Tag: Birth

Shattered and Scattered

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sunset111141

That cause can never be lost nor stayed
Which takes the course of what God has made;
And is not trusting in walls and towers,
But slowly growing from seeds to flowers.

Each noble service that has been wrought
Was first conceived as a fruitful thought;
Each worthy cause with a future glorious
By quietly growing becomes victorious.

Thereby itself like a tree it shows:
That high it reaches, as deep it grows;
And when the storms are its branches shaking,
It deeper root in the soil is taking.

Be then no more by a storm dismayed,
For by it the full grown seeds are laid;
And though the tree by its might it shatters,
What then, if thousands of seeds it scatters?
~Kristian Ostergaard   Source: from a Danish hymn, translated by J.C. Aaberg

 

springboardtrunk

The Last Apple

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aloneapple

And then there is that day when all around,
all around you hear the dropping of the apples, one
by one, from the trees. At first it is one here and one there,
and then it is three and then it is four and then nine and
twenty, until the apples plummet like rain, fall like horse hoofs
in the soft, darkening grass, and you are the last apple on the
tree; and you wait for the wind to work you slowly free from
your hold upon the sky, and drop you down and down. Long
before you hit the grass you will have forgotten there ever
was a tree, or other apples, or a summer, or green grass below,
You will fall in darkness…
~Ray Bradbury Dandelion Wine

appleoctober

You Come Too

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sunrise94141

I’m going out to clean the pasture spring;
I’ll only stop to rake the leaves away
(And wait to watch the water clear, I may):
I sha’n’t be gone long.—You come too.

I’m going out to fetch the little calf
That’s standing by the mother. It’s so young,
It totters when she licks it with her tongue.
I sha’n’t be gone long.—You come too.
~Robert Frost “The Pasture”
sunrise9414

Swaddling Shroud

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Magi by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Magi by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

…the scent of frankincense
and myrrh
arrives on the wind,
and I long
to breathe deeply,
to divine its trail.
But I know their uses
and cannot bring myself
to breathe deeply enough
to know
whether what comes
is the fragrant welcoming
of birth
or simply covers the stench of death.
These hands
coming toward me,
is it swaddling they carry
or shroud?

And yet you remind us
that the wisdom
of the womb
points toward the truth
of the tomb:
that what contains us
for a moment
or a season
with your touch
will finally give way
to freedom.
~Jan Richardson from Night Visions –searching the shadows of Advent and Christmas

The Christmas season is a wrap, put away for another year.
However, our hearts are not so easily boxed up and stored as the decorations and ornaments of the season.
Our troubles and concerns go on; our frailty a daily reality.
We can be distracted with holidays for a few weeks, but our time here slips away ever more quickly.

The Christmas story is not just about light and birth and joy to the world.
It is about how swaddling clothes became a shroud that wrapped Him tight.
There is not one without the other.
God came to be with us;  delivered so He could deliver.
Born so He could die in our place
To leave the linen strips behind, neatly folded.

Christmas:  the unwrapping that frees us forever.

sunset1513

Be Well, Be Glad

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at twenty
at 18 on Prankster for one last evening ride before I went to college and he went to a new home

At dusk, everything blurs and softens…

The horse bears me along, like grace,
making me better than what I am,
and what I think or say or see
is whole in these moments, is neither
small nor broken.  Who then
is better made to say be well, be glad,

or who to long that we, as one,
might course over the entire valley,
over all valleys, as a bird in a great embrace
of flight, who presses against her breast,
in grief and tenderness,
the whole weeping body of the world?
~Linda McCarriston from “Riding Out At Evening”

Remembering nearly three score of younger birthdays on my 59th~~

What I think or say or see is whole
in these tender moments
of my lengthening life
in this weeping world:

I am so glad to be so well.

as a yearling
as a yearling
at age two with Nancy holding baby Steve along with the Schmitz cousins
at age two with the Schmitz cousins, my baby brother in my sister’s lap
age 6 with the kindergarten car pool crowd
age 6 with the kindergarten car pool crowd
age 8
age 8
age nine
age nine
age 16
age 16 (surprise party by my next door neighbor and best friend)
age 25
age 25

The Abyss

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photo from the top of Mt. Baker by Josh Scholten
photo from the top of Mt. Baker by Josh Scholten

The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness. Although the two are identical twins, man, as a rule, views the prenatal abyss with more calm than the one he is heading for.
~Vladimir Nabokov from Speak Memory 

I think Nabokov had it wrong.  This is the abyss.
That's why babies howl at birth,
and why the dying so often reach
for something only they can apprehend.
At the end they don't want their hands
to be under the covers, and if you should put
your hand on theirs in a tentative gesture
of solidarity, they'll pull the hand free;
and you must honor that desire,
and let them pull it free.
~Jane Kenyon from "Reading Aloud to My Father"

We too often mistake this world, this existence,  as the only light there is,  a mere beam of illumination in the surrounding night of eternity, the only relief from overwhelming darkness.  If we stand looking up from the bottom, we might erroneously assume we are the source of the light, we are all there is.

Yet looking at this world from a different perspective, gazing down into the abyss from above, it is clear the light does not come from below –it is from beyond us.

The newborn and the dying know this.  They signal their transition into and out of this world with their hands.  An infant holds tightly to whatever their fist finds,  grasping and clinging so as not be lost to this darkness they have entered.  The dying instead loosen their grip on this world, reaching up and picking the air on their climb back to heaven.

We hold babies tightly so they won’t lose their way in the dark.  We loosen our grip on the dying to honor their reach out to the light that leads to something greater.

In the intervening years, we struggle in our blindness to climb out of the abyss to a vista of great beauty and grace.  Only then we can see, with great calm and serenity, where we are headed.

 

Delivered from a Drift

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This is what we were about to go through together twenty years ago tonight… it feels as if it were just yesterday but here in our kitchen is an almost twenty year old redhead home from college and that means it wasn’t just yesterday. How could it be two decades ago that Lea was almost born in a snowdrift?

Barnstorming

leahb0041

Sixteen years ago tonight I was a one week overdue, way too old pregnant lady, staring out the window at a 60 mile per hour northeaster, with horizontal snow.  I was pondering whether I’d be delivering my own baby at home since it was looking more and more dismal that the roads would be passable with the piling snowdrifts.  Recognizing some very minor early hints of labor, I called my obstetrician in town 10 miles away, and begged that I be allowed to come in “preventatively” to the hospital, so I wouldn’t have to sweat it out wondering if I would make it or not in time, or deliver in the middle of a snowdrift along the way.

Our faithful neighbor Sara Watson came with her daughter Kara to stay with the boys, and got quick lessons in how to run the generator if the power went out.  Dan and…

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Advent Cries and Sings: May it Be

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Leonardo Da Vinci--The Annunciation
Leonardo Da Vinci–The Annunciation

“I am the Lord’s servant,” Mary answered. “May it be as you have said.”
Luke 1: 38

We want it to be the way we want it: our plans, our timing, our hopes and dreams first and foremost.
And then life happens and suddenly nothing looks the way it was supposed to be. How are we to respond?

In my work in a University Health Center, I see in young adults a tremendous lack of resiliency, an inability to ride the waves that crash and overwhelm. One of the most common responses to the unexpected is to panic, facing uncontrollable anxiety that interferes with eating, sleeping, working, studying. A common response to anxiety is to self medicate in any way easily accessible: alcohol, marijuana, nicotine, sex, a friend’s prescription drugs. A little isn’t working so a lot might be better. The anxiety is compounded and becomes deepening depression.

The sadness and hopelessness, even anger –is a discouragement stemming from the lack of control of circumstances, feeling there is no way out, being unable to find another path to a different future. This leads too frequently to thoughts of ending one’s life as it seems too painful and pointless to continue, and thankfully more rarely, taking others’ lives at the same time in an attempt to make sure everyone else knows the depth of the pain.

There is an epidemic of hopelessness among our society’s young people that I’ve never before seen to this extent in my thirty years of clinical work. To them, their debts seem too great, their reserves too limited, their foundations too shaky, their hope nonexistent, their future too dim. They cannot ride the waves without feeling they are drowning. So they look for any way out.

In the annunciation of the angel approaching a young woman out of the blue, Mary’s response to this overwhelming circumstance is a model for us all when we are hit by a wave we didn’t expect and had not prepared for.

She is prepared; she has studied and knows God’s Word and His promise to His people. She is able to articulate it beautifully in the song she sings as her response. She gives up her so carefully planned life to give life to God within her.

Her resilience sings through the ages: may it be to me as you say.

May it be.
Your plans, Your purpose, Your promise.
Let it be.
Even if it may pierce my soul as with a sword.
You are there to plug the bleeding hole.

And I will sing through my tears.

Fear of Sunsets

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photo by Nate Gibson

How strange this fear of death is! We are never frightened at a sunset.
George McDonald

In our modern world that never seems to rest, a sunrise can seem more daunting than a sunset.  We are unprepared for the day to start–the ready-set-go of a sunrise can be overwhelming to a tired soul.  There are mornings when the new light of dawn penetrates right through our closed eyelids, enough to wake the dead, if not the sleeping.  It cannot be ignored in its urgency to rouse us to action.

In contrast, the end of the day requires little preparation.  Sunsets signal a slow-down unraveling of tension, a deep cleansing breath, a letting-go of the light for another night.  It eases over us, covering us like a comfortable quilt, tucking us in for the night with a kiss and hug and promise of sweet dreams.

The reason we do not fear the sunset is that we know it isn’t all there is.  The black nothingness of night would be petrifying if we didn’t understand and trust that the light will return, as startling as it may be in its brightness.   It is the rerunning cycle of the light and dark that reassures.   It is as it was created to be, over and over.

Let the sunset tuck us in.   Let the sunrise ready us for a new day.  Let it end, then let it begin again.

 

Song from a Snowdrift

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photo by Josh Scholten

Your rolling and stretching grew quieter that stormy winter night, but no labor came.
A week overdue, you clung to amnion and womb, not ready.
The wind blew wicked and snow flew sideways, landing in piling drifts.
The roads impassable, nearly impossible to traverse.

Your dad and I tried, worried about being stranded at home.
Our little car got stuck in a snowpile,  our tires spinning, whining against the snow.
A neighbor’s bulldozer dug us out to freedom.
You floated silent and still, knowing your time was not yet.

Creeping slowly through the dark night blizzard,
we arrived to the warm glow of the hospital.
You slept.
I, not at all.

Morning sun glistened off sculptured snow outside our window,
Your heart had mysteriously slowed in the night.
You were jostled, turned, oxygenated, but nothing changed.
You beat even more slowly.

The nurses’ eyes told me we had trouble. The doctor, grim faced, announced
delivery must happen quickly, taking you now, hoping we were not too late.
I was rolled, numbed, stunned, clasping your father’s hand, closing my eyes,
not wanting to see the bustle around me, not wanting to hear the shouted orders,
the tension in the voices, the quiet at the moment of opening when it was unknown what would be found.

And then you cried. A hearty healthy husky cry.
Perturbed and disturbed from the warmth of womb,
to the cold shock of a bright lit operating room,
your first vocal solo brought applause
from the surrounding audience who admired your pink skin,
your shock of damp red hair, your blue eyes squeezed tight,
then blinking open, wondrous.

You were brought wrapped for me to see and touch
before being whisked away,
your father trailing behind the parade to the nursery.
I closed my eyes, swirling in a brain blizzard of what-ifs.

If no storm had come, you would have fallen asleep forever within my womb,
no longer nurtured by an aging placenta,
cut off from what you needed to stay alive.
There would have been only our soft weeping,
knowing what could have been if we had only known,
if we could have been sent a sign to go for help.

Saved by a storm, dug from a drift:
I celebrate now each time I hear your voice singing.