Since childhood, I’ve imagined the books on my shelf having an internal life of their own, filled as they are with words and characters and plots and devices, contained in darkness between two covers until someone opens and reads.
Those words are freed, exposed to the light of day, to leak through the bindings or trickle down the pages to find new destinations. The stories morph, journeying on to who knows where.
Perhaps they drift to the ever-changing clouds that illuminate or darken the skies, depending upon their impact: some words of joy and some words of lament and sorrow.
Perhaps like closed books whose words are set free, when I pray, my words are liberated into the changing light to reach the ear of God.
And it is there my story is told, and He listens carefully to each word.
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As to me I know of nothing else but miracles, Whether I walk city streets, Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky, Or wade with naked feet along the beach just in the edge of the water, Or stand under trees in the woods, Or talk by day with any one I love, or sleep in the bed at night with any one I love, Or sit at table at dinner with the rest, Or watch honey-bees busy around the hive of a summer forenoon, Or animals feeding in the fields, Or birds, or the wonderfulness of insects in the air, Or the wonderfulness of the sundown, or of stars shining so quiet and bright, Or the exquisite delicate thin curve of the new moon in spring; These with the rest, one and all, are to me miracles, The whole referring, yet each distinct and in its place.
To me every hour of the light and dark is a miracle, Every cubic inch of space is a miracle, Every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread with the same, Every foot of the interior swarms with the same. Every spear of grass — the frames, limbs, organs, of men and women, and all that concerns them…
What stranger miracles are there? ~Walt Whitman from Leaves of Grass
Everywhere I turn, there is a miracle in the making. I know this deep in my bones, even when our days on this earth are short. I focus my camera to try to preserve it; I search for words to do it justice.
God touches every square inch of earth as if He owns the place, but these square inches are particularly marked by His artistry. It is a place to feel awed by His magnificence.
The strange miracle is that we are here at all: in an instant we are formed in all our unique potential, never having happened before and never to happen again—to become brain and heart and skin and arms and legs. We were allowed to be born, a miracle in itself in this modern age of conditional conception.
The strangest miracle of all is that we are still loved, corrupted as we are. We are still offered salvage, undeserving as we are. We are still gifted with the miracle of grace until our last breath.
How strange indeed. How utterly wondrous.
There is not a particle of life which does not bear poetry within it. ~Gustav Flaubert
There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, Mine! ~Abraham Kuyper
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Let us go forward quietly, forever making for the light, and lifting up our hearts in the knowledge that we are as others are (and that others are as we are), and that it is right to love one another in the best possible way – believing all things, hoping for all things, and enduring all things. ~Vincent Van Gogh from a Letterto Theo Van Gogh – 3 April 1878
I have lived so long On the cold hills alone . . . I loved the rock And the lean pine trees, Hated the life in the turfy meadow, Hated the heavy, sensuous bees. I have lived so long Under the high monotony of starry skies, I am so cased about With the clean wind and the cold nights, People will not let me in To their warm gardens Full of bees. ~Janet Loxley Lewis “Austerity”
Everywhere transience is plunging into the depths of Being. It is our task to imprint this temporary, perishable earth into ourselves, so deeply, so painfully and passionately, that its essence can rise again, invisible, inside of us. We are the bees of the invisible. We wildly collect the honey of the visible, to store it in the great golden hive of the invisible. ~Rainier Maria Rilke in a letter to his friend Witold Hulewicz, 1925
I am convinced, reading the news, too many people are forced to survive in a world cold and cruel, without warmth or safety, too many empty stomachs, no healing hands for injury or disease.
Our country was trying to help up until the last few months when so much has been pulled away.
No longer are we, the helper bees, sent to the invisible, bringing tangible hope and light, food and meds, to those who have so little.
No longer do we bring collected honey to the suffering, the ill, the poor and invisible who share this planet.
Oh Lord, turn us away from such austerity. Let us not forget how to share the humming riches of Your warm garden.
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This is another day, O Lord. I know not what it will bring forth, but make me ready, Lord, for whatever it may be. If I am to stand up, help me to stand bravely. If I am to sit still, help me to sit quietly. If I am to lie low, help me to do it patiently. And if I am to do nothing, let me do it gallantly. Make these words more than words, and give me the Spirit of Jesus. Amen. ~Book of Common Prayer
The world is overwhelmed with words coming from radio, TV, podcasts, books, magazines, social media or simply our own thoughts.
I feel barraged with what to think, how to think, who to believe, who not to believe, and why to risk thinking and believing at all.
I’m left desperate for a need for silence, just to quiet myself. All I need is to know what I am to do with this new day, how to best live this moment.
So I come to the Word, the only Word to think and believe. It explains. It responds. It restores. It refreshes. It consoles. It understands. It embodies the Spirit I need far more than I need silence.
The words I seek to hear are far more than Words. They are God Himself.
Amen and again Amen.
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Night after night darkness enters the face of the lily which, lightly, closes its five walls around itself, and its purse of honey, and its fragrance, and is content to stand there in the garden, not quite sleeping, and, maybe, saying in lily language some small words we can’t hear even when there is no wind anywhere, its lips are so secret, its tongue is so hidden – or, maybe, it says nothing at all but just stands there with the patience of vegetables and saints until the whole earth has turned around and the silver moon becomes the golden sun – as the lily absolutely knew it would, which is itself, isn’t it, the perfect prayer? ~Mary Oliver “The Lily”
Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin;yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Matthew 6:28b-29
I have been thinking about living like the lilies that blow in the fields.
They rise and fall in the edge of the wind, and have no shelter from the tongues of the cattle,
and have no closets or cupboards, and have no legs. Still I would like to be as wonderful
as the old idea. But if I were a lily I think I would wait all day for the green face
of the hummingbird to touch me. What I mean is, could I forget myself
even in those feathery fields? When Van Gogh preached to the poor of course he wanted to save someone–
most of all himself. He wasn’t a lily, and wandering through the bright fields only gave him more ideas
it would take his life to solve. I think I will always be lonely in this world, where the cattle graze like a black and white river–
where the vanishing lilies melt, without protest, on their tongues– where the hummingbird, whenever there is a fuss, just rises and floats away. ~Mary Oliver “Lilies”
From the simplest lyric to the most complex novel and densest drama, literature is asking us to pay attention… pay attention to the world and all that dwells therein and thereby learn at last to pay attention to yourself and all that dwells therein.
Literature, painting, music— the most basic lesson that all art teaches us is to stop, look, and listen to life on this planet, including our own lives, as a vastly richer, deeper, more mysterious business as we bumble along from day to day on automatic pilot. In a world that for the most part steers clear of the whole idea of holiness, art is one of the few places left where we can speak to each other of holy things.
Is it too much to say that Stop, Look, and Listen is also the most basic lesson that the Judeo-Christian tradition teaches us? Listen to history is the cry of the ancient prophets of Israel. Listen to social injustice, says Amos; to head-in-the-sand religiosity, says Jeremiah; to international treacheries and power-plays, says Isaiah; because it is precisely through them that God speaks his word of judgment and command.
In a letter to a friend Emily Dickinson wrote that “Consider the lilies of the field” was the only commandment she never broke. She could have done a lot worse. Consider the lilies. It is the sine qua non of art and religion both. ~Frederick Buechner from Whistling in the Dark
I have failed to “consider the lilies” way too many times.
In my daily life, I am considering my own worries and concerns as I walk past beauty and purpose and holiness. My mind turns inward, often blind and deaf to what is outside me.
It is necessary to be reminded every day that I need to pay attention beyond myself, to love my neighbor, to remember what history has to teach us, to search for the sacred in all things.
Stop, Look, Listen, Consider: all is grace, all is gift, all is holiness brought to life – so stunning, so amazing, so wondrous.
Thank you to David and Lynne Nelson, David Vos of VanderGiessen Nursery, Arlene Van Ry, Tennant Lake Park and Western Washington University for making their lovely lilies available to me to photograph.
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Some claim the origin of song was a war cry some say it was a rhyme telling the farmers when to plant and reap don’t they know the first song was a lullaby pulled from a mother’s sleep said the old woman
A significant factor generating my delight in being alive this springtime is the birdsong that like a sweeping mesh has captured me like diamond rain I can’t hear it enough said the tulip
Lifetime after lifetime we surged up the hill I and my dear brothers thirsty for blood uttering our beautiful songs said the dog ~Alicia Suskin Ostriker “Song” from The Old Woman, the Tulip, and the Dog
To be blessed is to know God is inside all created things, even those seemingly hopeless.
To be blessed is to sing a lullaby of loving kindness that settles a restless heart.
To be blessed is to become a blessing so contagious, there is no hope of cure.
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Lyrics: Oh! Hush thee, my baby, the night is behind us, And black are the waters that sparkled so green. The moon, o’er the combers, looks downward to find us, At rest in the hollows that rustle between.
Where billow meets billow, then soft be thy pillow, Oh weary wee flipperling, curl at thy ease! The storm shall not wake thee, nor shark overtake thee, Asleep in the arms of the slow swinging seas! ~Rudyard Kipling “The White Seal”
translated lyrics from the Lakota: Ah I say, I say to you I am speaking to you… Ah I say, I say to you To you I am saying it My kind-hearted boy go to sleep Tomorrow will be nice I am speaking to you
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As we walk into words that have waited for us to enter them, so the meadow, muddy with dreams, is gathering itself together
and trying, with difficulty, to remember how to make wildflowers. Imperceptibly heaving with the old impatience, it knows
for certain that two horses walk upon it, weary of hay. The horses, sway-backed and self important, cannot design
how the small white pony mysteriously escapes the fence everyday. This is the miracle just beyond their heavy-headed grasp,
and they turn from his nuzzling with irritation. Everything is crying out. Two crows, rising from the hill, fight
and caw-cry in mid-flight, then fall and light on the meadow grass bewildered by their weight. A dozen wasps drone, tiny prop planes,
sputtering into a field the farmer has not yet plowed, and what I thought was a phone, turned down and ringing,
is the knock of a woodpecker for food or warning, I can’t say. I want to add my cry to those who would speak for the sound alone.
But in this world, where something is always listening, even murmuring has meaning, as in the next room you moan
in your sleep, turning into late morning. My love, this might be all we know of forgiveness, this small time when you can forget
what you are. There will come a day when the meadow will think suddenly, water, root, blossom, through no fault of its own, and the horses will lie down in daisies and clover. Bedeviled, human, your plight, in waking, is to choose from the words
that even now sleep on your tongue, and to know that tangled among them and terribly new is the sentence that could change your life. ~Marie Howe “The Meadow”from The Good Thief
I am constantly looking for the sentence that will change my life.
I search high and low: in books, on tape, in sermons, and in everyday conversation.
I listen.
I realize it will not be a brand new revelation. Instead, it is a very very old sentence:
“I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” John 8:12
I look for the Light in the most unexpected places, and if I find it, I always try to share it here…
What is a sentence that has changed your life?
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People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within. ~ Elisabeth Kübler–Ross
The Methodist church of my childhood had a sanctuary lined by colorful rectangles of stained glass windows. Each church member had an opportunity to choose and place a colored pane matching his or her stage of life, to become a permanent part of the portrait of a diverse church family. Mosaics of colored sections represented the transition through life, moving from childhood in the windows at the entrance, on to adolescence, then to young adulthood, moving to middle age, and then finally to the elder years nearest the altar.
Rainbows of color crisscrossed the pews and aisles, starting with pale and barely defined green and yellow at the outset, blending into a blossom of blue, then becoming a startling fervor of red, fading into a tranquil purple past the center, and lastly immersed in the warmth of orange as one approached the brown of the wood paneled altar.
Depending on where one chose to sit, the light bearing a particular color combination was cast on open pages of scripture, or favorite hymns, or on the skin and clothing of the people, reflecting the essence of that life phase.
Included in the design was the seemingly random but intentional scattering of all of the colors in each panel. Gold and orange panes were sprinkled in the “youth” window predicting the wisdom to come, and a smattering of some greens, blues and reds were found throughout the “orange” window of old age, just like the “spark” of younger years so often seen in the eyes of the our eldest citizens.
The colored windows reflected the truth of God’s plan for our lives. There was certainty in the unrelenting passage of time; there was no turning back or turning away from what was to come.
Although each stage shone with its own unique beauty, none was as warm and welcoming as the fiery glow of the autumn of life. Those final windows focused their brilliance on the plain wood of the cross above the altar.
Beyond the stained glass, as life fades from the richest of colors to the earthy tones of dusty frames, the kaleidoscope of God’s illumination continues to shine, glorious.
We are like windows Stained with colors of the rainbow Set in a darkened room Till the bridegroom comes to shining through
Then the colors fall around our feet Over those we meet Covering all the gray that we see Rainbow colors of assorted hues Come exchange your blues For His love that you see shining through me
We are His daughters and sons We are the colorful ones We are the kids of the King Rejoice in everything
My colors grow so dim When I start to fall away from Him But up comes the strongest wind That he sends to blow me back into his arms again
And then the colors fall around my feet Over those I meet Changing all the gray that I see Rainbow colors of the Risen Son Reflect the One The One who came to set us all free
We are His daughters and sons We are the colorful ones We are the kids of the King Rejoice in everything
We are like windows Stained with colors of the rainbow No longer set in a darkened room Cause the bridegroom wants to shine from you
No longer set in a darkened room Cause the bridegroom wants to shine from you
What seemed to be the end proved to be the beginning… Suddenly a wall becomes a gate. ~Henri Nouwen from Gracias! A Letter of Consolation
As Christians we do not believe in walls, but that life lies open before us; that the gate can always be unbarred; that there is no final abandonment or desertion. We do not believe that it can ever be “too late.”
We believe that the world is full of doors that can be opened. Between us and others. Between the people around us. Between today and tomorrow. Our own inner person can be unlocked too: even within our own selves, there are doors that need to be opened.
If we open them and enter, we can unlock ourselves, too, and so await whatever is coming to free us and make us whole. ~ Jörg Zink from “Doors to the Feast”
What we call the beginning is often the end And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from.
We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time. Through the unknown, unremembered gate When the last of earth left to discover Is that which was the beginning; ~T.S. Eliot from “Little Gidding” The Four Quartets
There we shall rest and we shall see; we shall see and we shall love; we shall love and we shall praise. Behold what shall be in the end and shall not end. ~Augustine of Hippo ‘The City of God,’ Bk. XXII, Chap. 30
We stand outside the gate, incapable of opening it ourselves, watching as God Himself throws it open wide.
We choose to enter this unknown, unremembered gate into the endless length of days, where we shall see and we shall love, we shall love and we shall praise –
or we choose to remain outside, lingering in the familiar confines of what we know, though it destroys us.
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With thanks to conductor, composer, singer Ben Kornelis for putting these beautiful Augustinian words to music
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The issue is now clear. It is between light and darkness and everyone must choose his side. ~G. K. Chesterton, on his death bed
God is going to invade, all right: but what is the good of saying you are on His side then, when you see the whole natural universe melting away like a dream and something else – something it never entered your head to conceive – comes crashing in; something so beautiful to some of us and so terrible to others that none of us will have any choice left?
For this time it will be God without disguise; something so overwhelming that it will strike either irresistible love or irresistible horror into every creature.
It will be too late then to choose your side.
There is no use saying you choose to lie down when it has become impossible to stand up. That will not be the time for choosing: it will be the time when we discover which side we really have chosen, whether we realized it before or not.
Now, today, this moment, is our chance to choose the right side. ~C.S. Lewis – from Mere Christianity
…our hands have always been able to heal as much as harm. …since the dawn of humanity, each of us contains three people— the angel, the demon, and the one who decides which we will obey. ~Billy Coffey
It shouldn’t take plunging into a profound darkness, swallowed in a pit of sadness and sorrow to experience God’s immense capacity for love and compassion, but that is when our need for light and forgiveness is greatest.
It should not take sin and suffering to remind us life is precious and worthy of our protection, no matter how tempted we are to choose otherwise.
We are created, from the beginning, in the beginning, with the capacity to choose sides between darkness and light.
We choose too often to remain cloaked in darkness.
Our God chooses to shine the light of His Creation, to conquer our darkness through illuminating grace, dispersing our shadows, suffering the deepest darkness on our behalf to guarantee we are eternally worthy of His loving protection.
How then will we choose when He so clearly chooses us?
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