Category: Sunrise

Keep Pouring

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As long as that woman from the Rijksmuseum  
in painted quiet and concentration 
keeps pouring milk day after day 
from the pitcher to the bowl 
the World hasn’t earned 
the world’s end.
~Wislawa Szymborska “Vermeer” tr. by Claire Cavanagh
and Stanislaw Baranczak from Here

Vermeer’s “The Milkmaid” from the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

As ever, the sun rises and the sun sets, day after day.
God continues to pour out His colors across the skies.

God loves us enough to plant each of us here
with a plan for our redemption.

We don’t know how much longer.

Today we wave flags,
some in a show of power,
some in a show of gratitude,
some in a show of discontent.

Instead, I pour milk as a daily sacrament:
quietly, with great concentration and appreciation,
as that is the work I must do, day after day.

To milk the cows and raise wheat for bread
and conceive children and raise them up to pour and bake.

This is God’s created world, after all.
We must do our best to restore and preserve all that He has made.

So keep milking and keep pouring.

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A Soft Landscape

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Now have come the shining days
When field and wood are robed anew,
And o’er the world a silver haze
Mingles the emerald with the blue.

Summer now doth clothe the land
In garments free from spot or stain—
The lustrous leaves, the hills untanned,
The vivid meads, the glaucous grain.

The day looks new, a coin unworn,
Freshly stamped in heavenly mint;
The sky keeps on its look of morn;
Of age and death there is no hint.

How soft the landscape near and far!
A shining veil the trees infold;
The day remembers moon and star;
A silver lining hath its gold.

Again I see the clover bloom,
And wade in grasses lush and sweet;
Again has vanished all my gloom
With daisies smiling at my feet.

Again from out the garden hives
The exodus of frenzied bees;
The humming cyclone onward drives,
Or finds repose amid the trees.

At dawn the river seems a shade—
A liquid shadow deep as space;
But when the sun the mist has laid,
A diamond shower smites its face.

The season’s tide now nears its height,
And gives to earth an aspect new;
Now every shoal is hid from sight,
With current fresh as morning dew.
~John Burroughs “June’s Coming”

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”

Each month is special in its own way:  I tend to favor April and October for how the light plays on the landscape during transitional times — a residual of what has been, with a hint of what lies ahead.

Then there is June.  Dear, gentle, abundant and overwhelming June.  Nothing is dried up, there is such a rich feeling of ascension into lushness of summer with an “out of school” attitude, even if someone like me has graduated long ago.

And the light, and the birdsong and the dew and the greens — such vivid verdant greens. The stir of the day stirs my heart…

As lovely as June is, 30 days is more than plenty or I would become helplessly saturated. Then I can be released from my sated stupor to wistfully hunger for June for 335 more.

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Morning Has Come Again

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when the sun peeks over the horizon to greet
the day and spread golden honey warmth
to the dark, sleepy earth

when the birds begin to stir and twitter
and tune their songs to one another

when the trees rustle as the morning breeze
opens her eyes from slumber, and the dew is heavy
on the blades of grass

when I know morning has come once again
and we are not lost to the night, even as we
are not lost to the day

light dawns, and I can move again
breathing in streams of fresh morning air
lighting a candle for rejuvenation
and praying the day in with ginger and
salt and clay

oh how lovely it feels to be alive
how magical to wake with the light
and live
~Juniper Klatt “when the sun” from I was raised in a house of water.

Each morning is a fresh try at life,
a new chance to get things right
when our yesterdays are broken.

So I drink deeply of the golden dawn,
take a full breath of cool air and dive in head first
into luminous light and bushels of blossoms,
hoping I too might float on the morning magic.

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Rising Up From the Darkness

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My father taught me how to eat breakfast
those mornings when it was my turn to help
him milk the cows. I loved rising up from

the darkness and coming quietly down
the stairs while the others were still sleeping.
I’d take a bowl from the cupboard, a spoon

from the drawer, and slip into the pantry
where he was already eating spoonfuls
of cornflakes covered with mashed strawberries

from our own strawberry fields forever.
Didn’t talk much—except to mention how
good the strawberries tasted or the way

those clouds hung over the hay barn roof.
Simple—that’s how we started up the day.
~Joyce Sutphen, “Breakfast” from First Words, Red Dragonfly.

By the time I was four years old, my family owned several Guernsey and Jersey dairy cows my father milked by hand twice a day. My mother pasteurized the milk on our wood stove and we grew up drinking the best milk on earth, as well as enjoying home-made butter and ice cream.

One of my fondest early memories is getting up early with my dad, before he needed to be at school teaching FFA agriculture students (Future Farmers of America). I would eat breakfast with him and then walk out into the foggy fall mornings with our dog to bring in the cows for milking. He would boost me up on top of a very bony-backed chestnut and white patchwork cow while he washed her udder and set to work milking.

I would sometimes sing songs from up there on my perch and my dad would whistle since he didn’t sing.

I can still hear the rhythmic sound of the milk squirting into the stainless steel bucket – the high-pitched metallic whoosh initially and then a more gurgling low wet sound as the bucket filled up. I can see my dad’s capped forehead resting against the flank of the cow as he leaned into the muscular work of squeezing the udder teats, each in turn. I can hear the cow’s chewing her breakfast of alfalfa and grain as I balanced on her prominent spine feeling her smooth hair over her ribs. The barn cats circulated around us, mewing, attracted by the warm milky fragrance in the air.

Those were preciously simple starts to the day for me and my father, whose thoughts he didn’t articulate nor I could ever quite discern. But I did know I wasn’t only his daughter on mornings like that – I was one of his future farmers of America he dedicated his life to teaching.

Dad, even without you saying much, those were mornings when my every sense was awakened. I’ve never forgotten that- the best start to the day.

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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: He Got Up and So Will We

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So what do I believe actually happened that morning on the third day after he died?
…I speak very plainly here…

He got up.  He said, “Don’t be afraid.”

Love is the victor.  Death is not the end.  The end is life.  His life and our lives through him, in him.

Existence has greater depths of beauty, mystery, and benediction than the wildest visionary has ever dared to dream. 

Christ our Lord has risen.
~Frederick Buechner from The Magnificent Defeat

Make no mistake: if He rose at all
it was as His body;
if the cells’ dissolution did not reverse, the molecules
reknit, the amino acids rekindle,
the Church will fall…

It was not as the flowers,
each soft Spring recurrent;
it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled
eyes of the eleven apostles;
it was as His Flesh: ours.
~John Updike from “Seven Stanzas at Easter”

Our flesh is so weak, so temporary,
as ephemeral as a dew drop on a petal
yet with our earthly vision
it is all we know of ourselves
and it is what we trust knowing
of Him.

He was born as our flesh, from our flesh.
He walked and hungered and thirsted and slept
as our flesh.
He died, His flesh hanging in tatters,
blood spilling freely
breath fading
to nought,
speaking Words
our ears can never forget.

And He rose again
as His flesh like ours
to walk and hunger and thirst alongside us
and here on this hill we meet together,
–flesh of His flesh–
here among us He is risen
–flesh of our flesh–
married forever
as the Church
and its fragile, flawed
and everlasting body.

“Why do you look for the living among the dead?  He is not here; he has risen!”
Luke 24: 5-6

Thank you for following along during this Lenten season. May you have a blessed Easter celebration to carry with you through the weeks, months and years ahead.

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Where You Go, I Will Go: If Still in Darkness, Not in Fear

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‘Verily Thou art a God that hidest Thyself.’ 
is. xlv. 15.

God, though to Thee our psalm we raise
No answering voice comes from the skies;
To Thee the trembling sinner prays
But no forgiving voice replies;
Our prayer seems lost in desert ways,
Our hymn in the vast silence dies.

We see the glories of the earth
But not the hand that wrought them all:
Night to a myriad worlds gives birth,
Yet like a lighted empty hall
Where stands no host or door or hearth
Vacant creation’s lamps appal.

We guess; we clothe Thee, unseen King,
With attributes we deem are meet;
Each in his own imagining
Sets up a shadow in Thy seat;
Yet know not how our gifts to bring,
Where seek thee with unsandalled feet.

And still th’unbroken silence broods
While ages and while aeons run,
As erst upon chaotic floods
The Spirit hovered ere the sun
Had called the seasons’ changeful moods
And life’s first germs from death had won.

And still th’abysses infinite
Surround the peak from which we gaze.
Deep calls to deep and blackest night
Giddies the soul with blinding daze
That dares to cast its searching sight
On being’s dread and vacant maze.

And Thou art silent, whilst Thy world
Contends about its many creeds
And hosts confront with flags unfurled
And zeal is flushed and pity bleeds
And truth is heard, with tears impearled,
A moaning voice among the reeds.

My hand upon my lips I lay;
The breast’s desponding sob I quell;
I move along life’s tomb-decked way
And listen to the passing bell
Summoning men from speechless day
To death’s more silent, darker spell.

Oh! till Thou givest that sense beyond,
To shew Thee that Thou art, and near,
Let patience with her chastening wand
Dispel the doubt and dry the tear;
And lead me child-like by the hand;
If still in darkness not in fear.

Speak! whisper to my watching heart
One word—as when a mother speaks
Soft, when she sees her infant start,
Till dimpled joy steals o’er its cheeks.
Then, to behold Thee as Thou art,
I’ll wait till morn eternal breaks.
~Gerard Manley Hopkins “Nondum (Not Yet)”

There is great darkness right now in our country’s leadership, spilling shadows over the rest of the world.

Each day brings a new proclamation of presumed earthly power, exacting great cost to those who are most vulnerable and powerless.

Though it may seem God is silent, He is not.

God broods, as do parents who protect their offspring.
He hears the cries of His people who are harmed and helpless.
He will respond, and His children understand
we are still in the “not yet” of His kingdom on earth,
and we wait for His return to set all things right.

This year’s Lenten theme:

…where you go I will go…
Ruth 1:16

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Where You Go, I Will Go: Turn Aside and Look

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Now Moses was pasturing the flock of Jethro His father-in-law, the priest of Midian; and He led the flock to the west side of the wilderness, and came to Horeb, the mountain of God.

And the Angel of the Lord appeared to him in a blazing fire from the midst of a bush; and He looked, and behold, the bush was burning with fire, yet the bush was not consumed.

So Moses said, “I must turn aside now, and see this marvelous sight, why the bush is not burned up.”  When the Lord saw that he turned aside to look, God called to him from the midst of the bush, and said, “Moses, Moses!” And Moses said, “Here I am.”  Then God said, “Do not come near here; remove your sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.”
~Exodus 3: 1-5

Earth’s crammed with heaven,
and every common bush afire with God;
but only he who sees, takes off his shoes —
the rest sit around it and pluck blackberries.
~Elizabeth Barrett Browning from “Aurora Leigh”

It is difficult to undo our own damage…
It is hard to desecrate a grove and change your mind.
The very holy mountains are keeping mum.
We doused the burning bush and cannot rekindle it;
we are lighting matches in vain under every green tree. 
~Annie Dillard from Teaching a Stone to Talk

I need to turn aside and look,
to see, as if for the first and last time,
the kindled fire that illuminates even the darkest day
and never dies away.

I can not douse the burning bush.

I am invited, by no less than God Himself,
to shed my shoes, to walk barefoot and vulnerable,
to approach His bright and burning dawn.

Only then, only then
can I say:
“Here I am! Consume me!”

This year’s Lenten theme:

…where you go I will go…
Ruth 1:16

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Where You Go, I Will Go: Solitudes of Peace

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Now a red, sleepy sun above the rim
Of twilight stares along the quiet weald,
And the kind, simple country shines revealed
In solitudes of peace, no longer dim.
The old horse lifts his face and thanks the light,
Then stretches down his head to crop the green.
All things that he has loved are in his sight;
The places where his happiness has been
Are in his eyes, his heart, and they are good.
~Siegfried Sassoon from “Break of Day”

Stay away from reading 24 hour headlines.
Avoid being crushed by disturbing news.
Try facing the sun as it rises and sets,
knowing it will continue to do so, no matter what.

Do not forget
the eternal source of peace was
sent to earth
directly from God:
one Man walked among us, became sacrifice,
and He will return.

A new day breaks fresh each morning
and folds into itself gently each evening.

Be glad for another day
when all things you love are within reach.

Breathe deeply in gratitude for the remembrance
of infinite blessings.

This year’s Lenten theme:

…where you go I will go…
Ruth 1:16

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Where You Go, I Will Go: Desiring Dawn and Dew

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Overcome us that, so overcome,
we may be ourselves:
we desire the beginning of your reign
as we desire dawn and dew,
wetness at the birth of light.
~C.S. Lewis from The Great Divorce

When all nature is at rest, not a leaf moving,
then at evening the dew comes down —
no eye to see the pearly drops descending,
no ear to hear them falling on the verdant grass —
so does the Spirit come to you who believe.
When the heart is at rest in Jesus —
unseen, unheard by the world —
the Spirit comes, and softly fills the believing soul,
quickening all, renewing all within.
~Robert Murray McCheyne from The Love of Christ

The seed will grow well, the vine will yield its fruit, the ground will produce its crops, and the heavens will drop their dew. I will give all these things as an inheritance to the remnant of this people.
Zechariah 8:12

I have had opportunity to fly over a vast ocean to three different continents in my life. Each time, I adjusted my internal clock due to disorientation about what day and time it was.

But my reassurance came from the consistency of the sun rising and setting, washing the world with a refreshing dew the next morning.

Overcome that I could witness dawn wherever I awoke,
I felt the familiarity of home, even in far off lands.

I am reminded the Son rises over a vast Kingdom without borders, without corruption, without alienation, without end.

No matter where I sleep, I am covered by His cleansing dew.

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

This year’s Lenten theme:

…where you go I will go…
Ruth 1:16

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Drop down dew, ye heavens, from above,
and let the clouds rain the Just One.

Latin lyrics:
Rorate caeli desuper, et nubes pluant iustum.

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