Category: power

A Steady Center Holds

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Sometimes from sorrow, for no reason,
you sing. For no reason, you accept
the way of being lost, cutting loose
from all else and electing a world
where you go where you want to.

Arbitrary, a sound comes, a reminder
that a steady center is holding
all else. If you listen, that sound
will tell you where it is and you
can slide your way past trouble.

Certain twisted monsters
always bar the path—but that’s when
you get going best, glad to be lost,
learning how real it is
here on earth, again and again.
~William Stafford “Cutting Loose” from Dancing with Joy: 99 Poems

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;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst   
Are full of passionate intensity.
~William Butler Yeats from The Second Coming

Life is a hard battle anyway. If we laugh and sing a little as we fight the good fight of freedom, it makes it all go easier. I will not allow my life’s light to be determined by the darkness around me.
~Sojourner Truth

There are so many twists and turns in this life, we lose sight of the Center of all things. We don’t always know what is around the next corner. It can feel like things are falling apart, and we could be swallowed up.

Getting lost, tripping on rocks and falling into holes is part of reality. Bruises and scrapes remind us where we have been and what we have been through, yet we keep going.

We do not honor the arbitrary whims of bullies,
nor dim ourselves within the darkness where they dwell.

So we sing:

We shall overcome.
We’ll walk hand in hand.
We are not alone.
We are not afraid.
We shall all be free.
We shall live in peace.
Someday.

God will see us through.

Thank you to Parker Palmer and Carrie Newcomer who spoke about the Stafford poem “Cutting Loose” here

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Oh, deep in my heart
I do believe
We shall overcome some day

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Beginning an Uprising

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

sunrise81144

Whatever happens.
Whatever
what is is
is what I want.
Only that.
But that.
~Galway Kinnell “Prayer”

sunrise10915

Ah — a resting place,
where we come to understand
it is not required of us
to wrestle constantly and passionately
with our God —
nor pursue relentlessly
all God’s decrees as we understand them,
but only that we listen and wonder
and hope and pray,
that we might, perhaps,
make just a little difference,
one quiet grey day.
~Edwina Gateley “Just a Little Difference”

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 echoing halls of government and a certain white house.

We need to stop shouting and clasp hands in prayer.

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 of funds and no weapons of destruction and no walls to keep people in or keep them out.

He is the Word, come to overcome and overwhelm the shambles left of our world. Nothing can be more victorious than the Amen, our Amen, at the end of our prayers.

So be it and so shall it be.

Amen.
And again…Amen.

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original 1918 photo by Eric Engstrom
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Peace Rising in the Dark

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In winter, the earth remembers its hidden life;
a silence deepens that is not emptiness but preparation.
~Rowan Williams

When, in the middle of the night,
you wake with the certainty you’ve
done it all wrong, when you wake
and see clearly all the places you’ve failed,
in that moment, when dreams will not return,
this is the chance for your most gentle voice—
the one you reserve for those you love most—
to say to you quietly, oh sweetheart,
this is not yet the end of the story.
Sleep will not come, but somehow,
in that wide-awake moment there is peace—
the kind that does not need
everything to be right before it arrives.
The kind that comes from not fighting
what is real. The peace that rises
in the dark on its sure dark wings
and flies true with no moon, no stars.
~Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer “With Astonishing Tenderness” from The Unfolding

Peaceful sleep has been elusive over the last 10 nights.

I realize a significant number of people are resting more easily. They celebrate an overwhelming number of rapid changes instituted by a new government administration over a few days.

I’m not among them.

Sweetheart, this is not yet the end of the story.
It never is.

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Learning the Hard Way

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There are three kinds of men.
The ones that learn by reading.
The few who learn by observation. 
The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves.
~Will Rogers

We living creatures learn from the moment we take our first breath. We continue to learn until our last breath. With that lifetime of learning, one would think eventually we should find some semblance of wisdom.

But we don’t. We tend to learn the hard way especially when it comes to matters having to do with our (or others’) health and well-being.

Within a community, we want autonomy to do as we like, no matter what the science says. You’d think we’d know better, but as fallible human beings, we may impulsively make decisions about health issues. Is it evidence-based or simply an anecdotal story about what “worked” or “didn’t work” for someone else?

We’re facing at least four years of a new administration encouraging us all to “pee on the electric fence” and learn for ourselves rather than trust science. Careful research, years of observed experience, and plain common sense isn’t enough to trust public health and infectious disease experts to make wise recommendations about community and individual risk and prevention strategies.

The cows and horses on our farm need to touch an electric fence only once when reaching for greener grass on the other side. That moment provides a potent learning curve for them to make important future decisions. They won’t try testing it again no matter how alluring thngs appear on the other side. Humans should learn as quickly as animals but unfortunately don’t.

I know all too well what a shock feels like and I want to avoid repeating that experience.  Even so, in unguarded careless moments of feeling invulnerable (it can’t happen to me!) or annoyed at being told what I can and can’t do, or simply indulging in magical thinking, I find myself reaching for the greener grass. 

I suspect I’m not alone in my surprise when I’m jolted back to reality.

Many great minds have worked out various theories of effective learning, but, great mind or not, Will Rogers confirms a common sense suspicion: an adverse experience, like a “bolt out of the blue,” can be a powerful teacher. 

So we call peeing on an electric fence it “a teachable moment.”

Sadly, when we learn the hard way, it often ends up hurting everyone.

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The Dark Abyss of Hatred

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Let no man pull you so low as to hate him.
~Martin Luther King, Jr. from A Knock at Midnight: Inspiration from the Great Sermons of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.

I would permit no man to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him.
~Booker T. Washington from Up from Slavery

Darkness cannot drive out darkness:
only light can do that. 
Hate cannot drive out hate:
only love can do that.
Hate multiplies hate,
violence multiplies violence,
and toughness multiplies toughness
in a descending spiral of destruction….
The chain reaction of evil —
hate begetting hate,
wars producing more wars —
must be broken,
or we shall be plunged
into the dark abyss of annihilation.
~Martin Luther King Jr. from Strength to Love

Do not be overwhelmed with evil but overcome evil with good.
Romans 12:21

The goal of this life is to live with love and compassion for others, even those who try to pull us deep into the abyss of hatred.

Each of us, whether president, prince or pauper, is called to give up our own selfish agendas and consider the dignity of others and their greater good.

Cherish life: all lives – as is crystal clear from Christ’s example on the cross – including those who do hateful things and want to harm us. Let us not be pulled down to their level, spewing angry vindictive words rather than words of grace and peace.

Our only defense against evil is God’s love as sacrifice; only He can lead us to “where everything sad will come untrue”, where tears are no longer shed in anger, sorrow, and fear.

The light beam of His love finds us in the dark abyss.
The great shadow of meanness and hatefulness departs.

photo by Josh Scholten
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Sticking Together

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But a dragon lies in ambush for the traveler;
take care he does not bite you and inject you his poison of unbelief.
Seeing this numerous company winning salvation,
he selects and stalks his prey.
In your journey to the Father of souls,
your way lies past that dragon.
How shall you pass him? You must have
“your feet stoutly with the gospel of peace” (Ephesians 6:15)
so that, even if he does bite you,
he may not hurt you.
~St. Cyril of Jerusalem

St. Cyril of Jerusalem, in instructing catechumens, wrote:
“The dragon sits by the side of the road, watching those who pass. Beware lest he devour you. We go to the Father of Souls, but it is necessary to pass by the dragon.”

No matter what form the dragon may take, it is of this mysterious passage past him, or into his jaws, that stories of any depth will always be concerned to tell, and this being the case, it requires considerable courage at any time, in any country, not to turn away from the storyteller.
~Flannery O’Connor from “Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose”

Wherever I am, there’s always Pooh,
There’s always Pooh and Me.
Whatever I do, he wants to do,
“Where are you going today?” says Pooh:
“Well, that’s very odd ‘cos I was too.
Let’s go together,” says Pooh, says he.
“Let’s go together,” says Pooh.

“Let’s look for dragons,” I said to Pooh.
“Yes, let’s,” said Pooh to Me.
We crossed the river and found a few-
“Yes, those are dragons all right,” said Pooh.
“As soon as I saw their beaks I knew.
That’s what they are,” said Pooh, said he.
“That’s what they are,” said Pooh.

“Let’s frighten the dragons,” I said to Pooh.
“That’s right,” said Pooh to Me.
“I’m not afraid,” I said to Pooh,
And I held his paw and I shouted “Shoo!
Silly old dragons!”- and off they flew.

“I wasn’t afraid,” said Pooh, said he,
“I’m never afraid with you.”

So wherever I am, there’s always Pooh,
There’s always Pooh and Me.
“What would I do?” I said to Pooh,
“If it wasn’t for you,” and Pooh said: “True,
It isn’t much fun for One, but Two,
Can stick together, says Pooh, says he.
“That’s how it is,” says Pooh.
~A.A. Milne from “Us Two”

<Here there be dragons>
was any place on ancient maps
that was unknown and unexplored-
a place to avoid at all costs~
or for the daring traveler,
pointing to exactly the place to explore.

Here there be dragons
marks the remainder of our days
that dwell at the edge of life’s roadmap
~ unknown and full of peril ~

So many dragons to encounter,
ready to swallow us whole
if we follow a careless leader,
make a wrong turn,
ignore all signs of impending hazards.

Dragons singe our britches when we stray
beyond the known borders of the map.

There are dark valleys to pass through,
so many mysteries unsolved,
so many stories of frightening journeys told –
yet we stick together through troubles.

We pull on our stoutest shoes,
ready to trek where ever we must go,
never straying from the well-worn path
of those faithful few who have managed
to stay out of the jaws of dragons
to tell the cautionary tale.

“I’m never afraid with you… and that’s how it is…”

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God’s Keyboard

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The whole concept of the Imago Dei (or)…the ‘Image of God’ is the idea that all men have something within them that God injected…

This gives him a uniqueness, it gives him worth, it gives him dignity.

And we must never forget this…there are no gradations in the Image of God.

Every man from a treble white to a bass black
is significant on God’s keyboard,
precisely because every man is made in the Image of God.

One day we will learn that.

We will know one day that God made us to live together as brothers
and to respect the dignity and worth of every man.
– Martin Luther King, Jr. from his “The American Dream” sermon, July 4, 1965 from A Knock at Midnight: Inspiration from the Great Sermons of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.

Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses.
~C. S. Lewis from The Weight of Glory

photo of San Juan Islands by Joel DeWaard

We are united by our joint creation as the Image of God.  Not one of us reflects God more than another but together form His body and His kingdom on earth.

Dr. King’s words and wisdom continue to inform us of our shortcomings sixty years later. We flounder in our flaws and brokenness; so many question not only the validity of equality of all people of all shades, but even doubt the existence of a God who would create a world that includes the crippled body, the troubled mind, the questioned gender, the genetically challenged, those never allowed to draw a breath.

Yet we are all one, a composition made up of white and black keys too often discordant, sometimes dancing to different tempos, on rare occasions a symphony. 

The potential is there for harmony, and Dr. King would see and hear that in his time on earth.

Perhaps today we unite only in our shared tears, shed for continued strife and disagreements, shed for injustice that results in senseless killings, shed for our inability to hold up one another as holy in God’s eyes as His intended creation, no matter our color, our origin, our defects, our differences and similarities.

There are no gradations in God nor in His intended harmonious creation. We can weep together, anticipating the day when the Lord God wipes all tears away. 

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From a Boundless Deep

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The Incarnation is like a wave of the sea which,
rushing up on the flat beach,
runs out, even thinner and more transparent,
and does not return to its source but sinks into the sand and disappears.
~Hans Urs von Balthasar from Origen: Spirit and Fire

When the heart is full of joy,
it always allows its joy to escape.
It is like the fountain in the marketplace;
whenever it is full it runs away in streams,
and so soon as it ceases to overflow,
you may be quite sure that it has ceased to be full.
The only full heart is the overflowing heart.
~Charles Spurgeon from The Spurgeon Series 1857 & 1858: Unabridged Sermons In Modern Language

…continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness.
Colossians 2: 6b-7

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Romans 15:13

photo by Nate Gibson at Sendai, Japan

May the Lord make your love increase and overflow for each other and for everyone else, just as ours does for you.
1 Thessalonians 3:12

I do not think that skies and meadows are
Moral, or that the fixture of a star
Comes of a quiet spirit, or that trees
Have wisdom in their windless silences.
Yet these are things invested in my mood
With constancy, and peace, and fortitude,
That in my troubled season I can cry
Upon the wide composure of the sky,
And envy fields, and wish that I might be
As little daunted as a star or tree.
~John Drinkwater “Reciprocity”

I’m first class in the category of overflowing tears.

My family knows it doesn’t take much to make me cry:
saying goodbye, saying hello,
listening to a childrens’ choir singing,
a heartstring-tugging show on TV,
the whistled “Greensleeves” theme to the old Lassie series,
not to mention the whistled theme to the old “Leave it to Beaver” or “Andy Griffith” series–you name it, whistling does it.

Yesterday, instead of weeping overly sentimental tears, it was tears of relief that our country peacefully managed a transition of power – something that was very nearly thwarted four years ago. On that day, I wept tears of anger at scenes of violence coming from the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C.

Undaunted, I know God our Father remains a boundless deep source of all that is good and just in troubled times, constantly refilling the love of the Savior who seeks us out, while His Spirit flows into us like water into the sand.

We who weep will never empty.

Sunset and evening star,
  And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
  When I put out to sea,

But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
  Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
  Turns again home.

Twilight and evening bell,
  And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell,
  When I embark;

For tho’ from out our bourne of Time and Place
  The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
  When I have cross’d the bar.
~Lord Alfred Tennyson “Crossing the Bar”

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Some Sweeping Blast

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The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop away from you like the leaves of autumn.
~John Muir


Some sweeping blast may suddenly come o’er us,
Lose our place, and turn another leaf!
~Hannah Flagg Gould from “The Whirlwind”

Earth shuddered at my motion,
And my power in silence owns;
But the deep and troubled ocean
O’er my deeds of horror moans!
I have sunk the brightest treasure—
I’ve destroyed the fairest form—
I have sadly filled my measure,
And I am now a dying storm.
~Hannah Flagg Gould from “The Dying Storm”

Last night, the Pacific Northwest braced for a “historic” windstorm with unprecedented winds from the east, through the Cascade Mountain passes, rushing to a low pressure system forming in the ocean. The current term for such a storm is a “bomb cyclone,” followed by an “atmospheric river” – ominous descriptions and even more ominous when viewed on satellite images.

The eastern part of Seattle’s King County was hit full force with more than a half million homes left without power last night. It will be a miserable few days for so many in an urban setting as crews try to repair the damage. We live 100 miles to the north and experienced only mild winds, although there was heavy tree fall damage just 15 miles to the south of us in densely wooded Sudden Valley. Our county is usually the focal point for fall and winter windstorms, but we were largely spared this time around.

In anticipation of this storm, the weather services compared it to the historic windstorm on Columbus Day in 1962 which ravaged the region.

I remember that Columbus Day storm vividly as an eight year old living in Olympia, as the wind gusts clocked in at over 140 mph.  Large fir trees toppled over like toothpicks in the woods all around our house.  The root balls stood 15 feet tall, giant headstones over a mass of tree graves. 

Back then, my family’s home, located outside city limits, remained without power for at least a week. We lost all our stored home-grown meat and produce in our freezer and ate only canned goods, boiling water outside on a camp stove under kerosene lights, roasting hot dogs in our fireplace. We slept in sleeping bags under piles of blankets.

This week, when the predictions poured in about a similar strength storm, we readied our farm’s generator and hunkered down, waiting for the monster to storm into our yards and woods.

But the lights only flickered a few times, the winds meager in comparison to our usual fall and winter storms. Our woods, filled with fallen trees from bygone storms, was left untouched this time around.

I’m among the many relieved this morning, having aged past the challenge of living days without power. Today, as so many will be dealing with the messy clean up, my cares have dropped away like the leaves forced to let go in the storm, settling silent to wait for what nature might bring next.

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We Will Remember Them

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They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
~Lawrence Binyon from “For the Fallen” (1914)

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who died
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
~John McCrae “In Flanders Fields”

When you go home tell them of us and say –
“For your tomorrow we gave our today”
~John Maxwell Edmonds from “The Kohima Epitaph” 

November pierces with its bleak remembrance
Of all the bitterness and waste of war.
Our silence tries but fails to make a semblance
Of that lost peace they thought worth fighting for.
Our silence seethes instead with wraiths and whispers,
And all the restless rumour of new wars,
The shells are falling all around our vespers,
No moment is unscarred, there is no pause,
In every instant bloodied innocence
Falls to the weary earth ,and whilst we stand
Quiescence ends again in acquiescence,
And Abel’s blood still cries in every land
One silence only might redeem that blood
Only the silence of a dying God.
~Malcolm Guite “Silence: a Sonnet for Remembrance Day”

To our military veterans here and abroad –
in deep appreciation and gratitude for the freedoms
you have defended on behalf of us all.

No one is left untouched and unscarred in the bitterness of war:
those of you who died in service,
those of you wounded in service,
those of you who bore visible and invisible scars all your lives.

You are heroes to the cause of freedom.

As G.K. Chesterton said,
“Courage is a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die.”

My father was one of the fortunate ones who came home, returning to a quiet life of farming and teaching after three years serving in the Pacific with the Marines Corp from 1942 to 1945. Hundreds of thousands of his colleagues didn’t come home, dying on beaches and battlefields. Tens of thousands more came home forever marked, through physical or psychological injury, by the experience of war and witness of death and mayhem all around them.

In my medical training in the 1970’s, I cared for veterans hospitalized for mental health care after serving in WWII, Korea and Vietnam. I witnessed for myself the sacrifices of these soldiers, and the limits of our therapies.

No matter how one views wars our nation has fought and may be obligated to fight in the future, we must support and care for the men and women who have made, on our behalf, the commitment to be on the front line for freedom’s sake.

Even our God died so we could stop fighting each other (and Him). What a waste we have not stopped to listen and understand His sacrifice enough to finally lay down our weapons against one another forever.

Support for wounded veterans:

Disabled Veterans National Foundation

Wounded Warrior Project