Tag: broken

Brokenness Under Blessing

barnstormingblog1 Comment

The great mystery of God’s love is that
we are not asked to live as if we are not hurting,
as if we are not broken.

In fact, we are invited to recognize our brokenness
as a brokenness in which we can come in touch
with the unique way that God loves us.

The great invitation is to live your brokenness under the blessing.

I cannot take people’s brokenness away 
and people cannot take my brokenness away.
 
But how do you live in your brokenness?

Do you live your brokenness under the blessing or under the curse? The great call of Jesus is to put your brokenness under the blessing.
~Henri Nouwen from a lecture at Scarritt-Bennett Center

…be a glorified human being, with wounds.  God the Kintsugi master who beholds such brokenness in tender care, invites us, and asks of us, to be present in suffering and incalculable losses.  
… worship a Wounded Glorified Human Being, and be that ourselves. 
~Makoto Fujimura from Kinsugi Grace

It is a ceramic pot meant specially for our kitchen table — handmade by a potter friend using the abstract artistry of mane hairs from our farm’s Haflinger horses burnt onto the sides. But it hit the floor and broke into many pieces, looking completely beyond repair.

It is back on our table, repaired with love and care by another friend, using nothing more than copious amounts of Elmer’s Glue. This is the glue of every child’s school desk, the glue of every mother’s junk drawer, the glue of every heart that needs mending.

Elmer’s is not the gold of the Japanese art of kintsugi, where broken vessels are repaired with precious metals, creating an object even more valuable and beautiful than before, with streaks and tracks of gold highlighting their shattered history.

Yet it is now even more precious to me. Someone we love cared deeply enough to make it in the first place, and another we love cared deeply to repair it, making it even more beautiful and blessed in its brokenness, highlighting ragged pieces made whole again.

Someone made us.
Someone repairs us when we fall apart.
Someone blesses our brokenness with a glued-together beauty that makes us whole.

Every day, as the sun goes down,
I pause, broken, remembering how often
I messed up that day, in big and small ways.
Cracked open, my mistakes are illuminated,
weighing down my heart, impossible to forget.
Yet, as I pray for mercy, there follows a peacefulness,
as my errors are blotted out. My slate, one more time, is wiped clean.

Therefore do not lose heart.

For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God’s glory displayed in the face of Christ.

7 But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. 8 We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; 9 persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. 10 We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. 11 For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that his life may also be revealed in our mortal body. 12 So then, death is at work in us, but life is at work in you.

16 Therefore we do not lose heart.
2 Corinthinians: 6-12, 16

One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

$10.00
$25.00
$50.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00

Or enter a custom amount

$

Your contribution is deeply appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly


To Send This Precious Peace: If I Can Help…

barnstormingblogLeave a comment

If I can stop one heart from breaking,
I shall not live in vain;
If I can ease one life the aching,
Or cool one pain,
Or help one fainting robin
Unto his nest again,
I shall not live in vain.
~Emily Dickinson

Mostly, I want to be kind.
And nobody, of course, is kind,
or mean,
for a simple reason.
~Mary Oliver from “Dogfish”

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.
~Naomi Shihab Nye from “Kindness”

Have you ever noticed how much of Christ’s life was spent in doing kind things – in merely doing kind things? … he spent a great proportion of his time simply in making people happy, in doing good turns to people.

There is only one thing greater than happiness in the world, and that is holiness; and it is not in our keeping. But what God has put in our power is the happiness of those about us, and that is largely to be secured by our being kind to them.…

I wonder why it is that we are not all kinder than we are. How much the world needs it. How easily it is done. How instantaneously it acts. How infallibly it is remembered.
~Henry Drummond from The Greatest Thing in the World

It is tender kindness I miss most these days – this world aflame with anger and violence, distrust and bitterness, resentment and suspicion and cussed stubbornness.

There seems no relief in sight; we must find a way through.

It is time to offer and accept help when needed.
It is time to give and receive mercy without shame or scorn.
It is time to gently lift those soft vulnerable wings back into the nest.

We are saved by kindness, by grace given freely, thrown like a lifeline to us when we are overwhelmed.

I have been gently surrounded in a nest of kindness many times by the encouragement and love from those around me. When my heart is breaking, I know their mercy and grace becomes my glue.

photo by Josh Scholten

…the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. 
For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat,
I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink,
I was a stranger and you invited me in, 
I needed clothes and you clothed me, 
I was sick and you looked after me, 
I was in prison and you came to visit me.
Matthew 25:34-36

So if there is any encouragement in Christ,
any comfort from love,
any participation in the Spirit,
any affection and sympathy,
complete my joy by being of the same mind,
having the same love,
being in full accord and of one mind.
…. in humility count others more significant than yourselves.
Let each of you look not only to his own interests,
but also to the interests of others.
~Philippians 2: 1-4

Walk in a manner worthy of the calling
to which you have been called,
with all humility and gentleness,
with patience, bearing with one another in love,
eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
Ephesians 4: 1-3


This Lenten season I reflect on the words of the 19th century southern spiritual hymn “What Wondrous Love is This”

One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

$10.00
$25.00
$50.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00

Or enter a custom amount

$

Your contribution is deeply appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

To Bear the Dreadful Curse: Every Limb Lit

barnstormingblogLeave a comment

My sorrow’s flower was so small a joy
It took a winter seeing to see it as such.
Numb, unsteady, stunned at all the evidence
Of winter’s blind imperative to destroy,
I looked up, and saw the bare abundance
Of a tree whose every limb was lit and fraught with snow.
What I was seeing then I did not quite know
But knew that one mite more would have been too much.
~Christian Wiman “After a Storm” from Once in the West: Poems

Though a weak branch strains mightily to bear
a summer’s bounty of fruit without breaking, it will sustain the load.

Then comes winter wind and ice storms
and a snowflake becomes the mite too much.

Even so, a painful pruning is endured,
when even the strongest limbs are trimmed back,
urged to fearlessly grow on and be more fruitful.

I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener.  He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. 
John 15: 1-2

This Lenten season I reflect on the words of the 19th century southern spiritual hymn “What Wondrous Love is This”

One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

$10.00
$25.00
$50.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00

Or enter a custom amount

$

Your contribution is deeply appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

How to Make Christmas Last

barnstormingblogLeave a comment

When the song of the angels is stilled,
When the star in the sky is gone,
When the kings and the princes are home,
When the shepherds are back with their flock,
The work of Christmas begins:
To find the lost,
To heal the broken,
To feed the hungry,
To release the prisoner,
To rebuild the nations,
To bring peace among brothers,
To make music in the heart.
~Howard Thurman “The Work of Christmas”

The day of Christ’s birth is celebrated on one particular day
but the significance of His coming to live among us
remains our reality every day.

It isn’t about glitter and sparkles and stockings and ho-ho-ho.
It is a renewed commitment to the work we’re called to
as His brothers and sisters.

Jesus’ work has no end until He comes again.
In every waking hour, may we share the spirit of Christmas
with our lost, hungry broken world, making peace and making music.

One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

$10.00
$25.00
$50.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00

Or enter a custom amount

$

Your contribution is deeply appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

A Clamor of Questions

barnstormingblogLeave a comment

I’m scrambling an egg for my daughter.
“Why are you always whistling?” she asks.
“Because I’m happy.”
And it’s true,
Though it stuns me to say it aloud;
There was a time when I wouldn’t
Have seen it as my future.
It’s partly a matter
Of who is there to eat the egg:
The self fallen out of love with itself
Through the tedium of familiarity,
Or this little self,
So curious, so hungry,
Who emerged from the woman I love,
A woman who loves me in a way
I’ve come to think I deserve,
Now that it arrives from outside me.
Everything changes, we’re told,
And now the changes are everywhere:
The house with its morning light
That fills me like a revelation,
The yard with its trees
That cast a bit more shade each summer,
The love of a woman
That both is and isn’t confounding,
And the love
Of this clamor of questions at my waist.
Clamor of questions,
You clamor of answers,
Here’s your egg.
~C.G. Hanzlicek “Egg” from Against Dreaming.

Tell all the truth but tell it slant —
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth’s superb surprise
As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind —
~Emily Dickinson

When a grandchild asks a question, it is like a smooth and perfect egg safely in the nest, awaiting the exact moment to open up to breathe deeply of the world.

Sometimes my answer, try as I might, results in broken shell fragments, the insides all scrambled and released too soon.

I’m confounded by my love for childrens’ innocence in a harsh and painful world – I don’t always know the best thing to say when the truth has bits of hard shell in it. I end up telling the truth a bit slant so it might dazzle them gradually.

So I encourage them to keep asking their clamor of questions, and I do my best to answer in a way so they stay hungry for more, filled with truths without being blinded.

So many questions in their minds and mine.
So many eggs to open gently so the truth remains whole.

One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily ad-free Barnstorming posts

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

$10.00
$25.00
$50.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00

Or enter a custom amount

$

Your contribution is deeply appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

The Rising Tide

barnstormingblog1 Comment

As the tide rises, the closed mollusc
Opens a fraction to the ocean’s food,
Bathed in its riches. Do not ask
What force would do, or if force could.

A knife is of no use against a fortress.
You might break it to pieces as gulls do.
No, only the rising tide and its slow progress
Opens the shell. Lovers, I tell you true.

You who have held yourselves closed hard
Against warm sun and wind, shelled up in fears
And hostile to a touch or tender word—
The ocean rises, salt as unshed tears.

Now you are floated on this gentle flood
That cannot force or be forced, welcome food
Salt as your tears, the rich ocean’s blood,
Eat, rest, be nourished on the tide of love.
~May Sarton “Of Molluscs” from Complete Poems

photo by Josh Scholten

No question when I was younger, I tried to be a tough shell to crack. Over my years of medical training, I was warned to keep what is soft and tender closed and protected, or I would be picked clean, with my hard remains exposed and emptied.

Yet during those stressful years as a young physician, as one of a handful of female students, I didn’t feel attacked, nor was I forced to float through battering tides to hostile shores. Bathed in salty tears at times, I was comforted when the stormy winds came. My teachers were kind and gentle. Soothing words and heartfelt praise flowed around and through me.

I was treated just as I wanted to treat my patients: with respect and nurture.

All these years later, I have not forgotten this gift of love I was shown by my teachers and colleagues. Even when buried in the muck and sand up to my eyeballs, I could trust enough to open up my hard and crusty parts so I could feel the tide rise over and carry me home.

Hey little boy, whatcha got there?
Kind sir it’s a mollusk i’ve found
Did you find it in the sandy ground?
Does it emulate the ocean’s sound?
Yes I found it on the ground
Emulating the ocean’s sound
Bring forth the mollusk cast unto me
Let’s be forever let forever be free

Hey little boy come walk with me
And bring your new found mollusk along
Does it speaketh of the trinity
Can it gaze at the sun with its wandering eye
Yes it speaks of the trinity
Casting light at the sun with its wandering eye
Bring forth the mollusk, cast unto me
Let’s be forever let forever be free

You see there are three things that spur the mollusk from the sand
The waking of all creatures that live on the land
And with just one faint glance, back into the sea
The mollusk lingers, with it’s wandering eye
~Gene Ween

One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

¤10.00
¤25.00
¤50.00
¤5.00
¤15.00
¤100.00
¤5.00
¤15.00
¤100.00

Or enter a custom amount

Your contribution is deeply appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

The Snail’s Huffle

barnstormingblogLeave a comment

Little snail,
Dreaming you go.
Weather and rose
Is all you know.
Weather and rose
Is all you see,
Drinking
The dewdrop’s
Mystery.
~Langston Hughes “Snail”

   A walk, a rout, an escargatroire
of snails—do you envy their elasticity? To each,
      an aria, the tender antennae perceiving,
         smelling and feeling, heeding
         an orchestration, inborn: Seek. Glean.
      O this thirst! Dare we risk
   spiraling outward, onward, a frangible
ode-in-motion? Dear Earth, why show us
   these rippling, quicksilver guides,
      their boneless glide,
         the fearless right-angle ascent,
         with a cellular hope’s acrobatic
      sheen—even upside-down? Surely,
   an ancient desert mother advised,
Your shell will teach you everything.
~Laurie Klein “A Walk, a Rout, An Escargatroire”

James was a very small snail…
and gave the huffle of a snail in danger.
And nobody heard him at all.
~A.A.Milne from The Four Friends from  “When We Were Very Young”

I mean, the analogy writes itself
like the onion in a grand conceit
though we really are like two slugs
in a derelict mausoleum.
Google “snails are…”
Dangerous. Slow.
Destroying my garden.
Our jobs and our women.

You, who cannot speak snail,
wouldn’t understand how the shell
was the gift and curse of diaspora,
how our songs and laments resound
in our half-remembered houses
that we carry to forget, to carry on.
~Samatar Elmi “The Snails”

…who has a controlled sense of wonder
before the universal mystery,
whether it hides in a snail’s eye
or within the light that impinges on that delicate organ?
~Loren Eiseley from The Star Thrower

If a snail’s shell gets injured, a repair can be made quickly. New shell material is secreted by the mantle, and where there was once a crack, a scar appears, looking much like a skin scar. Even a missing shell section can be replaced.

Oliver Goldsmith described this in 1774:
Sometimes these animals are crushed seemingly to pieces, and, to all appearance, utterly destroyed; yet still they set themselves to work, and, in a few days, mend all their numerous breaches . . . to the re-establishment of the ruined habitation. But all the junctures are very easily seen, for they have a fresher colour than the rest; and the whole shell, in some measure, resembles an old coat patched with new pieces.
― Elisabeth Tova Bailey, The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating

A gastropod brave enough
to cross a busy sidewalk
appears in no particular rush~

no hurry toward the grassy expanse
on the other side.
The lawn will still be there
whether an hour from now
or tomorrow.

Its waving little snail eyes
trying see and smell the future.

To assure it would not be crushed underfoot
I decide to intervene in history
and give it a lift
as Someone has done for me
when I was in danger.

So today,
I saw a snail at risk of being crushed
and didn’t need to hear its cry
to do the right thing.

One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barstorming posts

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

¤10.00
¤25.00
¤50.00
¤5.00
¤15.00
¤100.00
¤5.00
¤15.00
¤100.00

Or enter a custom amount

Your contribution is deeply appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

Broken, But Not Shattered

barnstormingblogLeave a comment

Under a cherry tree
I found a robin’s egg,
broken, but not shattered.

I had been thinking of you,
and was kneeling in the grass
among fallen blossoms

when I saw it: a blue scrap,
a delicate toy, as light
as confetti

It didn’t seem real,
but nature will do such things
from time to time.

I looked inside:
it was glistening, hollow,
a perfect shell

except for the missing crown,
which made it possible
to look inside.

What had been there
is gone now
and lives in my heart

where, periodically,
it opens up its wings,
tearing me apart.
~Phyllis Levin “End of April”

photo by Josh Scholten

The great mystery of God’s love is that we are not asked to live as if we are not hurting, as if we are not broken. In fact, we are invited to recognize our brokenness as a brokenness in which we can come in touch with the unique way that God loves us. The great call of Jesus is to put your brokenness under the blessing.
~Henri Nouwen from a Lecture at Scarritt-Bennett Center

Some say you’re lucky
If nothing shatters it.

But then you wouldn’t
Understand poems or songs.
You’d never know
Beauty comes from loss.

It’s deep inside every person:
A tear tinier
Than a pearl or thorn.

It’s one of the places
Where the beloved is born.
~Gregory Orr from Concerning the Book That Is the Body of the Beloved

Every day, as the sun goes down,
I pause, feeling a bit or a lot broken, remembering how often
I messed up that day, in big and small ways.

I’ve been cracked open, my mistakes leaking and illuminated,
weighing down my heart, impossible to forget,
ready to take wings as I pray for mercy.

With forgiveness, there follows peacefulness.
Broken, but not shattered.
Cracked, but glistening clean.

One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

¤10.00
¤25.00
¤50.00
¤5.00
¤15.00
¤100.00
¤5.00
¤15.00
¤100.00

Or enter a custom amount

Your contribution is deeply appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

Breaking the Lock

barnstormingblog1 Comment

And yes it is necessary to admit
walking in the forest
the heart is a lock

it has inviolable chambers
like the woods, fallen trees
that block

access to the river
snowdrops surprising its edges
moss crystalline with frost

What I thought I wanted what I have tried to be
was the slender instrument that opened

a key: presence moving deeper into the forest
that releases the birds from the trees
and sends them   ascends them
to sky   by definition
open

but now there is nothing left to be solved like a riddle

this time the lock must be broken
what’s left has to be seized

because God only loves the strong thief
I mean the man who breaks his heart for God
~Jennifer Grotz, “Locked” from Window Left Open

All my life I wanted to be an effective key, unlocking life’s mysteries and opening up the world to those who are hopeless, stifled and trapped. Doctor training gave me a few locksmith tools. I found my patients taught me far more about their pain and suffering than my professors did.

Yet profound mysteries remain: some illnesses are rare or unique enough to defy diagnosis, some just don’t respond to available tools, while illnesses as well understood and treatable as depression or COVID infection still kill and incapacitate with abandon. The keys I may have accumulated don’t fit every lock. They don’t necessarily open the doors to freedom from fear or worry.

At times I feel aimless, wondering what tools I still have and if I remember how to use them. Simple knowledge is only one key, while brute force – breaking and entering – may be necessary to break the hardest lock of all – access to the troubled heart and soul.

God wants in, to pick up our broken pieces and put us back together. He doesn’t need a key to enter what He Himself has built from scratch. He owns the place.

One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

¤10.00
¤20.00
¤50.00
¤5.00
¤15.00
¤100.00
¤5.00
¤15.00
¤100.00

Or enter a custom amount

Your contribution is deeply appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

Ragged Hopes

barnstormingblog1 Comment

How granular they feel—grief and regret, arriving, as they do,
in the sharp particularities of distress. Inserting themselves—
cunning, intricate, subversive—into our discourse.

In the long night, grievances seem to multiply. Old dreams
mingling with new. Disappointment and regret bludgeon
the soul, your best imaginings bruised, your hopes ragged.

Yet wait, watch. From the skylight the room is filling with
soft early sun, slowly sifting its light on the bed, on your head,
a shower of fine particles. How welcome. And how reliable.
~Luci Shaw “Sorrow”

(In my sleep I dreamed this poem)

Someone I loved once gave me
a box full of darkness.

It took me years to understand
that this, too, was a gift.
~ Mary Oliver “The Uses of Sorrow” from Thirst

We are given a box full of darkness
by someone who loves us,
and we can’t help but open it
and weep.

It takes a lifetime to understand,
if we ever do,
we will inevitably hand off
this gift to others whom we love.

Opening the box
allows the Light in
where none existed before.
Light pours into our brokenness.

Sorrow ends up shining through our tears:
we reach out from a deep well of need.
Because we are loved so thoroughly,
we too love deeply beyond ourselves.

One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

¤10.00
¤20.00
¤50.00
¤5.00
¤15.00
¤100.00
¤5.00
¤15.00
¤100.00

Or enter a custom amount

Your contribution is deeply appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly