Here, I place a blue glazed cup where the wood is slightly whitened. Here, I lay down two bright spoons, our breakfast saucers, napkins white and smooth as milk.
I am stirring at the sink, I am stirring the amount of dew you can gather in two hands, folding it into the fragile quiet of the house. Before the eggs, before the coffee heaving like a warm cat, I step out to the feeder— one foot, then the other, alive on wet blades. Air lifts my gown—I might fly—
This thistle seed I pour is for the tiny birds. This ritual, for all things frail and imperiled. Wings surround me, frothing the air. I am struck by what becomes holy.
A woman who lost her teenage child to an illness without mercy, said that at the end, her daughter sat up in her hospital bed and asked:
What should I do? What should I do?
Into a white enamel bath I lower four brown eggs. You fill the door frame, warm and rumpled, kiss the crown of my head. I know how the topmost leaves of dusty trees feel at the advent of the monsoon rains.
I carry the woman with the lost child in my pocket, where she murmurs her love song without end: Just this, each day: Bear yourself up on small wings to receive what is given. Feed one another with such tenderness, it could almost be an answer. ~Marcia F. Brown “Morning Song”
I am comforted by rituals, as most of us are. The feeding, the cleaning, the washing, the nurture, smoothing of the wrinkled and ruffled, noticing who or what is near me, the sacred time of soothing rest.
It is those small things that get us through the day, that create holiness in each breath, each moment.
What should we do next? What might we do?
No need to wonder. With loving tenderness, we shall feed the hungry all our days.
Praise be to the not-nearly-a-girl anymore clerking at our local grocery outlet since junior high. Single mom, moved up after a decade of customer service to manage four well-ordered aisles of hairsprays, lipsticks, and youthful glow in glittering squeeze tubes. Familiar red-headed, brown-eyed, gap-toothed smile. Willing to put aside her boxes of chores to chat with each of us she names by heart.
I forget if she’s Mary or Alice or Jane. Fine, I answer after she asks, How’s your day? And driving my sacks of next week’s meals home, I wonder why she rises from her labors to greet me, why she straightens her smock where it’s pulled up a bit and rides her hips. Tucks in place a loose wisp of curl. When I walk by, what does she want to know, when she asks, How’s your day? I wonder why so seldom I’ve asked it back. ~Lowell Jaeger “Praise Be” from Or Maybe I Drift Off Alone.
Did you find everything you were looking for?Julie, the magenta-haired
checkout girl, asks, and no, I think, I didn’t find inner peace, or answers to
several questions I’ve been mulling, like are we headed for nuclear war and
does the rest of the world think America has gone bonkers and also, by the way,
I could not find the tofu bacon, and the chocolate sorbet shelf was empty
(I did find canned pumpkin in aisle four) but I am silent and smile at Julie who
seems to know what I’m thinking anyway so I hold back and muse on the view
of the bay this morning when we walked the dog and the parsnip soup we’ll
make for dinner and realize that total fulfillment probably jades the senses and
the bagger asks if I’d like help today carrying my groceries out to the car. ~Thomas R. Moore, “Finding Everything” fromRed Stone Fragments
He was a new old man behind the counter, skinny, brown and eager. He greeted me like a long-lost daughter, as if we both came from the same world, someplace warmer and more gracious…
…his face lit up as if I were his prodigal daughter returning, coming back to the freezer bins in front of the register which were still and always filled with the same old Cable Car ice cream sandwiches and cheap frozen greens. Back to the knobs of beef and packages of hotdogs, these familiar shelves strung with potato chips and corn chips…
I lumbered to the case and bought my precious bottled water and he returned my change, beaming as if I were the bright new buds on the just-bursting-open cherry trees, as if I were everything beautiful struggling to grow, and he was blessing me as he handed me my dime over the counter and the plastic tub of red licorice whips. This old man who didn’t speak English beamed out love to me in the iron week after my mother’s death so that when I emerged from his store my whole cock-eyed life – what a beautiful failure ! – glowed gold like a sunset after rain. ~Alison Luterman from “At the Corner Store”
This week as I shopped in one of our local grocery stores, I witnessed a particularly poignant scene. As I waited in the check out line, the older man ahead of me was greeted by the young cashier with the standard “Did you find everything you were looking for?” He responded with: “I looked for world peace on your shelves, but it must have been sold out…”
She stopped scanning and looked directly at him for the first time, trying to discern if she misunderstood him or if he was mocking her or what. “Did you try Aisle 4?” she replied and they both laughed. They continued in light-hearted conversation as she continued scanning and once he had paid for his order and packed up his cart, he looked at her again.
“Thank for so much for coming to work today – I am so grateful for what you do.” He wheeled away his groceries and she stood, stunned, watching him go.
As I came up next, I looked at her watering eyes as she tried to compose herself and I said to her: “I’ll bet you don’t hear that often enough, do you?” She pulled herself together and shook her head, trying to make sense of the gift of words he had bestowed on her.
“No – like never,” she said as she scanned my groceries. “How could he possibly have known that I almost didn’t come to work today because it has been so stressful to be here? People are usually polite, but lately more and more have been so demanding. No one seems to care about how others are feeling any more.”
She brushed away a tear and I paid for my groceries, and told her:
“I hope the rest of your work day is as great as that last customer. You’ve given me everything I was looking for today…”
And I emerged from the store feeling blessed, like I had scored a pot of gold like a sunset after rain.
Today a while it rained I washed the jars And then I lit a flame set the water to start And at the end of the day lined up to cool and seal Twelve pints of spiced peach jam twenty jars of dill beans canned From an old recipe that my mother gave to me Because it’s good to put a little bit by For when the late snows fly All that love so neatly kept By the work of our hands
Lay hands on boards and bricks and loud machines With shovels and rakes and buckets of soup they clean And I believe that we should bless evеry shirt ironed and pressed Salutе the crews out on the roads Those who stock shelves and carry loads Whisper thanks to the brooms and saws the dirty boots and coveralls And bow my head to the waitress and nurse Tip my hat to the farmer and clerk All those saints with skillets and pans And the work of their hands Work of their hands
Laid out on the counter pull up out of hot water The work of our hands so faithful and true I make something barely there music is a little more than air So now every year I’ll put by tomatoes and pears Boil the lids and wipe the lip with a calloused fingertip And I swear by the winter ground We’ll open one and pass the thing around Let the light catch the jar amber gold as a falling star It’s humble and physical it’s only love made visible Yeah now I understand it’s the work of our hands
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota, Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass. And the eyes of those two Indian ponies Darken with kindness. They have come gladly out of the willows To welcome my friend and me. We step over the barbed wire into the pasture Where they have been grazing all day, alone. They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness That we have come. They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other. There is no loneliness like theirs. At home once more, They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness. I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms, For she has walked over to me And nuzzled my left hand. She is black and white, Her mane falls wild on her forehead, And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear That is delicate as the skin over a girl’s wrist. Suddenly I realize That if I stepped out of my body I would break Into blossom. ~James Wright, “A Blessing” from Above the River: The Complete Poems
for James Wright
There are more like us. All over the world There are confused people, who can’t remember The name of their dog when they wake up, and people Who love God but can’t remember where
He was when they went to sleep. It’s All right. The world cleanses itself this way. A wrong number occurs to you in the middle Of the night, you dial it, it rings just in time
To save the house. And the second-story man Gets the wrong address, where the insomniac lives, And he’s lonely, and they talk, and the thief Goes back to college. Even in graduate school,
You can wander into the wrong classroom, And hear great poems lovingly spoken By the wrong professor. And you find your soul, And greatness has a defender, and even in death you’re safe. ~Robert Bly “People Like Us” from Stealing Sugar from the Castle
There are rare transcendent moments when I feel I could step outside my body, because something or someone moves me so profoundly, I no longer need to have my feet on the ground.
I’m thinking beyond myself. I’m thinking of another.
It is a sensation of floating while still connected; a circuit created as if electricity might flow, if only for an instant.
You too? Then think of me thinking of you. It brings us back again to the same music, the same poem, the same work of art, the same discovery that illuminates our souls.
Oh, think of me. And I of you.
And this is why we are safe in God’s hands, no matter what happens. We are meant to blossom together.
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
Leave a door open long enough, a cat will enter. Leave food, it will stay. Soon, on cold nights, you’ll be saying “Excuse me” if you want to get out of your chair. But one thing you’ll never hear from a cat is “Excuse me.” Nor Einstein’s famous theorem. Nor “The quality of mercy is not strained.” In the dictionary of Cat, mercy is missing. In this world where much is missing, a cat fills only a cat-sized hole. Yet your whole body turns toward it again and again because it is there. ~Jane Hirshfield “A Small-Sized Mystery” from Come, Thief.
The first time I saw him, it was just a flash of gray ringed tail disappearing into autumn night mist as I opened the back door to pour kibble into the empty cat dish on the porch: just another stray cat among many who visit the farm.
A few linger and stay.
So he did, keeping a distance in the shadows under the trees, a gray tabby with white nose and bib, serious yet skittish, watching me as I moved about feeding dogs, cats, birds, horses, creeping to the cat dish only when the others drifted away.
There was something in the way he held his head, an oddly forward ear; a stilted swivel of the neck. I startled him one day as he ate his fill at the dish.
He ran, the back of his head flashing red, scalp completely gone.
Not oozing, nor something new, but recent. A nearly mortal scar from an encounter with coyote, or eagle or bobcat. This cat thrived despite trauma and pain, tissue still raw, trying to heal.
He had chosen to live; life had chosen him.
My first thought was to trap him, to put him humanely to sleep to end his suffering mercifully, in truth to end my distress at seeing him every day, envisioning florid flesh even as he hunkered invisible in the shadowlands of the barnyard.
Yet the scar did not keep him from eating well or licking clean his pristine fur.
As much as I wanted to look away, to avoid confronting his mutilation, I always greeted him from a distance, a nod to his maimed courage, through wintry icy blasts and four foot snow, through spring rains and summer heat with flies.
His wounds remained always visible, a reminder of his inevitable fate.
I never did stroke that silky fur, or feel his burly purr, assuming he still knew how, but still fed his daily fill, as he fed my need to know: the value of a life so broken, each breath taken is filled with sacred air.
The depth of his wounds show how much he bleeds.
my wounded friend, as close as he would allow
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Thank you your support for daily Barnstorming posts through a one-time or recurring donation
When I was sick with a head cold, my head full of pressure, my father would soak a washcloth in hot water, then ball it up, ring it out. He would open it above my head, then place it against my face like a second skin, the light around me disappearing entirely except through the spaces between the stitching. I would inhale the steam in that darkness, hearing his voice on the other side, otherwise almost devoid of any other bodily sense but the warmth and depth of his voice, as if I had already died and was on the other side of life waiting for the sickness to lift, but I wasn’t. I was still on this earth, the washcloth going cold on my face, my body still sick, and my father still there when I opened my eyes, as he always was, there to give me warmth before going cold again. ~William Fargason “Elegy with Steam”
A common clinic conversation this time of year:
I’ve been really miserable with a cold for three days, and as my COVID test is negative, I need that 5 day Z-pack antibiotic to get better faster.
It really can be miserable suffering from cold symptoms. Ninety eight percent of the time these symptoms are due to a viral infection and since your rapid RSV and influenza nasal swab tests are also negative today, your illness should resolve over the next few days without you needing a prescription medication.
But I can’t breathe and I can’t sleep.
You can use salt water rinses and a few days of decongestant nose spray to ease the congestion.
But my face feels like there is a blown up balloon inside.
Try applying a warm towel to your face – the heat will help improve circulation in your sinuses and ease your discomfort.When it cools off, warm it up again – basically rinse and repeat.
And I’m feverish and having sweats at night.
Your temp today is 99.2 so not a concern. You can use ibuprofen or acetominophen to help the feverish feeling.
But my snot is green.
That’s not unusual with viral upper respiratory infections and not necessarily an indicator of a bacterial infection.
And my teeth are starting to hurt and my ears are popping.
Let me know if that is not resolving over the next few days.
But I’m starting to cough.
Your lungs are clear today so it is likely from post nasal drainage irritating your upper airway. Best way to help that is to breathe steam to keep your bronchial tubes moist, push fluids and prop up with an extra pillow.
But sometimes I cough to the point of gagging. Isn’t whooping cough going around?
Your illness doesn’t fit the typical timeline for pertussis. You can consider using an over the counter cough suppressant if needed.
But I always end up needing antibiotics. This is just like my regular sinus infection thing I get every year.
There’s plenty of evidence antibiotics can do more harm than good, eliminating healthy bacteria in your gut. They really aren’t indicated at this point in your illness and could have nasty side effects.
But I always get better faster with antibiotics. Doctors always give me antibiotics.
Studies show that two weeks later there is no significant difference in symptoms between those treated with antibiotics and those who did self-care without them.
But I have a really hard week coming up and my whole family is sick and I won’t be able to rest.
This could be your body’s way of saying that you need to take the time you need to recover – is there someone who can help pick up the load your carry?
But I just waited an hour to see you.
I really am sorry about the wait; we’re seeing a lot of sick people with so much viral illness going around and needing to test to rule out COVID and influenza.
But I paid a $20 co-pay today for this visit.
We’re very appreciative of you paying so promptly on the day of service.
But I can go down the street to the urgent care clinic or do one of those telehealth doctor visits and for $210 they will write me an antibiotic prescription without making me feel guilty for asking.
I wouldn’t recommend taking unnecessary medication that can lead to bacterial resistance, side effects and allergic reactions. I truly believe you can be spared the expense, inconvenience and potential risk of taking something you don’t really need.
So that’s it? Salt water rinses, warm towels on my face and just wait it out? That’s all you can offer?
Let me know if your symptoms are unresolved or worsening over the next few days.
So you spent all that time in school just to tell people they don’t need medicine?
I believe I can help most people heal themselves with self-care at home. I try to educate my patients about when they do need medicine and then facilitate appropriate treatment. Also, I want to thank you for wearing your mask today to reduce the chance of transmitting your virus to those around you.
I’m going to go find a real doctor who will actually listen to me and give me what I need.
It certainly is a choice you can make. A real doctor vows to first do no harm while always listening to what you think, what your physical examination shows, then takes into account what evidence-based clinical data says is the best and safest course of action. I realize you want something other than what I’m offering you today. If you are feeling worse over the next few days or develop new symptoms, please let me know so we can reevaluate how best to treat you.
I’ll bet you’ll tell me next you want me to get one of those COVID vaccines too, won’t you?
Actually, I prefer you be feeling a bit better before you receive both the COVID and influenza vaccines. That would offer extra immunity protection for you through the next few months. Shall we schedule you for a time for your vaccination updates next week?Remember, I’m still here if you need to review your options again…
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
How far friends are! They forget you, most days. They have to, I know; but still, it’s lonely just being far and a friend. I put my hand out—this chair, this table— So near: touch, that’s how to live. Call up a friend? All right, but the phone itself is what loves you, warm on your ear, on your hand. Or, you lift a pen to write—it’s not that far person but this familiar pen that comforts. Near things: Friend, here’s my hand. ~William Stafford “Friends” from The Way It Is
I initially started writing online almost twenty years ago to a group of friends, most that I had met in real life, but some of whom I only knew from afar. It felt like I was writing a letter but without the pen, paper, envelopes and stamp.
Now I write to over 22,000 people every day. A few of you I know well, some I’ve only met once, most of you I will never have the privilege to know personally. Some of you have written to me privately (some with pen and paper, stamp and envelope!) to tell me more about your lives and how the thoughts I send along each day make a difference to you.
I know the power and love found in a hand-written letter. Someone I have known for nearly 50 years still writes to her friends – Jane Goodall was my teacher and mentor. When she gave me the opportunity to work with her in Africa in the 1970s, it changed my life in ways I still am discovering. Most remarkably, she has written to me on a number of occasions and I treasure those notes. Her familiar pen written by her familiar hand comforts me.
It’s lonely being far away, and a friend. But here is my hand. I hope you will continue to take what I offer here and find it comforting.
giving Jane a hug, courtesy of WWU Communications
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
The children have gone to bed. We are so tired we could fold ourselves neatly behind our eyes and sleep mid-word, sleep standing warm among the creatures in the barn, lean together and sleep, forgetting each other completely in the velvet, the forgiveness of sleep.
Then the one small cry: one strike of the match-head of sound: one child’s voice: and the hundred names of love are lit as we rise and walk down the hall.
One hundred nights we wake like this, wake out of our nowhere to kneel by small beds in darkness. One hundred flowers open in our hands, a name for love written in each one. ~Annie Lighthart, from Iron String
I thought I had forgotten how to wake to the sound of a child’s voice in the night. I thought I wouldn’t remember how to gently open their bedroom door, entering their darkness from my own darkness, discerning what was distressing them, sensing how to soothe them back to slumber, wondering if I might sing or pray the words they needed to hear, bringing a blossoming peace and stillness to their night.
And then our son’s family arrived two months ago from thousands of miles away, to stay until they could settle in their own place, and I remembered my nights were never meant to be mine alone. As a child, I had so many night-wakenings that I’m sure my mother despaired that I would ever sleep through the night. She would come when I called, sitting beside my bed, rubbing my back until I forgot what woke me in the first place. She was patient and caring despite her own weariness, sleep problems and worriedness. She loved me and forgave me for needing her presence in the night, so her nights were never her own.
I too responded with compassion when my own children called out in the night. I woke regularly to phone calls from hospitals and patients during forty years of medical practice and listened and answered questions with grace and understanding. And now, for a time, I’m on call again, remembering the sweetness of being loved when the dark fears of the night need the light and promise of a new day coming, if only just a few hours away.
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
We live in an unbelieving age but one which is markedly and lopsidedly spiritual… an age that has domesticated despair and learned to live with it happily. There is something in us that demands the redemptive act, that demands that what falls at least be offered the chance to be restored. …what <modern man> has forgotten is the cost of it. His sense of evil is diluted or lacking altogether, and so he has forgotten the price of restoration.
This is an unlimited God and one who has revealed himself specifically. It is one who became man and rose from the dead. It is one who confounds the senses and the sensibilities, one known early on as a stumbling block. There is no way to gloss over this specification or to make it more acceptable to modern thought. This God is the object of ultimate concern and he has a name. ~Flannery O’Connor from a 1963 lecture published in Mystery and Manners
He has an unpronounceable name, this God of specificity, yet still He asks us to breathe it out with each breath we take — even if we don’t believe.
This God of specificity knows our name, as He formed each one of us for a reason and it is His voice calling out to us — even when we aren’t listening.
He is worthy of our attention as we are the object of His ultimate concern.
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
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)
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
It must have come in with the morning paper, still being delivered to those who shelter in place.
I have coffee and books, time, a garden, silence enough to fill cisterns.
It must have first walked the morning paper, as if loosened ink taking the shape of an ant.
Small black ant, alone, crossing a navy cushion, moving steadily because that is what it could do.
Set outside in the sun, it could not have found again its nest. What then did I save?
It did not move as if it was frightened, even while walking my hand, which moved it through swiftness and air.
Ant, alone, without companions, whose ant-heart I could not fathom — how is your life, I wanted to ask.
I lifted it, took it outside.
This first day when I could do nothing, contribute nothing beyond staying distant from my own kind, I did this. ~Jane Hirshfield from “Today, When I Could Do Nothing”
The other day, as I sat down in the grass to take pictures, I felt a tickle at the nape of my neck. I reached up, picked up something, and when I looked to see what it was, I found a tiny ant crushed in my fingers. Suddenly it felt like things were crawling everywhere on me, especially my scalp. I shook out my hair and clothes and found there weren’t any more ants. It was only one very unfortunate defenseless victim who chose the wrong place and time to inhabit me – unexpected, unwanted and unwelcome.
As a child, I was fascinated by the ant hills in the woods and fields of our small farm. I would track yards and yards of ant trails from the busy mounded colonies to tree trunks and other sources of food, watching the single file single-minded insects heading through all sorts of terrain to sustain their community. Having ants crawling on me wasn’t a problem then – they were part of my exploration of creation and sometimes they explored me.
How is your life, I wanted to ask.
Now as an adult, I confess I pay regularly for someone to come to the farm to spray around our house to prevent a resurgence of carpenter ants that threatened our foundation and walls some years ago. It works pretty well so I don’t have to deal with the reality of nature/creation invading my personal space. My wholistic acceptance of my co-existence with ants ends at my front door. No welcome mat for them, thou shalt not trespass.
I don’t seek to fathom their heart or a felt need to find food.
So now our country is embroiled in the polarizing issue of whether to protect the defenseless when they are unexpected, unwanted and unwelcome, especially when it may pose great personal risk to another. Many of those most upset by the judicial decision have a voice to protest today because their mother let them live, even though their conception was unexpected, unwanted and unwelcome. They were not prevented through prophylactic means, they were not squished in an intentional self-defensive move.
They were indeed part of creation.
They are living and whole and as angry and anxious as I was when I thought I was crawling with ants.
How is your life, I want to ask. How is it to feel what you are feeling right now?
I fathom your beating heart and that of a mother’s loving heart of selfless sacrifice.
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time and recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
Barnstorming 