I am hardly ever able to sort through my memories and come away whole or untroubled. It is difficult to sift through the stones, the weighty moments and know which is rare gem, which raw coal, which worthless shale or slate. So, one by one, I drag them across the page and when one cuts into the white, leaves a trail of blood, no matter how narrow the stream, then I know I’ve found the real thing, the diamond, one of the priceless gems my pain produced. “There! There,” I say, “is a memory worth keeping.” ~Nikki Grimes“Poems”
I have tucked-away memories that still scratch my tender skin: when they surface, I tend to bleed at the recollection, feeling the familiar sting behind my eyelids and upside-down stomach.
Some people work hard to completely bury painful history, unwilling to allow it back into the daylight to inflict even more harm.
I don’t welcome overwhelming memories back, but when they come unbidden, I grant them access only because I know, as this happened to me long ago, I will feel the sharp ache of sorrow when I witness bleeding in another.
I was there too. I am there with you now. What happened was real but done. Its healing leaves behind only a thin line where the bleeding was.
hankerchief tree (Ireland)Baby Barn Owlet hiding in the rocks and grassRiver carp (2-3 feet long) in Higashi-Kurume, Tokyo
Gardens are also good places to sulk. You pass beds of spiky voodoo lilies and trip over the roots of a sweet gum tree, in search of medieval plants whose leaves, when they drop off turn into birds if they fall on land, and colored carp if they plop into water.
Suddenly the archetypal human desire for peace with every other species wells up in you. The lion and the lamb cuddling up. The snake and the snail, kissing. Even the prick of the thistle, queen of the weeds, revives your secret belief in perpetual spring, your faith that for every hurt there is a leaf to cure it. ~Amy Gerstler “Perpetual Spring” from Bitter Angel
photo by Tomomi Gibson
We all want to fix what ails us: that was the point of my many years of medical training and over 40 years “practicing” that art. We want to know there is a cure for every hurt, an answer for every question, a resolution to every mystery, or peace for every conflict.
And there is. It just isn’t always on our timeline, nor is it always the answer we expect, nor the conflict magically dissolved. The mystery shall remain mystery until every tear is dried, as we stand before the Face of our Holy God who both loves and judges our hearts.
Sometimes this life hurts – a lot – but I believe in the perpetual Spring and Resurrection that guarantees our complete healing.
The barn roof sags like an ancient mare’s back. The field, overgrown, parts of it a marsh where the pond spills over. No hay or sacks of grain are stacked for the cold. In the harsh winters of my youth, Mama, with an axe, trudged tirelessly each day through deep snow, balanced on the steep bank, swung down to crack the ice so horses could drink. With each blow I feared she would fall, but she never slipped. Now Mama’s bent and withered, vacant gray eyes fixed on something I can’t see. I dip my head when she calls me Mom. What’s to say? The time we have’s still too short to master love, and then, the hollow that comes after. ~Kitty Carpenter “Farm Sonnet”
Vigil at my mother’s bedside
Lying still, your mouth gapes open as I wonder if you breathe your last. Your hair a white cloud Your skin baby soft No washing, digging, planting gardens Or raising children Anymore. Hollowed.
Where do your dreams take you? At times you wake in your childhood home of Rolling wheat fields, boundless days of freedom. Other naps take you to your student and teaching days Grammar and drama, speech and essays. Yesterday you were a young mother again Juggling babies, farm and your wistful dreams.
Today you looked about your empty nest Disguised as hospital bed, Wondering aloud about Children grown, flown. You still control through worry and tell me: Travel safely Get a good night’s sleep Take time to eat Call me when you get there
I dress you as you dressed me I clean you as you cleaned me I love you as you loved me You try my patience as I tried yours. I wonder if I have the strength to Mother my mother For as long as she needs.
When I tell you the truth Your brow furrows as it used to do When I disappointed you~ This cannot be A bed in a room in a sterile place Waiting for death Waiting for heaven Waiting
And I tell you: Travel safely Eat, please eat Sleep well Call me when you get there.
Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me. Revelation 3:20
…we are faced with the shocking reality: Jesus stands at the door and knocks, in complete reality. He asks you for help in the form of a beggar, in the form of a ruined human being in torn clothing. He confronts you in every person that you meet. Christ walks on the earth as your neighbor as long as there are people. He walks on the earth as the one through whom God calls you, speaks to you and makes his demands. That is the greatest seriousness and the greatest blessedness of <His> message. Christ stands at the door. Will you keep the door locked or open it to him? ~Dietrich Bonhoeffer from an Advent Sermon“The Coming of Jesus into our Midst”
photo by Nate Gibson
Sam does barn chores with me, always has. He runs up and down the aisles as I fill buckets, throw hay, and he’ll explore the manure pile out back and the compost pile and have stand offs with the barn cats (which he always loses). We have our routine. When I get done with chores, I whistle for him and we head to the house.
We head back home together.
Except this morning. I whistled when I was done and his furry little fox face didn’t appear as usual. I walked back through both barns calling his name, whistling, no signs of Sam. I walked to the fields, I walked back to the dog yard, I walked the road (where he never ever goes), I scanned the pond (yikes), I went back to the barn and glanced inside every stall, I went in the hay barn where he likes to jump up and down on stacked bales, looking for a bale avalanche he might be trapped under, or a hole he couldn’t climb out of. Nothing.
Passing through the barn again, I heard a little faint scratching inside one Haflinger’s stall, which I had just glanced in 10 minutes before. The mare was peacefully eating hay. Sam was standing with his feet up against the door as if asking what took me so long. He must have scooted in when I filled up her water bucket, and I closed the door not knowing he was inside, and it was dark enough that I didn’t see him when I checked. He and his good horse friend kept it their secret.
He made not a whimper nor did he bark when I called out his name, passing that stall at least 10 times looking for him. He just patiently waited for me to finally open the door I had previously locked tight.
It wasn’t Sam who was lost. Sam lost me. He patiently waited until I realized he was waiting for me for me to come around and open the door.
He was ready to accompany me back home.
Though you are homeless Though you’re alone I will be your home Whatever’s the matter Whatever’s been done I will be your home I will be your home I will be your home In this fearful fallen place I will be your home When time reaches fullness When I move my hand I will bring you home Home to your own place In a beautiful land I will bring you home I will bring you home I will bring you home From this fearful fallen place I will bring you home I will bring you home ~Michael Card
Peace flows into me As the tide to the pool by the shore; It is mine forevermore, It ebbs not back like the sea.
I am the pool of blue That worships the vivid sky; My hopes were heaven-high, They are all fulfilled in you.
I am the pool of gold When sunset burns and dies,— You are my deepening skies, Give me your stars to hold. ~Sara Teasdale, “Peace”
There will be rest, and sure stars shining Over the roof-tops crowned with snow, A reign of rest, serene forgetting, The music of stillness holy and low.
I will make this world of my devising Out of a dream in my lonely mind. I shall find the crystal of peace, – above me Stars I shall find. ~Sara Teasdale “Music of Stillness”
This is a wonderful day. I’ve never seen this one before. ~Maya Angelou
It is up to me how I begin this new day I’ve never seen before. Like every day, it comes unwrapped as a gift of light and growth and color and potential.
Nothing is so beautiful as Spring – When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush; Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens, and thrush Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing; The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.
What is all this juice and all this joy? A strain of the earth’s sweet being in the beginning In Eden garden. – Have, get, before it cloy, Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning, Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy, Most, O maid’s child, thy choice and worthy the winning. ~Gerard Manley Hopkins “Spring”
Once, we were innocent, now, no longer. Cloyed and clouded by sin. Given a choice, we chose sour over the sweetness we were born to, giving up walks together in the cool of the day to feed our appetite that could never be sated.
God made a choice to win us back with His own blood as if we are worthy of Him. He says we are. He dies to prove it. Every day I try to believe our earth can be sweet and beautiful again.
All winter your brute shoulders strained against collars, padding and steerhide over the ash hames, to haul sledges of cordwood for drying through spring and summer, for the Glenwood stove next winter, and for the simmering range.
In April you pulled cartloads of manure to spread on the fields, dark manure of Holsteins, and knobs of your own clustered with oats. All summer you mowed the grass in meadow and hayfield, the mowing machineclacketing beside you, while the sun walked high in the morning;
and after noon’s heat, you pulled a clawed rake through the same acres, gathering stacks, and dragged the wagon from stack to stack, and the built hayrack back, uphill to the chaffy barn, three loads of hay a day from standing grass in the morning.
Sundays you trotted the two miles to church with the light load a leather quartertop buggy, and grazed in the sound of hymns. Generation on generation, your neck rubbed the windowsill of the stall, smoothing the wood as the sea smooths glass.
When you were old and lame, when your shoulders hurt bending to graze, one October the man, who fed you and kept you, and harnessed you every morning, led you through corn stubble to sandy ground above Eagle Pond, and dug a hole beside you where you stood shuddering in your skin,
and lay the shotgun’s muzzle in the boneless hollow behind your ear, and fired the slug into your brain, and felled you into your grave, shoveling sand to cover you, setting goldenrod upright above you, where by next summer a dent in the ground made your monument.
For a hundred and fifty years, in the Pasture of dead horses, roots of pine trees pushed through the pale curves of your ribs, yellow blossoms flourished above you in autumn, and in winter frost heaved your bones in the ground – old toilers, soil makers:
O Roger, Mackerel, Riley, Ned, Nellie, Chester, Lady Ghost. ~Donald Hall, “Names of Horses”
Photo of Aaron Janicki haying with his Oberlander team in Skagit County courtesy of Tayler Rae
As a child, I regularly visited the horse grave dug by hand by my father in 1965 in an open clearing of our woods where our little chestnut mare, Dolly, rested in the ground.
She was felled by a vet’s bullet to the head after an agonizing bout with colic. I had returned to the house, unable to watch, but could not help but hear the gunshot as if it had gone through me as well.
At first her grave was a place to cry where no one but the trees and wild flowers could see.
When my tears dried up, it was a place to sing loudly where no one but chipmunks and my dog could hear.
Later it became the sanctuary where I retreated to talk to God when my church no longer was.
Her bones lie there still and no one but me knows where. The dent in the ground will always betray the spot.
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.
It waits upon the Lawn; It shows the furthest Tree Upon the furthest Slope we know; It almost speaks to you.
Then as Horizons step, Or Noons report away, Without the Formula of sound, It passes, and we stay:
A quality of loss Affecting our Content, As Trade had suddenly encroached Upon a Sacrament. ~Emily Dickinson – 85- Part two: Nature
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 darkness no longer claims us
but the lighting of March melting into April has its own sacred whispering voice.a
We are immersed in it but it belongs framed on gallery walls for perpetuity to be admired at any time of the year, whenever we need the soft cushion of golden pastels.
Surrounded by sacrament without and within, our life in the Lord gently glows.
A brief and unexpected Palm Sunday storm blew through yesterday afternoon with gusts of southerly winds, 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. 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.
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 was 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, 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.
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]
Come, my Way, my Truth, my Life: Such a way as gives us breath; Such a truth as ends all strife, Such a life as killeth death.
Come, my Light, my Feast, my Strength: Such a light as shows a feast, Such a feast as mends in length, Such a strength as makes his guest.
Come, my Joy, my Love, my Heart: Such a joy as none can move, Such a love as none can part, Such a heart as joys in love. ~George Herbert (1633), “The Call”
Written by a young vicar in the 17th century, dying of tuberculosis, these lines of rhyme, single syllable words, all except one.
Only one life lived truly killeth death. That one word is meant to stand out alone.
The rest is up to us: to find and blend together in unexpected unity.
We are called the understanding: all will be well even when we ache to dying.
May we seek new light, new feast, new strength, new life, new truth, new love.
