Category: power

A Secret Heart Broken

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nest2

 

wasphive5

 

…And I think
They know my strength,
Can gauge
The danger of their work:
One blow could crush them
And their nest; and I am not their friend.

And yet they seem
Too deeply and too fiercely occupied
To bother to attend.
Perhaps they sense
I’ll never deal the blow,
For, though I am not in nor of them,
Still I think I know
What it is like to live
In an alien and gigantic universe, a stranger,
Building the fragile citadels of love
On the edge of danger.
~James Rosenberg from “The Wasps’ Nest”

 

wasphive2

 

Anger is as a stone cast into a wasp’s nest.
~Pope Paul VI

waspnest

The nest was hanging like the richest fruit
against the sun. I took the nest
and with it came the heart, and in my hand
the kingdom and the queen, frail surfaces,
rested for a moment. Then the drones
awoke and did their painful business.
I let the city drop upon the stones.

It split to its deep palaces and combs.

The secret heart was broken suddenly.
~Michael Schmidt — “Wasps’ Nest”
waspnest2

It hung undisturbed the past few months as its busy citizens visited our picnics, greedily buzzed our compost bin, shot bullet-like out of the garbage can when I lifted the lid.  In short, their threat of using their weaponry controlled all our moves this summer.

This nest is their nighttime respite for a few more weeks before a freeze renders them weak and paralyzed in slow motion.  A thing of beauty outside harbors danger inside. I must not touch this tissue paper football nest with its beating buzzing hornet heart.

Let winter deal the devastating blow. As I am not in or of them, I cannot cast the first stone.

In a few short weeks, as they sleep, the north winds will tear it free from its tight hold,
bear it aloft in its lightness of being, and it will fall, crushed, broken, its secret heart revealed and all that stings will be let go.

 

 

waspnest11

 

waspnest10

To Balance Upon a Broken World

barnstormingblog7 Comments

sunset831149

 

Summer ends now; now, barbarous in beauty, the
Stooks arise
Around; up above, what wind-walks! what
lovely behavior
Of silk-sack clouds!  Has wilder, willful-waiver
Meal-drift molded ever and melted across the skies?
~Gerard Manley Hopkins, “Hurrahing in Harvest”

 

sunset917165
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 “September 1918”
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sunset8315
Am I the only one who awakes this morning with a prayer asking
that today be a day of healing between peoples rather than conflict and pain,
that the barbaric become peaceable~
no missiles launched,
no one gunned down in the streets,
no vehicles used as weapons,
no child misused,
no one sold into slavery,
no one abandoned, homeless and starving.
Am I the only one who awakes this morning and seeks only
to watch the clouds
to praise the heavens
to see the leaves turn color
to take out this day and taste it
and save it away somehow
so as to balance myself on this brokenness all around?
I am not the only one.
I know I am not.
sunset831141
sunset917166

Bruised Purple at the Core

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qal2017

 

qalace719159

 

qalace713155

 

lacey4

 

Her body is not so white as
anemone petals nor so smooth—nor
so remote a thing. It is a field
of the wild carrot taking
the field by force; the grass
does not raise above it.
Here is no question of whiteness,
white as can be, with a purple mole
at the center of each flower.

Each flower is a hand’s span
of her whiteness.  Wherever
his hand has lain there is
a tiny purple blemish.  Each part
is a blossom under his touch
to which the fibres of her being
stem one by one, each to its end,
until the whole field is a
white desire, empty, a single stem,
a cluster, flower by flower,
a pious wish to whiteness gone over —
or nothing.
~William Carlos Williams — “Queen Anne’s Lace” (1919)

 

qalace71315

 

qalace7191511

We all arise from a single stem, branching off in countless directions, a thousand million hues and shapes and types. We reflect the sunlight and we reflect the Light of the Son.

There can be no question of whiteness nor a pious wish for purity – we are all blemished right at the heart.

We are, each one of us, all colors and we are, each one of us, bruised purple at the core.  We bleed together, my friends, as He did for us.  We bleed together.

 

qalcenter

 

qalace3

 

qalaugust2

 

sunsetqal

Tarnished and Dry

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thistlebugs

thistledown1

thistlegrass2

In a patch of baked earth
At the crumbled cliff’s brink,
Where the parching of August
Has cracked a long chink,

Against the blue void
Of still sea and sky
Stands single a thistle,
Tall, tarnished, and dry.

Frayed leaves, spotted brown,
Head hoary and torn,
Was ever a weed
Upon earth so forlorn,

So solemnly gazed on
By the sun in his sheen
That prints in long shadow
Its raggedness lean?

From the sky comes no laughter,
From earth not a moan.
Erect stands the thistle,
Its seeds abroad blown.
~Robert Laurence Binyon –“The Thistle”

 

thistle8215

 

thistlesunset

 

There isn’t much that thrives in a dry summer like this other than mounds of blackberry bushes and scattered clusters of thistle.  They both are defended by thorns to keep them from being eaten by all but the most persistent and hungry grazing animals.

I admire and recognize such tenacity, knowing I too have held tightly to my own defenses to keep from being swallowed up. I approach these weeds with respect for the scars they can leave behind – their roots go deep, their seeds travel far.

We coexist because we must.

How else would beauty come from our bleeding wounds?

 

thistle816

 

We Who Are In Doubt

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morningswans

 

geese913

 

so far behind the others
in their neat little v, in their
competence of plans and wings, if
you didn’t listen you would think
it was a cry for help
or sympathy?
friends! friends!?
but it isn’t.
 
Silence of the turtle on its back in the street.
Silence of the polar bear pulling its wounded weight onto the ice.
Silence of the antelope with a broken leg.
Silence of the old dog asking for no further explanation.
 
How
was it I believed I was
God’s favorite creature? I,
who carry my feathery skeleton across the sky now, calling
out for all of us. I, who am doubt now, with a song.
~Laura Kasischke, “the call of the one duck flying south” from Space in Chains

 

morningswans2

 

We instinctively tend to limit for whom we exert ourselves.
We do it for people like us, and for people whom we like.

Jesus will have none of that.

By depicting a Samaritan helping a Jew,
Jesus could not have found a more forceful way to say
that anyone at all in need –
regardless of race, politics, class, and religion –
is your neighbor.

Not everyone is your brother or sister in faith,
but everyone is your neighbor,
and you must love your neighbor.
~Tim Keller from Generous Justice

 

chelanwalk16

 

I should know better than to think: 

because millions of lives were lost, a war was fought and won against white supremacists only seventy years ago, stopping the annihilation of a group of people executed due to their faith

–that the hatred between people of varying cultural, ethnic and faith backgrounds would cease.

 

I should know better than to think:

because blood was shed from bodies black and white in a war fought and won only 150 years ago stopping the “right” to own other people as property

–that somehow the inequality, disagreement and disparity among the diverse peoples of this country would be resolved.

 

I should know better than to think:

human beings surely must learn from their own checkered, bloody and horrific history of bigotry, racism and bias

–yet by our self-imposed blindness to what has transpired before, we doom ourselves to repeat history over and over again.

 

I should know better than to think:

freedom of speech and freedom to assemble can be exercised peaceably and without arms

–yet rallies, demonstrations and marches become killing fields and motor vehicles used as deadly weapons.

 

I should know better than to think:

college campuses are laboratories for debate and discourse, dissecting the mistakes of the past, plotting a course for a hopeful, more inclusive and better future, learning and stretching through the discomfort when one’s beliefs are challenged and tested

–yet tolerance for differences has transformed into an academic intolerance for differing points of view.

 

I should know better than to think:

we the people, all colors, all faiths, all backgrounds, are in this together, united as we move forward through the storms of history, the turmoil of the present and the unknowns of the future

–yet there are still those who shout loudest, reinforce walls to create distance, purposely intimidate and hurt neighbors rather than offer them a helping hand.

 

We are a seriously wounded and anguished people,
each of us having tried flying solo,
believing we are in the right and somehow favored.

Instead we have faltered and fallen.

We now lie bleeding alongside the road, as did the Samaritan,
dependent on someone,
the “other”,
to reach out in compassion
knowing we bleed the same blood.

We who doubt,
must no longer doubt the truth of who and what we are.

We bleed together.

 

image2

 

 

The Angles of Winter

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sisterssnow2

snowybranches

winterfarm4

Long yellow rushes bending
above the white snow patches;
purple and gold ribbon
of the distant wood:
what an angle
you make with each other as
you lie there in contemplation.
–  William Carlos Williams, January Morning – XII

iceddogwood

snowybricks2

 

For the past eleven days, millions of us wake reluctant to contemplate the headlines:

At what cross purposes are we now?
What right and left angles have been sharpened in the night?
What blowing snow covers a multitude of sins, hiding what we know lies beneath?

And when, O God,  will a naked and merciless January yield to the more welcoming light of Your spring?

 

snowycottonwood

woods30

An Uprising

barnstormingblog5 Comments

sunrise81144

 

To clasp the hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world.
~Karl Barth

 

sunrise10915

There is much shouting and gnashing of teeth going on in our country right now.  Some from the streets, some from computer keyboards and screens, and some from inside the halls of government and a certain white house.

We need to stop shouting and clasp hands in prayer.

Prayer is always easier for the youngest among us.  It can be amazingly spontaneous for kids — an outright exclamation of joy, a crying plea for help, a word of unprompted gratitude.   As a child I can remember making up my own songs and monologues to God as I wandered alone in our farm’s woods, enjoying His company in my semi-solitude.  I’m not sure when I began to silence myself out of self-conscious embarrassment, but I stayed silent for many years, unwilling to put voice to the prayers that rattled in my head.  In my childhood, prayer in public schools had been hushed into a mere and meaningless moment of silence, and intuitively I knew silence never changed anything.  The world became more and more disorderly in the 60’s and 70’s and in my increasingly indoctrinated mind, there was no prayer I could say that would make a difference either.

How wrong could I and my education be?  Nothing can right the world until we are right with God through talking to Him out of our depth of need and fear.  Nothing can right the world until we submit ourselves wholly, bowed low, hands clasped, eyes closed, articulating the joy, the thanks, and the petitions weighing on our hearts.

An uprising is only possible when our voice comes alive, unashamed, unselfconscious, rising up from within us, uttering words that beseech and thank and praise.  To rise up with hands clasped together calls upon a power needing no billions and no weapons and no walls ~ only the Word ~ to overcome and overwhelm the shambles left of our world.

Nothing can be more victorious than the Amen, our Amen, at the end.

So be it and so shall it be.

Amen, and Amen again.

sunrise109151

Perfectly and Completely Rotten

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applehole

O lovely apple!
beautifully and completely
                 rotten
hardly a contour marred–

                 perhaps a little
shrivelled at the top but that
                 aside perfect
in every detail! O lovely

                 apple! what a
deep and suffusing brown
                 mantles that
unspoiled surface! No one

                 has moved you
since I placed you on the porch
                 rail a month ago
to ripen.

                 No one. No one!
~William Carlos Williams “Perfection”

snowapple

“When a newspaper posed the question, ‘What’s Wrong with the World?’ the Catholic thinker G. K. Chesterton reputedly wrote a brief letter in response:

‘Dear Sirs:
I am.
Sincerely Yours,
G. K. Chesterton.’

That is the attitude of someone who has grasped the message of Jesus.”
~Timothy Keller, The Prodigal God (New York: Dutton, 2008)

snowyapple2

 

No one of us escapes the rottenness that lies not-so-deep beneath our shiny surface.  We are full of wormholes allowing the world inside to eat us alive.

We are the problem and the problem is us. That is why we need rescue by a Savior who is the one good apple among a barrel of contagiously bad apples. We are so tainted, it takes Someone who truly is Perfect to transform us from the inside out.

We’ve elected someone who is emphatically a reflection of who we are — bad and rotten and more than willing to spoil the barrel with his history of immoral and unethical behavior, his contentious and profane words, his complete lack of humility and his unwillingness to admit his flaws.

May we hang on to hope that our dis-united states will once again survive an imperfect leader, just as we’ve survived the other rotten apples we’ve placed over us.

We get exactly what we deserve in a President and no one should be celebrating that today.

May we fall to our knees, weeping and grateful, that Christ, who is the Leader of all in His Kingdom, will grant us a grace and sanctuary we emphatically don’t deserve.

Now that would be reason to celebrate.

rottenapple

North Brooklin, Maine
30 March 1973

Dear Mr. Nadeau:
As long as there is one upright man, as long as there is one compassionate woman, the contagion may spread and the scene is not desolate. Hope is the thing that is left to us, in a bad time. I shall get up Sunday morning and wind the clock, as a contribution to order and steadfastness.

Sailors have an expression about the weather: they say, the weather is a great bluffer. I guess the same is true of our human society—things can look dark, then a break shows in the clouds, and all is changed, sometimes rather suddenly. It is quite obvious that the human race has made a queer mess of life on this planet. But as a people we probably harbor seeds of goodness that have lain for a long time waiting to sprout when the conditions are right. Man’s curiosity, his relentlessness, his inventiveness, his ingenuity have led him into deep trouble. We can only hope that these same traits will enable him to claw his way out.

Hang on to your hat. Hang on to your hope. And wind the clock, for tomorrow is another day.
Sincerely,
[Signed, ‘E. B. White’] from Letters of Note

The Quiet Mystery

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oakleafhydrangea1116

Days pass when I forget the mystery.
Problems insoluble and problems offering
their own ignored solutions
jostle for my attention, they crowd its antechamber
along with a host of diversions, my courtiers, wearing
their colored clothes; cap and bells.
                                                        And then
once more the quiet mystery
is present to me, the throng’s clamor
recedes: the mystery
that there is anything, anything at all,
let alone cosmos, joy, memory, everything,
rather than void: and that, O Lord,
Creator, Hallowed One, You still,
hour by hour sustain it.
~Denise Levertov  “Primary Wonder” from Selected Poems

 

morning11816

Here is the mystery, the secret, one might almost say the cunning, of the deep love of God: that it is bound to draw upon itself the hatred and pain and shame and anger and bitterness and rejection of the world, but to draw all those things on to itself is precisely the means chosen from all eternity by the generous, loving God, by which to rid his world of the evils which have resulted from human abuse of God-given freedom.
~N.T.Wright from The Crown and The Fire

 

Inundated by overwhelmingly bad news of the world, I must cling to the mystery of His magnetism for my own weaknesses and flaws, my bitterness. He willingly pulls evil onto Himself, out of us. Hatred and pain and shame and anger disappear into the vortex of His love and beauty, the mucky corners of my heart vacuumed spotless.

We are let in on a secret: He is not sullied by absorbing the dirty messes of our lives.

Created in His image, sustained and loved, thus reflecting Him,
we are washed forever clean.

bremertonwaterfront

 

 

 

Afraid in the World

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peachbaker

Here is the world.
Beautiful and terrible things will happen.
Don’t be afraid.
~Frederich Buechner

baker111016

Most days I depend on beauty
happening in the most unexpected places
and go looking for it.

But when the unexpected terrible happens–
crushes, bleeds and fractures us apart,
and beauty appears to hide its face,
what I fear most
is that I’ll not ever see beauty again.

We are told:
the Words said
again and again and again
every single day,
if only we can hear,
if only we can assure others:

here I am with you in this broken world-
do not be afraid
do not be afraid
do not be afraid

 

bakercap