but the whole shadowed earth reaching up, taking hold ~David Baker “Quicker”
Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, Or what’s a heaven for? ~Robert Browning from Andrea del Sarto
My branches are bared during this season of letting go.
As starkly revealed as I am, perhaps darkening days are a blessing: less spotlight on my complexity in silhouette – all knobby joints, awkward angles and curves.
One thing I know: in this season when I prefer the shadowland, I still reach up, trying to hold on to the promise beyond me. In fact, so many of us keep grasping at what we know is there but cannot see.
God has come down to grab on to each one of us — and is still hanging on.
We are not too plain or complex or awkward to be lifted, welcomed, cherished as we are, into heaven’s arms.
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Each year I mark one lone outstanding tree, Clad in its robings of the summer past, Dry, wan, and shivering in the wintry blast. It will not pay the season’s rightful fee,— It will not set its frost-burnt leafage free; But like some palsied miser all aghast, Who hoards his sordid treasure to the last, It sighs, it moans, it sings in eldritch glee. A foolish tree, to dote on summers gone; A faithless tree, that never feels how spring Creeps up the world to make a leafy dawn, And recompense for all despoilment bring! Oh, let me not, heyday and youth withdrawn, With failing hands to their vain semblance cling! ~Edith Matilda Thomas “Winter Leafage”
Decades ago, while I worked as a nurses’ aide in a nursing home, I cared for a little slip of a lady almost 100 years of age who would not go down the hall to breakfast without her make up on. Wearing makeup was more important than putting on clothing to her, so our daily morning routine was prolonged considerably as she meticulously penciled over her invisible eyebrows, caked on powder on her forehead, nose and cheeks to cover the wrinkles, and tremulously applied a wavy thick border of red lipstick on her thin lips.
I tried to tell her how lovely she was without a mask on, how her well-worn skin deserved to be seen and admired, how her eyes shone more brightly without crumbling mascara on non-existent eyelashes. She would have none of it. She had never appeared in public without her makeup since her teenage years, and she was not about to start now.
She clung to the fading leaves of her youth, holding on with all her might to what she believed kept her beautiful, so she continued to preserve her “frost-burnt leafage” by covering up her translucent wrinkles.
She died quietly in her sleep one night. My morning duty was to prepare her body for the coming mortician. I washed her lovely face clean for the last time, admiring her without the makeup cover, appreciating each wrinkle’s fold and crevice, knowing she now was made new in a leafy dawn I could only imagine.
The mortician would do what was needed to dress her up to her specifications. But now I had seen the beauty underneath.
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Maybe night is about to come calling, but right now the sun is still high in the sky. It’s half-past October, the woods are on fire, blue skies stretch all the way to heaven. Of course, we know that winter is coming, its thin winding sheets and its hard narrow bed. But right now, the season’s fermented to fullness, so slip into something light, like your skeleton; while these old bones are still working, my darling, let’s dance. ~Barbara Crooker, “Reel” from The Book of Kells
I’ve never been much of a dancer other than the square dancing we were taught in grade school. I could do-si-do with the best of them.
Our church used to hold an annual square dance in November along with a harvest dinner. We gathered in a school gymnasium, where my husband and I learned to Virginia Reel up and back and be sore the next day. Those were the days…
Instead, our trees dance and reel this time of year, creating a scandal by getting more naked with each passing day and breeze. They sway and bow and join limbs. Their bare bones grasp one another in preparation for their cold and narrow winter bed, wrapped in the shroud that will give way, yet again to the green leaves of spring, only a few months away.
Pick a partner and away you go!
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Whatever harm I may have done In all my life in all your wide creation If I cannot repair it I beg you to repair it,
And then there are all the wounded The poor the deaf the lonely and the old Whom I have roughly dismissed As if I were not one of them. Where I have wronged them by it And cannot make amends I ask you To comfort them to overflowing,
And where there are lives I may have withered around me, Or lives of strangers far or near That I’ve destroyed in blind complicity, And if I cannot find them Or have no way to serve them,
Remember them. I beg you to remember them
When winter is over And all your unimaginable promises Burst into song on death’s bare branches. ~Anne Porter “A Short Testament” from Living Things.
While this end of the year’s darkness lingers, beginning too early and lasting too late, I find myself hiding in my own wintry soul, knowing I have too often failed to do what is needed when it is needed.
I tend to look inward when I need to focus outside myself. I muffle my ears to unhear supplicating voices. I turn away rather than meet a stranger’s gaze.
I appeal to God who knows my darkness needs His Light, who unimaginably promises buds of hope and warmth and color and fruit will arise from my barest branches.
He brings me forth out of hiding, to be impossibly transformed.
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but the whole shadowed earth reaching up, taking hold ~David Baker “Quicker”
Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, Or what’s a heaven for? ~Robert Browning from Andrea del Sarto
My branches are bare during this season of letting go. As starkly revealed as I am, perhaps darkening days are a blessing – less spotlight on my plainness in silhouette – all knobby joints and awkward angles and curves.
One thing I know though: in this season I prefer the shadowland, yet I still reach up, trying to hold on to the promise beyond me. In fact, so many of us have kept grasping at what we know is there but cannot see, God has come down to grab on to each one — and is still hanging on to us.
We are not too plain to be lifted, welcomed, cherished as we are, into heaven’s arms.
This year’s Advent theme “Dawn on our Darkness” is taken from this 19th century Christmas hymn.
Brightest and best of the sons of the morning, dawn on our darkness and lend us your aid. Star of the east, the horizon adorning, guide where our infant Redeemer is laid. ~Reginald Heber -from “Brightest and Best”
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It’s when we face for a moment the worst our kind can do, and shudder to know the taint in our own selves, that awe cracks the mind’s shell and enters the heart: not to a flower, not to a dolphin, to no innocent form but to this creature vainly sure it and no other is god-like, God (out of compassion for our ugly failure to evolve) entrusts, as guest, as brother, the Word. ~Denise Levertov “The Mystery of the Incarnation”
In the Christmas story, God … takes the risk of incarnation. The flesh God chooses is not that of a warrior but of a vulnerable baby, a claim that brought me tears of wonderment when I was young. But my adult knowledge of that infant’s fate — a fate shared by so many who have devoted their lives to love, truth, and justice — brings tears of anger and grief, along with a primal fear of what might happen if I followed suit.
…I know I’m called to share in the risk of incarnation. Amid the world’s dangers, I’m asked to embody my values and beliefs, my identity and integrity, to allow good words to take flesh in me. Constrained by fear, I often fall short — yet I still aspire to incarnate words of life, however imperfectly.
What good words wait to be born in us, and how can we love one another in ways that midwife their incarnation? ~Parker Palmer from “The Risk of Incarnation”
I, like you, am entrusted to care for the Word in its earthly incarnation: born into impoverished, humble, and homeless circumstances, He has no where to dwell except within me and within you.
And that is no small price for Him to pay, as my human heart can be inhospitable, hardened, cold and cracked. I am capable of the worst our kind can do.
So it is up to me to embody the Word in what I say and do, even if it means rejection as He suffered, even knowing that is the risk I must take. For me, it feels as vulnerable as if I were a bare tree standing naked in the chill winter wind. I’m fearful I might break or topple over. Yet if I’m created to harbor the incarnated Word, I must reach my roots deep, stand tall and find others who will stand alongside me.
This Advent, Iet us midwife the Word here on earth, to deliver it straight to receptive, warm, and loving hearts.
Come, my Way, my Truth, my Life: Such a Way, as gives us breath: Such a Truth, as ends all strife: Such a Life, as killeth death.
Come, My Light, my Feast, my Strength: Such a Light, as shows a feast: Such a Feast, as mends in length: Such a Strength, as makes his guest.
Come, my Joy, my Love, my Heart: Such a Joy, as none can move: Such a Love, as none can part: Such a Heart, as joys in love. ~George Herbert “The Call”
1.Let all mortal flesh keep silence, And with fear and trembling stand; Ponder nothing earthly-minded, For with blessing in his hand, Christ our God to earth descendeth, Our full homage to demand.
2.King of kings, yet born of Mary, As of old on earth he stood, Lord of lords, in human vesture, In the body and the blood; He will give to all the faithful His own self for heavenly food.
3.At his feet the six-winged seraph, Cherubim, with sleepless eye, Veil their faces to the presence, As with ceaseless voice they cry: Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia, Lord Most High!
This year’s Barnstorming Advent theme “… the Beginning shall remind us of the End” is taken from the final lines in T.S. Eliot’s poem “The Cultivation of Christmas Trees”
Maybe night is about to come calling, but right now the sun is still high in the sky. It’s half-past October, the woods are on fire, blue skies stretch all the way to heaven. Of course, we know that winter is coming, its thin winding sheets and its hard narrow bed. But right now, the season’s fermented to fullness, so slip into something light, like your skeleton; while these old bones are still working, my darling, let’s dance. ~Barbara Crooker, “Reel” from The Book of Kells
I’ve never been much of a dancer; we were taught square dancing in grade school when we were kids so I could do-si-do with the best of them.
The non-descript dancing of the sixties and seventies never appealed to me – it was kind of like writhing in place, sometimes alone, sometimes in parallel with another body.
Our church used to hold once a year square dances in November along with a harvest dinner, gathered in a school gymnasium, so my husband and I learned to Virginia Reel up and back and be sore the next day. Those were the days…
But right now, we watch our trees dance this time of year, getting more naked with each passing day and breeze. They sway and bow and join limbs, their bare bones grasping one another in preparation for their cold and narrow winter bed, wrapped in the shroud that will give way, yet again to the green leaves of spring, only a few months away.
A book of beauty in words and photography, available to order here:
And Is it not enough that every year A richly laden autumn should unfold And shimmer into being leaf by leaf, It’s scattered ochres mirrored everywhere In hints and glints of hidden red and gold Threaded like memory through loss and grief, When dusk descends, when branches are unveiled, When roots reach deeper than our minds can feel And ready us for winter with strange calm, That I should see the inner tree revealed And know its beauty as the bright leaves fall And feel its truth within me as I am?
It is not yet enough. So I must try, In my poor turn, to help you see it too, As though these leaves could be as rich as those, That red and gold might glimmer in your eye, That autumn might unfold again in you, Feeling with me what falling leaves disclose. ~Malcolm Guite from “And is it Not Enough?”
As the rains return, and the leaves turn and fall, we shelter together, blessed by years and miles, our unknown becoming known, our understanding of nakedness breathed in silence.
Though we be gray as the clouds above, our hearts beat in synchrony each pulsing moment more sacred than our last.
More beauty in words and photography in this book, available to order here:
I almost forgot To hang up an autumn moon Over the mountain ~Richard Wright “Haiku”
Lyric night of the lingering Indian Summer, Shadowy fields that are scentless but full of singing, Never a bird, but the passionless chant of insects, Ceaseless, insistent. The grasshopper’s horn, and far-off, high in the maples, The wheel of a locust leisurely grinding the silence Under a moon waning and worn, broken, Tired with summer.
Let me remember you, voices of little insects, Weeds in the moonlight, fields that are tangled with asters, Let me remember, soon will the winter be on us, Snow-hushed and heavy.
Over my soul murmur your mute benediction, While I gaze, O fields that rest after harvest, As those who part look long in the eyes they lean to, Lest they forget them. ~Sara Teasdale, “September Midnight”
I will not forget, dear harvest moon, to tuck you away where I can find you months from now, tangled up in the weary trees of autumn. Once the leaves fall, modest branches will be illuminated in their embarrassed nakedness.
When I too need your warm light on some cold dark night, I’ll know exactly where to find you because I’ve memorized your round face and where you are waiting for me. I’ll not forget because you never forget.
This book of beauty in words and photography is available to order here:
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