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.
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Measure the walls. Count the ribs. Notch the long days. Look up for blue sky through the spout. Make small fires with the broken hulls of fishing boats. Practice smoke signals. Call old friends, and listen for echoes of distant voices. Organize your calendar. Dream of the beach. Look each way for the dim glow of light. Work on your reports. Review each of your life’s ten million choices. Endure moments of self-loathing. Find the evidence of those before you. Destroy it. Try to be very quiet, and listen for the sound of gears and moving water. Listen for the sound of your heart. Be thankful that you are here, swallowed with all hope, where you can rest and wait. Be nostalgic. Think of all the things you did and could have done. Remember treading water in the center of the still night sea, your toes pointing again and again down, down into the black depths. ~ Dan Albergotti “Things to Do in the Belly of the Whale” from The Boatloads
“In my distress I called to the Lord, and he answered me. From deep in the realm of the dead I called for help, and you listened to my cry. You hurled me into the depths, into the very heart of the seas, and the currents swirled about me; all your waves and breakers swept over me. I said, ‘I have been banished from your sight; yet I will look again toward your holy temple.’ The engulfing waters threatened me,[b] the deep surrounded me; seaweed was wrapped around my head. To the roots of the mountains I sank down; the earth beneath barred me in forever. But you, Lord my God, brought my life up from the pit.
“When my life was ebbing away, I remembered you, Lord, and my prayer rose to you, to your holy temple.
“Those who cling to worthless idols turn away from God’s love for them.
But I, with shouts of grateful praise, will sacrifice to you. What I have vowed I will make good. I will say, ‘Salvation comes from the Lord.“
“It is a childish work—the whale has the head of a dog and Jonah looks suspiciously fresh.” —www.artbible.info
In candied red, the white-bearded prophet emerges hands still clasped in prayer, clean, really clean, maybe too clean, first-day- of-school clean, baptism clean. It is a childish painting, perhaps, the punished coming up for air after a three-day, divine timeout, his begging and pleading inside this flesh box, sincere or not, but he’s out, old and fresh in a world around him, Brueghel is sure to make clear, swirling blue-black and solid brown, the earth’s bruising, perhaps a wish of healing yellow in the distance, a light faded behind the eye’s focus. The dogfish eyes big and rolling back mouth open
like the cave like the tomb like the brown creek carp we refuse to touch hate to catch squishy and formless but counted nonetheless. But he will dirty himself again after Nineveh under the vine cussing at God telling God His own business, and he will forget the welcoming red the fresh fruit color of that cloak—the thin (or thinning) clearing in the background beyond sea and storm, even the mouth as exit as release. He will soon forget to consider how suspicious it is for a man like him sitting in death’s darkness for three days to come out so clean so bright so forgiven. ~Jacob Stratman “a poem for my sons when they yell at God” from Christian Century
As I grumble about what I think is wrong with the world, I fail to understand that God has heard much grumbling from His children before. And much of what is wrong with the world is also wrong with me.
It must get tiresome, listening to it.
Perhaps that is why Jonah, who wanted to die rather than deal with the sinful city he had been sent to redeem, was given a little respite for three days to think things over until he understood what his role was.
By counting all those ribs inside the whale, he was thinking about all the things he had done wrong and all the things he should have done, but didn’t.
Whenever I stand in a structure with powerful beams towering over and surrounding me, I too feel swallowed whole. I am no more than a tiny speck within a vast organism.
Nevertheless, small as I am, I still matter to God. I am being prepared to be spit out, to do what I’m supposed to do, and not be concerned nearly as much with my disgruntlement with the rest of the world as with my disgruntlement with myself.
Swallowed whole by hope. Spit out forgiven.
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There is weather on the day you are born and weather on the day you die. There is the year of drought, and the year of floods, when everything rises and swells, the year when winter will not stop falling, and the year when summer lightning burns the prairie, makes it disappear. There are the weathervanes, dizzy on top of farmhouses, hurricanes curled like cats on a map of sky: there are cows under the trees outlined in flies. There is the weather that blows a stranger into town and the weather that changes suddenly: an argument, a sickness, a baby born too soon. Crops fail and a field becomes a study in hunger; storm clouds billow over the sea; tornadoes appear like the drunk trunks of elephants. People talking about weather are people who don’t know what to say and yet the weather is what happens to all of us: the blizzard that makes our neighborhoods strange, the flood that carries away our plans. We are getting ready for the weather, or cleaning up after the weather, or enduring the weather. We are drenched in rain or sweat: we are looking for an umbrella, a second mitten; we are gathering wood to build a fire. ~Faith Shearin “Weather” from Orpheus, Turning.
On the planet the winds are blowing: the polar easterlies, the westerlies, the northeast and southeast trades… Lick a finger, feel the now. ~Annie Dillard from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
I’m still discovering, right up to this moment, that it is only by living completely in this world that one learns to have faith. I mean living unreservedly in life’s duties, problems, successes and failures, experiences and perplexities. In so doing, we throw ourselves completely into the arms of God. ~Dietrich Bonhoeffer from The Cost of Discipleship
Never before in the history of humanity have we had the ability to pull the weather forecast out of our pocket and know not only what to anticipate in the next 24 hours or 10 days, but even what is happening right now.
Prior to phone apps, we scanned the skies, checked the barometer, looked at where the weather vane points, monitored the thermometer, and put a licked finger up to test the wind direction.
As obsolete as those measures seem now, I confess they still make sense to me.
It’s a little silly if my phone says it is raining at “my location” and I can’t find a single cloud.
I want to know what is happening around me from my own observation, trust my own eyes, feel my own sweat in the heat, my chilly goose bumps in the cold, my wet head in the rain, my hair messy in the wind.
I want to know we’re all in this together, right now.
I want to live completely in this world, living now, finger held to the wind.
Then, having the information I need, I throw myself completely into the arms of God.
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More than the fuchsia funnels breaking out of the crabapple tree, more than the neighbor’s almost obscene display of cherry limbs shoving their cotton candy-colored blossoms to the slate sky of Spring rains, it’s the greening of the trees that really gets to me. When all the shock of white and taffy, the world’s baubles and trinkets, leave the pavement strewn with the confetti of aftermath, the leaves come. Patient, plodding, a green skin growing over whatever winter did to us, a return to the strange idea of continuous living despite the mess of us, the hurt, the empty. Fine then, I’ll take it, the tree seems to say, a new slick leaf unfurling like a fist to an open palm, I’ll take it all. ~Ada Limón“Instructions on Not Giving Up”
I thought I was emptied out – hollow and irretrievable – after a long drawn out winter of difficult news, and now these cold rainy spring days forecast even more bad news happening in the world.
Yet here I am ~ here we are ~ still among the living and breathing. I am swept away by what I see greening all around me.
The landscape begins to explode with layers of color and shadow. Standing close, I too am ignited. It is impossible to witness so much unfolding life and light and not be engulfed and heartened and singed around my edges.
It lures me outside where flames of green lap about my ankles as I stroll the fields and each fresh breeze fans the fires until I’ve nothing left of myself but ash and shadow.
Consumed and subsumed.
Combusted and busted.
What a way to go.
I’ll take it. I’ll take it all.
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Like a storm of hornets, the little white planets layer and relayer as they whip around in their high orbits, getting more and more dense before they crash against our crust. A maelstrom of ferocious little fists and punches, so hard to believe once it’s past. ~Kay Ryan “Hailstorm”
Several years ago, a brief and unexpected Palm Sunday storm blew through with gusts of southerly winds, thunder, horizontal rain and noisy hale. I had left the north/south center aisle doors wide open after morning chores, so the storm also blew through the barn. Hay, empty buckets, horse halters and cat food were strewn about. The Haflinger horses stood wide-eyed and fretful in their stalls as the hail on the metal roof hammered away.
Once I got the doors closed and secured, all was soon made right. The horses relaxed and got back to their meals and things felt normal again.
Today, Holy Monday morning, all seems calm but nevertheless, somewhat beaten up. The barn is still there, the roof still on, the horses where they belong and all seems to be as it was before the barnstorming wind. Or so it might appear.
This wind heralds another storm beginning this week that hits with such force that I’m knocked off my feet, blown away, and left bruised and breathless. No latches, locks, or barricades are strong enough to protect me from what will come over the next few days.
Yesterday he rode in on a donkey softly, humbly, and wept at what he knew must come.
Today, he overturns the tables in his fury.
Tomorrow he describes the destruction that is to happen, yet no one understands.
Wednesday, a woman boldly anoints him with precious oil, as preparation, ignoring his disciples’ rebukes.
On Thursday, he kneels before his friends, pours water over their dusty feet, presides over a simple meal, and later, abandoned, sweats blood in agonized prayer.
By Friday, all culminates in a most perfect storm, transforming everything in its path, leaving nothing untouched, the curtain torn, the veil removed.
The silence on Saturday is deafening.
Next Sunday, the Son rises, sheds his shroud and neatly folds what is no longer needed. He is nearly unrecognizable in his glory.
He calls my name, my heart burns within me at his words and I can never be the same again.
I am, once again and always, barnstormed to the depths of my soul. Doors flung open wide, my roof pulled off, everything of no consequence blown away and now replaced, renewed and reconciled.
May it be done this week as he has said, again and yet again, year after year, life after life.
another barnstorming
This year’s Barnstorming Lenten theme is Ephesians 3:9:
…to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things…
1. Courage, my soul, and let us journey on, Tho’ the night is dark, it won’t be very long. Thanks be to God, the morning light appears, And the storm is passing over, Hallelujah!
Chorus: Hallelujah! Hallelujah! The storm is passing over, Hallelujah!
2. Billows rolling high, and thunder shakes the ground, Lightnings flash, and tempest all around, Jesus walks the sea and calms the angry waves, And the storm is passing over, Hallelujah! [Chorus]
3. The stars have disappeared, and distant lights are dim, My soul is filled with fears, the seas are breaking in. I hear the Master cry, “Be not afraid, ’tis I,” And the storm is passing over, Hallelujah! [Chorus]
4. Soon we shall reach the distant shining shore, Free from all the storms, we’ll rest forevermore. Safe within the veil, we’ll furl the riven sail, And the storm will all be over, Hallelujah! [Chorus]
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When evening came, his disciples went down to the sea,got into a boat, and started across the sea to Capernaum.
It was now dark, and Jesus had not yet come to them. The sea became rough because a strong wind was blowing.
When they had rowed about three or four miles, they saw Jesus walking on the sea and coming near the boat,
…and they were frightened.
But he said to them, “It is I; do not be afraid.”
Then they were glad to take him into the boat, and immediately the boat was at the land to which they were going. John 6: 16-21
So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand. ~Isaiah 41:10
Maybe, after the sermon, after the multitude was fed, one or two of them felt the soul slip forth like a tremor of pure sunlight before exhaustion, that wants to swallow everything, gripped their bones and left them miserable and sleepy, as they are now, forgetting how the wind tore at the sails before he rose and talked to it —
tender and luminous and demanding as he always was — a thousand times more frightening than the killer sea. ~Mary Oliver from “Maybe”
Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid. ~Frederich Buechner
Most days I depend on beauty to give me hope, knowing somewhere, it will show its face.
Sometimes, in fearsome times, I must search in unexpected places.
It is then I worry I’ll not ever see beauty in quite the same way again: perhaps Beauty itself frightens me…
Yet we are told, again and again and again so we might listen and believe:
“It is I; fear not.”
…do not be afraid do not be afraid… …do not be afraid…
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.
This year’s Barnstorming Lenten theme is Ephesians 3:9: …to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things…
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The earth invalid, dropsied, bruised, wheeled Out in the sun, After frightful operation. She lies back, wounds undressed to the sun, To be healed, Sheltered from the sneapy chill creeping North wind, Leans back, eyes closed, exhausted, smiling Into the sun. Perhaps dozing a little. While we sit, and smile, and wait, and know She is not going to die. ~Ted Hughes from “A March Morning Unlike Others” from Ted Hughes. Collected Poems
March. I am beginning to anticipate a thaw. Early mornings the earth, old unbeliever, is still crusted with frost where the moles have nosed up their cold castings, and the ground cover in shadow under the cedars hasn’t softened for months, fogs layering their slow, complicated ice around foliage and stem night by night,
but as the light lengthens, preacher of good news, evangelizing leaves and branches, his large gestures beckon green out of gray. Pinpricks of coral bursting from the cotoneasters. A single bee finding the white heather. Eager lemon-yellow aconites glowing, low to the ground like little uplifted faces. A crocus shooting up a purple hand here, there, as I stand on my doorstep, my own face drinking in heat and light like a bud welcoming resurrection, and my hand up, too, ready to sign on for conversion. ~Luci Shaw “Revival” from What the Light Was Like.
This year, spring has been emerging early from an exceptionally warm and un-snowy winter, yet blizzard conditions last night closed the Cascade mountain passes with high winds causing extensive power outages in the Puget Sound region.
Our hilltop farm was spared overnight – we are grateful for light and heat this morning.
Up until now, all growing things have been several weeks ahead of the usual budding/blooming schedule when, like the old “Wizard of Oz” movie, the landscape suddenly turns from monochrome to technicolor with a soundtrack going from forlorn to glorious.
Like most folks, I too yearn for spring to commence, tapping my foot impatiently as if I’m personally owed an extravagant seasonal transformation from dormant to verdant.
We wait for the Great Physician’s announcement that His patient survived winter once again: “I’m happy to say the Earth is alive and restored, wounded but healing, breathing on her own but too addled by last night’s windstorm for you to expect much from her just yet.”
As we celebrate her imminent healing, we are reassured His Creation is still very much alive- we rejoice in this temporary home of ours. A promising prognosis for this patient coming out of the fog of winter: she lives, she breathes, she thrives, to bloom and sing with everything she’s got. So soon, so will I.
This year’s Barnstorming Lenten theme is Ephesians 3:9:
…to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things…
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“If I testify about myself, my testimony is not true.There is another who testifies in my favor, and I know that his testimony about me is true.
“You have sent to John and he has testified to the truth. Not that I accept human testimony; but I mention it that you may be saved. John was a lamp that burned and gave light, and you chose for a time to enjoy his light.
“I have testimony weightier than that of John. For the works that the Father has given me to finish—the very works that I am doing—testify that the Father has sent me.And the Father who sent me has himself testified concerning me. You have never heard his voice nor seen his form, nor does his word dwell in you, for you do not believe the one he sent. You study the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life.
“I do not accept glory from human beings, but I know you. I know that you do not have the love of God in your hearts.I have come in my Father’s name, and you do not accept me; but if someone else comes in his own name, you will accept him.How can you believe since you accept glory from one another but do not seek the glory that comes from the only God?
“But do not think I will accuse you before the Father. Your accuser is Moses, on whom your hopes are set. If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me. But since you do not believe what he wrote, how are you going to believe what I say?” John 5: 31-47
One lights a candle: that candle, for example, so far as regards the little flame which shines there — that fire has light in itself; but your eyes, which lay idle and saw nothing, in the absence of the candle, now have light also, but not in themselves.
Further, if they turn away from the candle, they are made dark; if they turn to it, they are illumined. But certainly that fire shines so long as it exists: if you would take the light from it, you also at the same time extinguish it; for without the light it cannot remain.
But Christ is light inextinguishable and co-eternal with the Father, always bright, always shining, always burning. Therefore, because in yourself you were darkness, when you shall be enlightened, you will be light, though in the light.
Be it that you were left in the dark in the night-time, you directed your attention to the lamp, you admired the lamp, and exulted at its light. But that lamp says that there is a sun, in which you ought to exult; and though it burns in the night, it bids you to be looking out for the day. ~Augustine from Tractate 22and Tractate 23 on the Book of John
Where would I be, in the dark of the night, if I didn’t have a light switch, a flashlight, or a candle to illuminate what I can not see?
I would be falling over the many obstacles in my way, running my head into objects overhead, or tripping into a dark hole underfoot.
I am grateful for those around me who steadfastly carry lamps to help me find my way when I’m lost. Each Sunday at church, I’m surrounded by them. I hope I too hold a lamp to show the path for someone else.
Yet it is not the lamp that is the ultimate source of Light – it is only the means to get where we each need to be.
Jesus tells us to focus on His inextinguishable Light – no more tripping and falling, bonks on the head, or getting irretrievably lost.
As the Word, He delivers us from our darkness and leads us to eternal life and Light.
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.
This year’s Barnstorming Lenten theme is Ephesians 3:9: …to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things…
Translation: O Light born of Light, Jesus, redeemer of the world, Mercifully deign to accept The praises and prayers of your suppliants.
O you who once deigned to be hidden in flesh For the sake of the lost, Grant us to be made members Of your blessed body.
TRANSLATION Word of the Highest, our only hope, Eternal day of earth and the heavens, We break the silence of the peaceful night; Saviour Divine, cast your eyes upon us!
Pour on us the fire of your powerful grace, That all hell may flee at the sound of your voice; Banish the slumber of a weary soul, That brings forgetfulness of your laws!
O Christ, look with favour upon your faithful people Now gathered here to praise you; Receive their hymns offered to your immortal glory; May they go forth filled with your gifts.
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I have no wit, no words, no tears; My heart within me like a stone Is numb’d too much for hopes or fears; Look right, look left, I dwell alone; I lift mine eyes, but dimm’d with grief No everlasting hills I see; My life is in the falling leaf: O Jesus, quicken me.
My life is like a faded leaf, My harvest dwindled to a husk: Truly my life is void and brief And tedious in the barren dusk; My life is like a frozen thing, No bud nor greenness can I see: Yet rise it shall—the sap of Spring; O Jesus, rise in me. ~Christina Rossetti from “A Better Resurrection”
<Peter> saw the linen cloths lying there,and the face cloth, which had been on Jesus’ head, not lying with the linen cloths but folded up in a place by itself. John 20: 6-7
It dawned on me that perhaps the first thing the risen Lord did after he defeated death, as his heart once again began to beat, was to fold his grave clothes.
This seemed to me to be good news for laundry doers everywhere—and especially to moms who probably still carry out the bulk of this mundane chore.
The risen Christ folded his laundry.
I suppose the angels could have done it but angels probably don’t have much experience with laundry. ~Doug Basler from “The Poetry of a Pastor” from Ekstasis Magazine
I remember, as a child, my panicky feeling, when my mother would help me take off a sweater with a particularly tight neck opening, as my head would get “stuck” momentarily until she could free me.
It caused an intense feeling of being unable to breathe or see anything around me – literally being frozen in place. I was trapped and held captive by something as innocuous as a piece of cloth, but the panic was real.
That same feeling still overwhelms me at times when I find myself stuck in my worries and fears, anxious and struggling to loosen what binds me, unable to look right or left, up or down.
My impulse, once free of whatever is smothering me, is to toss it as far away from me as possible. I want to be rid of it and never touch it again.
I certainly don’t take time to gently fold it up for all to see.
Jesus took the time to carefully fold His facial death cloth and leave it where anyone who entered the tomb would recognize it as proof that His body wasn’t stolen.
He had risen, leaving a clear message that all was in good order, as He said it would be.
Understanding that, I now find folding laundry more meaningful, not nearly as mundane. It is a reminder that a tidy and empty tomb is something to celebrate: new life quickens like spring sap rising from a fallen, faded leaf.
This year’s Barnstorming Lenten theme is Ephesians 3:9:
…to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things…
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Days pass when I forget the mystery. Problems insoluble and problems offering their own ignored solutions jostle for my attention… And then once more the quiet mystery is present to me, the throng’s clamor recedes: the mystery that there is anything, anything at all, let alone cosmos, joy, memory, everything, rather than void: and that, O Lord, Creator, Hallowed one, You still, hour by hour sustain it. ~Denise Levertov from “Primary Wonder” from Sands of the Well
Here is the mystery, the secret, one might almost say the cunning, of the deep love of God: that it is bound to draw upon itself the hatred and pain and shame and anger and bitterness and rejection of the world, but to draw all those things on to itself is precisely the means chosen from all eternity by the generous, loving God, by which to rid his world of the evils which have resulted from human abuse of God-given freedom. ~N.T. Wright from The Crown and The Fire
Inundated by the inevitable bad news of the world, I must cling to the mystery of His magnetism for my own weaknesses, flaws and bitterness.
I am frozen in the ice of sin, waiting to be thawed.
He willingly pulls evil onto Himself, out of me. Hatred and pain and shame and anger disappear into the vortex of His love and beauty, the mucky corners of my heart vacuumed spotless.
We are let in on a secret: He is not sullied by absorbing the dirty messes of our lives.
Created in His image, sustained and loved, thus a reflection of Him, it is no mystery we are washed forever clean.
photo of Mt. Baker reflected in Wiser Lake by Joel DeWaard
This year’s Barnstorming Lenten theme is Ephesians 3:9:
…to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things…
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