Tag: air

The Air is Charged With Blessing

barnstormingblog1 Comment

I thought of happiness, how it is woven
Out of the silence in the empty house each day
And how it is not sudden and it is not given
But is creation itself like the growth of a tree.
No one has seen it happen, but inside the bark
Another circle is growing in the expanding ring.
No one has heard the root go deeper in the dark,
But the tree is lifted by this inward work
And its plumes shine, and its leaves are glittering.

For what is happiness but growth in peace,
And as the air moves, so the old dreams stir
The shining leaves of present happiness?
No one has heard thought or listened to a mind,
But where people have lived in inwardness
The air is charged with blessing and does bless;
Windows look out on mountains and the walls are kind.
~ May Sarton, from “The Work of Happiness”  in  Collected Poems, 1930-1993

The settled happiness and security which we all desire,
God withholds from us by the very nature of the world:
but joy, pleasure, and merriment, he has scattered broadcast.
We are never safe, but we have plenty of fun, and some ecstasy.
It is not hard to see why.

The security we crave would teach us
to rest our hearts in this world
and oppose an obstacle to our return to God:
a few moments of happy love, a landscape, a symphony,
a merry meeting with our friends, a bath
or a football match, have no such tendency.

Our Father refreshes us on the journey with some pleasant inns,
but will not encourage us to mistake them for home.
~C.S. Lewis from The Problem of Pain

I am reminded every day, as every headline shouts bad news:
this is not our home.

I am only a wayfarer seeking out air charged with blessings to soak up like a dry sponge.

I sometimes lose focus on the “why” of my journey
on this troubled earth:
so much of my time and energy is understandably spent
seeking out safety and security,
striving for a road filled with happiness, joy and contentment,
as if that is my ultimate destination and purpose.

Yet the nature of a fallen world filled with faltering souls such as myself leads me down boulder-strewn paths filled with potholes and sheer cliffs.

At times nowhere feels safe or secure and I overthink my next step.

God acknowledges my fear of the unknown destination, as only He can know what lies ahead on anyone’s journey.

God in His mercy never leaves any of us homeless or without hope. He charges the very air we breathe with blessing. Yet He knows even our need for air to survive is simply not enough to sustain us for eternity.

He gifts Himself and I can breathe in Him. Only He will last forever.

We pray for blessings, we pray for peace
Comfort for family, protection while we sleep
We pray for healing, for prosperity
We pray for Your mighty hand to ease our suffering
And all the while, You hear each spoken need
Yet love us way too much to give us lesser things

‘Cause what if Your blessings come through raindrops
What if Your healing comes through tears
What if a thousand sleepless nights
are what it takes to know You’re near
What if trials of this life are Your mercies in disguise .

We pray for wisdom, Your voice to hear
We cry in anger when we cannot feel You near
We doubt Your goodness, we doubt Your love
As if every promise from Your word is not enough
And all the while, You hear each desperate plea
And long that we’d have faith to believe .

When friends betray us
When darkness seems to win
We know the pain reminds this heart
That this is not
This is not our home .
It’s not our home .
~Laura Story

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Greeting the Air

barnstormingblog6 Comments

… how do the roots know
they must climb toward the light?
And then greet the air
with so many flowers and colors?

Tell me, is the rose naked
or is that her only dress?

Why do trees conceal
the splendor of their roots?

But do you know from where
death comes, from above or from below?
From microbes or walls,
from wars or winter?

Where is the child I was,
still inside me or gone?
~Pablo Neruda from “The Book of Questions”

Here I am, on the eve of my 66th birthday, with more questions than answers, the child still inside me puzzling over the mundane and profound.

The “why’s” of life are the reason to keep getting up every day, if only to greet the air, feel the sun, smell the flowers and recognize that from hidden roots come beautiful growth.

I’m still growing by asking the questions that need to be asked.
I’m still growing while my roots reach deeper by the day.
I’m still growing because I know I need to reach out to the Light.

Looking Up into the Vastness

barnstormingblog2 Comments

sunsettree830182

 

sunrise828182

 

sunset830181

 

Yes, I see you down there
looking up into my vastness.

What are you hoping
to find on my vacant face,

there within the margins
of telephone wires?

You should know I am only
bright blue now because of physics:

molecules break and scatter
my light from the sun

more than any other color.
You know my variations—

azure at noon, navy by midnight.
How often I find you

then on your patio, pajamaed
and distressed, head thrown

back so your eyes can pick apart
not the darker version of myself

but the carousel of stars.
To you I am merely background.

You barely hear my voice.
Remember I am most vibrant

when air breaks my light.
Do something with your brokenness.
~David Hernandez “Sincerely, The Sky”

 

sunsettree830185

 

sunset72186

 

I probably spend too much time looking up at the sky – waking early to see what colors are being painted across the horizon and rushing through chores to try to catch the last streaks of orange in the west.

Yet the vast and overwhelming vistas tape together the fragments left of my day; I have been sliced and diced into 15 minute segments, trying hard to be the glue for others who arrive shattered into pieces.

I am a broken witness as Someone choreographs the movement, the shapes, the colors and the light.

So much to be done with brokenness.

 

evening59181

 

sunset88183

 

sunsettree830181

All the Airy Words We Summon

barnstormingblog4 Comments
octobertony
lookingnorth2

The world does not need words.
It articulates itself in sunlight, leaves, and shadows.
The stones on the path are no less real
for lying uncatalogued and uncounted.
The fluent leaves speak only 
the dialect of pure being.

The sunlight needs no praise piercing the rainclouds, 
painting the rocks and leaves with light, then dissolving
each lucent droplet back into the clouds that engendered it.
The daylight needs no praise, and so we praise it always–
greater than ourselves and all the airy words we summon.
~Dana Giola from “Words”

centralroadoct2
briarcrofthillwest

The words the world needs is the Word itself;
we are
because He breathed breath into us
and said that it was good.

Whatever we have to say about His Creation
pales compared to His
it is good

But we try
over and over again
to use words of wonder and praise
to express our awe and gratitude and amazement
while painted golden by His breath of Light.

goldenmorn1
octoberfarm1028171
goldenoctmorn6

To Be That Necessary

barnstormingblog4 Comments

danfield2

 

“I would like to be the air
that inhabits you for a moment
only. I would like to be that unnoticed
and that necessary.”
~Margaret Atwood from “Variations on the Word Sleep”

 

danpnp

 

For Dan’s birthday:

In this journey together,
we inhabit each other,
however long may be the road we travel;
you have become the air I breathe,
refreshing, renewing, restoring~~
you are that necessary to me,
and that beloved.

 

danbarn

 

danfield

This Surge of Hill

barnstormingblog1 Comment

sunset9814

sunsetcornfield

 

Here, on this surge of hill, I find myself
not as I am or will be or once was,
not as the measure of days defines my soul;
beyond all that a being of breath and bone,
partaker of wind and sun and air and earth,
I stand on the surge of hill and know myself
Below, the stars sink landward, and above
I breathe with their slow glimmer; fields are gone,
the woods are fallen into the speechless dark;
no claim, no voice, no motion, no demand.
It is alone we end then and alone
we go, creatures of solitary light;
the finger of truth is laid upon my heart:
See and be wise and unafraid, a part
of stars and earth-wind and the deepening night.
~Jane Clement

 

sunrise910141

dusk11714