet the world but once the commitment to wake is made, there is no other blossoming quite like it anywhere.
How can we possibly understand, while still buried in the dark, that we too rest planted in holy ground, waiting for the wakening that calls us forth to bloom, and fruit, and amaze.
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torrent rain driven aslant against the barn’s side
swollen Yamhill Creek furious with water
another V of geese over the farm this morning
the plowed field soggy underfoot fixed on distant May
a hawk hung in chill October air like a narrow-winged thought. ~Ed Higgins, “Anticipating Winter” from Near Truth Only
Field with Plowing Farmers by Vincent Van Gogh
Bleak winter weather is predicted to arrive nearly everywhere this week, with subzero temperatures, wind chills and blizzards.
I’m really not mentally ready for this coming cold, but an Arctic outflow waits for no one and certainly not for me.
The gulls, geese and swans somehow endure the chill, gleaning our neighbors’ muddy corn stalk fields, while overhead, eagles and hawks float on the wind currents, scanning for prey.
As I warm up in the house after barn chores, I turn the calendar pages, looking ahead to March. I know better than to try to rush time when each freezing day is precious and fleeting. I still try.
Like the birds sticking it out through winter here, the snowdrops are sprouting from under the leaf cover, as they do each January. They, like me, trust that spring is only around the corner.
So we endure what we must now with the knowledge of what comes next.
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Tonight at sunset walking on the snowy road, my shoes crunching on the frozen gravel, first
through the woods, then out into the open fields past a couple of trailers and some pickup trucks, I stop
and look at the sky. Suddenly: orange, red, pink, blue, green, purple, yellow, gray, all at once and everywhere.
I pause in this moment at the beginning of my old age and I say a prayer of gratitude for getting to this evening
a prayer for being here, today, now, alive in this life, in this evening, under this sky. ~David Budbill “Winter: Tonight: Sunset”
I strive to remember, each day, no matter how things feel, no matter how tired or distracted I am, no matter how worried, or fearful or heartsick over the state of the world or the state of my soul:
it is up to me to distill my gratitude down to this one moment of beauty that will never come again.
One breath, one blink, one pause, one whispered word: wow.
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Find a quiet rain. Then a green spruce tree. You will notice that nearly every needle has been decorated with a tiny raindrop ornament. Look closely inside the drop and there you are. In color. Upside down. Raindrops have been collecting snapshots since objects and people were placed, to their surprise, here and there on earth.
…even if we are only on display for a moment in a water drop as it clings to a pine needle, it is expected that we be on our best behavior, hair combed, jacket buttoned, no vulgar language. Smiling is not necessary, but a pleasant attitude is helpful, and would be, I think, appreciated. ~Tom Hennen from “Outdoor Photos”
… We are, as we have always been, dangerous creatures, the enemies of our own happiness. But the only help we have ever found for this, the only melioration, is in mutual reverence.
God’s grace comes to us unmerited, the theologians say. But the grace we could extend to one another we consider it best to withhold in very many cases, presumptively, or in the absence of what we consider true or sufficient merit (we being more particular than God), or because few gracious acts, if they really deserve the name, would stand up to a cost-benefit analysis.
This is not the consequence of a new atheism, or a systemic materialism that afflicts our age more than others. It is good old human meanness, which finds its terms and pretexts in every age. The best argument against human grandeur is the meagerness of our response to it, paradoxically enough.
And yet, the beautiful persists, and so do eloquence and depth of thought, and they belong to all of us because they are the most pregnant evidence we can have of what is possible in us. ~ Marilynne Robinson from “What Are We Doing Here?”
Grace rains down on us, often as a gentle shower, but sometimes in a torrential downpour.
I prefer quiet drizzle, clinging as droplets which reflect me as an earth-bound image of God.
Often, when I look at my upside-down image in a hanging drop, I feel downright unimpressive, even grouchy about getting wet. There I am, captured in a transparent selfie, about to fall to the ground and disappear forever.
Yet there are times when my image actually looks and feels presentable – maybe even a little beautiful – inside that drop of grace water.
God creates us pregnant with possibility. It is up to me to water the world with the love He bestows as unmerited grace. He can be so gentle and quiet, but I must be prepared for the deluge that sweeps me off my feet.
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The house lights go off and the footlights come on. Even the chattiest stop chattering as they wait in darkness for the curtain to rise. In the orchestra pit, the violin bows are poised. The conductor has raised the baton.
In the silence of a midwinter dusk there is far off in the deeps of it somewhere a sound so faint that for all you can tell it may be only the sound of the silence itself. You hold your breath to listen.
You walk up the steps to the front door. The empty windows at either side of it tell you nothing, or almost nothing. For a second you catch a whiff in the air of some fragrance that reminds you of a place you’ve never been and a time you have no words for. You are aware of the beating of your heart.
The extraordinary thing that is about to happen is matched only by the extraordinary moment just before it happens.
Advent is the name of that moment.
The Salvation Army Santa Claus clangs his bell. The sidewalks are so crowded you can hardly move. Exhaust fumes are the chief fragrance in the air, and everybody is as bundled up against any sense of what all the fuss is really about as they are bundled up against the windchill factor.
But if you concentrate just for an instant, far off in the deeps of yourself somewhere you can feel the beating of your heart. For all its madness and lostness, not to mention your own, you can hear the world itself holding its breath. ~Frederick Buechner – originally published in Whistling in the Dark and later in Beyond Words
What went up must come down. It isn’t just a law of physics. It is the reality of Christmas.
True, some houses have multicolored lights strung along their gutters year round, just not illuminated. And I’ve known some people’s artificial trees to stay up until Valentine’s Day or longer. But most of us dismantle what we so lovingly strung up, trimmed and decorated only a month or so ago.
It is a sad day taking down Christmas.
As a child I was so reluctant to see the tree come down that I’d cut a sprig of evergreen branch, complete with tinsel, and would put it in a vase of water in my bedroom in order for a small part of Christmas to linger a little longer. By April it would be crispy dry and forgotten and my mother would sneak in and toss it out, without my even missing it.
All the anticipation is spent and our energy wanes. Winter has only begun and now we’re boxing up the twinkling lights and putting away the ribbons and bows. All the fun stuff is tucked away for another year in the garage and attic. Maybe we have the timing of this celebration all wrong. Instead of the Twelve Days of Christmas it should be the Twelve Weeks–the lights should stay up until St. Patrick’s Day at least, just to keep us out of the shadows and doldrums of winter.
Today, as I swept up the last of the fir needles that had dropped to the floor, I knew, like the tree that I watered faithfully in the house for three weeks, I too have been drying up and parts of me left behind for others to sweep up. There had been the excitement of family brought together from all ends of the earth, friends gathering for meals and games, special church services, but now, some quiet time is sorely needed. The party simply can’t be sustained. The lights have to go off, and the eyes have to close.
So we will now walk into a winter replete with the startling splash of orange red that paints the skies in the evenings, the stark and gorgeous snow covered peaks surrounding us during the day, the grace of bald eagles and trumpeter swans flying overhead, the heavenly lights that twinkle every night, the shining globe that circles full above us, and the loving support of the Hand that rocks us to sleep when we need it.
We don’t need full stockings on the hearth, Christmas villages on the side table, or a blinking star on the top of the tree to know the comfort of His care and the astounding beauty of His creation, available for us without batteries, electrical plug ins, or the need of a ladder.
Instead of us pulling down Christmas, Christmas pulls us up from the doldrums, alive to possibility.
Every day. Year round. And we hold our breath, listening and waiting.
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Writer Luci Shaw turned 95 yesterday. A life-long poet and essayist in addition to being a wife, mother, publisher, gardener and outdoor enthusiast, Luci is a child of God who is continually living out and articulating the questions of faith, grace, and belief.
It is my privilege to know her as a neighbor in nearby Bellingham. Her books grace my shelves and I cherish her personal words of encouragement and mentoring.
Luci has gifted the world for decades with beauty and honesty, composing enriching poetic observations with heavenly anticipation.
Below is only a small sample of her work, some published as recently as two weeks ago – more of her writing and many books can be found at www.lucishaw.com.
Happy Birthday, Luci! You are beloved and blessed!
Luci Shaw -virtual presentation for Calvin Festival of Faith and Writing 2022
Last night I lay awake and practiced getting old. Not difficult,
but I needed to teach myself to love my destination before I arrive.
I feel the earth shifting under me. My writing hand shakes—its rubbery nudges clumsy,
my mind going slack, the way a day will lose its light and give itself to darkness,
and that long, nocturnal pause of inquiry— What next? And how long before light
reopens her blue eye? And will I need to learn a new language to converse with my Creator?
So, I am a questioner, one who waits, still, to arrive somewhere, some bright nest where
a new language breeds that I can learn to speak, unhindered, into heaven’s air,
somewhere I can live a long time, and never have to look back. ~Luci Shaw “December the 95th Year”
Luci Shaw at a Bellingham reading at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church -2017
In time of drought, let us be thankful for this very gentle rain, a gift not to be disdained though it is little and brief, reaching no great depth, barely kissing the leaves’ lips. Think of it as mercy. Other minor blessings may show up—tweezers for splinters, change for the parking meter, a green light at the intersection, a cool wind that lifts away summer’s suffocating heat. An apology after a harsh comment. A word that opens an unfinished poem like a key in a lock. ~Luci Shaw “Signs” from Eye of the Beholder.
Luci at a Bellingham reading of her poetry at Village Books in 2016
These still December mornings… Outside everything’s tinted rose, grape, turquoise, silver–the stones by the path, the skin of the sun
on the pond ice, at the night the aureola of a pregnant moon, like me, iridescent, almost full term with light. ~Luci Shaw from “Advent Visitation“in Accompanied by Angels
Today, in Bellingham, even the sidewalks gleam. Small change glints from the creases in the lady’s mantle and the hostas after the rain that falls, like grace, unmerited. My pockets are full, spilling over. ~Luci Shaw from “Small Change”
I love driving in Bellingham in the spring. In spite of the chilly weather, all the fruit trees are ‘springing,’ singing themselves into being in magnificent displays of pink and white–apricot, plum, apple, peach, cherry–undiscouraged by the darkly looming clouds today. Soon each twig will display its bridal bouquet grown for this spring wedding. I know this from years of observation! Next, they’ll grow so full and heavy with blossoms they’ll be ready to throw their bouquets to the crowd, and I’ll be watching for the petals to drop like wedding confetti, filling the gutters and swirling over sidewalks with their largesse. ~Luci Shaw
Out of the shame of spittle, the scratch of dirt, he made an anointing.
Oh, it was an agony-the gravel in the eye, the rude slime, the brittle clay caked on the lid.
But with the hurt light came leaping; in the shock and shine, abstracts took flesh and flew;
winged words like view and space, shape and shade and green and sky, bird and horizon and sun,
What next, she wonders, with the angel disappearing, and her room suddenly gone dark.
The loneliness of her news possesses her. She ponders how to tell her mother.
Still, the secret at her heart burns like a sun rising. How to hold it in— that which cannot be contained.
She nestles into herself, half-convinced it was some kind of good dream, she its visionary.
But then, part dazzled, part prescient— she hugs her body, a pod with a seed that will split her. ~Luci Shaw “Mary Considers Her Situation”
because we are all betrayers, taking silver and eating body and blood and asking (guilty) is it I and hearing him say yes it would be simple for us all to rush out and hang ourselves but if we find grace to weep and wait after the voice of morning has crowed in our ears clearly enough to break our hearts he will be there to ask us each again do you love me ~Luci Shaw “Judas, Peter” from Polishing the Petoskey Stone
Down he came from up, and in from out, and here from there. A long leap, an incandescent fall from magnificent to naked, frail, small, through space, between stars, into our chill night air, shrunk, in infant grace, to our damp, cramped earthy place among all the shivering sheep.
And now, after all, there he lies, fast asleep. ~Luci Shaw “Descent” from Accompanied By Angels
Blue homespun and the bend of my breast keep warm this small hot naked star fallen to my arms. (Rest … you who have had so far to come.) Now nearness satisfies the body of God sweetly. Quiet he lies whose vigor hurled a universe. He sleeps whose eyelids have not closed before. His breath (so slight it seems no breath at all) once ruffled the dark deeps to sprout a world. Charmed by doves’ voices, the whisper of straw, he dreams, hearing no music from his other spheres. Breath, mouth, ears, eyes he is curtailed who overflowed all skies, all years. Older than eternity, now he is new. Now native to earth as I am, nailed to my poor planet, caught that I might be free, blind in my womb to know my darkness ended, brought to this birth for me to be new-born, and for him to see me mended I must see him torn. ~Luci Shaw “Mary’s Song”
The juncture of twig and branch, scarred with lichen, is a gate we might enter, singing. ~Jane Kenyon from “Things” from Collected Poems
Who’s this –alone with stone and sea? It’s just the lowly Lichen We: the alga I, the fungus me; together, blooming quietly. What do we share–we two together? A brave indifference to the weather. A slow but steady growing pace. Resemblance to both mud and lace. As we now, so we shall be (if air clear and water free): the proud but lowly Lichen We, cemented for eternity. ~Joyce Sidman “The Lichen We” from Ubiquitous
All these years I overlooked them in the racket of the rest, this symbiotic splash of plant and fungus feeding on rock, on sun, a little moisture, air — tiny acid-factories dissolving salt from living rocks and eating them.
Here they are, blooming! Trail rock, talus and scree, all dusted with it: rust, ivory, brilliant yellow-green, and cliffs like murals!
Huge panels streaked and patched, quietly with shooting-stars and lupine at the base. Closer, with the glass, a city of cups!
Clumps of mushrooms and where do the plants begin? Why are they doing this? In this big sky and all around me peaks & the melting glaciers, why am I made to kneel and peer at Tiny? ~Lew Welch, “Springtime in the Rockies,Lichen” from Ring of Bone: Collected Poems
Back then, what did I know?
Uptown and downtown. Not north, not south, not you.
When I saw you, later, seaweed reefed in the air, you were grey-green, incomprehensible, old. What you clung to, hung from: old. Trees looking half-dead, stones.
Marriage of fungi and algae, chemists of air, changers of nitrogen-unusable into nitrogen-usable.
Like those nameless ones who kept painting, shaping, engraving, unseen, unread, unremembered. Not caring if they were no good, if they were past it.
Rock wools, water fans, earth scale, mouse ears, dust, ash-of-the-woods. Transformers unvalued, uncounted. Cell by cell, word by word, making a world they could live in. ~Jane Hirshfield from “For the Lichens” from Come, Thief
But what is life to a lichen? Yet its impulse to exist, to be, is every bit as strong as ours — arguably even stronger. If I were told that I had to spend decades being a furry growth on a rock in the woods, I believe I would lose the will to go on. Lichens don’t. Like virtually all living things, they will suffer any hardship, endure any insult, for a moment’s additional existence. Life, in short, just wants to be. ~Bill Bryson from A Short History of Nearly Everything
I’ve lived in the Pacific Northwest for nearly 70 years – this farm for 30 years. The grandeur of the snow-capped mountains to the north and east and the peaceful shore to the west overwhelms everything in between. Autumn after autumn, I’ve walked past these antique apple trees, but had never stopped to really look at the landscape growing on their bare shoulders and arms. There is a whole other ecosystem on each tree, a fairy land of earth bound dryland seaweed, luxuriant in the fall rains, colorful in the winter, hidden behind leaves and fruit in the hot summer. I had never really noticed the varied color and texture all around me.
This is the world of lichen, a mixed up symbiotic cross between algae and fungus, opportunistic enough to thrive on rock faces, but simply ecstatic on absorbent bark.
It hasn’t bothered them not to be noticed as they are busy minding their own business. As poet John McCullough writes in his poem “Lichen”:
It is merely a question of continuous adjustment, of improvising a life.
When I’m far from friends or the easing of a wind against my back, I think of lichen— never and always true to its essence, never and always at home.
Instead of lifting my eyes to the hills and the bay for a visual feast, I need only open the back gate to gaze on this landscape found on the ancient branches in my own back yard.
It’s a rich life of improvisation indeed.
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At times, particularly at night, I’m keenly aware of all the unknowable and uncountable lives happening behind closed doors and curtained windows, each one living their own sacred moment in time.
So many meals being eaten, baths taken, tears shed, stories told, prayers recited, kisses shared.
These moments are the blessings of a quotidian predictability that we try to pass on to our children. In our routines, we may become oblivious to the mysteries happening all around us: innumerable stars shining, fragile moths fluttering and sweetening apples hanging heavy — yet there is mystery within each of us as well.
In the dark of night, despite our weariness: We are remarkably loved and loving. We try our best in difficult times and circumstances. We grieve losses while struggling to survive sorrows. We seek purpose and meaning, despite feeling unworthy.
Each passing moment becomes one to cherish. Each moment mysteriously holy and sweet.
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I’m scrambling an egg for my daughter. “Why are you always whistling?” she asks. “Because I’m happy.” And it’s true, Though it stuns me to say it aloud; There was a time when I wouldn’t Have seen it as my future. It’s partly a matter Of who is there to eat the egg: The self fallen out of love with itself Through the tedium of familiarity, Or this little self, So curious, so hungry, Who emerged from the woman I love, A woman who loves me in a way I’ve come to think I deserve, Now that it arrives from outside me. Everything changes, we’re told, And now the changes are everywhere: The house with its morning light That fills me like a revelation, The yard with its trees That cast a bit more shade each summer, The love of a woman That both is and isn’t confounding, And the love Of this clamor of questions at my waist. Clamor of questions, You clamor of answers, Here’s your egg. ~C.G. Hanzlicek “Egg” from Against Dreaming.
Tell all the truth but tell it slant — Success in Circuit lies Too bright for our infirm Delight The Truth’s superb surprise As Lightning to the Children eased With explanation kind The Truth must dazzle gradually Or every man be blind — ~Emily Dickinson
When a grandchild asks a question, it is like a smooth and perfect egg safely in the nest, awaiting the exact moment to open up to breathe deeply of the world.
Sometimes my answer, try as I might, results in broken shell fragments, the insides all scrambled and released too soon.
I’m confounded by my love for childrens’ innocence in a harsh and painful world – I don’t always know the best thing to say when the truth has bits of hard shell in it. I end up telling the truth a bit slant so it might dazzle them gradually.
So I encourage them to keep asking their clamor of questions, and I do my best to answer in a way so they stay hungry for more, filled with truths without being blinded.
So many questions in their minds and mine. So many eggs to open gently so the truth remains whole.
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Like in old cans of paint the last green hue, these leaves are sere and rough and dull-complected behind the blossom clusters in which blue is not so much displayed as it’s reflected;
They do reflect it imprecise and teary, as though they’d rather have it go away, and just like faded, once blue stationery, they’re tinged with yellow, violet and gray;
As in an often laundered children’s smock, cast off, its usefulness now all but over, one senses running down a small life’s clock.
Yet suddenly the blue revives, it seems, and in among these clusters one discovers a tender blue rejoicing in the green. ~Rainer Maria Rilke “Blue Hydrangea” Translation by Bernhard Frank
… I’m tethered, and devoted to your raw and lonely bloom
my lavish need to drink your world of crowded cups to fill. ~Tara Bray “hydrangea” from Image Journal
Dwelling within a mosaic of dying colors, these petals fold and collapse under the weight of the sky’s tears.
This hydrangea bears a rainbow of hues, once-vibrant promises of blue now fading to rusts and grays.
I know what this is like: the running out of the clock, feeling the limits of vitality.
Withering and drying, I’m drawn, thirsty for the beauty, to this waning artist’s palette.
To quench my thirst: from an open cup, an invitation, an everlasting visual sacrament.
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