Category: sleep

The Unbroken Dark

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Now you hear what the house has to say.
Pipes clanking, water running in the dark,
the mortgaged walls shifting in discomfort,
and voices mounting in an endless drone
of small complaints like the sounds of a family
that year by year you’ve learned how to ignore.

But now you must listen to the things you own,
all that you’ve worked for these past years,
the murmur of property, of things in disrepair,
the moving parts about to come undone,
and twisting in the sheets remember all
the faces you could not bring yourself to love.

How many voices have escaped you until now,
the venting furnace, the floorboards underfoot,
the steady accusations of the clock
numbering the minutes no one will mark.
The terrible clarity this moment brings,
the useless insight, the unbroken dark.
~Dana Gioia, “Insomnia” from 99 Poems: New and Selected. 

The almost disturbing scent
of peonies presses through the screens,
and I know without looking how
those heavy white heads lean down
under the moon’s light. A cricket chafes
and pauses, chafes and pauses,
as if distracted or preoccupied.

When I open my eyes to document
my sleeplessness by the clock, a point
of greenish light pulses near the ceiling.
A firefly . . . In childhood I ran out
at dusk, a jar in one hand, lid
pierced with airholes in the other,
getting soaked to the knees
in the long wet grass.

The light moves unsteadily, like someone
whose balance is uncertain after traveling
many hours, coming a long way.
Get up. Get up and let it out.

But I leave it hovering overhead, in case
it’s my father, come back from the dead
to ask, “Why are you still awake? You can
put grass in their jar in the morning.”
~Jane Kenyon from “Insomnia” from Collected Poems

Sleep comes its little while.
Then I wake in the valley of midnight or three a.m.
to the first fragrances of spring which is coming,
all by itself, no matter what
My heart says,
what you thought you have you do not have.
My body says,
will this pounding ever stop?
My heart says:
there, there, be a good student.
My body says:
let me up and out,
I want to fondle those soft white flowers,
open in the night
~Mary Oliver from A Thousand Morning Poems

Our house does make sounds at night. It has many stories to tell, and does.

I’ve become accustomed to its various voices after almost thirty years sleeping (and too often not sleeping) here, yet hearing new noises are disconcerting – whether thumps that come from the attic, pattering of little feet across the roof, clinking and clunking of the furnace, or inexplicable wild sounds right outside the bedroom window.

Listening in the night reminds me I’m a mere visitor here. The house, the farm, all that surrounds me here remains long after I’m gone. Awake or asleep, I want to spend my time well here; tossing and turning in my thoughts gives me a chance to consider what the house, the land, the the wild and not-so-wild critters outside have to say. The “terrible clarity” of the unbroken dark is often disconcerting and downright frightening.

It is then, and only then – God’s still, small voice breaks the dark.
Always has. Always will.

I will seek You Lord
Search with all my heart till I find You
Waiting patiently
Longing for one word to breath new life
Your words are life

I will listen, ever listen
For Your still small voice
Lord I’m longing to know You more
So I will listen for Your still small voice

Take me to a place
Sheltered from the noise and distraction
Lord be my escape
Open up my heart to whispers of
Your life and love

I will listen, ever listen
For Your still small voice
Lord I’m longing to know You more
So I will listen for Your still small voice

I will listen, ever listen
For Your still small voice
Lord I’m longing to know You more
So I will listen for Your still small voice
~Jay Stocker

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Summer Nap

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In the afternoon of summer, sounds
come through the window: a tractor
muttering to itself as it

Pivots at the corner of the
hay field, stalled for a moment
as the green row feeds into the baler.

The wind slips a whisper behind
an ear; the noise of the highway
is like the dark green stem of a rose.

From the kitchen the blunt banging
of cupboard doors and wooden chairs
makes a lonely echo in the floor.

Somewhere, between the breeze
and the faraway sound of a train,
comes a line of birdsong, lightly
threading the heavy cloth of dream.
~Joyce Sutphen, “Soundings” from Naming the Stars

As a young child, I remember waking from my summer afternoon naps to the sights and sounds of our rural community. I could hear tractors working fields in the distance, farm trucks rumbling by on the road, the cows and horses in the fields, a train whistle in the distance and the ever-present birdsong from dawn to dusk.

These were the sounds of contentment and productivity, both together. Surely this is how heaven must be: always a sense of something wonderful happening, always a reason to celebrate, always a profound sense of respite and sanctuary.

Even now, there is that moment of awakening of my heart and soul from a summer nap when I try to listen for the chorus of angels outside my open window.

photo by Harry Rodenberger

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A Lavender Dusk

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Twilight fell:
The sky turned to a light, dusky purple littered with tiny silver stars.
~J.K.Rowling from Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

How strange this fear of death is!
We are never frightened at a sunset.
~George MacDonald

In our modern world that never seems to rest, a sunrise can feel more daunting than a sunset.  We are unprepared for the day to start:
the ready-set-go of a sunrise can be overwhelming to a tired soul. 

There are mornings when the new light of dawn penetrates right through our closed eyelids, enough to wake the dead, if not the sleeping.  It cannot be ignored in its urgency to rouse us to action.

In contrast, the end of the day requires little preparation.  Sunsets signal a slowing-down and unraveling of tension, a deep cleansing breath, a letting-go of the light for another night.  We hope twilight will ease over us, covering us like a comfortable quilt, tucking us in for the night with a kiss and hug and promise of sweet dreams.

The reason we do not need to fear the sunset is that we know it isn’t all there is. The black nothingness of night would be petrifying if we didn’t understand and trust that the light will return, as startling as it may be in its brightness.  It is the rerunning cycle of the light and dark that reassures.  It is as it was created to be, over and over.

Let the sunset tuck us in.  Let the sunrise prepare us for a new day. 

Now the day is over
night is drawing nigh,
shadows of the evening
steal across the sky.
Jesus, give the weary
calm and sweet repose;
with they tend’rest blessing,
may our eyelids close.

Approach the night with caution
It’s the best that you can do
Move quickly though the darkness
‘Til the daylight is renewed
Approach the night with caution
You will know it’s for the best
Once tomorrow’s morning
Quells the thumping in your chest
For evening is when all things dark can
Slide around with ease
And good things all get shoved in the shadows
By a wicked breeze
Approach the night with caution
No longer shall you roam
When darkness stains the eastern sky
Be sure that you are home
For night is the dividing line that
Blends the right and wrong
Spirits crossing freely over
Can hold you there too long

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Who Can Know?

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I do not like to think about my life,
one lived too often without original fire.

I would rather walk among the serious trees,
hooded by important weather, by immense silences.

I’d rather unravel the wind’s calligraphies,
letter by letter, and spell myself into the world,

a glittering altar of atoms, all aswirl.
Who can know what will happen to each of us,

as time’s currents bend and assail us,
as gravity pulls us further into ourselves?

Better to be buoyed skyward, to modestly reach out
to the palaver of raindrops, to the silky leaves,

so that the air’s amazement stirs an answering
ripple among my own heavy branches.

Let me lose myself in the star’s mute company,
among the steady wanderers of night

whose eyes ignite a cupola of yearnings.
Crown me with a wreath of stars unmoored

from desire, untampered by this ache
for a blaze beyond the tremor of my fingertips.
~Maurya Simon, “A Thousand Acres of Light” from Cartographies 

I take myself too seriously,
thinking everything in my life must be planned
so I am prepared for what could happen next –

Of course it is impossible
as who can know?

Each day the unexpected happens
if I am willing to recognize it:
the rush of the wind, the drenching of raindrops,
the tingle of the winter sun on my face.

In that moment I might find endless perfection.

Even the thriving among us may lie down this night
and fail to wake tomorrow,
atoms toppled over, leaves shriveled, roots exposed,
no longer needing to breathe
much sooner than planned.

Let me lose myself in that thought:
what is lost here is more than replaced by
the joy of beholding the Face of the Eternal God.

Faire is the heav’n, where happy souls have place,
In full enjoyment of felicitie,
Whence they doe still behold the glorious face
Of the divine, eternall Majestie…

Yet farre more faire be those bright Cherubins
Which all with golden wings are overdight,
And those eternall burning Seraphins,
Which from their faces dart out fierie light;
Yer fairer than they both, and much more bright,
Be th’ Angels and Archangels which attend
On God’s owne person, without rest or end.

These then is faire each other farre excelling
As to the Highest they approach more neare,
Yet is that Highest farre beyond all telling
Fairer than all the rest which there appeare,
Though all their beauties joynd together were:
How then can mortall tongue hope to expresse
The image of such endlesse perfectnesse?
~Edmund Spenser

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The Beginning Shall Remind Us of the End: A Dark Blanket of Peace

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Well I know now the feel of dirt under the nails,
I know now the rhythm of furrowed ground under foot,
I have learned the sounds to listen for in the dusk,
the dawning and the noon.

I have held cornfields in the palm of my hand,
I have let the swaying wheat and rye run through my fingers,
I have learned when to be glad for sunlight and for sudden
thaw and for rain.

I know now what weariness is when the mind stops
and night is a dark blanket of peace and forgetting
and the morning breaks to the same ritual and the same
demands and the silence.
~Jane Clement from No One Can Stem the Tide

Seven-thirty. Driving northwest out of town,
the snowscape dusky, sky tinted smoky peach.
In the rear view mirror, a bright orange glow
suffuses the stubbly treeline. Suddenly a column
of brightness shoots from the horizon,
a pillar of fire! One eye on the road,
I watch behind me the head of a golden
child begin to push up between the black knees
of the hills. Two weeks out from Solstice, the sun
so near winter it seems to rise in the south.
A fiery angel stands over his cradle of branches.
And what strange travelers come to honor him?
And what gift will I bring to him this day?
~Thomas Smith “Advent Dawn” from The Glory

And he shall be their peace.
Micah 5:5

I tossed and turned last night — my thoughts too busy, my blankets twisted in turmoil, my muscles too tight.  

The worries of the day required serious wrestling in the dark rather than settling silent and forgotten under my pillow after prayer.

Yet, as ever, morning dawns anew and once again I’m comforted by the rhythm of emerging light overwhelming the night. This ritual of starting fresh remembers the promises given to us again and again in His Word.

In the name of peace today, I will get my hands dirty digging a hole deep enough to hold the worries that kept me awake in the night.

And tomorrow, even if I try to remember, I will have forgotten where exactly I buried them.

This year’s Barnstorming Advent theme “… the Beginning shall remind us of the End” is taken from the final lines in T.S. Eliot’s poem “The Cultivation of Christmas Trees”


Peace, peace, peace on earth
and good will to all.
This is the time for joy
This is the time for love
Now let us all sing together
of peace, peace, peace on earth.

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The Forgiveness of Sleep

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The children have gone to bed.
We are so tired we could fold ourselves neatly
behind our eyes and sleep mid-word, sleep standing
warm among the creatures in the barn, lean together
and sleep, forgetting each other completely in the velvet,
the forgiveness of that sleep.

Then the one small cry:
one strike of the match-head of sound:
one child’s voice:
and the hundred names of love are lit
as we rise and walk down the hall.

One hundred nights we wake like this,
wake out of our nowhere
to kneel by small beds in darkness.
One hundred flowers open in our hands,
a name for love written in each one.
~Annie Lighthart “The Hundred Names of Love”

In the lull of evening, your son nested in your arms
becomes heavier and with a sigh his body
sloughs off its weight like an anchor into deep sleep,
until his small breath is the only thing that exists.

And as you move the slow dance through the dim hall
to his bedroom and bow down to deliver his sleeping form,
arms parting, each muscle defining its arc and release—
you remember the feeling of childhood,

traveling beneath a full moon,
your mother’s unmistakable laugh, a field of wild grass,
windows open and the night rushing in
as headlights trace wands of light across your face—

there was a narrative you were braiding,
meanings you wanted to pluck from the air,
but the touch of a hand eased it from your brow
and with each stroke you waded further

into the certainty of knowing your sleeping form
would be ushered by good and true arms
into the calm ocean that is your bed.
 — Alexandra Lytton Regalado, “The T’ai Chi of Putting a Sleeping Child to Bed” author of Matria

Each of those countless nights of a child wakening,
each of the hundreds of hours of lulling them in the moonlit dark,
leading them back to the soft forgiveness of sleep.

I remember the moves of that hypnotic dance,
a head nestled snug into my neck,
their chest pressed into mine,
our hearts beating in synchrony
as if they were still inside.

Even when our sleep was spare and our rest was sparse,
those night times rocking in unison
were worth every waking moment, trusting
we’re in this together, no matter what,
no matter how long.

We’re in this together.

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Appareled in Celestial Light

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There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparell’d in celestial light,
The glory of a dream.

The rainbow comes and goes,
And lovely is the rose;
The moon doth with delight
Look round her when the heavens are bare;
Waters on a starry night
Are beautiful and fair;
The sunshine is a glorious birth;
But yet I know, where’er I go,
That there hath pass’d away a glory from the earth.

Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind.
~William Wordsworth from Intimations of Immortality

I woke immersed in sadness;
it doesn’t happen often.
Whether a dream surrounded me in sorrow,
or perhaps the weight of grayness of the morning,
I couldn’t tell.

I felt burdened and weepy,
wondering where hope had fled just overnight.

Even though I know true glory lies beyond this soil,
I still look for it here,
seeking encouragement in midst of trouble.
I set out to find light which clothes the ordinary,
becoming resplendent and shimmering
from celestial illumination.

Though I may sometimes grieve for what is lost,
there is enough,
there is always enough each morning
to remind me God’s gift of grace and strength
transforms this day and every day.

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Waiting in Wilderness: So Strange and Wild a Guest

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In the dark, a child might ask, What is the world?
just to hear his sister
promise, An unfinished wing of heaven,
just to hear his brother say,
A house inside a house,
but most of all to hear his mother answer,
One more song, then you go to sleep.
How could anyone in that bed guess
the question finds its beginning
in the answer long growing
inside the one who asked, that restless boy,
the night’s darling?
Later, a man lying awake,
he might ask it again,
just to hear the silence
charge him, This night
arching over your sleepless wondering,
this night, the near ground
every reaching-out-to overreaches,
just to remind himself
out of what little earth and duration,
out of what immense good-bye,
each must make a safe place of his heart,
before so strange and wild a guest
as God approaches.
~Li-Young Lee “Nativity”

“What’s wrong with the world?” asked The Times of famous authors.
“Dear Sir,
I am. “
Yours, G.K. Chesterton

I’m not ashamed that I still ask the hard questions, just as I did when I was a child, lying in bed, fearful in the dark. Some call it a lack of faith: if I truly believed, I would trust completely, so asking such questions would be “out of the question.”

Yet God throughout scripture encourages questions, listens to lament, isn’t intimidated by uncertainty and weakness. He waits patiently for His people to make their hearts a safe place for Him to dwell – a place of wings and songs and awe and worship – even when resounding with questions.

My heart is a womb where our strange and wild God seeks to reside in this world. “Why me?” I ask, pondering yet another hard question in the dark.
“Why not you?” comes His response: a question for which He awaits my answer.

The Daylights

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When I wake up earlier than you and you
are turned to face me, face
on the pillow and hair spread around,
I take a chance and stare at you,
amazed in love and afraid
that you might open your eyes and have
the daylights scared out of you.
But maybe with the daylights gone
you’d see how much my chest and head
implode for you, their voices trapped
inside like unborn children fearing
they will never see the light of day.
The opening in the wall now dimly glows
its rainy blue and gray. I tie my shoes
and go downstairs to put the coffee on.
~Ron Padgett, “Glow” from Collected Poems.

It is my morning routine to wake early
and I take a moment to look at you still asleep,
your slow even breaths and peaceful face-
I’m thankful for every day I get to spend with you.

I know you know this~
we remind each other each day
in many ways, to never forget.

What blessing comes from a love
openly expressed and never hidden~
thriving in the dark of night,
yet never shining brighter
than in the delights and daylights
of each new morning together.

Not the Same Darkness

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We walked at the edge of the sea, the dog,
still young then, running ahead of us.
 
Few people.  Gulls.  A flock of pelicans
circled beyond the swells, then closed
their wings and dropped head-long
into the dazzle of light and sea.  You clapped
your hands; the day grew brilliant.
 
Later we sat at a small table
with wine and food that tasted of the sea.
 
A perfect day, we said to one another,
so that even when the day ended
and the lights of houses among the hills
came on like a scattering of embers,
we watched it leave without regret.
 
That night, easing myself toward sleep,
I thought how blindly we stumble ahead
with such hope, a light flares briefly—Ah, Happiness!
then we turn and go on our way again.
 
But happiness, too, goes on its way,
and years from where we were, I lie awake
in the dark and suddenly it returns—
that day by the sea, that happiness,
 
though it is not the same happiness,
not the same darkness.
~Peter Everwine, “The Day,” from New Letters

The beach at Tohoku, Japan where the tsunami hit in March 2011

The traumas of the past may revisit me in the night as they linger in the fringes of my mind, ready to creep back into my consciousness in times of stress. When I feel vulnerable and weak, I remind myself that past darkness must not overpower my nights. I try to call up different memories to push the sadness or fear back to the periphery.

So I return to my visits to the sea.

During those halcyon days, I was surrounded by beauty, of peacefulness, of family come together in warmth and closeness. Those times we’ve spent on the coast are treasures to open when I need them — breathing deeply of the sea, hearing the rhythm of the waves and feeling the cool breezes once again on my skin.

The memories themselves become precious reservoirs of happiness – readily renewed and refreshed. The darkness is overwhelmed, no longer overwhelming. Instead, it retreats from the shore of my mind like a wave pulls back into the depths of an endless sea.