Category: Sunrise

Never Felt a Calm So Deep

barnstormingblog3 Comments

Never did sun more beautifully steep
In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill;
Ne’er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!
The river glideth at his own sweet will:
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still!
~William Wordsworth from Composed Upon Westminster Bridge, September 1802

The world will never starve for want of wonders, but for want of wonder.
— G. K. Chesterton

The ending of September is wistful yet expectant.  We have not yet had frost but the air has a stark coolness that presages a freeze coming soon.  Snow has fallen on the mountain passes and the peaks.

Nothing is really growing any more; there is a settling in, as if going down for a nap–drifting off, comfortable, sinking deep and untroubled under the blankets.

Our long sleep is not yet come but we take our rest at intervals.  There is still daylight left though the frenetic season has passed.

We take our calm as it comes, in a serene moment of reflection, looking out from the edge and wondering… pondering what is waiting on the other side.

The Momentum of Existence

barnstormingblog1 Comment

Sometimes you don’t get a chance
To pause and rest
Even to just take it all in
Sometimes life just goes too fast
And if you halt, even for a moment
You could get rolled over
By the momentum of existence
So, push yourself and keep going
Because once you stop
You may not get started again
And if you need a breather
Do it after the big stuff is done –
I guarantee you the view
Will be a whole lot better
~Eric Nixon “The Momentum of Existence” from Equidistant

Sunrise and sunset happen so reliably every day, but I’m often too busy to be there to witness them. I miss some great shows because I don’t get up early enough or get home from work in time or simply don’t bother to look out the window.

These are brilliant light and shadow shows that are free for the taking if only I pause, take a breather, and watch.

The view keeps getting better the older I get. The momentum of daily life is pausing purposely to allow me, breathless, to take it all in.

We Come and Go

barnstormingblog4 Comments

The land belongs to the future; that’s the way it seems to me. How many of the names on the county clerk’s plat will be there in fifty years? I might as well try to will the sunset over there to my brother’s children. We come and go, but the land is always here. And the people who love it and understand it are the people who own it–for a little while.

~Willa Cather from O Pioneers!

As we travel through the prairie to meet our new grandson, the expanse of land flies by just as it did when I was a child traveling with my family. The skies are just as dramatic, the horizons lay beyond what can be easily discerned, the grasses plentiful and brown. Sixty years have made little discernible difference to these plains but have made incredible difference to me. I am barely recognizable in comparison.

We are born as images of God to stay awhile to love this land as best we can; we come and go. Today we celebrate the coming of a new grandson born of the mountains and farmland and the prairies.

He belongs to the future.

Golden Coloratura

barnstormingblog2 Comments

All night the crickets chirp,   
Like little stars of twinkling sound  
In the dark silence.    

They sparkle through the summer stillness
With a crisp rhythm:
They lift the shadows on their tiny voices.

But at the shining note of birds that wake,
Flashing from tree to tree till all the wood is lit—
O golden coloratura of dawn!—
The cricket-stars fade slowly,
One by one.
~Leonora Speyer, “Crickets at Dawn” from A Canopic Jar

Most mornings here tend to be gray — primarily unassuming and humble. Sunrise usually happens without much visual fanfare – blink and I miss it.

Instead I listen for morning rather than watch for it.

As summer night sounds fade out, the dawn songs begin. Birds become the harbingers where frogs and crickets let off.

There are a few special days when the light ascends gilded and decides to linger while the whole atmosphere is transformed. The air itself is burnished and shining, and all that is touched turns to gold. Like a stage production about to begin, the curtain rises to the sounds of an overture while a resplendent backdrop is illuminated.

So I wait, a transfixed audience, for the day’s aria to begin.

Like Right Now

barnstormingblogLeave a comment

It could happen any time, tornado,
earthquake, Armageddon. It could happen.

Or sunshine, love, salvation.

It could, you know. That’s why we wake
and look out––no guarantees
in this life.

But some bonuses, like morning,
like right now, like noon,
like evening.
~William Stafford “Yes” from The Way It Is: New and Selected Poems

Of course there are no guarantees — no matter how selfless we are, how devout our practices, how righteous we appear in others’ eyes.

The natural disaster still happens, the illness progresses, the unexpected still happens because there is no warranty on how things must go while we’re here.

What is guaranteed is our vision of God’s glory as portrayed through His infinite sacrifice, His infinite worth, His infinite value, His infinite presence and transcendence. We glorify him through our enjoyment of Him — right now, right here — the bonus of another morning, another noon, another evening. It is bonus, not anything we are owed.

Guaranteed glorious. Unlimited warranty.

One More Morning

barnstormingblog4 Comments

I want to get up early one more morning,
before sunrise. Before the birds, even.
I want to throw cold water on my face
and be at my work table
when the sky lightens and smoke
begins to rise from the chimneys
of the other houses.
I want to see the waves break
on this rocky beach, not just hear them
break as I did all night in my sleep.

I want to spend the day watching this happen
and reach my own conclusions.
I hate to seem greedy—have so much
to be thankful for already.
But I want to get up early one more morning, at least.
And go to my place with some coffee and wait.
Just wait, to see what’s going to happen.
~Raymond Carver “At Least” from Where Water Comes Together With Other Water

And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth.
~Raymond Carver “Late Fragment”


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

Every time I open my eyes at dawn,
listening for the voice of one more morning,
I am reminded how precious is this moment
~this new day~
how intensely grateful I am
for each breath and each heartbeat
gifted to me.

We are created for this realization:
we are, everyone of us, beloved.
We are meant to wonder breathless at this,
to keep watch, waiting to see what will happen next.

Never Leaving the Land

barnstormingblog8 Comments

My grandparents owned the land,
worked the land, bound
to the earth by seasons of planting
and harvest.

They watched the sky, the habits
of birds, hues of sunset,
the moods of moon and clouds,
the disposition of air.
They inhaled the coming season,
let it brighten their blood
for the work ahead.

Soil sifted through their fingers
imbedded beneath their nails
and this is what they knew;
this rhythm circling the years.
They never left their land;
each in their own time
settled deeper.
~Lois Parker Edstrom “Almanac” from Night Beyond Black. © MoonPath Press, 2016

My husband and I met in the late 70’s while we were both in graduate school in Seattle, living over 100 miles away from our grandparents’ farms farther north in Washington. We lived farther still from my grandparents’ wheat farm in Eastern Washington and his grandparents’ hog farm in Minnesota. One of our first conversations together, the one that told me I needed to get to know this man better, was about wanting to move back to work on the land. We were both descended from peasant immigrants from the British Isles, Holland and Germany – farming was in our DNA, the land remained under our fingernails even as we sat for endless hours studying in law school and medical school classes.

When we married and moved north after buying a small farm, we continued to work full time at desks in town. We’ve never had to depend on this farm for our livelihood, but we have fed our family from the land, bred and raised livestock, and harvested and preserved from a large garden and orchard. It has been a good balance thanks to career opportunities made possible by our education, something our grandparents would have marveled was even possible.

Like our grandparents, we watch in wonder at what the Creator brings to the rhythm of the land each day – the light of the dawn over the fields, the activity of the wild birds and animals in the woods, the life cycles of the farm critters we care for, the glow of the evening sun as night enfolds us. We are blessed by the land’s generosity when it is well cared for.

Now forty years after that first conversation together about returning to farming, my husband and I hope to never leave the land. It brought us together, fed our family, remains imbedded under our fingernails and in our DNA. Each in our own time, we will settle even deeper.

Thank you to retired RN and poet Lois Parker Edstrom for this exquisite poem about living and dying on the land. It has been my privilege to meet her and her husband and welcome them to our farm.
Your words have brought me many blessings!