Tag: beauty

So Starved for Hope

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I know what you planned, what you meant to do, teaching me
to love the world, making it impossible
to turn away completely, to shut it out completely ever again –
it is everywhere; when I close my eyes,
birdsong, scent of lilac in early spring, scent of summer roses:
you mean to take it away, each flower, each connection with earth –
why would you wound me, why would you want me
desolate in the end, unless you wanted me so starved for hope
I would refuse to see that finally
nothing was left to me, and would believe instead
in the end you were left to me.
~Louise Glück “Vespers” (one of ten Vespers poems)

I wait for the Lord, my soul waits,
    and in his word I hope;
~Psalm 130:5

Mid-spring days like this:
bright, so promising with potential,
birdsong constantly in the air,
scent of orchard blossoms, lilacs,
early roses and a flush of color everywhere…

how can we not love the world so much we never want to leave it?

Yet we must hold this loosely.

It is but a tiny show of the glories to come,
of what You have waiting for us next.

I am wounded knowing I must eventually let this go.

I am hungry for hope that isn’t found
in all this beauty and lushness,
the fulfilling hope that is only
You as my Father and Creator.

You provide only a taste here.
I know what I starve for,
so starved with hope for what You have in store.

I will wait for you
I will wait for you
in the end You were left for me.

Amen and Amen.

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Where You Go, I Will Go: Becoming Something Understood

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Softnesse, and peace, and joy, and love, and blisse,
Exalted Manna, gladnesse of the best,
Heaven in ordinarie, man well drest,
The milkie way, the bird of Paradise,

Church-bels beyond the stars heard, the souls bloud,
The land of spices, something understood.
~George Herbert from “Prayer I”

Breathe in me, O Holy Spirit,
that my thoughts may be holy.
Act in me, O Holy Spirit,
that my work, too, may be holy.
Draw my heart, O Holy Spirit,
that I love but what is holy.
Strengthen me, O Holy Spirit,
to defend all that is holy.
Guard me, then, O Holy Spirit,
that I always may be holy.
~Augustine prayer

Considering the distance between us and God,
what seems insurmountable to overcome,
how amazing it only takes a few words to Him,
our pleas and praise,
our breath in His ear,
when, unhesitating
He plummets to us;
we are lifted to Him.

Heaven richly dwells in the ordinary.

The plainness in our prayers is the desire
to be known,
to be fully understood,
to be loved
by the One who is our Creator,
making us extraordinary.

This year’s Lenten theme:

…where you go I will go…
Ruth 1:16

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Where You Go, I Will Go: My Heart Caught Off Guard

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And some time make the time to drive out west
Into County Clare, along the Flaggy Shore,
In September or October, when the wind
And the light are working off each other
So that the ocean on one side is wild
With foam and glitter, and inland among stones
The surface of a slate-grey lake is lit
By the earthed lightning of a flock of swans,
Their feathers roughed and ruffling, white on white,
Their fully grown headstrong-looking heads
Tucked or cresting or busy underwater.
Useless to think you’ll park and capture it
More thoroughly. You are neither here nor there,
A hurry through which known and strange things pass
As big soft buffetings come at the car sideways
And catch the heart off guard and blow it open.
~Seamus Heaney “Postscript” from The Spirit Level

…they can hardly contain their happiness
That we have come.

They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.
There is no loneliness like theirs.

Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of my body I would break
Into blossom.
~James Wright from “The Blessing”

I have looked upon those brilliant creatures,   
And now my heart is sore.
All’s changed since I, hearing at twilight,   
The first time on this shore,
The bell-beat of their wings above my head,   
Trod with a lighter tread.
~William Butler Yeats from “The Wild Swans at Coole”

‘Tis strange that death
should sing.
I am the cygnet to this pale faint swan,
Who chants a doleful hymn to his own death,
And from the organ-pipe of frailty sings
His soul and body to their lasting rest.
~William Shakespeare from “King John”

Walking outside before the sun was up on a recent rainy morning,  I heard overhead the swishing hush of wings in flight and the trumpeter swans’ doleful call as dozens passed above me in a long meandering line against the early dawn grayness.

The swan flocks predictably arrive here in late autumn to eat their fill, feasting in the harvested cornfields surrounding our farm, their bright white plumage a stark contrast to the dulling muddy soil. Usually, they stick around until spring, as they lift their long graceful necks and fan out their wings to be picked up the wind, leaving us behind and beneath, moving on to their next feeding and breeding grounds.

These incredible creatures bring such joy with their annual arrival, while their leave-taking reminds me, once again, nothing on earth can last.

My heart recently caught off guard still beats. God’s love heals our earthly hearts.

“‘Tis strange that death should sing…”

I give myself over to their beauty, and walk with lighter tread, singing a new song: I am grateful my heart someday will soar beyond this soil.

 So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.
2 Corinthians 4: 16-18

This year’s Lenten theme:

…where you go I will go…
Ruth 1:16

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Talk Softly to Your Heart

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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’ve been learning in retirement 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 both by what I haven’t gotten done and what I managed to do. And now, at seventy years old, I hope I still have some time to explore some of those things I left undone.

Except I haven’t been as robust and healthy as I wish to be. For the past month, during very chilly weather and after a prolonged bout of bronchitis, I found I couldn’t tolerate the cold air outside or in the barn while I did daily chores. My chest strangely hurt.

I finally took myself to a cardiologist who was concerned with a number of risk factors in my family and my own history and arranged testing, which I flunked yesterday.

I ended up with two stents to open blockages in my main coronary artery, plus a night in the hospital. I spent the night thinking about blessings and what needs to happen in my life now:

Reflecting with gratitude on being alive by the grace of our Lord.
Holding my heart gently and treating it well.
Humming as I go. 
Just sitting when I wish but walking when I must.
Watching out the window for the real twitters and tweeters in this crazy noisy world.
Loving up those around me.

It’s sweet to remember why I’m here. I’ve been given a new chance to enjoy every moment.

So after a lifetime of getting mostly A’s, flunking isn’t always bad.

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Breathing a Prayer

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It was beautiful as God
must be beautiful: glacial
eyes that had looked on
violence and come to terms
with it; a body too huge
and majestic for the cage in which
it had been put; up
and down in the shadow
of its own bulk it went
lifting, as it turned,
the crumpled flower of its face
to look into my own
face without seeing me. It
was the colour of the moonlight
on snow and as quiet
as moonlight, but breathing
as you can imagine that
God breaths within the confines
of our definition of him, agonizing
over immensities that will not return.
~R.S. Thomas “The White Tiger”

There are nights that are so still
that I can hear the small owl calling
far off and a fox barking
miles away. It is then that I lie
in the lean hours awake listening
to the swell born somewhere in the Atlantic
rising and falling, rising and falling
wave on wave on the long shore
by the village that is without light
and companionless. And the thought comes
of that other being who is awake, too,
letting our prayers break on him,
not like this for a few hours,
but for days, years, for eternity.
~R.S.Thomas “The Other”

Angels, where you soar
Up to God’s own light,
Take my own lost bird
On your hearts tonight;
And as grief once more
Mounts to heaven and sings,
Let my love be heard
Whispering in your wings.
~Alfred Noyes “A Prayer”

We confine and cage our concept of God, trying to understand His power and beauty within our limited world. He tells us what He is capable of, yet we diminish His immensity to only what we are able to fathom.

He is an eternal mystery, allowing our beseeching prayers to break over Him again and again and again.

Our grief is carried on wings to God, our prayers desperate for His breath and comfort.

Let our love be heard, let our love be heard, let our love be heard –always and forever.

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Awaiting a Leafy Dawn

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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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Emptying Like a Cloud

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God empties himself
into the earth like a cloud.
God takes the substance, contours
of a man, and keeps them,
dying, rising, walking,
and still walking
wherever there is motion.
Annie Dillard from “Feast Days” in Tickets for a Prayer Wheel

Soon we will enter the season of Advent, an opportunity to reflect on a God who “takes the substance, contours of a man”, as He “empties himself into the earth like a cloud.” 

Like drought-stricken parched ground, we prepare to respond to the drenching of the Spirit through the Son, and be ready to spring up with renewed growth.

He walked among us before His dying and subsequent rising up.
He walked among us again, appearing where least expected,
sharing a meal, causing our hearts to burn within us,
inviting us to touch and know Him.

His invitation remains open-ended,
His heart preparing us for our eternal home.

I think of that every time the clouds gather, open up, and empty.  
He freely falls to earth, soaking us completely,
through and through and through.

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The Inner Tree Revealed

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I am out with lanterns looking for myself…
~Emily Dickinson from “Letters”

And is it not enough that every year
A richly laden autumn should unfold
And shimmer into being leaf by leaf,
Its 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?

And is it not enough that I should walk
Through low November mist along the bank,
When scents of woodsmoke summon, in some long
And melancholy undertone, the talk
Of those old poets from whose works I drank
The heady wine of an autumnal song?

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 “And Is It Not Enough?”

For over 15 years now, I have bared my soul here at Barnstorming, looking for others’ words to help me sort through the events of my life. I particularly look for words that resonate: I can say “I’ve felt like that as well,” with the hope that others reading along with me will recognize that familiar “yes, that is the way it is for me.”

Every day, I am out looking for myself with the help of Light provided by our Creator God. I carry lanterns hither and yon, exploring paths and hidden spaces and wondering what is around the next corner.

So I want to help you see where this journey is going.

Maybe it is finding your own “inner tree” as the leaves fall,
revealing the strength of bare bones.
Maybe it is noticing beauty in the ordinary.
Maybe it is the warmth of knowing someone else feels as you do.
Maybe it is discovering a connection, mysterious and wondrous.

Often I hear from you that the Light you carry helped lead you here.
Welcome, my friend — let’s walk together…

photo by Josh Scholten
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Finding Joy in Small Things

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It greets me again on some cold November evening
Crested with cherry and yellow hearted
A most magnificent leaf on the ground by the train station

Tuesday morning and the windows are foggy
My room is cold and my bed is warm
And it sings it’s bright hello in crisp morning sunlight

On the 9:36 to Euston I find it in a stranger
who can’t hold in his laugh, hand over mouth
Chuckling through his nose. He is wonderful.

Three old ladies outside a bistro chattering
Canyon laugh lines and bright lipstick
When they dimple at me, I return my biggest smile

And on Saturday I do the dishes at my sister’s house
Through the kitchen window the tall grass
On the mountainside dances in the amber evening

Something soft blooms in my chest in answer
To the cobweb glistening with dew, dragonflies,
The little yellow boat at Portnoo pier, darling and weathered

To mist below the hill and the first sip of a good cup of tea
My niece’s laugh and my father’s teaspoon collection
And that silk moth I saw sunsoaking on a hot afternoon and I know

It cannot all be luck. My days are threaded with joy
So small and featherlight, a breath against the wind.
Woven together in defiant splendour

These small things
And Your glory therein.
~Mary Clement Mannering “This Small Thing”

dragonfly wings photo by Josh Scholten

When cold, wet, dreary days are more gray than sunlit – even these November days still contain small things of joy.

The trick is to notice the simple threads through the day, sometimes unraveling but mostly weaving a story-telling tapestry.

I never want to forget to keep looking, even when my eyes feel heavy, my heart is weary and the news is consistently discouraging.

The small things of beauty are out there, woven together to cloak us in His glory.

photo of a windy day at Manna Farm from Nate Lovegren
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A Slow and Radiant Happening

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In heaven it is always autumn. The leaves are always near
to falling there but never fall, and pairs of souls out walking
heaven’s paths no longer feel the weight of years upon them.
Safe in heaven’s calm, they take each other’s arm,
the light shining through them, all joy and terror gone.
But we are far from heaven here, in a garden ragged and unkept
as Eden would be with the walls knocked down, the paths littered
with the unswept leaves of many years, bright keepsakes
for children of the Fall. The light is gold, the sun pulling
the long shadow soul out of each thing, disclosing an outcome.
The last roses of the year nod their frail heads,
like listeners listening to all that’s said, to ask,
What brought us here? What seed? What rain? What light?
What forced us upward through dark earth? What made us bloom?
What wind shall take us soon, sweeping the garden bare?
Their voiceless voices hang there, as ours might,
if we were roses, too. Their beds are blanketed with leaves,
tended by an absent gardener whose life is elsewhere.
It is the last of many last days. Is it enough?
To rest in this moment? To turn our faces to the sun?
To watch the lineaments of a world passing?
To feel the metal of a black iron chair, cool and eternal,
press against our skin? To apprehend a chill as clouds
pass overhead, turning us to shivering shade and shadow?
And then to be restored, small miracle, the sun shining brightly
as before? We go on, you leading the way, a figure
leaning on a cane that leaves its mark on the earth.
My friend, you have led me farther than I have ever been.
To a garden in autumn. To a heaven of impermanence
where the final falling off is slow, a slow and radiant happening.
The light is gold. And while we’re here, I think it must
    be heaven.
~Elizabeth Spires from “In Heaven it is Always Autumn” from Now the Green Blade Rises

The Bench by Manet

We wander our autumn garden mystified at the passing of the weeks since seed was first sown, weeds pulled, peapods picked. It could not possibly be done so soon–this patch of productivity and beauty, now wilted and brown, vines crushed to the ground, no longer fruitful.

The root cellar is filling up, the freezer packed. The work of putting away is almost done.

So why do I go back to the now barren soil my husband so carefully worked, numb in the knowledge I will pick no more this season, feel the burst of a cherry tomato exploding in my mouth or the green freshness of a bean straight off the vine?

Because for a few fertile weeks, only a few weeks, the garden was a bit of heaven on earth, impermanent but a real taste nonetheless. 

We may have mistaken Him for the gardener when He appeared to us radiant, suddenly unfamiliar. He offered the care of the garden, to bring in the sheaves, to share the forever mercies in the form of daily bread grown right here and now.

When He says my name, I will know Him. 

And the light is golden.

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