Category: sunset

Come and See: Light of the World

barnstormingblogLeave a comment

Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, 
“I am the light of the world.
Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness,
but will have the light of life.” 

So the Pharisees said to him, 
“You are bearing witness about yourself; your testimony is not true.” 

Jesus answered, 
“Even if I do bear witness about myself, my testimony is true,
for I know where I came from and where I am going,
but you do not know where I come from or where I am going. 
You judge according to the flesh; I judge no one. 
Yet even if I do judge, my judgment is true,
for it is not I alone who judge, but I and the Father who sent me. 
In your Law it is written that the testimony of two people is true. 
I am the one who bears witness about myself,
and the Father who sent me bears witness about me.”  

They said to him therefore, “Where is your Father?”

Jesus answered, 
“You know neither me nor my Father. 
If you knew me, you would know my Father also.”  

These words he spoke in the treasury, as he taught in the temple; but no one arrested him, because his hour had not yet come.
John 8:12-20

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?” given to the Oxford Socratic Club

I see your world in light that shines behind me,
Lit by a sun whose rays I cannot see,
The smallest gleam of light still seems to find me
Or find the child who’s hiding deep inside me.

I see your light reflected in the water,
Or kindled suddenly in someone’s eyes,
It shimmers through the living leaves of summer,
Or spills from silver veins in leaden skies,

It gathers in the candles at our vespers
It concentrates in tiny drops of dew
At times it sings for joy, at times it whispers,
But all the time it calls me back to you.

I follow you upstream through this dark night
My saviour, source, and spring, my life and light.
~Malcolm Guite “I am the Light of the World”

Those who do not yet share our faith can share our wonder at the beauty and comfort of light in the darkness, from the stars in the heavens to the candlelight at a service or over a shared meal.
~Malcolm Guite “The Light of the World is For Everyone”

Darkness is not where we will dwell forever.
We are hushed in fear and hungry for Light.
Jesus promises to feed us from Himself.

We are promised this in the Word:
and night will be no more.
They will need no light of lamp or sun,
for the Lord God will be their light…
Revelation 22:5.

Somewhere between the Word in the beginning
and the Word that becomes flesh
and the Word thriving as Spirit in our hearts and hands,
there is the sacred silent Light of God come to earth

a threshold of quiet stillness
as we stand poised to cross into the Light brought by His Word;
He is a flint struck to our wick
in our eagerness to abolish the Darkness
with the eternal glow of His illuminating Word.

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.

The Fade to Twilight

barnstormingblog2 Comments

some words need to be

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.

Standing Here, Empty-Handed

barnstormingblogLeave a comment

Have you ever seen
anything
in your life
more wonderful

than the way the sun,
every evening,
relaxed and easy,
floats toward the horizon

and into the clouds or the hills,
or the rumpled sea,
and is gone–
and how it slides again

out of the blackness,
every morning,
on the other side of the world,
like a red flower

streaming upward on its heavenly oils,
say, on a morning in early summer,
at its perfect imperial distance–
and have you ever felt for anything
such wild love–
do you think there is anywhere, in any language,
a word billowing enough
for the pleasure

that fills you,
as the sun
reaches out,
as it warms you

as you stand there,
empty-handed–
or have you too
turned from this world–

or have you too
gone crazy
for power,
for things?
~Mary Oliver “The Sun”

There is no word to describe
its faithful return each day.

I struggle to hang on to it,
unwilling to let this lambent light
slip through my fingers~

Yet I remain empty-handed,
too focused on things less illuminating.

Soon darkness will begin to claim our days again.
So I grasp hold of this warmth and light
and hold on as long as I’m able,
burnishing my readiness for eternity.

A Glass Filled With Our Lives

barnstormingblogLeave a comment

How swiftly the strained honey
of afternoon light
flows into darkness

and the closed bud shrugs off
its special mystery
in order to break into blossom:

as if what exists, exists
so that it can be lost
and become precious.
~Lisel Mueller “In Passing” from Alive Together

He may become like a glass filled with a clean light for eyes to see that can.
~J.R.R. Tolkien – Gandalf speaks of Frodo after his injuries – in The Lord of the Rings

…what (does) it mean to bear Christ in the midst of a world that feels somehow even more chaotic and violent than usual. What does it mean to be saved and healed by him when we linger and ache, here in the darkened realm of the still-broken world?
…in this passage I return again, again, to the astonishing recollection of God in his love, who takes what evil meant to be our destruction (pain, loneliness, loss), and makes it the place of his arrival.
The man of sorrows,
bearing our pain so that no sorrow may ever end the story again.
Where we grieve, he arrives to heal.
Where we ache, he bears our load.
Where we cry aloud, he answers.
So that our need becomes the very ground of our renewal.
And the clear light of his love shines through the glass of our lives.

Eventually.
For those who can see.
I know people like that.
I want to become a soul like that.
~Sarah Clarkson writing about the above Tolkien quote here

Each one of us, like a swelling bud hanging heavy,
waits on the stem —
already but not quite yet.

Such is the late afternoon light of a mid-spring day~
~ an air of mystery in a honeyed moment of illumination ~
knowing something more is coming.

Not just letting go of what we cannot yet understand.
Not just peering through a glass darkly.
Not just giving up and dropping away.

Breaking from bud into blossom means opening fully,
glowing with transparent ripeness in the glass of our lives.
Becoming light itself.

The Raggedy Days of April Slip Away

barnstormingblog3 Comments

April is like the raggedy, wandering gypsy lad of the fairy tale.
When he moves, streaks of gold show beneath his torn garments
and you suspect that this elfin creature is actually a prince in disguise.

April is just that.

There are raggedy, cold days, dark black ones,
but all through the month for a second, for an hour, or for three days at a stretch you glimpse pure gold.

The weeks pass and the rags slip away, a shred at a time.
Toward the end of the month his royal highness stands before you.
~Jean Hersey from The Shape of a Year

I avoid spending much time in front of mirrors now. I’m thinning on top, thickening a bit lower, sagging and stretching, wrinkled and patched and, let’s face it…raggedy.

Still, if I look closely past the rags and sags, I see the same eyes as my younger self peering back at me.

There are some things that age does not disguise.

The lightness and freshness of youth might be covered up with the trappings of aging, but I’m overjoyed to still be here, just as I am.

Every once in awhile, I believe I glimpse a little gold under my wrinkly surface.

I’m no queen or princess in disguise, but breathing in the scents of certain perfumed days of April can make me feel like one.

A Slumbering Silence

barnstormingblogLeave a comment

Again the woods are odorous, the lark
Lifts on upsoaring wings the heaven gray
That hung above the tree-tops, veiled and dark,
Where branches bare disclosed the empty day.

After long rainy afternoons an hour
Comes with its shafts of golden light and flings
Them at the windows in a radiant shower,
And rain drops beat the panes like timorous wings.

Then all is still. The stones are crooned to sleep
By the soft sound of rain that slowly dies;
And cradled in the branches, hidden deep
In each bright bud, a slumbering silence lies.
~Rainer Maria Rilke, “In April” translated by Jessie Lamont

A Light exists in Spring
Not present on the year
At any other period –
When March is scarcely here

A Color stands abroad
On Solitary Hills
That Science cannot overtake,
But Human Nature feels.
~Emily Dickinson from 85- Part two: Nature

sunrise410143

I do not know what gorgeous thing
the bluebird keeps saying,
his voice easing out of his throat,
beak, body into the pink air
of the early morning. I like it
whatever it is. Sometimes
it seems the only thing in the world
that is without dark thoughts.
Sometimes it seems the only thing
in the world that is without
questions that can’t and probably
never will be answered, the
only thing that is entirely content
with the pink, then clear white
morning and, gratefully, says so.
~Mary Oliver “What Gorgeous Thing” from Blue Horses 

Maybe it is the particular tilt of the globe on its axis,
or the suffusion of clouds mixing
with the perpetually damp atmosphere,
or perhaps the knowledge
the darkness no longer claims us
most of our waking time.

The light of gentle April
has its own sacred whispering voice
orchestrated with myriad birdsong.

We are immersed inside it for just a few weeks,
yet it belongs framed on gallery walls for perpetuity
to be admired at any time of the year,
whenever we seek sweet slumber on
a soft cushion of golden pastels.

Surrounded by such sacrament
without and within,
our recreated life in the Lord
gently glows.

A Dishwater Sky of Sadness

barnstormingblog1 Comment

A dishwater sky mutes
sun’s rays to gray, the hills
leading to the pass forested
in haze, drained of green.

Though a steady bluster, the wind
musters nothing but silence.
The plodding sound of melt
drip, drip, drips
from the askew rusted rain gutter
outside my purview.
Perhaps, I have all my life been
too much in love with sadness.
~Lana Hectman Ayers from “Window in Late January” from Autobiography of Rain

A silence slipping around like death,
Yet chased by a whisper, a sigh, a breath,
One group of trees, lean, naked and cold,
Inking their crest ‘gainst a sky green-gold,
One path that knows where the corn flowers were;
Lonely, apart, unyielding, one fir;
And over it softly leaning down,
One star that I loved ere the fields went brown.
~Angelina Weld Grimke “A Winter Twilight”

I am astonished by my thirst
for clinging to sadness
when a gray day asks so little of me.

Good thing I’m shaken from my melancholy
by such simple moments
as a twilight shimmering gold,
a burst of unexpected evening birdsong,
a steadfast fir standing unyielding on our hilltop,
where it glimpses the edge of tomorrow
as today’s dusky horizon fades away.

Surrounded By a Winter Sunset

barnstormingblogLeave a comment

How can I feel so warm   
Here in the dead center of January? I can   
Scarcely believe it, and yet I have to, this is   
The only life I have. 
~James Wright from “A Winter Daybreak above Vence”

sunset1131812
to the northwest
sunset1131816
to the north

To-day I shall be strong,
No more shall yield to wrong,
  Shall squander life no more;
Days lost, I know not how,
I shall retrieve them now;
Now I shall keep the vow
  I never kept before.
Ensanguining the skies
How heavily it dies
  Into the west away;
Past touch and sight and sound
Not further to be found,
How hopeless under ground
  Falls the remorseful day.
~A.E. Houseman from “How Clear, How Lovely Bright”

sunset1131816
to the northeast
sunset1131810
to the east
sunset1131814
to the southeast

It was like a church to me.
I entered it on soft foot,
Breath held like a cap in the hand.
It was quiet.
What God there was made himself felt,
Not listened to, in clean colours
That brought a moistening of the eye,
In a movement of the wind over grass.
There were no prayers said. But stillness
Of the heart’s passions — that was praise
Enough; and the mind’s cession
Of its kingdom. I walked on,
Simple and poor, while the air crumbled
And broke on me generously as bread.
~R.S. Thomas “The Moor”

sunset113188
to the south
sunset1131811
to the southwest

So welcome in the dead center of January:
a surround-sunset experience on our farm – 360 degrees of evolving color and patterns, streaks and swirls, gradation and gradual decline.

All is silent. No bird song, no wind, no spoken prayer.
Yet communion takes place with the air breaking and feeding me like manna from heaven.

Witnessing the light bleeding out all around me:

I will squander my days no more, treasuring each as sheer gift.
I will seek to serve my God, church, family, friends, and community.
I will be warmed on this chilly winter day even as it descends to darkness, knowing light and hope will return.

sunset113181
to the west
sunset113182
to the west
sunset113171
to the west

An Advent Threshold: Nothing But Light

barnstormingblogLeave a comment

(Jesus said) I have come to bring fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!
Luke 12:49

Earth’s crammed with heaven,
and every common bush afire with God
~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

Nine Kinds of Blindness
1. The one where your eyes do not work to see anything.
2. The one where your eyes do not work to see everything.
3. The one where your eyes work, but you cannot see what you have never seen before.
4. The one where your eyes work but you cannot see what is inconvenient.
5. The one where your eyes work but someone is keeping you from using them.
6. The one where your eyes work but you are angry.
7. The one where your eyes work but you are afraid.
8. The one where your eyes work but there is no light.
9. The one where your eyes work but there is nothing but light.
~Paul Pastor “Nine Kinds of Blindness” from  Bower Lodge

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

We are invited, by no less than God Himself,
through the original burning bush that is never consumed
to shed our shoes, to walk barefoot and vulnerable,
and approach the bright and burning dawn,
even when it is the darkest midnight,
even when it is a babe in a manger who kindles a fire in each one of us.

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

My 2025 Advent theme:
On the threshold between day and night

On that day there will be neither sunlight nor cold, frosty darkness. 
It will be a unique day—a day known only to the Lord—
with no distinction between day and night. 
When evening comes, there will be light.
Zechariah 14:6-7

So once in Israel love came to us incarnate, stood in the doorway between two worlds, and we were all afraid.
~Annie Dillard in Teaching a Stone to Talk

Within our darkest night,
you kindle the fire
that never dies away,
that never dies away.
Within our darkest night,
you kindle the fire
that never dies away,
that never dies away.
~Taize

An Advent Threshold: The Light Inside an Open Barn Door

barnstormingblogLeave a comment

When the miracle happened it was not
with bright light or fire—
but a farm door with the thick smell of sheep
and a wind tugging at the shutters.

There was no sign the world had changed for ever
or that God had taken place;
just a child crying softly in a corner,
and the door open, for those who came to find.
~Kenneth Steven “Nativity”

This Advent, I’m trying not to be scared of the dark. 
~James K.A. Smith from “Waiting” (Image Journal)

I feel like I’m constantly aware of the world’s anguish, reminded daily in headlines and news updates. The knowledge of others’ grief and mourning, their losses and struggles, is overwhelming.

This world is a fearful place of pain and tears for so many, so much of the time. For my part, I try not to be afraid of the dark…

So who am I to write of moments of incredible encouragement and beauty, posting pictures of the latest masterpiece painted through the filtered light of sunrise and sunset, searching out and sharing the illuminated gifts that exist all around me – while people suffer?

We were certainly not created to wallow in anguish – yet here we are, trying in every way to climb our way out of the dark mess we’ve made. I am one of the countless standing on the threshold of a Light sent to diminish and overwhelm our darkest times.

Three different times, a messenger angel appeared out of the blue, saying “do not be afraid.” Zechariah had been “startled and gripped with fear,” Mary was “troubled and wondered at his words” and the shepherds were “terrified.” They were never to be the same again.

Yet the first words directly from heaven were “fear not.” My first reaction would be: there must be plenty to fear if I’m being told not to be afraid. And this world is a terrifying place, especially in the dark.

It is up to us, overwhelmed by the darkness of these times, to seek out the barn door opening enough to show a light spilling out. We are invited, troubled and doubtful, to come see what is inside.

So too then, we ourselves open: waiting, watching, longing for this glory to come. Nothing will be the same, ever again.

My 2025 Advent theme:
On the threshold between day and night

On that day there will be neither sunlight nor cold, frosty darkness. 
It will be a unique day—a day known only to the Lord—
with no distinction between day and night. 
When evening comes, there will be light.
Zechariah 14:6-7

So once in Israel love came to us incarnate, stood in the doorway between two worlds, and we were all afraid.
~Annie Dillard in Teaching a Stone to Talk