Light and wind are running over the headed grass as though the hill had melted and now flowed. ~Wendell Berry “June Wind” from New Collected Poems
Cut grass lies frail: Brief is the breath Mown stalks exhale. Long, long the death
It dies in the white hours Of young-leafed June With chestnut flowers, With hedges snowlike strewn,
White lilac bowed, Lost lanes of Queen Anne’s lace, And that high-builded cloud Moving at summer’s pace. ~Philip Larkin “Cut Grass” from The Complete Poems
June is the month when grass grows exponentially, taking over all open spaces and every nook and cranny
Light and wind work magic on a field of flowing tall grass. The blades of the mower lay it to the ground in green streams that course up and down the slopes. It lies orderly in stoneless cemetery rows.
Farmer’s fields are lined with rows of mown grass, a precious commodity to be harvested for the livestock to eat the rest of the year. Some of the green is bagged up like big marshmallows for easy storage and some put in silos for later in the winter.
The shorn grass is critical to the life of the animals we raise.
What was once waving and bowing to the wind is cut and crushed: no longer bending but bent, no longer flowing but flown, no longer growing but mown.
At summer’s pace, while the clouds saunter overhead, grasses are stored as fodder for the beasts of the farm on those cold nights when the wind beats at the doors.
It will melt in their mouths. As we watch them chew, we’ll remember overflowing abundance of those summer days in June.
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…you mustn’t be frightened … if a sadness rises in front of you, larger than any you have ever seen; if an anxiety, like light and cloud-shadows, moves over your hands and over everything you do. You must realize that something is happening to you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hand and will not let you fall. Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness, any misery, any depression, since after all you don’t know what work these conditions are doing inside you? ~Rainer Maria Rilke from Letters to a Young Poet
We were made for difficult times such as these: we feel things deeply, our joys and awe and fears ~ so much so we can feel swept away.
Feelings are not the final say yet they both motivate and immobilize us.
God has told us to be His Light in the shadows; we will find Him if we long for Him.
Though we may feel lost, wandering, uncertain, hopeless He takes us by the hand and leads us through.
Grab hold and hang on tight.
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The evening comes slowly over us, over the cardinal and the wren still feeding, over the swallows suddenly swooping to snatch up mosquitoes
over the marsh where the green sedge lately has a tawny tinge over two yearlings bending long necks to nibble hillock bushes
finally separate from their doe mother. A late hawk is circling against the sky streaked lavender. The breeze has quieted, vanished
into leaves that still stir a bit like a cat turning round before sleep. Distantly a car passes and is gone. Night gradually
unrolls from the east where the ocean slides up and down the sand leaving seaweed tassels: a perfect world for moments. ~Marge Piercy “June 15th, 8pm”from Made in Detroit
So many fleeting moments pass by me, a shower of raindrops disappearing into a stream — I can’t capture and hold them. They run through my fingers like water, leaving behind a damp residue of remembrance.
Yet each a moment of perfection, even as I lose my grasp on it. Perhaps a written word or recorded photo, elusive as the relentless flow of time itself.
A moment gifted by God, a moment breathed, a moment observed, a moment vanished, lived fully, yet never to come again.
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My heart is like a little bird That sits and sings for very gladness. Sorrow is some forgotten word, And so, except in rhyme, is sadness.
The world is very fair to me— Such azure skies, such golden weather, I’m like a long caged bird set free, My heart is lighter than a feather.
I rise rejoicing in my life; I live with love for God and neighbor; My days flow on unmarred by strife, And sweetened by my pleasant labor.
Oh youth! oh spring! oh happy days, Ye are so passing sweet, and tender, And while the fleeting season stays, I’ll revel care-free, in its splendor. ~Ella Wheeler Wilcox “Joy”
Veil after veil of thin dusky gauze is lifted, and by degrees the forms and colours of things are restored to them, and we watch the dawn remaking the world in its antique pattern. ~Oscar Wilde from The Picture of Dorian Gray
I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else. ~C.S. Lewis from “Is Theology Poetry?” in The Weight of Glory
Tomorrow we’ll discover What our God in Heaven has in store One more dawn One more day One day more… ~from Les Miserable
I wasn’t the only one watching the light emerging over the foothills this morning. A bird sitting atop our barn’s weathervane greeted this morning’s dawn, a silent witness, along with me.
I thought we might face the new day together, both preparing ourselves for whatever might come our way.
Yet he flew away, leaving me behind to face it on my own.
Morning without you is a dwindled dawn. ~Emily Dickinsonin a letter to a friend April 1885
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All this he saw, for one moment breathless and intense, vivid on the morning sky; and still, as he looked, he lived; and still, as he lived, he wondered. ~Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows
Beyond Mágdalen and by the Bridge, on a place called there the Plain, In Summer, in a burst of summertime Following falls and falls of rain, When the air was sweet-and-sour of the flown fineflower of Those goldnails and their gaylinks that hang along a lime; . . . . . . . . The motion of that man’s heart is fine Whom want could not make píne, píne That struggling should not sear him, a gift should cheer him Like that poor pocket of pence, poor pence of mine. . . . . . . . . ~Gerard Manley Hopkins “Cheery Beggar”
Busy old fool, unruly sun, Why dost thou thus, Through windows, and through curtains call on us?
Thy beams, so reverend and strong Why shouldst thou think? I could eclipse and cloud them with a wink, But that I would not lose her sight so long; If her eyes have not blinded thine, Look, and tomorrow late…
Thou, sun, art half as happy as we, In that the world’s contracted thus. Thine age asks ease, and since thy duties be To warm the world, that’s done in warming us. Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere; This bed thy center is, these walls, thy sphere. ~John Donne from “The Sun Rising”
My father, when he was surprised or suddenly impressed, would blurt “Great day in the morning,” as though a revelation had struck him. The figure of his speech would seem to claim some large event appeared at hand, if not already here; a mighty day or luminous age was flinging wide its doors as world on world revealed their wonders in the rapturous morning, always new, beginning as the now took hold. ~Robert Morgan “Great Day in the Morning” from Terroir
Every time I open my eyes as dawn streams through the window, as I listen for the voice of yet another morning while the sun rises to warm the world –
I am reminded how precious is this moment ~this “great day in the morning” ~ how intensely grateful I am for each breath and each heartbeat gifted to me, a cheery beggar
We are created to experience this realization: we are, everyone of us, beloved.
We are meant to wonder breathless at this burst of summer, to keep watch for each new dawn, waiting to see what will happen next.
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So he said to them again, “I am going away, and you will seek me, and you will die in your sin. Where I am going, you cannot come.”
So the Jews said, “Will he kill himself, since he says, ‘Where I am going, you cannot come’?”
He said to them, “You are from below; I am from above. You are of this world; I am not of this world. I told you that you would die in your sins, for unless you believe that I am he you will die in your sins.”
So they said to him, “Who are you?”
Jesus said to them, “Just what I have been telling you from the beginning. I have much to say about you and much to judge, but he who sent me is true, and I declare to the world what I have heard from him.”
They did not understand that he had been speaking to them about the Father.
So Jesus said to them, “When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am he, and that I do nothing on my own authority, but speak just as the Father taught me.And he who sent me is with me. He has not left me alone, for I always do the things that are pleasing to him.”
As he was saying these things, many believed in him. John 8:21-30
My Father God, in Heaven great, We remembrance keep Of fathers You have given us; Today, though, many weep.
Countless tears right now are shed For fathers in the grave. Some the dirt atop still fresh When life this week upgave.
Others in mind of fathers whom Abandoned years ago. Children who are missing them; Their longing won’t let go.
Some have fathers who have failed And brought unmeasured pain. But their children love them still, And love is ne’er in vain.
Then I think of men whose child Left the fold of sheep. These fathers’ hearts afflicted yet; With prayer, they vigil keep.
What about the man who wants To loving father be, And share his overflowing heart With one upon his knee?
Fatherhood has broken been And touched on earth by curse; But God His work continues still; All will in time reverse.
On this day of joy and pain, Hope is not all lost. God in heaven holds the tears Of those in suffering tossed.
Saints who ache for father love Have One who fills their cup; A Father faithful, kind and wise, With love that won’t give up.
My Father God, in Heaven great, Who His children keep Hold tightly those today who mourn, For Lord, so many weep. ~Gigi Ryan from “Many Weep”
There is no controlling life. Try corralling a lightning bolt, containing a tornado. Dam a stream and it will create a new channel. Resist, and the tide will sweep you off your feet. Allow, and grace will carry you to higher ground. The only safety lies in letting it all in— the wild with the weak; fear, fantasies, failures and success. When loss rips off the doors of the heart, or sadness veils your vision with despair, practice becomes simply bearing the truth. In the choice to let go of your known way of being, the whole world is revealed to your new eyes. ~Danna Faulds “Allow” From Go In and In
On this Sunday solstice, on this day to honor Fathers: we hear the Son tell the truth about our heavenly Father, who made us in His image, to know and love us.
We have struggled to trust our belief as the Son indeed rose up, our doubts and sin taken upon Him, so we would never be alone.
This is our Father who loves us from the beginning. This is His Son who bears our darkness into the Light. This is the Spirit embedded within us.
They are true, so we can believe.
I am reading slowly through the words in the Book of John over the next year alongside my church family. Once a week, I will invite you to “come and see” what those words might mean as we explore His promises together.
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The wise old apple tree in spring, Though split and hollow, makes a crown Of such fantastic blossoming We cannot let them cut it down. It bears no fruit, but honey bees Prefer it to other trees.
The orchard man chalks his mark And says, “This empty shell must go.” We nod and rub it off the bark As soon as he goes down the row. Each spring he looks bewildered. “Queer, I thought I marked this thing las year.”
Ten orchard men have come and gone Since first I saw my grandfather Slyly erase it. I’m the one To do it now. As I defer The showy veteran’s removal My grandson nods his approval.
Like mine, my fellow ancient’s roots Are deep in the last century From which our memories send shoots For all our grandchildren to see How spring, inviting bloom and rhyme, Defeats the orchard men of time. ~Robert Hillyer “The Pastoral”
When great trees fall, rocks on distant hills shudder, lions hunker down in tall grasses, and even elephants lumber after safety.
When great trees fall in forests, small things recoil into silence, their senses eroded beyond fear.
When great souls die, the air around us becomes light, rare, sterile. We breathe, briefly. Our eyes, briefly, see with a hurtful clarity. Our memory, suddenly sharpened, examines, gnaws on kind words unsaid, promised walks never taken.
Great souls die and our reality, bound to them, takes leave of us. Our souls, dependent upon their nurture, now shrink, wizened. Our minds, formed and informed by their radiance, fall away. We are not so much maddened as reduced to the unutterable ignorance of dark, cold caves.
And when great souls die, after a period peace blooms, slowly and always irregularly. Spaces fill with a kind of soothing electric vibration. Our senses, restored, never to be the same, whisper to us. They existed. They existed. We can be. Be and be better. For they existed. ~ Maya Angelou “When Great Trees Fall”
When our ancient Spitzenberg apple tree came down in a November windstorm years ago, there was no time to provide any sort of memorial service, or otherwise dispose of the remains.
My husband started in on the job Thanksgiving morning and I watched through the kitchen window as I cooked for the family members soon to arrive. As he made several chain saw cuts through the trunk to make pieces easily moveable, the extent of the astonishing hole in this old tree became visible. It was suffering from an extreme equivalent of human osteoporosis with a brittle skeleton that somehow had lasted through innumerable windstorms over the years, even while still bearing apples, still trying its best to be fruitful.
The brittleness extended right down into the roots, and they too gave way so easily in the wind that the tree literally broke off at ground level and leaned over, propped up by much healthier and resilient upper branches that had so recently held apples.
When it fell, the trunk oriented itself so it provided a view right through to the barnyard down the hill, telescoping what the tree had surveyed for so many years of its life. Clearly this had been a holey trunk for some years; within the cavity at the base were piles of different size rocks stashed there by the Lawrence children three generations ago, followed by our Gibson children thirty years ago.
There was also a large tarnished spoon, lost decades ago into the dark center of the apple tree and now retrieved at its death. At some point, a Gibson child playing a farm version of frisbee golf must have flung a plastic bucket lid at the hole in the tree, and it disappeared into the gap and settled at the bottom.
All this, like a treasure trove of history, was just waiting for the time when the tree would give up its secrets at its death. There were no gold or silver coins, no notes to the future like a glass bottle put out to sea. This well hidden time capsule held simply rocks and spoon and lid.
I realized as I stared into the gulf of empty trunk that I’m hollowing too, more hollow than I care to admit. Like so many of us, stuff is hidden deep inside that we’d just as soon not have discovered. Our outside scaffolding braces against the buffeting by the winds and storms of life, as we cling with mighty roots to this mortal soil.
It is clear we’d be much stronger if we were wholly solid throughout, filled with something stronger even than our outsides. Yet we tend to get filled up with a lot of nothing, or even worse than nothing, a lot of garbage. This is stuff that weakens us, furthers the rot, shortens our fruitful life, doing nothing to make us more whole and holy.
I’m looking more critically now at what fills my empty spots since staring down the barrel of that old apple tree trunk.
Even so, I realize my hollow shell has been saved and salvaged, year after year, by the grace and wisdom of our Divine Orchardist who loves us as we are, up to and after we finally topple over.
May our hollow be hallowed. Wholly hole-y holy…
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repeated the way a sunset plays every night in the fade to twilight the same scene over and over but never once lost in its sameness ~Juniper Klatt “some words need to be” from I was raised in a house of water
Out of the deep and the dark, A sparkling mystery, a shape, Something perfect, Comes like the stir of day: One whose breath is a fragrance, One whose eyes reveal the road to stars, The wind in his countenance, The glory of heaven upon his back. He steps like a vision hung in air, Diffusing the passion of eternity; His abode is the sunlight of morn, The music of eve his speech: In his sight, One shall turn from the dust of the grave, And move upward to the woodland. ~Yone Noguchi“The Poet”
Once in your life you pass Through a place so pure It becomes tainted even By your regard, a space Of trees and air where Dusk comes as perfect ripeness. Here the only sounds are Sighs of rain and snow, Small rustlings of plants As they unwrap in twilight. This is where you will go At last when coldness comes. It is something you realize When you first see it, But instantly forget. At the end of your life You remember and dwell in Its faultless light forever. ~Paul Zimmer “The Place” from Crossing to Sunlight Revisited.
I like the slants of light; I’m a collector. That’s a good one, I say… ~Annie Dillard from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
I won’t forget the glow on the hill as the sun drops, centering behind our sentinel tree. I won’t forget the rays coming through the branches, glistening on a tattered web and an evening primrose unwrapping. I won’t forget the way the air itself changes as the color spreads, like a fragrant scent carried on the wind.
The light is faultless but I am not. My collection of slants of light and words to describe them may fade with time.
Even so, it was – maybe just once – so perfect, so pure, so ripe. And I’ll remember I was there to witness it.
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And I was alive in the blizzard of the blossoming pear, Myself I stood in the storm of the bird–cherry tree. It was all leaflife and starshower, unerring, self–shattering power, And it was all aimed at me.
What is this dire delight flowering fleeing always earth? What is being? What is truth?
Blossoms rupture and rapture the air, All hover and hammer, Time intensified and time intolerable, sweetness raveling rot. It is now. It is not. ~Osip Mandelstam “And I Was Alive” (translated by Christian Wiman) from Stolen Air
Ordinary things have always seemed numinous to me. One Calvinist notion deeply implanted in me is that there are two sides to your encounter with the world. You don’t simply perceive something that is statically present, but in fact there is a visionary quality to all experience. It means something because it is addressed to YOU. ~Marilynne Robinson from The Paris Review 2008
We mostly live through routine and ordinary days, unconscious of many treasures and abundance laid before us.
In fact, these are addressed to us as pure gift – postmarked to our address, fully paid, no postage due.
Daily I search the soil of my life, this farm, this faith to find what in me still yearns to grow, to blossom, to fruit, in order to be harvested to share with others.
Such sweetness undoes our inevitable decay.
I am so grateful for the tie that binds me to those who visit this page, hoping what I share makes a difference in your ordinary, but still so precious, day.
The gift of ordinary time is now. Its numinosity is aimed at each one of us.
Poem by Dana Gioia
Echo of the clocktower, footstep in the alleyway, sweep of the wind sifting the leaves. Jeweller of the spiderweb, connoisseur of autumn’s opulence, blade of lightning harvesting the sky.
Keeper of the small gate, choreographer of entrances and exits, midnight whisper traveling the wires. Seducer, healer, deity or thief, I will see you soon enough— in the shadow of the rainfall, in the brief violet darkening a sunset—
but until then I pray watch over him as a mountain guards its covert ore and the harsh falcon its flightless young.
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A hundred thousand birds salute the day:– One solitary bird salutes the night: Its mellow grieving wiles our grief away, And tunes our weary watches to delight; It seems to sing the thoughts we cannot say, To know and sing them, and to set them right; Until we feel once more that May is May, And hope some buds may bloom without a blight. This solitary bird outweighs, outvies, The hundred thousand merry-making birds Whose innocent warblings yet might make us wise Would we but follow when they bid us rise, Would we but set their notes of praise to words And launch our hearts up with them to the skies. ~Christina Rossetti “A Hundred Thousand Birds”
Every day is perfect, if when you wake, you hear birds in the garden, in the yard. Birds
up and down, ushering in one more day in all the houses on Shaker Way. Birds on telephone lines, light posts. Birds
twit, twittering on trees hailing fellow birds with a nod of beak—gray kingbird;
top-hatted, streamertail tuxedoed, doctor bird— busy-bodied hummingbird
tucking in, out, of pink, red ixoras punch-drunk in love. Birds preening for, chatting up other birds—
the oriole, the grass quit, in mid-song on the lawn, in a dance of birds an all-day-long conference of bird;
red-headed woodpecker —drummer boy, or girl bird in this daily symphony of birds
—an orchestra on Shaker Way in serenade of each perfect day with birds— from the very first mockingbird
heralding, in solo warble one more day, filled with birds— brightened, lightened, trilled by birds:
Bird, bird, bird. Hello bird. You lift me up bird. You sing the day beautiful, bird. ~Ann-Margaret Lim “Birdsong of Shaker Way”
Birds afloat in air’s current, sacred breath? No, not breath of God, it seems, but God the air enveloping the whole globe of being. It’s we who breathe, in, out, in, the sacred, leaves astir, our wings rising, ruffled—but only saints take flight… But storm or still, numb or poised in attention, we inhale, exhale, inhale, encompassed, encompassed. ~Denise Levertov from “In Whom We Live and Move and Have Our Being”from The Stream and the Sapphire
As if reluctant to let go the setting sun last night, one lone bird still sang a twilight song, long after the others fell asleep, their heads tucked neatly under their wings.
This lone bird had not yet finished the day, breathing in and out its plaintive melody, articulating what my own thoughts could not say.
And before a hint of light this June morning, I am swept from my dreams at 4:30 AM by a full chorus singing from the same tree, no longer a lone voice, but hundreds.
Although my day is launched early by warbling songs, I cannot forget twilight’s one reluctant bird who fought back the impending darkness using only its voice.
I too resist the darkness with what I write here, if only I can keep it at bay: inhaling, exhaling, encompassed in holy Breath.
I want to sing out light and love to Light: encompassed by no darkness here.
I hear a bird chirping, up in the sky I’d like to be free like that spread my wings so high I see the river flowing water running by I’d like to be that river, see what I might find
I feel the wind a blowin’, slowly changing time I’d like to be that wind, I’d swirl and the shape sky I smell the flowers blooming, opening for spring I’d like to be those flowers, open to everything
I feel the seasons change, the leaves, the snow and sun I’d like to be those seasons, made up and undone I taste the living earth, the seeds that grow within I’d like to be that earth, a home where life begins
I see the moon a risin’, reaching into night I’d like to be that moon, a knowing glowing light I know the silence as the world begins to wake I’d like to be that silence as the morning breaks
He doesn’t know the world at all Who stays in his nest and doesn’t go out. He doesn’t know what birds know best Nor what I sing about, Nor what I sing about, Nor what sing about: That the world is full of loveliness.
When dew-drops sparkle in the grass And earth is aflood with morning light. light A blackbird sings upon a bush To greet the dawning after night, the dawning after night, the dawning after night. Then I know how fine it is to live.
Hey, try to open your heart to beauty; Go to the woods someday And weave a wreath of memory there. Then if tears obscure your way You’ll know how wonderful it is To be alive. ~Paul Read
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