The world is charged with the grandeur of God. It will flame out, like shining from shook foil; It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod? Generations have trod, have trod, have trod; And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil; And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod. And for all this, nature is never spent; There lives the dearest freshness deep down things; And though the last lights off the black West went Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs — Because the Holy Ghost over the bent World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings. ~Gerard Manley Hopkins “God’s Grandeur”
Today marks the crushing of Christ in the Garden of the Oil Press, Gethsemane.
“Gethsemane” means “oil press” –a place of olive trees treasured for the fine oil delivered from their fruit. And so, on this Thursday night, the pressure is turned up high on the disciples, not just on Jesus.
The disciples are expected, indeed commanded, to keep watch alongside the Master, to be filled with prayer, to avoid the temptation of weakened flesh thrown at them at every turn.
But they fail pressure testing and fall apart.
Like them, I am easily lulled by complacency, by my over-indulged satiety for material comforts that do not truly fill hunger or quench thirst, by my belief that being called a follower of Jesus is enough.
It is not enough. I fail the pressure test as well.
I fall asleep through His anguish. I dream, oblivious, while He sweats blood. I might even deny I know Him when pressed hard.
Yet, the moment of betrayal becomes the moment He is glorified, thereby God is glorified.
Crushed, bleeding, poured out over the world — from precious loving wings that brood and cover us — He becomes the sacrifice that anoints us.
Incredibly, indeed miraculously, He, the crushed, loves us, bent and flattened as we are – anyway.
Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing. Luke 13:34
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
The sacred moments, the moments of miracle, are often the everyday moments, the moments which, if we do not look with more than our eyes or listen with more than our ears reveal only… a gardener, a stranger coming down the road behind us, a meal like any other meal. But if we look with our hearts, if we listen with all our being and imagination.. what we may see is Jesus himself. ~Frederick Buechner from The Magnificent Defeat
Farmer with a pitchfork by Winslow Homer
We can be blinded by the everyday-ness of it: A simple loaf of bread is a meal we take for granted. A gardener looks up and smiles as he hoes a row of weeds, trying to restore order in chaos. A wanderer along the road catches up to engage in conversation.
Every day contains millions of everyday moments lost and forgotten, seemingly meaningless.
Perhaps we would see Jesus if only we opened our eyes and listened with our ears. At the table, on the road, in the garden at sunrise.
With the new vision we have been given, we discover: there is nothing everyday about the miracle of Him abiding with us – always in plain sight.
“Sir,” they said, “we would like to see Jesus.” John 12: 21
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
The whole of Christ’s life was a continual passion; others die martyrs, but Christ was born a martyr. He found a Golgotha, where he was crucified, even in Bethlehem, where he was born; for to his tenderness then the straws were almost as sharp as the thorns after, and the manger as uneasy at first as the cross at last. His birth and his death were but one continual act, and his Christmas Day and his Good Friday are but the evening and the morning of one and the same day. From the creche to the cross is an inseparable line. Christmas only points forward to Good Friday and Easter. It can have no meaning apart from that, where the Son of God displayed his glory by his death. ~John Donne, opening words in his sermon on Christmas Day 1626
O dying souls! behold your living spring! O dazzled eyes! behold your sun of grace! Dull ears attend what word this word doth bring! Up, heavy hearts, with joy your joy embrace! From death, from dark, from deafness, from despairs, This life, this light, this word, this joy repairs.
Man altered by sin from man to beast; Beast’s food is hay, hay is all mortal flesh. Now God is flesh and lies in manger pressed As hay, the brutish sinner to refresh. O happy field wherein this fodder grew, Whose taste doth us from beasts to men renew. ~Robert Southwell from The Nativity of the Christ,Jesuit poet (1561-1595)
Our neighborhood hay crew
remembered on
frosty mornings before dawn
when bales are broken for feed
and fragrant summer spills forth.
In the dead of winter
during the darkest blowing icy nights
the bales open like a picture book
illustrating how life once was,
and will be again~
Rainy spring nights’ hay
becomes bedding
for new foals’ sleep
to guarantee sunshine
in the uneasy manger
on the darkest of days:
Communion.
Advent 2023 theme …because of the tender mercy of our God, whereby the sunrise shall visit us from on high to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace. Luke 1: 78-79 from Zechariah’s Song
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
God came to us because he wanted to join us on the road, to listen toour story, and to help us realize that we are not walking in circles but moving towards the house of peace and joy. This is the great mystery of Christmas that continues to give us comfort and consolation: we are not alone on our journey. The God of love who gave us life sent his only Son to be with us at all times and in all places, so that we never have to feel lost in our struggles but always can trust that he walks with us.
The challenge is to let God be who he wants to be. A part of us clingsto our aloneness and does not allow God to touch us where we are most in pain. Often we hide from him precisely those places in ourselves where we feel guilty, ashamed, confused, and lost. Thus we do not give him a chance to be with us where we feel most alone.
Christmas is the renewed invitation not to be afraid and to let him – whose love is greater than our own hearts and minds can comprehend – be our companion. ~Henri Nouwen from Gracias: A Latin American Journal
13 Now that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem. 14 They were talking with each other about everything that had happened. 15 As they talked and discussed these things with each other, Jesus himself came up and walked along with them; When he was at the table with them, he took bread, gave thanks, broke it and began to give it to them. 31 Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him, and he disappeared from their sight. 32 They asked each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?” Luke 24: 13-15, 31-32
I tend to walk through life blinded to what is really important, essential and necessary. Self-absorbed, immersed in my own troubles and concerns, I stare down at my own feet as I take each step, rather than looking forward at the road ahead.
Instead, I could be enrapt and listening to the Companion who has always walked beside me.
This living breathing walking God on the road to Emmaus feeds us from His word. I hunger for even more, my heart burning within me.
Jesus makes plain how He Himself addresses my most basic needs: He is the bread of life so I am fed. He is the living water so I no longer thirst. He is the light of dawn so I am never left in darkness. He shares my yoke so my burden is easier. He clothes me with righteousness so I am never naked. He cleanses me when I am at my most soiled and repugnant. He is the open door–always welcoming, with a room prepared for me.
So when I encounter Him along the road of my life — even if I don’t seem to be making progress, staying frozen in the same place — I need to be ready to recognize him, listen, invite Him in to stay, share whatever I have with Him. When He breaks bread and hands me my piece, I want to accept it with open eyes of gratitude, knowing the gift He hands me is nothing less than Himself and I’ll never be the same again. I hunger for even more, my heart burning within me.
Advent 2023 theme …because of the tender mercy of our God, whereby the sunrise shall visit us from on high to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace. Luke 1: 78-79 from Zechariah’s Song
I wonder as I wander out under the sky How Jesus the Saviour did come for to die For poor on’ry people like you and like I; I wonder as I wander out under the sky.
When Mary birthed Jesus ’twas in a cow’s stall With wise men and farmers and shepherds and all But high from God’s heaven, a star’s light did fall And the promise of ages it then did recall.
If Jesus had wanted for any wee thing A star in the sky or a bird on the wing Or all of God’s Angels in heaven to sing He surely could have it, ’cause he was the King
I wonder as I wander out under the sky How Jesus the Saviour did come for to die For poor on’ry people like you and like I; I wonder as I wander out under the sky ~Appalachian Carol
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support Barnstorming
They lie on the ground after the deer have left after the bear has had her fill they
lie under the stars and under the sun in a cloud of brambles the ripest ones fall first become black jam in the thatch. as a boy I hated picking blackberries the pail never full like one half of a slow conversation.
Now their taste is sweeter in memory the insect buzz the branches too high the blue summer never quite over before the fall begins. ~Richard Terrell from “Blackberries” from What Falls Away is Always
You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet Like thickened wine: summer’s blood was in it Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for Picking. Then red ones inked up and that hunger Sent us out with milk cans, pea tins, jam-pots Where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots. Round hayfields, cornfields and potato-drills We trekked and picked until the cans were full, Until the tinkling bottom had been covered With green ones, and on top big dark blobs burned Like a plate of eyes. Our hands were peppered With thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard’s.
We hoarded the fresh berries in the byre. But when the bath was filled we found a fur, A rat-grey fungus, glutting on our cache. The juice was stinking too. Once off the bush The fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour. I always felt like crying. It wasn’t fair That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot. Each year I hoped they’d keep, knew they would not. ~Seamus Heaney from “Blackberry Picking”
In the early morning an old woman is picking blackberries in the shade. It will be too hot later but right now there’s dew.
Some berries fall: those are for squirrels. Some are unripe, reserved for bears. Some go into the metal bowl. Those are for you, so you may taste them just for a moment. That’s good times: one little sweetness after another, then quickly gone.
Once, this old woman I’m conjuring up for you would have been my grandmother. Today it’s me. Years from now it might be you, if you’re quite lucky.
The hands reaching in among the leaves and spines were once my mother’s. I’ve passed them on. Decades ahead, you’ll study your own temporary hands, and you’ll remember. Don’t cry, this is what happens.
Look! The steel bowl is almost full. Enough for all of us. The blackberries gleam like glass, like the glass ornaments we hang on trees in December to remind ourselves to be grateful for snow.
Some berries occur in sun, but they are smaller. It’s as I always told you: the best ones grow in shadow. ~Margaret Atwood “Blackberries” from Dearly
I love to go out in late September among the fat, overripe, icy, black blackberries to eat blackberries for breakfast, the stalks very prickly, a penalty they earn for knowing the black art of blackberry-making; and as I stand among them lifting the stalks to my mouth, the ripest berries fall almost unbidden to my tongue, as words sometimes do, certain peculiar words like strengths or squinched, many-lettered, one-syllabled lumps, which I squeeze, squinch open, and splurge well in the silent, startled, icy, black language of blackberry-eating in late September. ~Galway Kinnell “Blackberry Eating”
Blackberry vines are trouble 90% of the year – always growing where they are not welcome – reaching out to grab passersby without discriminating between human, dog or horse. But for a month in late summer and early fall, they yield black gold – bursting, swelling, unimaginably sweet fruit that is worth the hassle tolerated the rest of the weeks of the year.
It has been an unusually dry summer here in the Pacific Northwest with little rain until recently, so the fields are brown and even the usually lush blackberry vines have started to dry and color up. The berries themselves are rich from the sun but starting now to shrivel and mold.
Our Haflinger horses have been fed hay for the past several weeks as there is not enough pasture for them without the supplement–we are about 6 weeks ahead of schedule in feeding hay. I had grown a little suspicious the last couple nights as I brought the Haflingers into the barn for the night. Two of the mares turned out in the back field had purplish stains on their chests and front legs. Hmmmm. Raiding the berries. Desperate drought forage behavior in an extremely efficient eating machine.
So this evening I headed toward the berries. When the mares saw the bowl in my hand, that was it. They mobbed me. I was irresistible.
So with mares in tow, I approached a berry bank. It was ravaged. Trampled. Haflinger poop piles everywhere. All that were left were some clusters of gleaming black berries up high overhead, barely reachable on my tip toes, and only reachable if I walked directly into the thicket. The mares stood in a little line behind me, pondering me as I pondered my dilemma.
I set to work picking what I could reach, snagging, ripping and bloodying my hands and arms, despite my sleeves. Pretty soon I had mares on either side of me, diving into the brambles and reaching up to pick what they could reach as well, unconcerned about the thorns that tore at their sides and muzzles. They were like sharks in bloody water–completely focused on their prey and amazingly skilled at grabbing just the black berries, and not the pale green or red ones.
Plump Haflingers and one *plumpish* woman were willingly accumulating scars in the name of sweetness.
When my bowl was full, I extracted myself from the brambles and contemplated how I was going to safely make it back to the barn without being mare-mugged. Instead, they obediently trailed behind me, happy to be put in their stalls for their evening hay, accepting a gift from me with no thorns or vines attached.
Clearly, thorns are part of our everyday life. Thorns stand in front of much that is sweet and good and precious to us. They tear us up, bloody us, make us cry, make us beg for mercy.
Yet thorns have been overcome. They did not stop our salvation, did not stop goodness raining down on us, did not stop the taste of sweetness given as a gracious gift.
If we hesitate, thorns only proliferate unchecked.
So, desperate and hungry, we dive right in, to taste and eat.
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
is taken by surprise as it speaks, are you sure this is the right street? for example—or just
cowpath—no more: a blurb, a bleep, really, out of the imagination, and then once again everything is
perfectly still, save, perhaps, a cow or two on the horizon,—
and the sound of cowbirds in sudden excellence, where
formerly there were none. ~Jane Mead“Sometimes the Mind” From The Usable Field
photo by Bette Vander Haakphoto by Bette Vander Haak
photo by Bette Vander Haak
Many current roads started out as cowpaths decades ago. These meandering trails made sense to cows at the time. Subsequently, because people lack imagination, we tend to also follow those original twist and turns as we navigate life’s byways. Now paved with asphalt and good intentions, our roads accommodate more than a herd of cows giving hitchhiking cowbirds a free meal.
Cowbirds don’t lack imagination though; they are ready-made opportunists. They occupy any furry back that happens to attract tasty insects. The (horse?)birds happily set sail on a dinner cruise while doing their host a favor by gobbling irritating flies.
Imagine meandering through countryside pastures all day, unconcerned where the next meal will come from because it always comes to you.
Its easy if you try. You can say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one. I hope someday you’ll join us and the world (horses, cows, birds) will live as one…
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
Once I am sure there’s nothing going on I step inside, letting the door thud shut. Another church: matting, seats, and stone, And little books; sprawlings of flowers, cut For Sunday, brownish now; some brass and stuff Up at the holy end; the small neat organ; And a tense, musty, unignorable silence, Brewed God knows how long. Hatless, I take off My cycle-clips in awkward reverence,
Move forward, run my hand around the font. From where I stand, the roof looks almost new- Cleaned or restored? Someone would know: I don’t. Mounting the lectern, I peruse a few Hectoring large-scale verses, and pronounce “Here endeth” much more loudly than I’d meant. The echoes snigger briefly. Back at the door I sign the book, donate an Irish sixpence, Reflect the place was not worth stopping for.
Yet stop I did: in fact I often do, And always end much at a loss like this, Wondering what to look for; wondering, too, When churches fall completely out of use What we shall turn them into, if we shall keep A few cathedrals chronically on show, Their parchment, plate, and pyx in locked cases, And let the rest rent-free to rain and sheep. Shall we avoid them as unlucky places?
Bored, uninformed, knowing the ghostly silt Dispersed, yet tending to this cross of ground Through suburb scrub because it held unspilt So long and equably what since is found Only in separation – marriage, and birth, And death, and thoughts of these – for whom was built This special shell? For, though I’ve no idea What this accoutred frowsty barn is worth, It pleases me to stand in silence here;
A serious house on serious earth it is, In whose blent air all our compulsions meet, Are recognised, and robed as destinies. And that much never can be obsolete, Since someone will forever be surprising A hunger in himself to be more serious, And gravitating with it to this ground, Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in, If only that so many dead lie round. ~Philip Larkin from “Church-going”
Even an empty shell of a church invites in silent witness- even those of us who struggle with unbelief, who stop only to rest a moment, to mock or sigh, breathe in the musty history of such a place.
Over the centuries, there has been much wrong with churches, comprised as they are of fallen people with broken wings and fractured faith. They seem anachronistic, from another time and place, echoing of baptisms and eucharist, weddings and funerals.
Yet we still return, fragmented souls that we are, acknowledging the flaws in one another as we crack open to spill our own.
What is right with the church goes beyond silence: Who we pray to, why we sing and feast together on the grace and generosity of His Word. We are restless noisy people joined together as a body bloodied, bruised, redeemed.
Dear Lord of Heaven and Earth, look out for us in our motley messiness, rain down Your restless love upon our heads, no matter how frowsty a building we worship in, or how we look or feel today.
Be unignorable, so we might come back, again and again.
We stand, stirred, in silence, simply grateful to be alive, to raise our hands together, then sing and kneel and bow in such an odd and humble house, indeed a home God might call His own.
pulpit peonies
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
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
Here is the source of every sacrament, The all-transforming presence of the Lord, Replenishing our every element Remaking us in his creative Word.
For here the earth herself gives bread and wine, The air delights to bear his Spirit’s speech, The fire dances where the candles shine, The waters cleanse us with His gentle touch.
And here He shows the full extent of love To us whose love is always incomplete, In vain we search the heavens high above, The God of love is kneeling at our feet.
Though we betray Him, though it is the night. He meets us here and loves us into light. ~Malcolm Guite “Maundy Thursday”
On this Maundy Thursday we are called to draw near Him, to gather together among the hungry and thirsty to the Supper He has prepared.
He washes the dirt off our feet; we look away, mortified. He serves us from Himself; we fret about whether we are worthy.
We are not.
Starving and parched, grimy and weary, hardly presentable to be guests at His table, we are made worthy only because He has made us so.
This year’s Lenten theme: So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. 2 Corinthians 4: 18
By the magnet of Christ I am drawn to stillness My joy is to live as a recluse of Love Resting my head on the heart of all Mercy Living in the presence of the Presence
This is my home where I will live forever: Hidden with Christ in God
This breath and this heartbeat, the rhythm of my praising, sounding to the wing-beats of angel-song. My will is an anchor in the depths of silence – Living in the presence of the Presence
Each morning I rise in the Holy of Holies to sacrifice each moment of time. Burning like a lamp with the oil of gladness – Living in the presence of the Presence
Fasting from all things to feast on your manna, bread in the wilderness gathered each dawn. Tasting your sweetness in quiet communion – Living in the presence of the Presence
With my prayer I am sowing / sewing the seeds of heaven, a garden of paradise to bloom on earth. Spinning and weaving, revealing the beauty of Living in the presence of the Presence
In the silence of the senses I know only Being – the vast fields of heaven in the smallest thing. Unknowable mystery that cannot be spoken living in the presence of the Presence ~Kathleen Deignan
We do not want merely to see beauty… we want something else which can hardly be put into words- to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it.
We discern the freshness and purity of morning, but they do not make us fresh and pure. We cannot mingle with the splendours we see. But all the leaves of the New Testament are rustling with the rumour that it will not always be so. Someday, God willing, we shall get in. ~C.S. Lewis from The Weight of Glory
Part of the joy of beauty is the realization that it is part of a larger whole, most of which appears to be just out of sight. We are drawn forward toward something… and left waiting, wondering. ~N.T. Wright from Life, God and Other Small Topics
Each day brings headlines that tear at us, pull us down and rub us with mud. We are grimy by association, sullied and smeared.
Still, in our state of disgrace, Beauty is offered up to us, sometimes out of the blue, unexpected but so welcome.
In His last act with those He loved, Jesus shared Himself through a communal meal, then washed and toweled their dirty feet clean, immersing them, despite their protests, in all that is beautiful and clean. He made the ugly beautiful.
He took on and wore their grime on a towel around His waist.
It is now our turn to help wash away the dirt from whoever is in need. He showed us how to help others look for the good parts.
This year’s Lenten theme: So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. 2 Corinthians 4: 18
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.
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
Barnstorming 