To Sunder for a Second

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One wading a Fall meadow finds on all sides   
The Queen Anne’s Lace lying like lilies
On water; it glides
So from the walker, it turns
Dry grass to a lake… 

Your hands hold roses always in a way that says   
They are not only yours; the beautiful changes   
In such kind ways,   
Wishing ever to sunder
Things and things’ selves for a second finding, to lose   
For a moment all that it touches back to wonder.
~Richard Wilbur from “The Beautiful Changes” Collected Poems 1943-2004
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A look out the window at first frost
as change breaks up the beautiful once again:
to wonder at the throes of dying,
to know the kindness of a glistening dawn
when all before seemed darkness,
when all to come so ephemeral,
the broken in a moment
made whole.
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Beauty Past Change

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Glory be to God for dappled things –
   For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
      For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
   Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and plough;
      And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange;
   Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
      With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
                                Praise him.
~Gerard Manley Hopkins “Pied Beauty”
There is no perfection outside of Him;
His reflected beauty has no uniformity.
We give Him glory in our imperfection,
the defects and blemishes which
only He can make whole.
Who knows why He does this?
Yet He does.
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The Wild Lands

Mt. Shuksan yesterday, photo by Emily Gibson
                                                  Mt. Shuksan yesterday, photo by Emily Gibson

 

He found himself wondering at times,
especially in the autumn,
about the wild lands,
and strange visions of mountains that he had never seen came into his dreams.
~J.R.R. Tolkien Fellowship of the Rings

 

Mt. Baker from the north yesterday
                                                            Mt. Baker from Artist Point yesterday

 

Thank God who seasons thus the year,
And sometimes kindly slants his rays;
For in his winter he’s most near
And plainest seen upon the shortest days.

I scent my med’cine from afar,
Where the rude simpler of the year
October leads the rustling war,
And strews his honors on the summer’s bier.

The evening of the year draws on,
The fields a later aspect wear;
Since Summer’s garishness is gone,
Some grains of night tincture the noontide air.
~Henry David Thoreau, selected stanzas from “The Fall of the Leaf”

octobertwinlakes11Twin Lakes Mt. Baker National Forest

Wandering in a wild land of beauty,
especially in the coolness of autumn,
with the dry hot melting “garishness” of summer past,
God is most plain in these places,
His slanting rays touching
everything and all.

shuksan6Mt. Shuksan yesterday, from Artist Point

Fingerprints of the Creator

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C.S. Lewis said, “Most of us miss our cues repeatedly.” 
Or, as Sherlock Holmes commented to Watson:
“You see, but you do not observe.” 
Artist Thomas La Duke noted: 
“Some things are so common that they disappear. 
They’re all around us, but they vanish.” 
Missing our cues, we fail to notice the fingerprints of the Creator
in the ordinary textures and phenomena of living
because we are distracted by daily urgencies,
by things we consider more important,
which in the end may prove to be both trivial and transient.
Mary Oliver wrote:  
“If you notice anything
it leads you to notice
more
and more.”
~Luci Shaw from Breath for the Bones

 

How is it I see more at 61 than I ever did at 20, 30, 40, or even 50?
It is like being ten again when everything was a discovery; everything is worth notice.

 

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The Philosophic Flower

 

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There are philosophies as varied as the flowers of the field,
and some of them weeds and a few of them poisonous weeds.
But they none of them create the psychological conditions
in which I first saw,
or desired to see,
the flower.

~G.K.Chesterton

 

The news is filled with poisonous weeds,
disguised as something palatable,
but one taste, one look
and I am toast.

I seek a beauty that is more than petal thin,
weed or not,
where roots reach deep
and colors so vibrant
it renews my heart
and fills my retinas full.

 

 

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The Eye of the Poet

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Nature doth thus kindly heal every wound.
By the mediation of a thousand little mosses and fungi,
the most unsightly objects become radiant of beauty.
There seem to be two sides of this world, presented us at different times,
as we see things in growth or dissolution, in life or death.
And seen with the eye of the poet,
as God sees them,
all things are alive and beautiful.

~Henry David Thoreau (journal)

 

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Beautiful and Terrible Things Will Happen

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Here is the world.
Beautiful and terrible things will happen.
Don’t be afraid.
~Frederich Buechner

 

(Two local teens died in separate roll over car accidents yesterday)

Most days I depend on beauty
happening in the most unexpected places
and go looking for it.
But when the terrible crushes, bleeds and fractures us,
beauty hides its face,
what I fear most
is that I’ll not ever see beauty happen again.

We are told, again and again and again
every single day, if only we can hear:
here I am with you in this broken world-
do not be afraid
do not be afraid
do not be afraid

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Noticing

photo by Joel DeWaard
photo by Joel DeWaard

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How beautiful the things are that you did not notice before!
A few sweetclover plants
Along the road to Bellingham,
Culvert ends poking out of driveways,
Wooden corncribs, slowly falling,
What no one loves, no one rushes towards or shouts about,
What lives like the new moon,
And the wind
Blowing against the rumps of grazing cows.
~Robert Bly from “Like the New Moon I Will Live My Life”

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I see in a new way now,
my eyes scanning for the unnoticed and plain,
along the roadsides, on my walks,
anywhere I might wander.
I take a moment to notice what
I might keep for another day,
like a jar of canned peaches in my cellar,
so I won’t forget, and someday share
its sweetness.

photo by Joel DeWaard
photo by Joel DeWaard
photo by Harry Rodenberger
photo by Harry Rodenberger

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Beauty Bleak

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That there is beauty bleak and far from ours,
Great reaches where the Lord’s delighting mind,
Though not inhuman, ponders other things
~Richard Wilbur from “Elsewhere”
so much to ponder
so much truth
so much beauty that
startles and delights
all at once
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