Category: storm

A Reason None of Us Knows

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…I have been younger in October
than in all the months of spring
walnut and may leaves the color
of shoulders at the end of summer
a month that has been to the mountain
and become light there
the long grass lies pointing uphill
even in death for a reason
that none of us knows…

my love is for lightness
of touch foot feather
the day is yet one more yellow leaf
and without turning I kiss the light
by an old well on the last of the month
gathering wild rose hips
in the sun
~W. S. Merwin from “The Love of October” from Migration

 

This warm wind gusts through shedding branches
stripping them bare
and carrying the leaves yards
far away, to a diverse gathering
they have never known:
chestnut, cherry, birch, walnut, apple,
maple, parrotia, pear, oak, poplar
suddenly sharing the same fate and grave,
each wearing a color of its own,
soon to blend with the others
as all slowly melt to brown.

There is lightness in the letting go,
for reasons none of us knows.

 

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The Brows of Morning

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“The narrow bud opens her beauties to
The sun, and love runs in her thrilling veins;
Blossoms hang round the brows of Morning, and
Flourish down the bright cheek of modest Eve,
Till clust’ring Summer breaks forth into singing,
And feather’d clouds strew flowers round her head.

“The spirits of the air live on the smells
Of fruit; and Joy, with pinions light, roves round
The gardens, or sits singing in the trees.”
Thus sang the jolly Autumn as he sat;
Then rose, girded himself, and o’er the bleak
Hills fled from our sight; but left his golden load.
~William Blake from “To Autumn”

 

For northwest native webfoots like myself, this has been an atypically tough summer: no rain, full-out heat and humidity, melting glaciers, dust, drought, fires, smoke and water restrictions.  When the string of three plus months of overwhelming sun finally broke in a devastating wind and rainstorm this past weekend, I for one celebrated, despite no power and no water for a couple of days.  Since then the rain has poured and snow has fallen on bare rock in the mountains.  This morning the fog returned with moisture rising from spider-webbed soppy ground to meet the roselight of the dawn.

Praise God this Morning for a blissful relief
found in furrowed brows of Morning,
of foggy feather’d clouds;
we move from clust’ring Summer
to the golden load of jolly Autumn.

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Brought Together By the Lights

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image

I awoke to eery inky darkness this morning around 5 AM. No digital clock numbers shining red, no nightlight illumination. Just black. The wind and rain storm yesterday that hit Puget Sound and the Washington coast left us without power, and a quick scan out the windows informed me we were not alone waking in the dark this morning.  The closest lights in the horizon were the Canadian border cities ten miles away gleaming bright.

We were caught unprepared on this one.  The flashlights, of course, were not where they were supposed to be, and the candles were stuck deep in cupboards after Christmas.  The generator, unused for too long, won’t start.  Our little bit of battery power for computer and phone is rapidly diminishing. When an Amish acquaintance from Ohio called me and I lamented about how completely unAmish I was in my dependency on the power grid, he chuckled and asked me if I had my oil lamps lit yet.

We are nearing 20 hours since the power went out, the storm long past, but sit with 200,000 other homes waiting to be “turned on” again. It could be awhile. It is just for these kinds of situations on the farm that we have a small generator that we use sporadically to pump the water to the barn and keep the freezer and refrigerator cold. No such luck this time.  Good thing it is a warm time of year (except for the freezer stuff).

Our children always celebrated our power outages. It is high adventure, an escape from the routine, and even in their teenage years, they cling closer. They are all gone but I remember past power outages when we cleaned barn with the help of flashlights, cleaned house together and folded clothes in the dark, guessing the color of the dark socks, played piano and sang together and read lines in my son’s high school musical, helping him to memorize his part. We played games and laughed more than usual. We were drawn together by necessity as well as by choice. There was one good light in the kitchen, so there we sat encircled together, connected by a candle, when so often we are flung apart by the busyness and bright light of the world.

Last night we revisited those times as we had previously planned to have five neighbor children over for several hours to hang out and eat dinner.  The barbecue worked, we ate canned fruit and green salad and finished off all the ice cream before it became soup. They found our dark house unique with books by flashlight, playing piano and watching cartoons by iPad.  As they headed home last night to their generator-powered house, I wistfully hugged each one, remembering those family storm days not so long ago.

I am hopeful about the thought of the power returning sometime soon. Our children used to say a no power day was one of the best Saturdays they remembered in a long time. I have to agree. Maybe we need to take a hint and shut off the electronics– the phone, TV, computer, and just sit down together more often, sharing ourselves inside a circle of light. It is far more memorable, and in a dark house battered by a windstorm, far more enlightening to the heart.

Prepare for Joy: Blown Away

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eveninghaybarn

It has been a relatively warm wet week in the northwest, so it seemed reasonable after finishing up farm chores last night to leave the large rolling north-south doors wide open in the barn where the horses are housed.  Then I woke suddenly at midnight hearing powerful gusts of a southerly wind buffeting the house.  Knowing what havoc a wind can do inside an open barn, I went out in pajamas and muck boots to roll the doors closed before the storm could reach inside, a true barnstorming as has happened here before on Holy Week…

 

An unexpected southerly wind hit suddenly late Sunday night, gusting up to 40 miles an hour and slamming the house with drenching rain as we prepared to go to bed. Chores in the barn had been done hours before, but as we had not been expecting a storm, the north/south center aisle doors were still open, and I could hear banging and rattling as they were buffeted in the wind. I quickly dressed to go latch the doors for the night, but the tempest had done its damage. Hay, empty buckets, horse blankets, tack and cat food had blown all over, while the Haflingers stood wide-eyed and fretful in their stalls. A storm was blowing inside the barn as well as outside it.

It took some time to tidy up the mess after the doors were secured but all was soon made right. The wind continued to bash at the doors, but it no longer could touch anything inside them. The horses relaxed and got back to their evening meal though the noise coming from outside was deafening. I headed back up to the house and slept fitfully listening to the wind blow all night, wondering if the metal barn roof might pull off in a gust, exposing everything within.

Yet in the new daylight on Monday morning, all was calm. The barn was still there, the roof still on, the horses where they belonged and all seemed to be as it was before the barnstorming wind.

Or so it might appear.

This wind heralds another storm coming this week that hits with such force that I’m knocked off my feet, swept 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.

On Sunday he rode in on a donkey softly, humbly, and wept at what he knew was coming.

Yesterday, he withered the fruitless tree and overturned the tables in his fury.

Today the plans are made to betray him.

Tomorrow, he teaches the people to prepare them, then rests in anticipation.

On Thursday, he kneels as a servant, pours water over dusty feet, presides over a simple meal, and then, abandoned by his friends,  sweats blood in agonized prayer.

By Friday, all culminates in the perfect storm, transforming everything in its path, leaving nothing untouched.

The silence on Saturday is deafening.

Next Sunday, the Son rises and returns, all is calm, all is well, all set to right.  He calls my name, breaks bread with broken hands, my heart burns within me at his words and I can never be the same again.

Barnstormed to the depths of my soul. Doors flung open wide, the roof pulled off, everything I was before blown away and now replaced, renewed and reconciled.

So shall his spirit storm within us as he has said, again and yet again.

 

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Should Have Been Mine

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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”

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A Desolate Reflection

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It is a blustery and soaking start to the University’s academic year:  we enter autumn with no little trepidation…

 

Enter autumn as you would
a closing door.  Quickly,
cautiously.  Look for something inside
that promises color, but be wary
of its cast–a desolate reflection,
an indelible tint.
~Pamela Steed Hill from “September Pitch”

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One Fir Unyielding

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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 cress ‘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”

Our farm’s lone fir is a focal point of the neighborhood,
standing grand on the highest hill for several miles around.

Raptors use this tree for views of the surrounding fields.
The horses love the shade on hot summer days.
It is backdrop for glorious sunsets and rising moons.

Yet in winter I find myself admiring it most —
Its steadfast presence, so stoic and unyielding
though buffeted by cold wind and icy storms.

Decades of seasons flow past the lone fir,
“silence slipping around like death,
yet chased by a whisper, a sigh,
a breath.”

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photo by Nate Gibson
photo by Nate Gibson

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January 5, 1993

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I embarrass our daughter annually on January 5 with her birthday story because it was so dramatic (for us!) and though she was the main character in the drama, it is all myth to her. Lea is 21 today! Inconceivable! Yet it is so and we celebrate the Author of the drama that ensured she would have many birthdays to come. Happiest of birthdays to you, Lea!

Barnstorming

I couldn’t sleep that snowy stormy night even though I was not in earnest labor, and safely tucked into a hospital bed on the Labor and Delivery unit, my husband sleeping soundly in the other bed in the room.  It had been plenty harrowing just getting to the hospital in a northeaster, getting stuck in a snow drift, and being dug out by a bulldozer.   I knew our long-awaited third baby, over a week overdue, would be born the next day, blizzard or no blizzard, and then as soon as I could stand up and walk,  we would head right back to the farm to our sons, where our neighbors were staying with them.  At least that’s what I had planned.

It didn’t work out that way.  Not even close.

This baby wasn’t going to enter the world without a little more drama.  Instead of stoically agreeing along with me…

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A Canticle for Advent: What Our Good God For Us Has Done

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The Nativity by Le Nain, Antoine and Louis (d.1648) & Mathieu (1607-77)
The Nativity by Le Nain, Antoine and Louis (d.1648) & Mathieu (1607-77)
Good people all, this Christmas time,
Consider well and bear in mind
What our good God for us has done
In sending his beloved son
With Mary holy we should pray,
To God with love this Christmas Day
In Bethlehem upon that morn,
There was a blessed Messiah born
The night before that happy tide
The noble Virgin and her guide
Were long time seeking up and down
To find a lodging in the town
But mark right well what came to pass
From every door repelled, alas
As was foretold, their refuge all
Was but a humble ox’s stall
Near Bethlehem did shepherds keep
Their flocks of lambs and feeding sheep
To whom God’s angel did appear
Which put the shepherds in great fear
Arise and go, the angels said
To Bethlehem, be not afraid
For there you’ll find, this happy morn
A princely babe, sweet Jesus, born
With thankful heart and joyful mind
The shepherds went the babe to find
And as God’s angel had foretold
They did our Saviour Christ behold
Within a manger he was laid
And by his side a virgin maid
Attending on the Lord of Life
Who came on earth to end all strife
There were three wise men from afar
Directed by a glorious star
And on they wandered night and day
Until they came where Jesus lay
And when they came unto that place
Where our beloved Messiah lay
They humbly cast them at his feet
With gifts of gold and incense sweet.
~Traditional Irish — the Wexford Carol 12th century

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2b6URDdh_7A

 

“‘We would have healed Babylon,
but she cannot be healed;
let us leave her and each go to our own land,
for her judgment reaches to the skies,
it rises as high as the heavens.’

10 “‘The Lord has vindicated us;
come, let us tell in Zion
what the Lord our God has done.’
Jeremiah 51: 9-10

 

Even when I am weary,
one foot in front of the other
in the humble chores of the barn,
so cold I no longer
remember what was
once sweaty summer work,
now hands aching in an arctic wind
that shows no mercy.

I know respite comes, refuge is near.
I will remember what our good God
has prepared for us in such a place as this,what He has done to bring us home
when we are aching for Him.

 

A Canticle for Advent: Give Him My Heart

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fencenorth

In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter, long ago.

Our God, Heaven cannot hold Him, nor earth sustain;
Heaven and earth shall flee away when He comes to reign.
In the bleak midwinter a stable place sufficed
The Lord God Almighty, Jesus Christ.

Enough for Him, whom cherubim, worship night and day,
Breastful of milk, and a mangerful of hay;
Enough for Him, whom angels fall before,
The ox and ass and camel which adore.

Angels and archangels may have gathered there,
Cherubim and seraphim thronged the air;
But His mother only, in her maiden bliss,
Worshipped the beloved with a kiss.

What can I give Him, poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb;
If I were a Wise Man, I would do my part;
Yet what I can I give Him: give Him my heart.
~Christina Rossetti 1872

7 Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. 8 And God is able to bless you abundantly, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work.
2 Corinthinians 9:7-8

In bleak weather, as so many of us are experiencing today, it is a chore to do chores and a chore to be cheerful.  The arctic winds are moaning everywhere around the farm, the earth now hard as iron, all water like stone.
Yet to this misery He chose to come, knowing He was to be hurt, to bleed, to join us in pain.

How can I hold back my heart from One like this?   It is all I have of any value to Him.  It is what He came for, to take back with Him.