Category: tragedy

Lit From Inside

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With a heavy heart and prayers for those who have lost their homes and livelihoods in the fires in southern California – the love that lights a home from within will never end up in ashes

We need to separate
to see the life we’ve made,
to leave our house
where someone waits, patiently,
warm beneath the sheets,
to don layers of armor,
sweater, coat, mittens, scarf,
to stride down the frozen road,
putting distance between us
this cold winter morning,
to look back and see,
on the hilltop, our life,
lit from inside.
~Laura Foley “To See It” from It’s This 

Our bedroom suffused
in a dark dawn’s ethereal glow
from a moon-white sky,
mixing a million stars and snowflakes

A snow light covers all,
settling gently around us,
tucking in the drifting corners
of a downy comforter

I take a moment to watch you sleep,
your slow even breaths and peaceful face-
grateful for each day and night I spend with you.

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

What blessing comes from a love
lit from within –
thriving in the dark of night,
yet never shining brighter
than in the delights and daylights
of a new morning together.

We Are No Longer Alone: Facing the Unknown

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Usually, after turning out that forgotten barn light, I sit on the edge of the tractor bucket for a few minutes and let my eyes adjust to the night outside. City people always notice the darkness here, but it’s never very dark if you wait till your eyes owl out a little….

I’m always glad to have to walk down to the barn in the night, and I always forget that it makes me glad. I heave on my coat, stomp into my barn boots and trudge down toward the barn light, muttering at myself. But then I sit in the dark, and I remember this gladness, and I walk back up to the gleaming house, listening for the horses.
~Verlyn Klinkenborg from A Light in the Barn

…all who heard it wondered at what the shepherds told them. But Mary treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart..
~Luke 2:18-19

Inside the barn the sheep were standing, pushed close to one
another. Some were dozing, some had eyes wide open listening
in the dark. Some had no doubt heard of wolves. They looked
weary with all the burdens they had to carry, like being thought
of as stupid and cowardly, disliked by cowboys for the way they
eat grass about an inch into the dirt, the silly look they have
just after shearing, of being one of the symbols of the Christian
religion. In the darkness of the barn their woolly backs were
full of light gathered on summer pastures. Above them their
white breath was suspended, while far off in the pine woods,
night was deep in silence. The owl and rabbit were wondering,
along with the trees, if the air would soon fill with snowflakes,
but the power that moves through the world and makes our
hair stand on end was keeping the answer to itself.
~Tom Hennen “Sheep in the Winter Night” from Darkness Sticks to Everything: Collected and New Poems.

Yet another school shooting takes hold of my heart and breaks it:
two of our children are school teachers, our grandchildren are students.

there is so much about this world I don’t understand –
the news of each day causes more questions
and a sense of ever deeper despair.

There are times when I feel my hair stand on end,
wondering where it all leads.

Half a lifetime ago, I was far more confident after so many years in school and training; now I am well aware there is much I can never know or understand.

To accept the mystery and power that moves through this world
is an awe-filled load to carry.

All shall be revealed in the fullness of time.
Yet shortening time is gets emptier by the minute.

I want to know why too many are taken from us too young,
why there is persisting darkness and evil causing fear and suffering, why we stumble and fall and fail again and again,
why we don’t trust one another or trust God
when there are simply things that can’t be known or understood yet.

Most of all I need faith that God has my life and your life in His hands. His power moving through our hearts is real and true and trustworthy even if we don’t know all the answers to myriad questions yet.

So like sheep, huddled and frightened, we wait for our Shepherd’s voice to tell us where to go and what comes next.

He leaves the light on for us because, like sheep, like children,
the darkness and the unknown can feel overwhelming.

AI image created for this post

This year’s Advent theme is from Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s sermon on the First Sunday in Advent, December 2, 1928:

The celebration of Advent is possible only to those who are troubled in soul, who know themselves to be poor and imperfect, and who look forward to something greater to come. For these, it is enough to wait in humble fear until the Holy One himself comes down to us, God in the child in the manager.

God comes.

He is, and always will be now, with us in our sin, in our suffering, and at our death. We are no longer alone. God is with us and we are no longer homeless.
~Dietrich Bonhoeffer – from Christmas Sermons

Click to Listen: He Will Carry the Weight of the World by The City Choir

A Painful Wuthering

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Fall, leaves, fall; die, flowers, away;
Lengthen night and shorten day;
Every leaf speaks bliss to me
Fluttering from the autumn tree.
I shall smile when wreaths of snow
Blossom where the rose should grow;
I shall sing when night’s decay
Ushers in a drearier day.
~Emily Brontë “Fall, Leaves, Fall”

It was not the thorn bending to the honeysuckles, but the honeysuckles embracing the thorn.
~Emily Brontë from Wuthering Heights

The loudest crows
cawing over the tops of the oaks
call me to autumn already,
and though my back is to the window,

I know the sky must be a gray wuthering,
and the curlews are crying. The wind
must be moaning as it goes sweeping
across heath and moors and the spikes
of purple heather thousands of miles away
from where my body sits; yet

I feel the gorse
grazing my ankles as I go.
~Andrea Potos “Brontean Morning” from Her Joy Becomes

I avoid watching sad movies and will close a book that is clearly heading for a weepy ending.

I don’t need to wrap myself around things that hurt when there is enough sadness and pain in the world already. Deep emotion sticks to me like velcro, even when I know the tragedy is not my own. I take it on as if it is.

As a result, the Brontë novel Wuthering Heights is not my cup of tea. I suffered through the book as well as the movie versions. It is grim with wild, destructive passions that only lead to more sorrow. I become immersed in those desperately gray “wuthering” scenes feeling the sharp thorns of the words I read that end up drawing blood from me.

But most suffering is not at all fictional. When I become aware of tragedy happening far away, when the hurricane leaves behind terrible devastation or bombs and bullets rip communities to shreds, even though there is little I can physically do to help, I can’t turn away and not look. I can’t close the book that makes me sad and uncomfortable.

I too must feel the hurt, embracing the thorns rather than avoiding them.

Jesus did just that, taking it all upon Himself. He never turned away and still, now, today, He is pierced, bloodied for our sake.

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Edges So Sharp

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The ghosts swarm.
They speak as one 
person. Each
loves you. Each
has left something undone.

Today’s edges
are so sharp

they might cut
anything that moved.

The way a lost
word

will come back
unbidden.

You’re not interested
in it now,

only
in knowing
where it’s been.
~Rae Armantrout from “Unbidden”

I wish for you the blessing
of a room where strangers sit
breathing unashamed
into a chosen silence

Not the gasping breath
of travelers on a crowded plane
or the tenuous wheeze
of the waiting room

May you know the power
of those who have decided
to submit to the silence
to enter the mystery
be consumed by it
and emerge transformed

May you belong among those
who inhale the stillness
as if it is keeping us
because it is
keeping us alive
~Bethany Lee, “To Enter the Mystery” from Etude for Belonging: poems for practicing courage and hope

The grace of God means something like:
Here is your life.
You might never have been, but you are…
Here is the world.
Beautiful and terrible things will happen.
Don’t be afraid.
I am with you.
~Frederick Buechner in “Wishful Thinking and later” in Beyond Words

Twenty three years ago,
a day started with bright sun above
and ended in tears and bloodshed below.

This is a day for recollection;
we live out remembrance of
the torrential red that flowed that day;

Two decades later, far-away streets still course
with the blood of innocents.

What have we learned from all this?

That terrible day’s edges were so sharp
we all bled and still bear the scars.

So do not be afraid: we are able to still breathe and weep.

We Are Lost…

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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, I was raised in a house of water

…deeds are done which appear so evil to us
and people suffer such terrible evils
that it does not seem as though any good will ever come of them;
and we consider this, sorrowing and grieving over it 

so that we cannot find peace in the blessed contemplation of God as we should do; 

and this is why:

our reasoning powers are so blind now, so humble and so simple

And this is what he means where he says, 
“You shall see for yourself that all manner of things shall be well”, 
as if he said, “Pay attention to this now, faithfully and confidently, 
and at the end of time you will truly see it in the fullness of joy.
~Julian of Norwich from Revelations of Divine Love

Even when,
yet again,
innocents – our children, our teachers –
do not wake, as if by magic, to see this golden morn

I’m heavy laden as the tears of this dewy dawn
touch every lost and grieving thing

there is no reason for this
to happen again and again and again
~we weep until we are dry as dust~

Pay attention to this now, to this mourning for innocents
who are lost to the night and the day.

If only we listen and act, shall this be made well.

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A Mind Blurred

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For all
the pain

passed down
the genes

or latent
in the very grain

of being;
for the lordless

mornings,
the smear

of spirit
words intuit

and inter;
for all

the nightfall
neverness

inking
into me

even now,
my prayer

is that a mind
blurred

by anxiety
or despair

might find
here

a trace
of peace.
~Christian Wiman “Prayer” from Once in the West

We all have times when nothing makes sense. The mind blurs with stress or fear or a sense of unreality – all focus is lost and the world becomes simultaneously fuzzy and prickly.

If that happens here in these pages, through these words and photos I share, it is because I need reminding: things often don’t make sense to me when tragedy, pain and suffering happen to people on the other side of the earth, or just down the road from here, or to those I love.

Or to me.

It still makes sense to God. He has clear vision I will never have.

He doesn’t make bad things happen; He grieves it too.
He is the focus when all else is blurry.

God calls to us out of the haze that obscures. Only then peace begins.

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When I Was Sinking Down: The Bridge of Grace

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The bridge of grace will bear your weight…
~Charles Spurgeon

Where God tears great gaps
we should not try to fill  them with human words.
They should remain open.
Our only comfort is the God of the resurrection,
the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
who also was and is (our) God.
~Dietrich Bonhoeffer from “Circular Letters in the Church Struggle”

An old man going a lone highway,
Came, at the evening cold and gray,
To a chasm vast and deep and wide.
Through which was flowing a sullen tide
The old man crossed in the twilight dim,
The sullen stream had no fear for him;
But he turned when safe on the other side
And built a bridge to span the tide.

“Old man,” said a fellow pilgrim near,
“You are wasting your strength with building here;
Your journey will end with the ending day,
You never again will pass this way;
You’ve crossed the chasm, deep and wide,
Why build this bridge at evening tide?”

The builder lifted his old gray head;
“Good friend, in the path I have come,” he said,
“There followed after me to-day
A youth whose feet must pass this way.
This chasm that has been as naught to me
To that fair-haired youth may a pitfall be;
He, too, must cross in the twilight dim;
Good friend, I am building this bridge for him!”
~Will Allen Dromgoole “The Bridge Builder”

A terrible accident collapsed a massive bridge yesterday,
taking lives from grieving families,
creating a great gap for those who depend on the span
for connection and transport.

No human bridge builder could instantly repair
the deep and wide gap left behind
when the bridge came down.

Christ – the Divine Bridge to humanity from heaven –
was broken too, separated from His Father, the Builder.

The chasm left behind was so wholly unbridgeable.
Forsaken, Christ suffers for His brothers and sisters
who are drowning in sin by paying, with His life,
a ransom we on our own could never satisfy.

His grace is the only bridge
able to bear our awful weight.

We need a Mediator, a divine engineer,
whose grace is strong enough
to fill our every hole, bridge our every gap,
carry hope to our emptiness and grief
and deliver us wholly to our Father,
who was and is our God.

Lord, comfort us
by spanning our troubled waters,
bearing our weighty burdens,
to ensure we will safely reach the Other Side
where Your arms await us.

For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.
1Timothy 2:5

photo by Josh Scholten
photo by Josh Scholten

This Lenten season I reflect on the words of the 19th century southern spiritual hymn “What Wondrous Love is This”

What was Bound to Happen

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Outside the house the wind is howling
and the trees are creaking horribly.
This is an old story
with its old beginning,
as I lay me down to sleep.
But when I wake up, sunlight
has taken over the room.
You have already made the coffee
and the radio brings us music
from a confident age. In the paper
bad news is set in distant places.
Whatever was bound to happen
in my story did not happen.
But I know there are rules that cannot be broken.
Perhaps a name was changed.
A small mistake. Perhaps
a woman I do not know
is facing the day with the heavy heart
that, by all rights, should have been mine.
~Lisel Mueller “In November” from Alive Together

It does not escape me~
(I awake every day knowing this)
a disastrous earthquake happened somewhere else,
a war ravages families on both sides of a border,
a windstorm leveled a town,
a drunk driver devastated two families,
a fire left a house in ashes,
a mother nearly died giving birth,
a flood ravaged a village,
a grim diagnosis darkened
someone’s remaining days.

No mistake has been made,
yet I awake knowing this part of my story
has yet to visit me –
I hear of so much suffering,
knowing the heavy heart
that could have been mine
still beats,
still breaks,
still aches,
still believes in grace, mercy, and miracles.

A Night of Dark Intent

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The world is its usual rich self. Disturbed news
Came before sleep, then hours before light, finally
A return to coffee and the joy of unfinished poems.
It is early October, bright leaves falling everywhere.

What could it mean that such sharp leaves fall?
Does it imply that the best are called first?

I don’t want to imply that such abundance of meaning
Exists in me. A lamppost shines over
The ocean. The waves take what they want of the
light.
The rest they give back, to the hospitals and the poor.
~Robert Bly from Morning Poems

Bellingham Bay-photo by Nate Gibson

The shattered water made a misty din.
Great waves looked over others coming in,
And thought of doing something to the shore
That water never did to land before.
The clouds were low and hairy in the skies,
Like locks blown forward in the gleam of eyes.
You could not tell, and yet it looked as if
The shore was lucky in being backed by cliff,
The cliff in being backed by continent;
It looked as if a night of dark intent
Was coming, and not only a night, an age.
Someone had better be prepared for rage.
There would be more than ocean-water broken
Before God’s last Put out the light was spoken.
~Robert Frost “Once By the Pacific”

photo by Nate Gibson at Sendai, Japan

We were staying with our friends Brian and Bette at their cabin on a bluff just above the beach at Sendai, Japan, just a few dozen feet above the devastation that wiped out an entire fishing village below during the 3/11/11 earthquake and tsunami. We walked that stretch, learning of the stories of the people who had lived there, some of whom did not survive the waves that swept their houses and cars away before they could escape. We walked past the footprints of foundations of hundreds of demolished homes, humbled by the rubble mountains yet to be hauled away to be burned or buried and scanned acres of wrecked vehicles now piled one on another, waiting to become scrap metal. It was visual evidence of life suddenly and dramatically disrupted.

This was a place of recreation and respite for some who visited regularly, commerce and livelihood for others who stayed year round. Yet it looked like a foreign ghostly landscape. Even many trees perished, lost, broken off, fish nets still stuck high on their scarred trunks. There were small memorials to lost family members within some home foundations, with stuffed animals and flowers wilting from the recent anniversary observance.

It was a powerful place of memories for those who live there and know what it once was, how it once looked and felt, and painfully, what it became in a matter of minutes on 3/11/11. The waves swept in inexplicable suffering, then carried their former lives away. Happiness gave ground to such terrible pain that could never have hurt as much without the joy that preceded it.

We want to ask God why He doesn’t do something about the suffering that happens anywhere a disaster occurs – but if we do, He will ask us the same question right back. We need to be ready with our answer and our action. He knows suffering. Far more than we do. He took it all on Himself as His Light on earth was snuffed out, despite His love and joy in His creation.

As Sendai’s citizens slowly recover, the inner and outer landscape is forever altered. What remains the same is the tempo of the waves, the tides, and the rhythm of the light and the night, happening just as originally created.

The Light returned.

In that realization, pain gives way. It cannot stand up to His love and His joy in dispelling the dark.

the rubble still piled on the beach at Tohoku, Japan, a year after the 3/11/11 tsunami
photo by Nate Gibson
Sendai

Do Not Look Back

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He loved to ask his mother questions. It was the pleasantest thing for him to ask a question and then to hear what answer his mother would give. Bambi was never surprised that question after question should come into his mind continually and without effort. 

Sometimes he felt very sure that his mother was not giving him a complete answer, was intentionally not telling him all she knew.  For then there would remain in him such a lively curiosity, such suspicion, mysteriously and joyously flashing through him, such anticipation, that he would become anxious and happy at the same time, and grow silent.
~Felix Salten from Bambi

A Wounded Deer—leaps highest—
I’ve heard the Hunter tell—
‘Tis but the Ecstasy of death—
And then the Brake is still!
~Emily Dickinson “165″

As the house of a person
in age sometimes grows cluttered
with what is
too loved or too heavy to part with,
the heart may grow cluttered.
And still the house will be emptied,
and still the heart.

Empty and filled,
like the curling half-light of morning,
in which everything is still possible and so why not.

Filled and empty,
like the curling half-light of evening,
in which everything now is finished and so why not.

Beloved, what can be, what was,
will be taken from us.
I have disappointed.
I am sorry. I knew no better.

A root seeks water.
Tenderness only breaks open the earth.
This morning, out the window,
the deer stood like a blessing, then vanished.
~Jane Hirschfield from “The Standing Deer”


My first time ever
seated next to my mother
in a movie theater, just
a skinny four year old girl
practically folded in half
by a large padded chair
whose seat won’t stay down,
bursting with anticipation
to see Disney’s Bambi.

Enthralled with so much color,
motion,  music, songs and fun
characters, I am wholly lost
in this new world of animated
reality when suddenly
Bambi’s mother looks up,
alarmed, from eating
a new clump of spring grass
growing in the snow.

My heart leaps
with worry.
She tells him
to run quickly
for the thicket –
find the safest place where
she has always
kept him warm
next to her.

She follows behind,
urges him to run faster,
not to look back,
don’t ever look back.

Then the gun shot
hits my belly too.

My stomach twists
as he cries out
for his mother,
pleading for her.
I know in my heart
she is lost forever,
sacrificed to save him.

I sob as my mother
reaches out to me,
telling me not to look.
I bury my face
inside her hug,
knowing Bambi
is cold and alone
with no mother
any more.

My mama took me home
before the end.
I could not bear to watch
the rest of the movie 
for years.

Those cries
still echo
in my ears
any time someone hunts and shoots
to kill the innocent.

Now, my own three children are grown,
they have babies of their own,
my mom is gone from this earth.
I can even keep the seat from folding
me in half in a movie theater.

I am nearing my eighth decade, and
there are still places in this world where
mothers and fathers
sons and daughters
grandmothers and grandfathers
sisters and brothers
and babies are hunted down
despite the supposed safety of the thicket~
the sanctuary, the school, the grocery store, the home,
places where we believe we are shielded from violence.

There can be no innocence when any of us may be hunted.