Today is one of those excellent January partly cloudies in which light chooses an unexpected part of the landscape to trick out in gilt, and then the shadow sweeps it away. You know you’re alive. You take huge steps, trying to feel the planet’s roundness arc between your feet. ~Annie Dillard from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
It was like a church to me. I entered it on soft foot, Breath held like a cap in the hand. It was quiet. What God there was made himself felt, Not listened to, in clean colours That brought a moistening of the eye, In a movement of the wind over grass.
There were no prayers said. But stillness Of the heart’s passions – that was praise Enough; and the mind’s cession Of its kingdom. I walked on, Simple and poor, while the air crumbled And broke on me generously as bread. ~R.S. Thomas “The Moor”
After years of rarely paying attention, too busy with whatever household, work-place, or barnyard task needed doing, I realized there are only a finite number of sunrises and sunsets left to me.
Now I stop, take a deep breath, sense the earth’s roundness and feel lucky to be alive, a witness to a moment of manna falling from the sky.
Sometimes it is as plain and gray as I am, but at times, a fire is lit from above and beneath, igniting the sky, overwhelming me.
I am swept away by light and shadow, transfixed and transformed, forever grateful to be fed by heavenly bread broken over my head.
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With a century old choral society With a Christmas tradition of singing Handel’s Messiah.
Sixty-some enthusiastic singers recruited without auditions Through church bulletin announcements:
Farmers, store clerks, machinists, students Grade schoolers to senior citizens
Gather in an unheated church for six weeks of rehearsal To perform one man’s great gift to sacred music.
Handel, given a libretto commissioned to compose, Isolated himself for 24 days – barely ate or slept,
Believed himself confronted by all heaven itself To see the face of God,
And so created overture, symphony, arias, oratorios Soaring, interwoven themes repeating, resounding
With despair, mourning, anticipation Renewal, redemption, restoration, triumph.
Delicate appoggiaturas and melismata Of astounding complexity and intricacy.
A tapestry of sound and sensation unparalleled, To be shouted from the soul, wrung from the heart.
This changing group of rural people gathers annually to join voices Honoring faith foretold, realized, proclaimed.
Ably led by a forgiving director with a sense of humor And a nimble organist with flying feet and fingers.
The lilting sopranos with angel song, The altos a steadfast harmonic support,
The tenors echo plaintive prophecy The base voices remain full and resonant.
The strings paint a heaven-sent refrain In a duet of counterpoint melody.
The audience sits, eyes closed Remembering oft-repeated familiar verses.
The sanctuary overflows With thankfulness and praise as we shall be changed.
Glory to God! For unto us a Child is born And all the people, whether singers or listeners, are comforted.
Dan and Emily after the 2008 Messiah performance
This year’s Advent theme “Dawn on our Darkness” is taken from this 19th century Christmas hymn:
Brightest and best of the sons of the morning, dawn on our darkness and lend us your aid. Star of the east, the horizon adorning, guide where our infant Redeemer is laid. ~Reginald Heber -from “Brightest and Best”
The congregation sang off key. The priest was rambling. The paint was peeling in the Sacristy.
A wayward pigeon, trapped in the church, flew wildly around for a while and then flew toward a stained glass window,
but it didn’t look like reality.
The ushers yawned, the dollar bills drifted lazily out of the collection baskets and a child in the front row began to cry.
Suddenly, the pigeon flew down low, swooping over the heads of the faithful like the Holy Ghost descending at Pentecost
Everyone took it to be a sign, Everyone wants so badly to believe. You can survive anything if you know that someone is looking out for you,
but the sky outside the stained glass window, doesn’t it look like home? ~June Beisch, “Holy Ghost” from Fatherless Women.
A little aside from the main road, becalmed in a last-century greyness, there is the chapel, ugly, without the appeal to the tourist to stop his car and visit it. The traffic goes by, and the river goes by, and quick shadows of clouds, too, and the chapel settles a little deeper into the grass.
But here once on an evening like this, in the darkness that was about his hearers, a preacher caught fire and burned steadily before them with a strange light, so that they saw the splendour of the barren mountains about them and sang their amens fiercely, narrow but saved in a way that men are not now. ~R.S. Thomas “The Chapel”
The church knelt heavy above us as we attended Sunday School, circled by age group and hunkered on little wood folding chairs where we gave our nickels, said our verses, heard the stories, sang the solid, swinging songs.
It could have been God above in the pews, His restless love sifting with dust from the joists. We little seeds swelled in the stone cellar, bursting to grow toward the light.
Maybe it was that I liked how, upstairs, outside, an avid sun stormed down, burning the sharp- edged shadows back to their buildings, or how the winter air knifed after the dreamy basement.
Maybe the day we learned whatever would have kept me believing I was just watching light poke from the high, small window and tilt to the floor where I could make it a gold strap on my shoe, wrap my ankle, embrace any part of me. ~Maureen Ash “Church Basement”
There is much wrong with churches overall, comprised as they are of fallen people with broken wings and fractured faith. We seem odd, keen to find flaws in one another as we crack open and spill our own.
Yet what is right with the church is who we pray to, why we sing, feast together and share His Word. We are visible people joined together as a body bloodied and bruised. Someone is looking out for us despite our thoroughly motley messiness.
Our Lord of Heaven and Earth rains down His restless love upon our heads, no matter how humble a building we worship in, or how we look or feel today.
The dove descends upon us.
We are simply grateful to be alive, to raise our hands together, to sing and kneel and bow in a house, indeed a home that God calls His own.
This year’s Advent theme “Dawn on our Darkness” is taken from this 19th century Christmas hymn.
Brightest and best of the sons of the morning, dawn on our darkness and lend us your aid. Star of the east, the horizon adorning, guide where our infant Redeemer is laid. ~Reginald Heber -from “Brightest and Best”
The old church leans nearby a well-worn road, Upon a hill that has no grass or tree, The winds from off the prairie now unload The dust they bring around it fitfully.
The path that leads up to the open door Is worn and grayed by many toiling feet Of us who listen to the Bible lore And once again the old-time hymns repeat.
And ev’ry Sabbath morning we are still Returning to the altar waiting there. A hush, a prayer, a pause, and voices fill The Master’s House with a triumphant air.
The old church leans awry and looks quite odd, But it is beautiful to us and God. ~Stephen Paulus
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In this kingdom the sun never sets; under the pale oval of the sky there seems no way in or out, and though there is a sea here there is no tide. For the egg itself is a moon glowing faintly in the galaxy of the barn, safe but for the spoon’s ominous thunder, the first delicate crack of lightning. ~Linda Pastan, “Egg”
It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad. C. S. Lewis from Mere Christianity
I try hard to be the good egg- smooth on the surface, gooey inside, often a bit scrambled, yet ordinary and decent, indistinguishable from others, blending in, not making waves.
It’s not been bad staying just as I am. Except I can no longer remain like this.
A dent or two have appeared in my outer shell from bumps along the way, and a crack up one side extends daily.
It has come time to change or face inevitable rot.
Nothing can be the same again: the fragments of shell left behind must be abandoned as useless confinement.
Newly hatched and transformed: now there is the wind beneath my wings. I’ll soar toward an endless horizon where the sun never sets. and stretches beyond eternity.
I will no longer be merely ordinary.
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The best kind of rain, of course, is a cozy rain. This is the kind of rain that falls on a day when you’d just as soon stay in bed a little longer, write letters or read a good book by the fire, take early tea with hot scones and jam, and look out the streaked window with complacency. ~ Susan Allen Tothfrom England for All Seasons
Cozy rains typically don’t happen on weekdays. There are always things to do, places to be, people to impress, rain or shine. On weekdays rain tends to be a drag-us-down, smotheringly gray inconvenience of wet shoes, damp jackets, impossibly limp hair in school and work place.
But on a Saturday? The same drops from the same cloudy skies become a comfy, tuck-me-in-once-again and snuggle-down kind of rain. There is no schedule to follow, no structured day, no required attendance, no need to even poke my nose out the door (unless living on a farm with hungry critters in the barn).
This is why most northwest natives are rainophilics, anticipating this quiet time of year with great longing. We are granted permission by precipitation to be complacent, slowed down, contemplative, and yes, even lazy… * * * Okay, enough of that. Gotta get up, get going, laundry to do, house to clean, barn to muck out, bills to pay, meals to prepare.
Maybe in the morning the rain will still be falling and there will be a chance to sit with hot tea cup in hand after church, gazing through streaked windows. Cozy rain all day on a Sabbath Sunday. With scones. And jam. Bliss… that is, until Monday.
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Oh, feed me this day, Holy Spirit, with the fragrance of the fields and the freshness of the oceans which you have made, and help me to hear and to hold in all dearness those exacting and wonderful words of our Lord Jesus Christ, saying: Follow me. ~Mary Oliver from “Six Recognitions of the Lord”
A full year passed (the seasons keep me honest) since I last noticed this same commotion. Who knew God was an abstract expressionist? I’m asking myself—the very question I asked last year, staring out at this array of racing colors- the out-of-control Virginia creeper my friends say I should do something about, whose vermilion went at least a full shade deeper…
…God’s not nonexistent; He’s just been waylaid by a host of what no one could’ve foreseen. He’s got plans for you: this red-gold-green parade is actually a fairly detailed outline.
…it’s true that my Virginia creeper praises Him, its palms and fingers crimson with applause, that the local breeze is weaving Him a diadem… ~Jacqueline Osherow from “Autumn Psalm”
The crimson leaves creep over the brow of our ancient garage in growing streaks and flowing streams, crawling alongside to reach new destinations.
This old building was once a small church at the turn of the 20th century, moved just a few hundred yards from the intersection of two country roads to this raised knoll.
It is fitting that every fall this little cedar-paneled church, emptied of sermons and worship, weeps red.
Every autumn these bloodied fingers reach out to touch and bless, clasp and envelope: Do not despair. He’s got plans for us all. Plans that give hope.
I must follow.
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I didn’t stay for the closing hymns and prayers. I felt out of sorts, so I left.
Someone was before me at the door: a child, gazing at a spot on her wrist.
She said, “Can you help me?” “What is it?” “A ladybug,” she said.
So I opened the door, and she said, “It jumped off.” We stood looking around.
“It’ll be all right,” I said. She went in, and I left, taking care where I stepped. ~Louis Simpson “At the Church Door” from The Owner of the House.
Maker of All Things, including appetite, including stealth, including the fear that makes all of us, sometime or other, flee for the sake of our small and precious lives, let me abide in your shadow— let me hold on to the edge of your robe as you determine what you must let be lost and what will be saved.
I will try. I will step from the house to see what I see and hear and I will praise it…
But this too, I believe, is a place where God is keeping watch until we rise, and step forth again… ~Mary Oliver from “Red Bird”
Even when I am out of sorts, even though my mind is already out the door and the rest of me not far behind, even though I am supposed to have a smile on my face and encouraging words on my lips, even though I should be focusing on who needs my help rather than my own helplessness.
Then, somehow, there is solace.
I am plucked out of my doldrums and given a chance to reset and start over – God intervenes in the least likely way so that I see things differently, by watching where I am stepping to protect the defenseless rather than plunge, lurch, stumble, crush my way back to the world.
I am a rescuer rescued, encouraged by encouragement, ready to step forth in compassion.
God is keeping watch over the mere lady bug and merest me.
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How long does it take to make the woods? As long as it takes to make the world. The woods is present as the world is, the presence of all its past, and of all its time to come. It is always finished, it is always being made, the act of its making forever greater than the act of its destruction. It is a part of eternity, for its end and beginning belong to the end and beginning of all things, the beginning lost in the end, the end in the beginning.
What is the way to the woods, how do you go there? By climbing up through the six days’ field, kept in all the body’s years, the body’s sorrow, weariness, and joy. By passing through the narrow gate on the far side of that field where the pasture grass of the body’s life gives way to the high, original standing of the trees. By coming into the shadow, the shadow of the grace of the strait way’s ending, the shadow of the mercy of light.
Why must the gate be narrow? Because you cannot pass beyond it burdened. To come in among these trees you must leave behind the six days’ world, all of it, all of its plans and hopes. You must come without weapon or tool, alone, expecting nothing, remembering nothing, into the ease of sight, the brotherhood of eye and leaf. ~Wendell Berry, “Sabbath 1985 V”
We who live in the six day world, walking the six day path to the narrow gate forget too quickly about the seventh day Sabbath. The meaning of our existence is not defined by how much we accomplish in the week, or how capable we are at carrying our burdens.
We are invited to walk through the narrow way, where worries and heavy loads cannot fit the opening.
Passing through shadow is part of reaching the light. The mercy of the shadow is — then we know light exists.
Light beyond shadow, Joy beyond tears, Love that is greater when darkest our fears; deeper the Peace when the storm is around, nearer the Hope to the lost who is found. Light of the world, ever shining, shining!
Hope in our pain and our dying. in our darkness, there is Light, in our crying, there is Love, in the noise of life imparting Peace that passes understanding.
Light beyond shadow, Joy beyond tears, Love that is greater when darkest our fears; deeper the Peace when the storm is around, nearer the Hope to the lost who is found. -Paul Wigmore
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To plunge headlong into the heart of a blossom, its amber eyes inscrutably focusing on your own, magnified by a lens of dew. Whose scent, invisible, drowns you in opulence, and for which you can find nothing adequate to say.
You sense that you are loved wholly, yet are quite unable to understand why. But then, you lift your face, creased with the ordinary, to a heaven that is breaking into blue, and find your contentment utterly beyond telling, unspeakable, uncontained. ~Luci Shaw from “Speechless” from Sea Glass
my heart panics not to be, as I long to be, the empty, waiting, pure, speechless receptacle. ~Mary Oliver from “Blue Iris”
There are days we live as if death were nowhere in the background; from joy to joy to joy, from wing to wing, from blossom to blossom to impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom. ~Li-Young Lee, last stanza of “From Blossoms” from Rose.
… it seemed as if the tiniest seed of belief had finally flowered in me, or, more accurately, as if I had happened upon some rare flower deep in the desert and had known, though I was just then discovering it, that it had been blooming impossibly year after parched year in me, surviving all the seasons of my unbelief. ~Christian Wiman from My Bright Abyss
To live as if death were nowhere in the background: that is impossible right now when death stalks every headline.
Yet, to emerge and blossom, even when we are drying in the desert of discouragement, is to respond to Christ’s call to us.
We are not dying, but alive in Him, an amazing impossible flowering.
So I allow my eye to peer through a dying time such as this, needing a flotation device and depth finder as I’m likely to get lost, sweeping and swooning through the inner space of life’s deep tunnels, canyons and corners, coming up for air and diving in again to journey into exotic locales draped in silken hues ~this fairy land on a stem~ to immerse and emerge in the possibilities of such an impossible blossom.
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Yesterday, running slowly in the gravel I saw a tiny bird feathered pulsating globe of white and gray on its back black pinprick eyes pointing up to the sky. I stooped down closely to peer. We stared at one another— creature to creature— for a small eternity. I scooped him into my hands and placed him gently an offering upright onto the grass whispering a prayer to the One who sees and knows each one every sparrow and every sorrow. ~Karen Swallow Prior “Creature to Creature”
photo by Harry Rodenberger
Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? And not one of them is forgotten before God. Why, even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not; you are of more value than many sparrows. Luke 12: 6-7
Typically, I hear sparrows more than see them most of the year. They are shy little birds and fly away any time I approach them. But during the winter months when the northeast arctic winds are blowing, they cling to the rose bushes beneath my bird feeders, fluffed up to try to stay warm, buffeted about by the breeze, just trying to stay alive. Singing is the last thing on their little minds.
This is when we need each other the most; the sparrow is hanging on the best it can to make it to spring and so am I, seeking to nurture some small part of Creation in order to keep simmering my hope for the future. Although there is no sparrows’ song lilting in the air during the coldest months, I know it will return.
So I sing for them.
I sing because I’m happy. I sing because I’m free. His eye is on the sparrow and I know He watches me.
Why should I feel discouraged, Why should the shadows come, Why should my heart be lonely, And long for Heav’n and home, When Jesus is my portion? My constant friend is He: His eye is on the sparrow, And I know He watches me; His eye is on the sparrow, And I know He watches me.
Refrain
I sing because I’m happy, I sing because I’m free, For His eye is on the sparrow, And I know He watches me.
Let not your heart be troubled, His tender word I hear, And resting on His goodness, I lose my doubts and fears; Though by the path He leadeth, But one step I may see; His eye is on the sparrow, And I know He watches me; His eye is on the sparrow, And I know He watches me.
Whenever I am tempted, Whenever clouds arise, When songs give place to sighing, When hope within me dies, I draw the closer to Him, From care He sets me free; His eye is on the sparrow, And I know He watches me; His eye is on the sparrow, And I know He watches me.
Lyrics by Civilla Martin
ot one sparrow is forgotten, E’en the raven God will feed; And the lily of the valley From His bounty hath its need. Then shall I not trust Thee, Father, In Thy mercy have a share? And through faith and prayer, my Mother, Merit Thy protecting care?
Shaker Hymn (Canterbury Shakers Hymnal, 1908)
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