Category: power

An Undivided Wonder

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One grief, all evening—: I’ve stumbled
upon another animal merely being
             itself and still cuffing me to grace.

             This time a bumblebee, black and staggered
above some wet sidewalk litter. When I stop
             at what I think is dying

             to deny loneliness one more triumph,
I see instead a thing drunk
           with discovery—the bee entangled

            with blossom after pale, rain-dropped blossom
gathered beneath a dogwood. And suddenly
             I receive the cold curves and severe angles

             from this morning’s difficult dreams
about faith:—certain as light, arriving; certain
            as light, dimming to another shadowed wait.

            How many strokes of undivided wonder
will have me cross the next border,
            my hands emptied of questions?
~Geffrey Davis “West Virginia Nocturne” from Night Angler

So much happens in the lives of creatures in the world
above, around, and beneath our feet.
The dewy immobilized bumblebee,
the ladybug floating, rescued by a cloverleaf,
the translucent spider hiding in a blossom fold.

Most of the time we are oblivious,
absorbed in our own joys, fears, and sorrows,
struggling to understand our own place in the world,
unsure if we people are the only image of our Creator.

But life’s drama doesn’t just belong to us.

It is the baby bird fallen from the nest too young,
rescued from mouth of the barn cat.
It is the farmyard snake abandoning its ghost-like skin.
It is the spider residing in the tulip, ready to grab the honey bee.
It is the praying mantis poised to swallow the fly.
It is the katydid, the cricket, the grasshopper trying to blend in.

When I struggle with my faith in this often cruel world,
I realize not every question, not every doubt, needs answers.
It is enough, as a trusting witness of all that is wondrous around me,
to pray someday it will no longer be mysterious.

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I’m Comfortable in this Spot

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There are no creatures you cannot love.
A frog calling at God
From the moon-filled ditch
As you stand on the country road in the June night.
The sound is enough to make the stars weep
With happiness.
In the morning the landscape green
Is lifted off the ground by the scent of grass.
The day is carried across its hours
Without any effort by the shining insects
That are living their secret lives.
The space between the prairie horizons
Makes us ache with its beauty.
Cottonwood leaves click in an ancient tongue
To the farthest cold dark in the universe.
The cottonwood also talks to you
Of breeze and speckled sunlight.
You are at home in these
great empty places
along with red-wing blackbirds and sloughs.
You are comfortable in this spot
so full of grace and being
that it sparkles like jewels
spilled on water.
~Tom Hennen “From a Country Overlooked”, from Darkness Sticks to Everything

There are some God’s creatures I struggle to love –
fleas, chiggers, mosquitoes, ticks, slugs, yellow jackets among them. Also poisonous snakes, spiders and scorpions come to mind.
And then there are pathogenic bacteria, parasites and viruses…

It is not their fault I struggle to find their value –
only God knows why He made them as He did.

What I have learned over 7 decades is to try to look for beauty wherever I am.

To listen to the breezes and the birds, to look for how the light plays with leaves and water and how it is all created to help us feel at home for the time we are here.

Yet, this is an imperfect world where beauty doesn’t provide shelter to those with their basic needs unfulfilled – where there is no comfort, no safety, no hope.

God, deliver us from being too comfortable when others suffer.
Help us feel Your love to pass on to those in need.
Help us to know how to make a difference for them.
We know that makes a difference to You.

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Feeling Them Resting There

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The sunlight now lay over the valley perfectly still.
I went over to the graveyard beside the church
and found them under the old cedars…
I am finding it a little hard to say that I felt them resting there,
but I did…

I saw that, for me, this country would always be populated
with presences and absences,
presences of absences,
the living and the dead.
The world as it is
would always be a reminder
of the world that was,
and of the world that is to come.
~Wendell Berry in Jayber Crow

In great deeds, something abides. 
On great fields, something stays. 
Forms change and pass; bodies disappear; 
but spirits linger, 
to consecrate ground for the vision-place of souls. 

And reverent men and women from afar, 
and generations that know us not and that we know not of, 
heart-drawn to see where and by whom great things were suffered and done for them, shall come to this deathless field, 
to ponder and dream; and lo!
the shadow of a mighty presence shall wrap them in its bosom, 
and the power of the vision pass into their souls. 

This is the great reward of service. 
To live, far out and on, in the life of others;
this is the mystery of the Christ,
–to give life’s best for such high sake
that it shall be found again unto life eternal.
~Major-General Joshua Chamberlain, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania 1889

A box of over 700 letters, exchanged between my parents from late 1941 to mid-1945, sat unopened for six decades.

I started reading. I felt them resting in those inked words.

My parents barely knew each other before marrying quickly on Christmas Eve 1942 – the haste due to the uncertain future for a newly trained Second Lieutenant in the Marine Corps. They only had a few weeks together before she returned home to her rural teaching position and he readied himself to be shipped out for the island battles to come.

They had no idea they would not see each other for another 30+ months or even see each other again at all. They had no idea their marriage would fall apart 35 years later and they would reunite a decade after the divorce for five more years together before Dad died of cancer at age 73.

A presence of absence: the letters do contain the long-gone but still-familiar voices of my parents, but they are the words and worries of youngsters of 20 and 21, barely prepared for the horrors to come from war and interminable waiting. When he was fighting battles on Tarawa, Saipan, and Tinian, no letters or news would be received for a month or more, otherwise they tried to write each other daily, though with minimal news to share due to military censorship. They speak mostly of their desire for a normal life together rather than a routine centered on mailbox, pen and paper and waiting – lots and lots of waiting.

I’m not sure what I hoped to find in these letters. Perhaps I hoped for flowery romantic whisperings and the poetry of longing and loneliness. Instead I am reading plain spoken words from two people who somehow made it through those awful years to make my sister and brother and myself possible.

Our inheritance is contained in this musty box of words bereft of poetry. But decades later my heart is moved by these letters – I carefully refold them back into their envelopes and replace them gently back in order. A six cent airmail stamp – in fact hundreds and hundreds of them – was a worthwhile investment in the future, not only for themselves and their family to come, but for generations of U.S. citizens who tend to take their freedom for granted.

Thank you, Dad and Mom, for the early years together you gave up to make today possible for us and the generations to follow.

I hear the mountain birds
The sound of rivers singing
A song I’ve often heard
It flows through me now
So clear and so loud
I stand where I am
And forever I’m dreaming of home
I feel so alone, I’m dreaming of home

It’s carried in the air
The breeze of early morning
I see the land so fair
My heart opens wide
There’s sadness inside
I stand where I am
And forever I’m dreaming of home
I feel so alone, I’m dreaming of home

This is no foreign sky
I see no foreign light
But far away am I
From some peaceful land
I’m longing to stand
A hand in my hand
…forever I’m dreaming of home
I feel so alone, I’m dreaming of home
~Lori Barth and Philippe Rombi “I’m Dreaming of Home”

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Seeking a Close Encounter of Awful Quiet

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A dark mist lay over the Black Hills, and the land was like iron.
At the top of ridge I caught sight of Devil’s Tower upthrust against the gray sky as if in the birth of time the core of the earth had broken through its crust and the motion of the world was begun.

There are things in nature
that engender an awful quiet in the heart of man;
Devil’s Tower is one of them.
~N.Scott Momaday in The Way to Rainy Mountain

We didn’t have a close encounter with Devil’s Tower on this particular trip yesterday through Wyoming. Over the years we have made many cross-country road trips like this one, passing by the turn-off to Devil’s Tower because there was urgency to get where we needed to go. Occasionally we would see it hazy in the far distance, so I could say I had “seen it” but I really had not seen it … according to my Stanford professor N. Scott Momaday.

Scott was from the Kiowa tribe. In his language, this rock formation is named Tso-i-e or “standing on a rock.” For him and his people, it is sacred ground. The Cheyenne, Crow, Lakota, Shoshone, and Arapahoe all revere this rock monolith, although most tribal members did not live near enough to see it themselves, but the legends traveled many miles through the generations through oral tradition.

I took Scott’s unforgettable class “Native American Mythology and Lore” in 1973, as a 19 year old sophomore. He had a commanding presence, a booming resonant voice for story telling, a predilection for the poetry of Emily Dickinson and a hankering since childhood to be a character in the stories of Billy the Kid. The first day of class, he introduced us to Tso-i-e first and foremost. He told us his grandmother’s story passed to her from her grandparents:

“Eight children were there at play, seven sisters and their brother. Suddenly the boy was struck dumb; he trembled and began to run upon his hands and feet. His fingers became claws, and his body was covered with fur. Directly there was a bear where the boy had been. The sisters were terrified.; they ran and the bear after them. They came to the stump of a great tree, and the tree spoke to them. It bade them climb upon it, and as they did so it began to rise into the air. The bear came to kill them, but they were just beyond its reach. It reared against the tree and scored the bark all around with its claws. The seven sisters were borne into the sky, and they became the stars of the Big Dipper.”

My family finally made time to see the Tower up close. For me, this “close encounter” was meant to connect the dots from my class and to understand more fully the spiritual background of the Plains people as our son, Ben, had lived and taught on the Pine Ridge Lakota Sioux Reservation in South Dakota for two years.

The Tower surely is awe-filled holy ground for us all – we are diminished in its presence. It disquiets the heart with its awful grandeur and sheer other-worldliness. In its own way, it is as resonant as Scott’s captivating stories about its origins, yet remains a reminder of the ever-changing impermanence of geologic formations.

We need more holy places in our lives even as they (and we) change with the sands and winds of time. We need to seek more “awful quiet” in our hearts, to continue to tell our sacred stories, generation to generation, never forgetting Who it is who set the world in motion.

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Drilling Away

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The woodpecker keeps returning
to drill the house wall.
Put a pie plate over one place, he chooses another.
There is nothing good to eat there:
he has found in the house
a resonant billboard to post his intentions,
his voluble strength as provider.
But where is the female he drums for? Where?
I ask this, who am myself the ruined siding,
the handsome red-capped bird, the missing mate.
~Jane Hirshfield “The Woodpecker Keeps Returning”

A woodpecker once,
A sort of a dunce,
And who as a warbler not much of a siren,
Passed by many trees
Where he might have with ease
Bored out a nice hole to his hunger appease,
For a lofty church steeple made out of sheet iron.

He whetted his bill,
And then with good-will
And a thrumpty-thrum-thrum he started to bore,
Nor let up until
The end of his bill
Was worn off so much that it gave him a chill
And the back of his bobber began to get sore.

A black bird and wren,
A rooster and hen,
A crow and a sparrow were watching him drill,
And squinted one eye
At his birdship so high,
So far from the earth that he looked like a fly
And wondered how long he could work with good-will.

When his bobber gave out
He gave a faint shout
To the crowd that was watching him down on the ground,
And said, Come up here
Where the air is so clear
And lend me a hand, for a worm is so near
Whenever I peck I can hear his faint sound.

Then the blackbird and wren
And the sparrow and hen
And the crow that were watching him, called from below
And said, “Silly Goose,
Your work’s of no use,
You might drill in that iron until your head’s loose.
You have no more sense than some men that we know.”
~Ed Blair “The Foolish Woodpecker”

Piliated woodpecker

A bold piliated woodpecker in Rockport, Massachusetts made the news last week about his destructive rampage through that community, cracking mirrors and windows on vehicles. He is attacking his reflection as a potential competitor.

He’s been nicknamed the “piliated pillager.” His aggressive attitude and bright topknot of unruly feathers is reminiscent of another public figure who won’t be stopped from destroying things.

We have a variety of these little fellows here on the farm. One would think the loud rat-a-tats emanating from trees and buildings would be due to similar bold and fearless birds. Yet our woodpeckers tend to be visitors seldom-seen yet most-audible. They project a loud and noisy presence to the ear but prefer to be invisible to the eye.

I guess they don’t want us witnessing their repetitive self-induced head trauma…

These noisy birds are a reminder of how some people hammer away on social media, often using lots of capital letters. They desperately want to be heard and acknowledged, wanting their opinions to resonate and reverberate for all to hear.

Whenever I hear an insistent pecking echoing from on high, I try to spot the offending and ornery woodpecker who is claiming dominance over the airwaves and his intended targets. There is no question he has once again succeeded in getting my attention, even if my sole reaction is to shake my head at his utter foolishness — he has no more sense than some men I know…

Flicker
Downy woodpecker

“If only, if only, ” the woodpecker sighs
The bark on the trees was as soft as the skies…
~from the story “Holes”

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Simply Lost

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Perhaps she came down for the apples,
or was flushed out by the saws powering
the far woods, or was simply lost,
or was crossing one open space for another.

She was a figure approaching, a presence
outside a kitchen window, framed
by the leafless apple trees, the stiff blueberry bushes,
the after-harvest corn, the just-before-rain sky,

a shape only narrow bones could hold,
turning its full face upward, head tilted to one side, as if to speak.

I want my life back.

Morning settles around her like a silver coat.
Rustling branches, hooves in flight.
~Philip Terman “Deer Descending”

Who among us does not feel this?

Everything changing faster than we can respond:
loss of jobs,
research halting mid-study,
inconsistency abounds,
families shattered,
uncertainty prevails.

What happened to
of the people,
by the people,
for the people
rather than dictated by just a few

We are so lost,
how to find our way back
to caring for the poor, the weak, the vulnerable
with a spirit of commitment, compassion and sacrifice.

For God alone – no one else – remains our strength and shield.
Lost and afraid, we want our lives back.

We need His Refuge where we may rest.
We seek Sanctuary from this darkness,
to once again awaken hopeful to a new morning.

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Rummaging Among Clouds

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The fields are snowbound no longer;
There are little blue lakes and flags of tenderest green.
The snow has been caught up into the sky—
So many white clouds—and the blue of the sky is cold.
Now the sun walks in the forest,
He touches the boughs and stems with his golden fingers;
They shiver, and wake from slumber.
Over the barren branches he shakes his yellow curls. …
Yet is the forest full of the sound of tears….
A wind dances over the fields.
Shrill and clear the sound of her waking laughter,
Yet the little blue lakes tremble
And the flags of tenderest green bend and quiver.
~Katherine Mansfield “Very Early Spring”

You might say that clouds have no nationality
Being flags of no country, flaunting their innocent neutrality
Across frontiers, ignorant of boundaries;
But these clouds are clearly foreign, such an exotic clutter
Against the blue cloth of the sky
I want to rummage among them, I want to turn them over
With eager fingers, I want to bargain
For this one or that one, I want to haggle and dicker
Over the prices, and I want to see my clouds wrapped up
In sheets of old newspapers, and give them away
To young girls to pin in their hair
Or tuck them, glossy as gardenias, behind an ear,
Or stretch one out to the length of a lacy shawl
And toss it over a shoulder, or around a waist.
~Constance Urdang “Clouds”

Our farm sits about 9 miles from an international border. The sky and clouds are oblivious to the line drawn by two governments, and don’t bother to stop at the border stations controlling access of humans across that line.

The clouds are free to go where they please, so they do, while we watch. They are both a foreign and domestic cloud of witnesses to our earthbound follies and foolishness.

No passports or IDs, no being pulled into “secondary” for more intensive searches and questioning, no being “turned back” not allowed across, no deportations.

They simply float and glide where the breezes take them, assuming whatever shape, identity or characteristics they wish.

What a beautiful day in the neighborhood if one happens to be a cloud or a cloud of witnesses…

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Changed Utterly

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Let Him easter in us,
be a dayspring to the dimness of us,
be a crimson-cresseted east.
~ Gerard Manley Hopkins from “The Wreck of the Deutschland”

There is a fragrance in the air,
a certain passage of a song,
an old photograph falling out from the pages of a book,
the sound of somebody’s voice in the hall
that makes your heart leap and fills your eyes with tears.

Who can say when or how it will be
that something easters up out of the dimness
to remind us of a time before we were born and after we will die?

God himself does not give answers.
He gives himself.
~Frederick Buechner from Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy and Fairy Tale

All changed,
changed utterly:  
 A terrible beauty is born.
~William Butler Yeats from “Easter, 1916”

So, friends, every day do something
that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.

Go with your love to the fields.
Lie down in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn’t go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.
~Wendell Berry from Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

It had been a slow coming of spring this year, seeming in no hurry whatsoever. Snow has remained in the foothills and the greening of the fields only begun.

Bravely, flowering plum and cherry trees burst into bloom despite a continued chill, and the pink dogwood and apple blossoms are now emerging. The perfumed air of spring permeates the dawn.

Such variability is disorienting, much like standing blinded in a sudden spotlight in a darkened room, practicing resurrection.

Yet this is exactly what eastering is like. It is awakening out of a restless sleep, opening a door to let in fresh fragrant air, and the heavy stone locking us in the dark is rolled back.

Overnight all changed, and changed utterly.

He is not only risen.  He is given indeed.

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Where You Go, I Will Go: The Center Cannot Hold

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Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere   
The ceremony of innocence is drowned…
~William Butler Yeats from “The Second Coming”

At the still point of the turning world.
Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards;
at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered.
Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline.

Here is a place of disaffection
Time before and time after
In a dim light: neither daylight
Investing form with lucid stillness
Turning shadow into transient beauty
With slow rotation suggesting permanence
Nor darkness to purify the soul
Emptying the sensual with deprivation
Cleansing affection from the temporal.
Neither plentitude nor vacancy. 
~T.S. Eliot from “Burnt Norton” The Four Quartets

Here at the very centre of all things,
Here at the meeting place of love and loss
We all foresee, and see beyond the cross.
~Malcolm Guite from “The Anointing at Bethany”

For you always have the poor with you, and whenever you want, 
you can do good for them. But you will not always have me. 
She has done what she could; 
she has anointed my body beforehand for burial. 
And truly, I say to you, wherever the gospel is proclaimed in 
the whole world, what she has done will be told in memory of her.
Mark 14:7-9

This Wednesday is a long way from Ash Wednesday,
but all our Wednesdays are marked by ashes —
we begin this day with that taste of ash in our mouth:
of failed hope and broken promises…

On this Wednesday, we submit our ashen way to you —
you Easter parade of newness.
Before the sun sets, take our Wednesday and Easter us,
Easter us to joy and energy and courage and freedom;
Easter us that we may be fearless for your truth.
Come here and Easter our Wednesday with
mercy and justice and peace and generosity.
We pray as we wait for the Risen One who comes soon.
~Walter Brueggeman from “Marked By Ashes”

Jesus makes clear Who is at the center of our salvation. It is our faith and belief in Him, rather than good works we do.

Jesus’ response to Mary of Bethany’s anointing of His feet before He enters Jerusalem carries parallel messages for us all.

Mary acts out of faith even as she confronts the painful reality of Jesus’ predictions of His death and burial. Mary believes what His disciples refuse to hear.

Jesus prays later to have the reality of His suffering lifted from Him, but in obedience, He perseveres out of faith and love for the Father.

Mary acts out of steadfast love for the Master, showing single-minded devotion in the face of criticism from the disciples.

Jesus, on the cross, shows forgiveness and love even while his enemies deride and execute Him.

Mary acts out of significant personal sacrifice–pouring costly perfume worth a full year’s wages–showing her commitment to the living Christ who is here and now before her.

Jesus willingly gives the ultimate sacrifice of Himself–there is no higher price to pay.

Mary responds to His need for compassion and His response clearly shows He is deeply moved by her action.

Jesus, as man Himself, recognizes humanity’s need to be saved, and puts Himself in our place. We respond, incredulous, putting Him first in our lives.

Mary did what she could in the middle of this Holy Week to ease His distress at what He would soon confront. 

She did what she could for Him –
humbly, beautifully, simply, sacrificially.

And so we remember Mary as the harbinger of His suffering and death, just as He said we would. 

She did what she could — as should we.

stained glass from Meyers Studio, Munich 1899

This year’s Lenten theme:

…where you go I will go…
Ruth 1:16

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Where You Go, I Will Go: Reclaimed and Restored

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To invite Jesus to cleanse the temple of our hearts
is not to ask for guilt and shame.
It is to ask for healing.
The same Lord who overturned tables did so
not to destroy and humiliate,
but to reclaim and restore.
He interrupts only that which obstructs.
He removes only that which hinders life and worship.
His cleansing is never punitive; it is always redemptive.
~Scott Sauls from “What Would Jesus Overturn in Your Life?”

To live coram Deo is to live one’s entire life
in the presence of God,
under the authority of God,
to the glory of God. 

To live in the presence of God is to understand
that whatever we are doing and wherever we are doing it,
we are acting under the gaze of God.

There is no place so remote that we can escape His penetrating gaze.

To live all of life coram Deo is to live a life of integrity.
It is a life of wholeness that finds
its unity and coherency
in the majesty of God.

Our lives are to be living sacrifices,
oblations offered in a spirit of adoration and gratitude.

A fragmented life is a life of disintegration.
It is marked by inconsistency, disharmony, confusion,
conflict, contradiction, and chaos.

Coram Deo … before the face of God.
…a life that is open before God.
…a life in which all that is done is done as to the Lord.
…a life lived by principle, not expediency; by humility before God,
not defiance.
~R.C. Sproul from “What Does “coram Deo” mean?”

We cannot escape His gaze…all of us, all colors, shapes and sizes…
Created in His image, imago dei, so He looks at us as His reflections in the mirror of the world.

What we do, how we speak, how we treat others
reflects the face of God.
Jesus is the embodied temple, bringing His sacrifice to the people,
rather than people coming to the temple with their sacrifices.

I cringe to think how we hide from His gaze.
All I see around me and within me is:
inconsistency, dishonesty, disharmony, confusion,
conflict, contradiction, and chaos.

Everywhere, everyone is saying:
only I know what is best.

We call hypocrisy on one another,
holding fast to moral high ground when the reality is:
we drown together in the mud of our mutual guilt and lack of humility.
All that we have done to others, we have done to God Himself.

It is time for us to be on our knees asking for cleansing,
for the temples of our hearts to be overturned,
our corruption scattered.

Jesus comes to cleanse, repair, reclaim and restore – us.

Kind of takes one’s breath away.

This year’s Lenten theme:

…where you go I will go…
Ruth 1:16

AI image created for this post

VERSE 1 It is not death to die
To leave this weary road
And join the saints who dwell on high
Who’ve found their home with God
It is not death to close
The eyes long dimmed by tears
And wake in joy before Your throne
Delivered from our fears
CHORUS O Jesus, conquering the grave
Your precious blood has power to save
Those who trust in You
Will in Your mercy find
That it is not death to die
VERSE 2 It is not death to fling
Aside this earthly dust
And rise with strong and noble wing
To live among the just
It is not death to hear
The key unlock the door
That sets us free from mortal years T
To praise You evermore
Original words by Henri Malan (1787-1864).
Translated by George Bethune (1847)

Angels, where you soar
Up to God’s own light
Take my own lost bird
On your hearts tonight;
And as grief once more
Mounts to heaven and sings
Let my love be heard
Whispering in your wings

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