What a piece of work is a man! …And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? ~ William Shakespeare – Hamlet’s soliloquy
God – the God who made the dust, who made the stars, who made the elements of which we are composed – that same God chooses from the beginning to make his dwelling among us, to live for all time like us, as a servant of the soil. I am the dust of the earth, but God declares that he is not too good, not too proud, for my dustiness. ~Daniel Stulac fromPlough Quarterly No. 4: Earth
What I know for sure is this: We come from mystery and we return to mystery. I arrived here with no bad memories of wherever I’d come from, so I have no good reason to fear the place to which I’ll return. And I know this, too: Standing closer to the reality of death awakens my awe at the gift of life. ~Parker Palmer “On the Brink of Everything“
…I do nothing, I give You nothing. Yet You hold me
minute by minute from falling. ~Denise Levertov fromPsalm Fragments (Schnittke String Trio),in The Stream and the Sapphire
This dust left of man: earth, air, water and fire prove inadequate to quell the significance of how, in spoken words at the beginning, this dust became us, and how, forevermore, this is holy dust we leave behind.
We are held secure from falling by transcendent hope of eternal life, restored by a glory breathed into us – such a piece of work we are the plainest of ash.
This year’s Lenten theme:
…where you go I will go… Ruth 1:16
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This is a litany to earth and ashes, to the dust of roads and vacant rooms, to the fine silt circling in a shaft of sun, settling indifferently on books and beds. This is a prayer to praise what we become, “Dust thou art, to dust thou shalt return.” Savor its taste—the bitterness of earth and ashes. ~Dana Gioia from “The Litany”
I will show you fear in a handful of dust. ~T.S. Eliot from “The Wasteland”
…let us be marked not for sorrow. And let us be marked not for shame. Let us be marked not for false humility or for thinking we are less than we are
but for claiming what God can do within the dust, within the dirt, within the stuff of which the world is made, and the stars that blaze in our bones, and the galaxies that spiral inside the smudge we bear. ~Jan Richardson from “Blessing the Dust”in Circle of Grace
God’s people are reminded today, through dust and ashes, that our stay here is temporary.
This reality recently became very clear to me. So I follow Christ where He goes, He paused to gather me in – one more lost sheep.
This earth quakes and floods and burns and shatters, as does my frail human heart in all its dustiness.
His light splinters, spilling into colors and hues through that misty veil -God’s people are smudged with no longer bitter ash, no longer opaque, but shining luminous and eternal and glorious.
This year’s Lenten theme:
…where you go I will go… Ruth 1:16
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All I could see from where I stood Was three long mountains and a wood; I turned and looked another way, And saw three islands in a bay. So with my eyes I traced the line Of the horizon, thin and fine, Straight around till I was come Back to where I’d started from; And all I saw from where I stood Was three long mountains and a wood.
Over these things I could not see; These were the things that bounded me; And I could touch them with my hand, Almost, I thought, from where I stand. And all at once things seemed so small My breath came short, and scarce at all.
The world stands out on either side No wider than the heart is wide; Above the world is stretched the sky,— No higher than the soul is high. The heart can push the sea and land Farther away on either hand; The soul can split the sky in two, And let the face of God shine through. But East and West will pinch the heart That can not keep them pushed apart; And he whose soul is flat—the sky Will cave in on him by and by. ~Edna St. Vincent Millay at age 19, from “Renascence”
I know for a while again, the health of self-forgetfulness, looking out at the sky through a notch in the valley side, the black woods wintry on the hills, small clouds at sunset passing across. And I know that this is one of the thresholds between Earth and Heaven, from which I may even step forth from myself and be free. ~ Wendell Berry, Sabbaths 2000
I was told once by someone I respected that my writing reflected “sacramental” living — reflecting my effort to touch and taste the holiness of everyday moments, as if they are the cup and bread that sustain us.
I allowed that feedback to sit warmly beside me, like a comforting companion during the hours I struggled with what to share here.
Yet, as tomorrow begins weeks of Lenten observance, I realize it is all too tempting to emphasize sacrament over the sacrifice it inevitably represents.
As much as I love the world and the beauty I find here, I need to recognize there will be “thin places” between heaven and earth where we must forget “self” and step forth through a holy threshold into something far greater.
So I struggle with what sacrificial living truly means, as a terrifying illuminating freedom remaining far beyond my grasp.
I may even step forth from myself and be free…
photo of San Juan Islands by Joel De Waardphoto of San Juan Islands by Joel De Waardphoto of San Juan Islands by Joel De WaardAI image created for this post
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The heart of a woman goes forth with the dawn, As a lone bird, soft winging, so restlessly on, Afar o’er life’s turrets and vales does it roam In the wake of those echoes the heart calls home.
The heart of a woman falls back with the night, And enters some alien cage in its plight, And tries to forget it has dreamed of the stars While it breaks, breaks, breaks on the sheltering bars. ~Georgia Douglas Johnson “The Heart of a Woman” fromThe Heart of a Woman and Other Poems
Some mornings I’m not sure what else to do with my worry, so I fling my tender heart out ahead of me, hoping I might eventually catch up with it to bring it back home before nightfall.
Sometimes it is a race to see if anyone else rescues it first or if someone even notices it out there fluttering its way through the day, trying to stay aloft.
Perhaps, in its lonely flight, it will try winging its way home and there I’ll find it patiently waiting for me on the doorstep as I return empty-handed.
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All at once I saw what looked like a Martian spaceship whirling towards me in the air. It flashed borrowed light like a propeller. Its forward motion greatly outran its fall. As I watched, transfixed, it rose, just before it would have touched a thistle, and hovered pirouetting in one spot, then twirled on and finally came to rest. I found it in the grass; it was a maple key, a single winged seed from a pair.
Hullo.
I threw it into the wind and it flew off again, bristling with animate purpose, not like a thing dropped or windblown…
O maple key, I thought, I must confess I thought, o welcome, cheers.
And the bell under my ribs rang a true note, a flourish as of blended horns, clarion, sweet, and making a long dim sense I will try at length to explain. Flung is too harsh a word for the rush of the world. Blown is more like it, but blown by a generous, unending breath. That breath never ceases to kindle, exuberant, abandoned; frayed splinters spatter in every direction and burgeon into flame. And now when I sway to a fitful wind, alone and listing, I will think, maple key. When I shake your hand or meet your eyes I will think, two maple keys. If I am a maple key falling, at least I can twirl…
…Squeak into a gap in the soil, turn, and unlock- more than a maple- a universe. ~Annie Dillard from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
The set seed and the first bulbs showing. The silence that brings the deer.
The trees are full of handles and hinges; you can make out keyholes, latches in the leaves.
Buds tick and crack in the sun, break open slowly in a spur of green.
*
That woody clack of antlers. In yellow and red, the many griefs of autumn.
The dawn light through amber leaves and the trees are lanterned, blown
the next day to empty stars. Smoke in the air; the air, turning.
*
Under a sky of stone and pink faring in from the north and promising snow:
the blackbird. In his beak, a victory of worms.
The winged seed of the maple, the lost keys under the ash. ~Robin Robertson from “Finding the Keys”
I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven… Matthew 16:19
Let us seek words as plentiful as those keys that twirl from the maple branch —
Words once freed, spoken and blown by a generous breath, ready to unlatch life’s secrets and push ajar the doors of heavy hearts.
May we somehow use the Word we have been given to open up just enough to listen, to unlock horns, and welcome what grace may fall into our empty and longing arms.
I am a helicopter child Whirling, swirling, sailing Into the wide unknown Dancing, arcing Into the future.
Wind carry me upward Wind blow me onward Wind sail me outward.
O The great tree my mother The green tree my father: Send me into the world To plant new hope To grow new dreams.
Wind carry me upward Wind blow me onward Wind sail me outward.
I was born in high branches Swaying, singing, growing Now I seek a new home Earth to welcome me Soil to feed me I am tomorrow.
Wind carry me upward Wind blow me onward Wind sail me outward. I am tomorrow. ~Marion Saunderson
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Let your speech be alway with grace, seasoned with salt, that ye may know how ye ought to answer every man. Colossians 4: 6
Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, with all malice,and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you. Ephesians 4: 31-32
You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. Matthew 5:43-45
And whom do I call my enemy? An enemy must be worthy of engagement. I turn in the direction of the sun and keep walking. It’s the heart that asks the question, not my furious mind. The heart is the smaller cousin of the sun. It sees and knows everything. It hears the gnashing even as it hears the blessing. The door to the mind should only open from the heart. An enemy who gets in, risks the danger of becoming a friend. ~Joy Harjo “This Morning I Pray For My Enemies”
I have a heart full of questions Quieting all my suggestions What is the meaning of Christian In this American life?
Is there a way to love always? Living in enemy hallways Don’t know my foes from my friends and Don’t know my friends anymore Power has several prizes Handcuffs can come in all sizes Love has a million disguises But winning is simply not one ~Jon Guerra from “Citizens”
…{His is} the love for the enemy– love for the one who does not love you but mocks, threatens, and inflicts pain. The tortured’s love for the torturer. This is God’s love. It conquers the world. ~Frederich Buechner from The Magnificent Defeat
After watching the appalling ambush of disrespect and rudeness by our country’s two leaders in the Oval Office yesterday toward visiting Ukrainian President Zelenskyy, I find myself gnashing my teeth in anger.
Now – who indeed is the friend, and who is the enemy?
This was not the time or forum for a public, rather than private high stakes discussion: the presence of cameras encourages bullies to have their say in front of a vast audience, determined to intimidate in order to “make good television.”
Simply agreeing to disagree on some issues in a difficult negotiation no longer seems an option. Why can’t a debate honor the other side enough to facilitate a civil discussion? Instead, if someone doesn’t see it your way, they’re perceived as ungrateful, morally deficient, hostile or worst of all, they have become the enemy.
But Ukraine is not the enemy and never wants to be. They want to remain whole and free to govern themselves and need help to withstand the attacks of their neighborhood bully.
Those of us who have been around awhile know: bellowing hateful words puts a match to angry feelings that burn hot inside and outside. Usually a fruitful political debate over polarizing opinions can inspire a profound sense of purpose and compromise, yet if there is no respect or honor shown, it burns to ashes.
I disagree vehemently with what our leaders are doing and in particular, the boorish and foolish way they are doing it. Their school yard behavior is a far cry from the biblical command to exhibit grace and compassion instead of hostility and retribution.
Fickle things are those angry words – someone lights a match to them, keeps stoking the fire with new fuel, over and over again until nothing remains standing.
Let us refuse to be the kindling as our leaders seek our attention daily by inflicting more trauma and angst, not just to the citizens of Ukraine and Europe, but to the U.S. citizens to whom they are ultimately accountable.
Let us resist our own angry gnashing of teeth by praying that only God’s transforming love for enemies can soften the hearts and minds of the bullies of the world.
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“Why, what’s the matter, That you have such a February face, So full of frost, of storm and cloudiness?” – William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing
The wrap-up to February feels like spring is flirting with us. But will winter really ever be finished?
Our doldrums are deep; a brief respite of sun and warmth too rare.
We feel it in the barn as we go about our daily winter routine. The Haflingers are impatient and yearn for freedom, over-eager when handled, sometimes banging on the stall doors in their frustration at being shut in, not understanding that the alternative is to stand outside all day in cold rain and wind. To compensate for their confinement, we start grooming off their thick winter coats, urging their hair to loosen and curry off in sheets over parts of their bodies, yet otherwise still clinging tight.
The horses are a motley crew right now, much like a worn ’60s shag carpet, uneven and in dire need of updating. I prefer that no one see them (or me) like this. Eventually I know the shag on my horses will come off, revealing the sheen of new short hair beneath, but when I look at myself, I’m unconvinced there is such transformation in store for me.
Cranky, I put one foot ahead of the other, oblivious to the subtle seasonal renewal around me, refusing to believe even in the possibility.
It happened today. Dawn broke bright and blinding so I headed outside and stumbled across something extraordinary.
A patch of snowdrops sat blooming in a newly cleared space in our farmyard, visible now only because of bramble removal done last fall. These little white upside down flowers were planted decades ago around our house and yard. There they’ve been, year after year, harbingers of the long-awaited spring to come in a few short weeks, sometimes covered by the overgrowth and invisible to me in my self-absorbed blindness.
I was astonished that someone, many many years ago, had carried these bulbs around the farm, planting them, hoping they might bless another soul sometime somehow. The blossoms had sprung from their sleep beneath the covering of years of fallen leaves and blackberry vines.
It was as if I’d been physically hugged by this someone long dead, now flesh and blood beside me, with work-rough hands, and dirty fingernails, and broad brimmed hat, and a satisfied smile. This secret gardener is no long living, so I mentally reach back across those years in gratitude, showing my deep appreciation for the time and effort it took to place a foretaste of spring in an unexpected and hidden place.
I am thus compelled to look for ways to leave such a gift for someone to find 70 years from now as they likewise stumble blindly through too many gray days full of human drama, frailty and flaw. Though I will be long gone, I can reach across the years to grab them, hug them in their doldrums, lift them up and give them hope for what is to come.
It is the peeling away of winter’s shaggy coat, revealing the fresh smoothness of spring glistening underneath.
What an astonishing thought that it was done for me, and in reaffirming that promise of renewal, I might do it for another.
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When we have died, and arms long empty of our memories, reach to know love’s pure and sacred touch, and to embrace a long sought, long anticipated place…
when we have gone the way of all the earth, and pain and sorrow are no more, not seen or heard or found, no more the discontent of place or time or any lesser haste, but only One whose love transcends our harsh and wearied days,
when we have died and gone and fallen fast asleep, and found the settled light and our so much a sweeter sacral rest, forever held in caring arms, yes, held now everlasting in a wonder of it all, then we have not gone down empty, we have not died alone. ~Henry Lewis from “When”
This event happened in 1975 while I was an undergraduate student researcher in Tanzania, East Africa, working alongside other researchers assisting Dr. Jane Goodall in her study of wild chimpanzees and baboons.
Several metal buildings were scattered along the shore at Gombe National Park, having been built over the years since Jane Goodall and her mother Vanne arrived on a bare beach in 1960. From the very beginning, one of the most powerful connections between these two British women and the Tanzanian villagers who lived up and down Lake Tanganyika was their provision of basic medical supplies and services when needed. Initially, under the cover of the camp tents, they tended to wounds, provided a few medications, and assisted whenever they were needed for help.
Later, an actual dispensary was built as part of the park buildings, with storage for first aid supplies and medications, many of which were traditional Chinese medications, in little boxes with Chinese characters, and no translation. All we had was a sheet of paper explaining if a medication was to be used for headaches, fevers, bleeding problems or infections.
There were “open” times in the dispensary and each of the research assistants took turns to see villagers as they came by to be seen for medical issues. We saw injuries that had never healed properly, some people with permanently crippled limbs, centipede bites that swelled legs, babies who were malnourished, malarial fevers.
It felt like so little to offer. None of us had medical training beyond first aid and CPR, but what small service we could provide was met with incredible gratitude.
So it wasn’t a surprise when a villager arrived one afternoon, running and out of breath, asking that we come right away to help. There had been a terrible accident up the beach when a water taxi engine exploded while transporting two dozen villagers, along with their provisions, including goats and chickens. As people rushed to get away from the engine fire, the roofed boat overturned, with everyone trapped among the boxes, unable to escape.
Even more tragic, Tanzanians were never taught to swim, so no one on shore could help in the rescue effort.
We dropped everything and six of us ran up the beach for a mile, and could see an overturned water taxi just off shore. The best swimmers went out and started searching for people who had been too long in the deep water. They began to pull the bloated bodies to shore, one by one, the lake water pouring from lifeless mouths and noses. All we could do was line them up side by side on the beach, trying to keep the biting flies from covering them, trying to make sense of what was so senseless. There were eight children of various ages, including two small babies, several older women, one pregnant woman, the rest men of all ages–twenty four souls in all, not a single survivor.
As a nurses’ aide, I had cared for the dying and helped to bathe their bodies after death, but I had never before seen so much death at once, and never a dead child.
Before long, relatives started arriving, their grief-stricken wails of loss filling the air on this remote African lakeshore. Husbands and wives wept, keening over a spouse. Children crouched, in shock, by a dead parent. Grandmothers clutched their dead children and grandchildren and would not let go.
We had saved no one. We had no power to bring them back to life.
We could only bear witness to the loss and grief with deep compassion for our neighbors who had come to depend on us to help. It became even clearer to me, in a way I had never understood before, how deep our need is for the mercy of God who is our only comfort when terrible things happen.
I have not forgotten those who were lost to the world that day fifty years ago. Still, all these years later, when I see photos of senseless violence and death, whether war or other disasters, I grieve for them anew with fresh tears, all over again.
Psalm 51: Have mercy, O God… according to your great compassion…
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Oh do you have time to linger for just a little while out of your busy
and very important day for the goldfinches that have gathered in a field of thistles
for a musical battle, to see who can sing the highest note, or the lowest,
or the most expressive of mirth, or the most tender? Their strong, blunt beaks drink the air
as they strive melodiously not for your sake and not for mine
and not for the sake of winning but for sheer delight and gratitude – believe us, they say, it is a serious thing
just to be alive on this fresh morning in the broken world. I beg of you,
do not walk by without pausing to attend to this rather ridiculous performance.
It could mean something. It could mean everything. It could be what Rilke meant, when he wrote: You must change your life. ~Mary Oliver “Invitation” from ” A Thousand Mornings
…here there is no place that does not see you. You must change your life. ~Rainer Maria Rilke from “Archaic Torso of Apollo”
Just to be alive means everything~~
Despite all the brokenness in this world and our own cracks in need of glue, we need healing.
I welcome the change; a new day of delight and gratitude.
I beg of you, do not simply walk by.
Pause. Linger. Listen. Change.
You are welcome.
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Toads are smarter than frogs. Like all of us who are not good- looking they have to rely on their wits. A woman around the beginning of the last century who was in love with frogs wrote a wonderful book on frogs and toads. In it she says if you place a frog and a toad on a table they will both hop. The toad will stop just at the table’s edge, but the frog with its smooth skin and pretty eyes will leap with all its beauty out into nothing- ness. I tried it out on my kitchen table and it is true. That may explain why toads live twice as long as frogs. Frogs are better at romance though. A pair of spring peepers were once observed whispering sweet nothings for thirty-four hours. Not by me. The toad and I have not moved. ~Tom Hennen “Plains Spadefoot Toad”
Plain, bumpy, staid, cautious, contemplative, tending to plop or splat rather than risk a graceful, carefree leap into nothingness.
Someone has to hold down the swamp, while peering over the edge of the abyss, belching out an occasional thoughtful croak while thousands of dainty peepers sing their hearts out like so many sleighbells jingling gaily throughout the endless, late winter night.
We all sing together…
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Poets who know no better rhapsodize about the peace of nature, but a well-populated marsh is a cacophony. ~Bern Keating
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