Category: ordinary

The Courage to Fail

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All the art of living lies
in a fine mingling of letting go and holding on.
~Henry Ellis

The trees are undressing, and fling in many places—
On the gray road, the roof, the window-sill—
Their radiant robes and ribbons and yellow laces;
A leaf each second so is flung at will,
Here, there, another and another, still and still.

A spider’s web has caught one while downcoming,
That stays there dangling when the rest pass on;
Like a suspended criminal hangs he, mumming
In golden garb, while one yet green, high yon,
Trembles, as fearing such a fate for himself anon.
~Thomas Hardy “Last Week in October”

Watching a dry leaf twirl
in the wind, its stem still

tethered to the tree, I think
of how stubborn I’ve been,

refusing to let go of what was
never intended for me,

not knowing something better
was waiting if I’d let myself lift

into the gale, that the courage
to fail is life’s greatest gift.
~Beth Copeland “Late November” from I Ask the Mountain to Heal My Heart: Poems

The builder who first bridged Niagara’s gorge,
Before he swung his cable, shore to shore,   
Sent out across the gulf his venturing kite   
Bearing a slender cord for unseen hands   
To grasp upon the further cliff and draw
A greater cord, and then a greater yet;   
Till at the last across the chasm swung   
The cable then the mighty bridge in air!
So we may send our little timid thought  
Across the void, out to God’s reaching hands—
Send out our love and faith to thread the deep—
Thought after thought until the little cord
Has greatened to a chain no chance can break,
And we are anchored to the Infinite!
~Edwin Markham  “Anchored to the Infinite”

I feel like the only one who failed
to fall from the tree along with all the others,
caught in an invisible silken strand,
dangling suspended and helpless,
twisting and turning in the storms of winter.

I wish I had the faith to trust
in this slender thread
bridging the chasm between heaven and earth,
assured rescue will come as
others pass me by ~~
another and another, still and still.

So I remain suspended in the void,
anchored to God’s reaching hands.

I’ll never again be let go.

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Year After Year

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The birds do not sing in these mornings. The skies
are white all day. The Canadian geese fly over
high up in the moonlight with the lonely sound
of their discontent. Going south. Now the rains
and soon the snow. The black trees are leafless,
the flowers gone. Only cabbages are left
in the bedraggled garden. Truth becomes visible,
the architecture of the soul begins to show through.
God has put off his panoply and is at home with us.
We are returned to what lay beneath the beauty.
We have resumed our lives. There is no hurry now.
We make love without rushing and find ourselves
afterward with someone we know well. Time to be
what we are getting ready to be next. This loving,
this relishing, our gladness, this being puts down
roots and comes back again year after year.
~Jack Gilbert “Half the Truth” from Collected Poems.

In the shape of this night, in the still fall
of snow, Father
In all that is cold and tiny, these little birds
and children…
Before the bells ring, before this little point in time
has rushed us on
Before this clean moment has gone, before this night
turns to face tomorrow, Father
There is this high singing in the air
Forever this sorrowful human face in eternity’s window
And there are other bells that we would ring, Father
Other bells that we would ring.
~Kenneth Patchen from “At the New Year”

The object of a New Year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul…
~G.K.Chesterton from A Chesterton Calendar

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
   The flying cloud, the frosty light:
   The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
   Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
   The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring in the valiant man and free,
   The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
   Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.
~Lord Alfred Tennyson from “In Memoriam”

Often when something is ending
we discover within it the spore of new beginning,
and a whole new train of possibility is in motion
before we even realize it.
When the heart is ready for a fresh beginning,
unforeseen things can emerge.
And in a sense, this is exactly what a beginning does.
It is an opening for surprises. 
~John O’Donohue from “To Bless the Space Between Us”

No heralding trumpets –
Just softening shadows,
Timed and tracked.

Fingers of light flaring amber
Over the eastern ridge of foothills,
Caress the slopes of snow capped peaks.

So I bid this past year farewell.

The horizon’s glowing coral palette
Climbs higher, wider, deeper
Painting clouds beyond reach.

Each earthly thing bathed in gold
Glimpsed and grasped without fanfare
Yet wholly miraculous.

Too soon this day, this year, becomes ordinary again
Although it is truth:
we can be born anew, year after year.

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An Advent Threshold: For the Growing Grey

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Autumn
Was certainly not winter, scholars say,
When holy habitation broke the chill
Of hearth-felt separation, icy still,
The love of life in man that Christmas day.
Was autumn, rather, if seasons speak true;
When green retreats from sight’s still ling’ring gaze,
And creeping cold numbs sense in sundry ways,
While settling silence speaks of solitude.
Hope happens when conditions are as these; 
Comes finally lock-armed with death and sin,
When deep’ning dark demands its full display.
Then fallen nature driven to her knees
Flames russet, auburn, orange fierce from within,
And brush burns brighter for the growing grey.
~David Baird “Autumn”

We have become so accustomed to the idea of divine love and of God’s coming at Christmas that we no longer feel the shiver of fear that God’s coming should arouse in us.

We are indifferent to the message, taking only the pleasant and agreeable out of it and forgetting the serious aspect, that the God of the world draws near to the people of our little earth and lays claim to us.

The coming of God is truly not only glad tidings, but first of all frightening news for everyone who has a conscience.
~Dietrich Bonhoeffer from Watch for the Light

The shepherds were sore afraid. So why aren’t we?

The scholars say Christ was most likely born in the autumn of the year ~ so fitting, as our reds and oranges fade fast to grey as we descend into this wintering world on the threshold of dying, crying out for resuscitation. 

Murderous frosts and falling snow have wilted down all that was flush with life and we become desperate for hope for renewal.

And so this babe has come like a refiner’s fire to lay claim to us and we feel the heat of His embrace – in the middle of the chill, in the middle of our dying – no matter what time of year.

He finds us in our liminal moment of transition.

Hope happens when conditions are as these…

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

1. Father, enthroned on high—―Holy, holy!
Ancient eternal Light—hear our prayer.

REFRAIN
Come, O Redeemer, come;
grant us mercy.
Come, O Redeemer, come;
grant us peace.

2. Lord, save us from the dark of our striving,
faithless, troubled hearts weighed down. REFRAIN

3. Look now upon our need; Lord, be with us.
Heal us and make us free from our sin. REFRAIN

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The Whole Shadowed Earth Reaching Up

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  the season quicker now
the darkening—

no longer the leaves
fluttering down

but the whole shadowed earth
reaching up, taking hold
~David Baker “Quicker”

Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp,
Or what’s a heaven for?
~Robert Browning from Andrea del Sarto

My branches are bared during this season of letting go.

As starkly revealed as I am, perhaps darkening days are a blessing: less spotlight on my complexity in silhouette – all knobby joints, awkward angles and curves.

One thing I know: in this season when I prefer the shadowland, I still reach up, trying to hold on to the promise beyond me. In fact, so many of us keep grasping at what we know is there but cannot see.

God has come down to grab on to each one of us — and is still hanging on.

We are not too plain or complex or awkward to be lifted, welcomed, cherished as we are, into heaven’s arms.

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The Intricate Texture of Things

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Here is a new light on the intricate texture of things in the world…: the way we the living are nibbled and nibbling — not held aloft on a cloud in the air but bumbling pitted and scarred and broken through a frayed and beautiful land.
~Annie Dillard in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

fogdrops3

The weather is getting brisker so the outdoor critters, some invited, some not,  are starting to move inside.  The cats scoot between our legs as we open the front door, heading straight for the fireplace to bask in the warmth rather than a cold wind. The pup comes in from the yard for a nightly snack and chew bone, and stretches out on the rug, acting every bit like a piece of furry furniture. And today there was another mouse in the trap under the sink. I almost thought we were mouse-free with three weeks of none sighted and none trapped, but there he was waiting for me in the morning, well fed and quite dead.  He became an opportune meal for a cat too lazy to go get himself a living breathing mouse.

From nibbling to nibbled.  It is a tough world, inside and out.

Our most numerous and ambitious visitors from outside are the spiders, appearing miraculously crawling futilely up the sides in the bathtub, or scurrying across the kitchen floor, or webbing themselves into a corner of the ceiling with little hope of catching anything but a stray house moth or two this time of year. Arachnids are certainly determined yet stationary predators, rebuilding their sticky traps as needed to ensure their victims won’t rip away, thereby destroying the web.

I don’t really mind sharing living quarters with another of God’s creatures, but I do prefer the ones that are officially invited into our space and not surprise guests. The rest are interlopers that I tolerate with grudging admiration for their instinctive ingenuity. I admit I’m much too large, inept, and bumbling to find my way into someone else’s abode through a barely perceptible crack, and I’m certainly incapable of weaving the intricate beauty of a symmetrical web placed just so in a high corner.

After all, I am just another creature in the same boat. There is something quite humbling about being actually invited into this frayed and beautiful, complex and broken world, “pitted and scarred” as I am. I’m grateful I’ve so far escaped capture in the various insidious traps of life,  not just the spring-loaded kind and the sticky filament kind.

So it is okay that I’m settled in, cozy in front of the fireplace, just a piece of the furniture. Just so long as I don’t startle anyone or nibble too much of what I shouldn’t, I just might be invited to stay awhile.

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A Wordless Song

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Everyone suddenly burst out singing;
And I was filled with such delight
As prisoned birds must find in freedom,
Winging wildly across the white
Orchards and dark-green fields; on—on—and out of sight.

Everyone’s voice was suddenly lifted;
And beauty came like the setting sun:
My heart was shaken with tears; and horror
Drifted away. . . O, but Everyone
Was a bird; and the song was wordless;
the singing will never be done. 
~Siegried Sassoon “Everyone Sang”

“Hope” is the thing with feathers –
That perches in the soul –
And sings the tune without the words –
And never stops – at all –

And sweetest – in the Gale – is heard –
And sore must be the storm –
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm –

I’ve heard it in the chillest land –
And on the strangest Sea –
Yet – never – in Extremity,
It asked a crumb – of me.
~Emily Dickinson “Hope is the thing with feathers”

When it feels like the world is rent in two,
and the gulf into which we topple
too wide and dark to climb without help,
we can look to the sky
and see the birds’ stitching and hear their wordless singing,
the careful caring line of connection
pulling us out of a hopeless hole,
startled and grateful
to be made whole.
Hope borne on feathered wings:
may we fly threaded and knitted to one another, singing.

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The Shadow of Joy

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Today as the news from Selma and Saigon 
poisons the air like fallout, 
I come again to see 
the serene great picture that I love. 

Here space and time exist in light  the eye like the eye of faith believes. 
The seen, the known 
dissolve in iridescence, become 
illusive flesh of light 
that was not, was, forever is. 

O light beheld as through refracting tears. 
Here is the aura of that world 
each of us has lost. 
Here is the shadow of its joy. 
~Robert Hayden “Monet’s Waterlilies”

…The world
is flux, and light becomes what it touches,
becomes water, lilies on water,
above and below water,
becomes lilac and mauve and yellow
and white and cerulean lamps,
small fists passing sunlight
so quickly to one another
that it would take long, streaming hair
inside my brush to catch it.
To paint the speed of light!
Our weighted shapes, these verticals,
burn to mix with air
and change our bones, skin, clothes
to gases.  Doctor,
if only you could see
how heaven pulls earth into its arms
and how infinitely the heart expands
to claim this world, blue vapor without end.
~Lisel Mueller, “Monet Refuses the Operation” from Second Language

Monet’s Waterlilies, Art Institute of Chicago

“Heaven pulls earth into its arms…”

We see things differently, don’t we?
What seems ordinary to one person is extraordinary to another.

How might I learn to adjust my focus to see things as you do?
How might I help others to see the world as I do?

The world is flux; my delight and dismay flows from moment to moment, from object to absence, from light to darkness, from color to gray. Perhaps the blur from the figurative (or real) cataract impeding my vision creates a deeper understanding, as I use my imagination to fill in what I can’t discern.

My heart and mind expands to claim this world and all that beauty has to offer, while heaven – all this while – is pulling me into its arms.

In heaven, my focus will be clear. It will all be extraordinarily holy.

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Come and See: Grasping a Rainbow of Words

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The true harvest of my daily life is somewhat as intangible and indescribable as the tints of morning or evening.  It is a little star-dust caught, a segment of the rainbow which I have clutched.
~Henry David Thoreau from Walden

In the beginning was the Word, 
and the Word was with God, 
and the Word was God.
John 1:1

Painting the indescribable with words necessitates subtlety, sound and rhythm.

The best word color portraits I know are by Gerard Manley Hopkins who created pictures through startling word combinations: 

“crimson-cresseted”,
“couple-colour”,
“rose-moles”,
“fresh-firecoal”,
“adazzle, dim”,
“dapple-dawn-drawn”,
“blue-bleak embers”,
“gash gold-vermillion”.

I understand how difficult it is to harvest daily life using ordinary words. Like grasping ephemeral star trails or the transient rainbow that moves away as I approach, what I hold on the page is intangible —
yet nevertheless very real.

I keep reaching for understanding, searching for the best words to share here: those that are ephemeral color yet eternal, and very very real.

After all, in the beginning was the Word, and there is no better place to start with its promise.

I’ll be reading slowly through the words in the Book of John over the next year. Once a week, I will invite you to “come and see” what those words might mean as we explore the promise together.

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Time to Say Grace

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You say grace before meals. All right. But I say grace before the concert and the opera, and grace before the play and pantomime, and grace before I open a book, and grace before sketching, painting, swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing and grace before I dip the pen in the ink.
~G.K. Chesterton

Norman Rockwell’s 1951 painting Saying Grace

Chesterton has it right.  No matter what I embark on, I should say grace first.  Even my breathing, my waking, and my sleeping. Even the brilliance right outside my back door.

Continual and constant thanks and praise to the Creator for all things bright and beautiful, and helping us through the dark times. 

Instead I am plagued with inconstancy and inconsistency, with a stubborn tendency to take it all for granted.

As I “dip pen in ink” this morning, join me in saying grace:

He is worthy. Amen and Amen.

Even more so.  Ever more now.

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Kicking Up Leaves

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Just as, when you keep watch
on the ground ahead of where your boots
kick up the leaves, the path
goes vague and blurred, while

if you lift your eyes the far
reach of the trail comes lucid
as map; so when you look
at tomorrow through next year,

the way, otherwise
so tangled and burdensome,
clears. And if the leaves
are, as they likely are,

fallen from the trees around you,
then you get to look
deeper into things
than spring allowed.
~Charles O. Hartman “Autumn Ordinance”

I remember it
as October days are always remembered,
cloudless, maple-flavored,
the air gold and so clean
it quivers.
~Leif Enger, from Peace Like a River 

The air tastes like autumn,
quivering on my tongue –
no need for pumpkin-spice flavoring
to feel the change.

Revel in the gold and bronze tint to the sky,
the cinnamon nutmeg dusting of the trees,
the heavy sprinkling of hanging dew drops,
the crisp and shivery breezes,
the new landscape peering through bony branches.

Soon the ground will be frosty instead of dusty,
leaving a crunchy carpet rather than shady veil.

October is always a much-needed transition,
keeping us fresh gazing at new horizons,
reminding us to breathe deeply when life feels shallow,
remembering we are immersed
in the glory of a new day we have never lived before.

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