First day of February, and in the far corner of the yard the Adirondack chair, blown over by the wind at Christmas, is still on its back, the snow too deep for me to traipse out and right it, the ice too sheer to risk slamming these old bones to the ground.
In April I will walk out across the warming grass, and right the chair as if there had never been anything to stop me in the first place, listening for the buzz of hummingbirds which reminds me of how fast things are capable of moving. ~John Stanizzi “Ascension”
photo by Josh Scholten
I want to believe we’ve already had our winter and now it’s done. Turning the calendar to February, I hope we’ll begin a gradual warming trend to spring.
For a few days in January, I had the constant challenge of finding safe footing when surfaces were snow and ice-covered; I certainly didn’t want to add to the burden of the local orthopedists who were busy putting together broken arms and legs and dislocated joints from too many unscheduled landings.
Despite what the calendar says, sometimes winter is never quite done with us. I know in my head that winter is not forever — February will wrap up its short stay of 29 days and once again I will move about with ease without worrying about iced-over frosty walkways. But my heart is not so easily convinced as I become more risk-averse, worrying about fractures.
So my heart and head and aging bones need reminding: Those who traipse on slick surfaces will always risk being broken. Those who have fallen will be righted and put together again. Those who suffer regret are forgiven even when pain is not easily forgotten. And time moves quickly on, despite our efforts to hold on to now; my old bones and tender heart are healed when and if I still can be of use to others.
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Tonight at sunset walking on the snowy road, my shoes crunching on the frozen gravel, first
through the woods, then out into the open fields past a couple of trailers and some pickup trucks, I stop
and look at the sky. Suddenly: orange, red, pink, blue, green, purple, yellow, gray, all at once and everywhere.
I pause in this moment at the beginning of my old age and I say a prayer of gratitude for getting to this evening
a prayer for being here, today, now, alive in this life, in this evening, under this sky. ~David Budbill “Winter: Tonight: Sunset”
I strive to remember, each day, no matter how things feel, no matter how tired or distracted I am, no matter how worried, or fearful or heartsick over the state of the world or the state of my soul:
it is up to me to distill my gratitude down to this one moment of beauty that will never come again.
One breath, one blink, one pause, one whispered word: wow.
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Writer Luci Shaw turned 95 yesterday. A life-long poet and essayist in addition to being a wife, mother, publisher, gardener and outdoor enthusiast, Luci is a child of God who is continually living out and articulating the questions of faith, grace, and belief.
It is my privilege to know her as a neighbor in nearby Bellingham. Her books grace my shelves and I cherish her personal words of encouragement and mentoring.
Luci has gifted the world for decades with beauty and honesty, composing enriching poetic observations with heavenly anticipation.
Below is only a small sample of her work, some published as recently as two weeks ago – more of her writing and many books can be found at www.lucishaw.com.
Happy Birthday, Luci! You are beloved and blessed!
Luci Shaw -virtual presentation for Calvin Festival of Faith and Writing 2022
Last night I lay awake and practiced getting old. Not difficult,
but I needed to teach myself to love my destination before I arrive.
I feel the earth shifting under me. My writing hand shakes—its rubbery nudges clumsy,
my mind going slack, the way a day will lose its light and give itself to darkness,
and that long, nocturnal pause of inquiry— What next? And how long before light
reopens her blue eye? And will I need to learn a new language to converse with my Creator?
So, I am a questioner, one who waits, still, to arrive somewhere, some bright nest where
a new language breeds that I can learn to speak, unhindered, into heaven’s air,
somewhere I can live a long time, and never have to look back. ~Luci Shaw “December the 95th Year”
Luci Shaw at a Bellingham reading at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church -2017
In time of drought, let us be thankful for this very gentle rain, a gift not to be disdained though it is little and brief, reaching no great depth, barely kissing the leaves’ lips. Think of it as mercy. Other minor blessings may show up—tweezers for splinters, change for the parking meter, a green light at the intersection, a cool wind that lifts away summer’s suffocating heat. An apology after a harsh comment. A word that opens an unfinished poem like a key in a lock. ~Luci Shaw “Signs” from Eye of the Beholder.
Luci at a Bellingham reading of her poetry at Village Books in 2016
These still December mornings… Outside everything’s tinted rose, grape, turquoise, silver–the stones by the path, the skin of the sun
on the pond ice, at the night the aureola of a pregnant moon, like me, iridescent, almost full term with light. ~Luci Shaw from “Advent Visitation“in Accompanied by Angels
Today, in Bellingham, even the sidewalks gleam. Small change glints from the creases in the lady’s mantle and the hostas after the rain that falls, like grace, unmerited. My pockets are full, spilling over. ~Luci Shaw from “Small Change”
I love driving in Bellingham in the spring. In spite of the chilly weather, all the fruit trees are ‘springing,’ singing themselves into being in magnificent displays of pink and white–apricot, plum, apple, peach, cherry–undiscouraged by the darkly looming clouds today. Soon each twig will display its bridal bouquet grown for this spring wedding. I know this from years of observation! Next, they’ll grow so full and heavy with blossoms they’ll be ready to throw their bouquets to the crowd, and I’ll be watching for the petals to drop like wedding confetti, filling the gutters and swirling over sidewalks with their largesse. ~Luci Shaw
Out of the shame of spittle, the scratch of dirt, he made an anointing.
Oh, it was an agony-the gravel in the eye, the rude slime, the brittle clay caked on the lid.
But with the hurt light came leaping; in the shock and shine, abstracts took flesh and flew;
winged words like view and space, shape and shade and green and sky, bird and horizon and sun,
What next, she wonders, with the angel disappearing, and her room suddenly gone dark.
The loneliness of her news possesses her. She ponders how to tell her mother.
Still, the secret at her heart burns like a sun rising. How to hold it in— that which cannot be contained.
She nestles into herself, half-convinced it was some kind of good dream, she its visionary.
But then, part dazzled, part prescient— she hugs her body, a pod with a seed that will split her. ~Luci Shaw “Mary Considers Her Situation”
because we are all betrayers, taking silver and eating body and blood and asking (guilty) is it I and hearing him say yes it would be simple for us all to rush out and hang ourselves but if we find grace to weep and wait after the voice of morning has crowed in our ears clearly enough to break our hearts he will be there to ask us each again do you love me ~Luci Shaw “Judas, Peter” from Polishing the Petoskey Stone
Down he came from up, and in from out, and here from there. A long leap, an incandescent fall from magnificent to naked, frail, small, through space, between stars, into our chill night air, shrunk, in infant grace, to our damp, cramped earthy place among all the shivering sheep.
And now, after all, there he lies, fast asleep. ~Luci Shaw “Descent” from Accompanied By Angels
Blue homespun and the bend of my breast keep warm this small hot naked star fallen to my arms. (Rest … you who have had so far to come.) Now nearness satisfies the body of God sweetly. Quiet he lies whose vigor hurled a universe. He sleeps whose eyelids have not closed before. His breath (so slight it seems no breath at all) once ruffled the dark deeps to sprout a world. Charmed by doves’ voices, the whisper of straw, he dreams, hearing no music from his other spheres. Breath, mouth, ears, eyes he is curtailed who overflowed all skies, all years. Older than eternity, now he is new. Now native to earth as I am, nailed to my poor planet, caught that I might be free, blind in my womb to know my darkness ended, brought to this birth for me to be new-born, and for him to see me mended I must see him torn. ~Luci Shaw “Mary’s Song”
The night after she returned from the hospital the uneven rumbly liquid breathing of one soon
to go under kept me at the surface of thoughts I couldn’t escape. Clonazepam, Lorazepam,
not even Ambien could pull or sink me. And in the morning, sure enough, we couldn’t coax or shake her awake
except for a few seconds when someone or thing wrenched her eyes open and let her answer no
to every question in a scornful voice we’d never heard before before pulling her down to that rocky undertow.
Through the morning and afternoon every breath, a grunt, a rattling that soaked the bedclothes and pillows in sweat.
Then at 3 pm, she returned—recognizing her two daughters speaking her own name and the name of the president.
The hospice nurse put a line through the word “Comatose” scrawled at the top of her chart and for the next few hours
a light or absence seemed to emanate from her almost emptied irises. No sentences. No speech as the white
nimbus of hair, thick and lively around her head nodded yes to sitting up and getting dressed—
to sweet potatoes and Jeopardy! as though part of her remained in that rheumy underwater place
that took her breath away and wiped out the syntax of explanation and inquiry, leaving only
no I won’t and certainly not and don’t ever wake me up again. ~Lisa Sewell “The Land of Nod”
Vigil at my mother’s bedside
Where do your dreams take you? At times you wake in your childhood home of Rolling wheat fields, boundless days of freedom. Other naps take you to your student and teaching days Grammar and drama, speech and essays. Yesterday you were a young mother again Juggling babies, farm and your wistful dreams.
Today you looked about your empty nest Disguised as hospital bed, Wondering aloud about Children grown, flown. You still control through worry and tell me: It’s foggy out there Travel safe through the dark Call me when you get there Take time to eat Sleep sound, ready to wake fresh tomorrow
I dress you as you dressed me I clean you as you cleaned me I love you as you loved me You try my patience as I tried yours. I wonder if I have the strength to Mother my mother For as long as she needs.
When I tell you the truth of where you are Your brow furrows as it used to do When I disappointed you~ This cannot be A bed in a room in a sterile place Waiting Waiting for death, Waiting for heaven, Waiting for the light
And I tell you: It’s foggy Travel safe through the darkness Eat something, please eat Sleep sound, ready to wake fresh tomorrow Call me when you get there.
Advent 2023 theme …because of the tender mercy of our God, whereby the sunrise shall visit us from on high to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace. Luke 1: 78-79 from Zechariah’s Song
Wake, Awake for Night is Flying Let the shadows be forsaken, The time has come for us to waken, And to the Day our lives entrust. Search the sky for heaven’s portal: The clouds shall rain the Light Immortal, And earth will soon bud forth the Just.
Of one pearl each shining portal, where, dwelling with the choir immortal, we gather ’round Your dazzling light. No eye has seen, no ear has yet been trained to hear what joy is ours! ~Philipp Nicolai
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Like in old cans of paint the last green hue, these leaves are sere and rough and dull-complected behind the blossom clusters in which blue is not so much displayed as it’s reflected;
They do reflect it imprecise and teary, as though they’d rather have it go away, and just like faded, once blue stationery, they’re tinged with yellow, violet and gray;
As in an often laundered children’s smock, cast off, its usefulness now all but over, one senses running down a small life’s clock.
Yet suddenly the blue revives, it seems, and in among these clusters one discovers a tender blue rejoicing in the green. ~Rainer Maria Rilke “Blue Hydrangea” Translation by Bernhard Frank
… I’m tethered, and devoted to your raw and lonely bloom
my lavish need to drink your world of crowded cups to fill. ~Tara Bray “hydrangea” from Image Journal
Dwelling within a mosaic of dying colors, these petals fold and collapse under the weight of the sky’s tears.
This hydrangea bears a rainbow of hues, once-vibrant promises of blue now fading to rusts and grays.
I know what this is like: the running out of the clock, feeling the limits of vitality.
Withering and drying, I’m drawn, thirsty for the beauty, to this waning artist’s palette.
To quench my thirst: from an open cup, an invitation, an everlasting visual sacrament.
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Flung is too harsh a word for the rush of the world. Blown is more like it, but blown by a generous, unending breath. ~Annie Dillardfrom Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
Andrew Wyeth – Wind from the Sea, 1947
Perhaps as a child you had the chicken pox and your mother, to soothe you in your fever or to help you fall asleep, came into your room and read to you from some favorite book, Charlotte’s Web or Little House on the Prairie, a long story that she quietly took you through until your eyes became magnets for your shuttering lids and she saw your breathing go slow. And then she read on, this time silently and to herself, not because she didn’t know the story, it seemed to her that there had never been a time when she didn’t know this story—the young girl and her benevolence, the young girl in her sod house— but because she did not yet want to leave your side though she knew there was nothing more she could do for you. And you, not asleep but simply weak, listened to her turn the pages, still feeling the lamp warm against one cheek, knowing the shape of the rocking chair’s shadow as it slid across your chest. So that now, these many years later, when you are clenched in the damp fist of a hospital bed, or signing the papers that say you won’t love him anymore, when you are bent at your son’s gravesite or haunted by a war that makes you wake with the gun cocked in your hand, you would like to believe that such generosity comes from God, too, who now, when you have the strength to ask, might begin the story again, just as your mother would, from the place where you have both left off. ~Keetje Kuipers“Prayer”
How is it possible 64 years have flown by and I still need the same story to be told to me again?
Long ago the 5-year old me had a sudden terrifying revelation that I would someday cease to walk this earth. Now a nearly 70-year old me is more intimidated at the head-long rush of the days-months-years than at the inevitable end to come. The world hurtles through space and time at a pace that leaves me breathless. Indeed, I have been flung at times, bruised and weary from all the hurry and hubbub.
I want to find the strength to ask God to begin telling the reassuring story again, starting right where we left off. I know I will be blown away again – blown by God’s breath that loves, fills and nurtures with a generous promise both hopeful and fulfilled.
Utterly blown away by what comes next.
If only the five year old me could have known.
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No longer do I cover tables filled with food and laughter My seams are frayed my hems falling my strength no longer able To hold the hot and cold
I wish for those first days When just woven I could keep water From seeping through Repelled stains with the tightness of my weave Dazzled the sunlight with my Reflection
I grow old though pleased with my memories The tasks I can no longer complete Are balanced by the love of the tasks gone past
I offer no apology only this plea:
When I am frayed and strained and drizzle at the end Please someone cut a square and put me in a quilt That I might keep some child warm
And some old person with no one else to talk to Will hear my whispers
I make them warm to keep my family from freezing; I make them beautiful to keep my heart from breaking. –From the journal of a prairie woman, 1870
To keep a husband and five children warm, she quilts them covers thick as drifts against the door. Through every fleshy square white threads needle their almost invisible tracks; her hours count each small suture that holds together the raw-cut, uncolored edges of her life. She pieces each one beautiful, and summer bright to thaw her frozen soul. Under her fingers the scraps grow to green birds and purple improbable leaves; deeper than calico, her mid-winter mind bursts into flowers. She watches them unfold between the double stars, the wedding rings. ~Luci Shaw “Quiltmaker”
When I no longer have strength or the usefulness to perform my daily tasks, piece me up and sew me into a greater whole along with pieces of others who are also fading.
We are so much better together, so much more colorful and bold, becoming art and function in our fraying state.
Full of warmth and beauty and fun covering all who sleep and love and cuddle, or in their frailty may drift off to heaven on a quilt-cloud as their last breath is breathed.
~~click each quilt to enlarge and admire the handiwork~~
thank you again to the talented quilters displaying their art at the NW Washington Fair in Lynden (see previous years’ work here, here, here, here, here, and here )
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The whole idea of it makes me feel like I’m coming down with something, something worse than any stomach ache or the headaches I get from reading in bad light- a kind of measles of the spirit, a mumps of the psyche, a disfiguring chicken pox of the soul.
You tell me it is too early to be looking back, but that is because you have forgotten the perfect simplicity of being one and the beautiful complexity introduced by two. But I can lie on my bed and remember every digit. At four I was an Arabian wizard. I could make myself invisible by drinking a glass of milk a certain way. At seven I was a soldier, at nine a prince.
But now I am mostly at the window watching the late afternoon light. Back then it never fell so solemnly against the side of my tree house, and my bicycle never leaned against the garage as it does today, all the dark blue speed drained out of it.
This is the beginning of sadness, I say to myself, as I walk through the universe in my sneakers. It is time to say good-bye to my imaginary friends, time to turn the first big number.
It seems only yesterday I used to believe there was nothing under my skin but light. If you cut me I could shine. But now when I fall upon the sidewalks of life, I skin my knees. I bleed. ~Billy Collins “On Turning Ten”
photo by Danyale Tamminga
No matter how hard you try to be what you once were, you can only be what you are here and now. Time hypnotizes. When you’re nine, you think you’ve always been nine years old and will always be. When you’re thirty, it seems you’ve always been balanced there on that bright rim of middle life. And then when you turn seventy, you are always and forever seventy. You’re in the present, you’re trapped in a young now or an old now, but there is no other now to be seen. ~ Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine
Some people turn sad awfully young. No special reason, it seems, but they seem almost to be born that way. They bruise easier, tire faster, cry quicker, remember longer and, as I say, get sadder younger than anyone else in the world. I know, for I’m one of them. ~Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine
Some reflections on moving from one decade of life to the next:
Turning ten is a big deal, no going back to single digits. Turning twenty is a bid goodbye to a fleeting childhood. Turning thirty is down to business of family, job and debt. Turning forty is a mid-life muddle, a surging forth into the second half. Turning fifty is settling in while finding the nest emptying. Turning sixty is grateful hope for a fruitful third life trimester. Turning seventy is just around the corner – there is no other now. Turning eighty, ninety or hundred would be pure gift of grace.
I hope once again, as when I was nine, I might only bleed out rays of light when cut – I pray these final decades shine bright with meaning and purpose.
I like to cry. After I cry hard it’s like it’s morning again and I’m starting the day over. ~Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine
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When great trees fall, rocks on distant hills shudder, lions hunker down in tall grasses, and even elephants lumber after safety.
When great trees fall in forests, small things recoil into silence, their senses eroded beyond fear.
When great souls die, the air around us becomes light, rare, sterile. We breathe, briefly. Our eyes, briefly, see with a hurtful clarity. Our memory, suddenly sharpened, examines, gnaws on kind words unsaid, promised walks never taken.
Great souls die and our reality, bound to them, takes leave of us. Our souls, dependent upon their nurture, now shrink, wizened. Our minds, formed and informed by their radiance, fall away. We are not so much maddened as reduced to the unutterable ignorance of dark, cold caves.
And when great souls die, after a period peace blooms, slowly and always irregularly. Spaces fill with a kind of soothing electric vibration. Our senses, restored, never to be the same, whisper to us. They existed. They existed. We can be. Be and be better. For they existed. ~ Maya Angelou “When Great Trees Fall”
It sounded like July 4 fireworks lighting up the evening
a pop, then silence- a crack, then several more.
I look out the kitchen window – the old Spitzenburg tree had fallen, irrevocably split and splintered.
Neither wind, nor lightning-felled, simply toppled by old age and inner rot
It lies still, its hollowed trunk like a brittle bone broken
Given up and given in after decades of battering winter wind storms
Instead it fell in a fragile fruiting finale, pulled up by the roots
coming for to carry me home at twilight’s last gleaming.
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The main thing is this– when you get up in the morning you must take your heart in your two hands. You must do this every morning. Then talk softly to your heart, don’t yell. Say anything but be respectful. Say–maybe say, Heart, little heart, beat softly but never forget your job, the blood. You can whisper also, Remember, remember. ~Grace Paley from “The Art of Growing Older” in Just As I Thought
Approaching seventy, she learns to live, at last. She realizes she has not accomplished half of what she struggled for, that she surrendered too many battles and seldom celebrated those she won. Approaching seventy, she learns to live without ambition: a calm lake face, not a train bound for success and glory. For the first time, she relaxes her hands on the controls, leans back to watch the coming end. Asked, she’d tell you her life is made out of the things she didn’t do, as much as the things she did do. Did she sing a love song? Approaching seventy, she learns to live without wanting much more than the light in the catbird window seat where, watching the voracious fist-sized tweets, she hums along. ~Marilyn Nelson “Bird Feeder”
I’m learning to let go by relaxing my grip on the controls on the runaway train of ambition. This is a change for someone driven for decades to succeed in various professional and personal roles.
I’m aware who I am is defined by what I haven’t gotten done and what I managed to do. And now, nearing seventy, I have some time to explore some of those things I left undone.
Reflecting the calm I feel. Holding my heart gently. Humming as I go. Just sitting when I wish to. Watching out the window. Loving up those around me.
It’s sweet to remember why I’m here.
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