There’s always an iris amusing and amazing. Today, wildly purple stretching to search dark colors, open and about to reach. Reach.
Even the vase holds on, shows courage for both who touch the beautiful, alive and color to color, evoking how one can love another. Longer to live, shorter to die. ~Eloise Klein Healy “Iris”
What word informs the world, and moves the worm along in his blind tunnel?
What secret purple wisdom tells the iris edges to unfold in frills? What juiced and emerald thrill
urges the sap until the bud resolves its tight riddle? What irresistible command
unfurls this cloud above this greening hill, or one more wave — its spreading foam and foil —
across the flats of sand? What minor thrust of energy issues up from humus in a froth
of ferns? Delicate as a laser, it filigrees the snow, the stars. Listen close — What silver sound
thaws winter into spring? Speaks clamor into singing? Gives love for loneliness? It is this
un-terrestrial pulse, deep as heaven, that folds you in its tingling embrace, gongs in your echo heart. ~Luci Shaw “What Secret Purple Wisdom” The Green Earth: Poems of Creation
He gave Himself to us to wrest joy from our misery-
A mystery is too much to accept such sacrifice is possible.
We are blind-hearted to the possibility: He who cannot be measured unfolds before us to reach us, overwhelming our darkness.
I prefer remaining closed in my bud, hidden in the little room of my heart rather than risk opening by loving another in full blossom and fruitfulness.
Lord, give me grace to open my tight fist of a bud.
Prepare me for embracing your mystery. Prepare me to unfurl, to reach out beyond myself. Prepare me to bloom wildly purple.
What is the crying at Jordan? Who hears, O God, the prophecy? Dark is the season, dark our hearts and shut to mystery.
Who then shall stir in this darkness prepare for joy in the winter night? Mortal in darkness we lie down, blind-hearted, seeing no light.
Lord, give us grace to awake us, to see the branch that begins to bloom; in great humility is hid all heaven in a little room.
Now comes the day of salvation, in joy and terror the Word is born! God gives himself into our lives; Oh, let salvation dawn! ~Carol Christopher Drake
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Incurable and unbelieving in any truth but the truth of grieving, I saw a tree inside a tree rise kaleidoscopically as if the leaves had livelier ghosts.
I pressed my face as close to the pane as I could get to watch that fitful, fluent spirit that seemed a single being undefined or countless beings of one mind haul its strange cohesion beyond the limits of my vision over the house heavenwards.
Of course I knew those leaves were birds.
Of course that old tree stood exactly as it had and would (but why should it seem fuller now?) and though a man’s mind might endow even a tree with some excess of life to which a man seems witness, that life is not the life of men. And that is where the joy came in. ~Christian Wiman, “From a Window” from Every Riven Thing.
Coming to Christianity is like color slowly aching into things, the world becoming brilliantly, abradingly alive. “Joy is the overflowing consciousness of reality,” Simone Weil writes, and that’s what I had, a joy that was at once so overflowing that it enlarged existence, and yet so rooted in actual things that, again for the first time, that’s what I began to feel: rootedness. ~Christian Wiman “Gazing Into the Abyss”
Nothing is to be taken for granted. Nothing remains as it was.
Like this old pink dogwood tree, I now lean over more, I have a few bare branches with no leaves, I have my share of broken limbs, I have my share of blight and curl.
Yet each stage and transition of life has its own beauty: bursting forth with leaves and blooms after a long winter of nakedness adorned only by feathered friends destined to fly away.
Color has literally seeped in overnight, resulting in a riot of joy.
Yet what matters most is what grows unseen, underground, in a network that feeds and thrives no matter what happens above ground, steadfast roots of faith remain a reason to believe.
Nothing is to be taken for granted. Nothing remains as it was. Especially me. Oh, and especially me.
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Forgive me if I forget with the birdsong and the day’s last glow folding into the hands of the trees, forgive me the few syllables of the autumn crickets, the year’s last firefly winking like a penny in the shoulder’s weeds, if I forget the hour, if I forget the day as the evening star pours out its whiskey over the gravel and asphalt I’ve walked for years alone, if I startle when you put your hand in mine, if I wonder how long your light has taken to reach me here. ~Jake Adam York “Abide”
Through cloud and sunshine, Lord, abide with me. ~Henry Lyte, from the hymn “Abide with Me”
A Peaceful Day on a Shaded Porch As a couple dozen Holstein cows Swaying their great udders march To the barn behind this house. We rock in the chairs, drinking tea, Thinking of the ones who died, Working this farm before you and me, Singing, “Fast falls the eventide,” Thinking of all they must do Before the end and the deep abyss, They took great comfort from this view On just such a peaceful day as this. Which says: our time is short, no time to waste. Let us improve today before we are replaced. ~Rozel Hunt, “A Peaceful Day on a Shaded Porch.”
On my grayest days, as transient as life can feel, I am no more than a raindrop on the fingertip of a glass blade.
We walk hand in hand, alongside ~abiding~ in Him whose Light reaches out even in the depths of our night.
Abide with me, fast falls the eventide, The darkness deepens Lord, with me abide When other helpers fail and comforts flee Help of the helpless, oh, abide with me
Swift to its close ebbs out life’s little day Earth’s joys grow dim, its glories pass away Change and decay in all around I see O Thou who changest not, abide with me
I fear no foe, with Thee at hand to bless Ills have no weight, and tears no bitterness Where is death’s sting? Where, grave, thy victory? I triumph still, if Thou abide with me
I need thy presence every passing hour. What but thy grace can foil the tempter’s power? Who like thyself my guide and strength can be? Through cloud and sunshine, O abide with me.
Hold Thou Thy cross before my closing eyes Shine through the gloom and point me to the skies Heaven’s morning breaks, and earth’s vain shadows flee In life, in death, o Lord, abide with me Abide with me, abide with me
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Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of – throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself. ~C.S. Lewis from Mere Christianity
Whether bunker or cottage or palace, when I seek shelter, safety or simplicity, it is not enough. I am not a dwelling for God until His remodel project is finished~
He puts down His chisel, hammer and saw, sees what He has salvaged from the junk heap, looks me over and declares it good.
My father’s treehouse is twenty seven years old this summer, lonesome and empty high up in the black walnut tree in our front yard. It remains a constant reminder of my father’s own abandoned Swiss Family Robinson dreams.
Over the years, it has been the setting for a local children’s TV show, laser tag wars, sleep overs and tea parties, even my writer’s retreat with a deck side view of the Cascades to the east, the Canadian Coastal Range to the north and Puget Sound to the west. Now it is a sad shell no longer considered safe to visit, as the support branches in its century-old tree are weakening with age and time. It is on our list of farm restoration projects, but other falling down buildings must be prioritized first.
My father’s dream began in February 1995 when our sons were 8 and 6 years old and our daughter just 2. We had plenty of recycled lumber on our old farm and an idea about what to build. My dad, retired from his desk job and having recently survived a lymphoma diagnosis and treatment, had many previous daunting building projects to his credit, and a few in his mind that he was yet to get to. He was eager to see what he could construct for his grandkids by spring time. He doodled out some sketches of what might work in the tree, and contemplated the physics of a 73 year old man scaling a tree vs. building it on the ground and hoisting it up mostly completed. I got more nervous the more I thought about it and hoped we could consider a project less risky, and praying the weather wouldn’t clear enough for construction to start any time soon.
The weather did clear just as my father’s health faded. His cancer relapsed and he was sidelined with a series of doctor’s appointments, hospitalizations and treatment courses. He hung on to that hope of getting the treehouse going by summer, still thinking it through in his mind, still evaluating what he would need to buy to supplement the materials already gathered and piled beneath the tree. In the mean time he lost physical strength day by day.
I decided his dream needed to proceed as he fought his battle, so I borrowed library books on treehouses, and hired two college age brothers who lived down the road to get things started. I figured if my dad got well enough to build again, at least the risky stuff could be already done by the young guys. These brothers took their job very seriously. They pored over the books, took my dad’s plans, worked through the details and started in. They shinnied up the tree, put up pulleys on the high branches and placed the beams, hoisting them by pulling on the ropes with their car bumper. It was working great until the car bumper came off.
I kept my dad updated with photos and stories. It was a diversion for him, but the far off look in his eye told me he wasn’t going to be building anything in this world ever again. He was gone by July. The treehouse was completed a month later. It was everything my dad had dreamed of, and more. It had a deck surrounded by a protective railing, a trap door, and staircase up the trunk. We had an open tree celebration and had 15 friends and neighbors up there at once. I’m sure dad was sipping lemonade with us as well, enjoying the view.
Now all these years later, the treehouse is tilting on its foundation as the main weight-bearing branch is weakening with age. We’ve declared it condemned, not wanting to risk an accident. As I look out my front window, it remains a daily reminder of past dreams fulfilled and those yet unfulfilled. Much like my father’s body, the old walnut tree is weakening, hanging on by the roots, but its muscle strength is failing. It will, inevitably come down in one of our frequent fierce windstorms, just as its nearby partner did a few years ago.
The treehouse dream branched out in another way. One of the construction team brothers decided to try building his own as a place to live in his woods, using a Douglas Fir tree as the center support and creating an octagon, two stories, 30 feet off the ground. He worked on it for two years and moved in, later marrying someone who decided a treehouse was just fine with her, and for 20+ years, they’ve been raising five children there. The treehouse kids are old enough to come work for me on our farm, a full circle feeling for me. This next generation is carrying on a Swiss Family Robinson dream that began in my father’s mind and our front yard.
I still have a whole list full of dreams myself, some realized and some deferred by time, resources and the limits of my imagination. I feel the clock ticking too, knowing that the years and the seasons slip by me faster and faster as I near the age my father was when he first learned he had cancer. It would be a blessing to me to see others live out the dreams I have held so close.
Like my father, I will some day teeter in the wind like our old tree, barely hanging on. When ready to fall to the ground, I’ll reach out with my branches and hand off my dreams too. The time will have come to let them go. Thank you, Dad, for handing me yours.
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And this, then, is the vision of that Heaven of which we have heard, where those who love each other have forgiven each other,
where, for that, the leaves are green, the light a music in the air, and all is unentangled, and all is undismayed. ~Wendell Berry “To My Mother”
…I sat at a workbench at a camp by a deep Adirondack lake learning how to braid long thin plastic strips into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.
I had never seen anyone use a lanyard or wear one, if that’s what you did with them, but that did not keep me from crossing strand over strand again and again until I had made a boxy red and white lanyard for my mother.
She gave me life and milk from her breasts, and I gave her a lanyard. She nursed me in many a sick room, lifted spoons of medicine to my lips, laid cold face-cloths on my forehead, and then led me out into the airy light and taught me to walk and swim, and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.
Here are thousands of meals, she said, and here is clothing and a good education. And here is your lanyard, I replied, which I made with a little help from a counselor. Here is a breathing body and a beating heart, strong legs, bones and teeth, and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered, and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.
And here, I wish to say to her now, is a smaller gift—not the worn truth that you can never repay your mother, but the rueful admission that when she took the two-tone lanyard from my hand, I was as sure as a boy could be that this useless, worthless thing I wove out of boredom would be enough to make us even. ~Billy Collins from “The Lanyard”
...I want to thank you truly for the wry smile you set on my lips, a smile as mild as your own; it has saved me pain and grief. And if now I shed a tear for you, and all who wait like you and do not know what they wait for, it does not matter. O gentle death, do not touch the hands, the heart of the old. Goodbye, dear one, farewell, my sweet mother. ~Salvatore Quasimodo from “Letter to My Mother”
Mother love is life and light beginning in the dark, as a special secret, until you know without a doubt you will never be just yourself again, tethered forever to another.
~this sacrificial love is a haven of abundant grace~
the tangles we make of our lives unravel, straighten and smooth, no dismay over mistakes made
I was created within you – to love my own children fully, fervently, forever and forever – as I was loved by you.
White egret glided over grasses, fiddlehead and fern, then landed, as I was caring for young children by a pond.
Angelic, her wing span fanned its gentle wave across the shore
and no one noticed. No one applauded or knelt upon the grass.
But the children, eyes and mouths as round as moons, stopped and held her for that moment,
watched as she preened her wings, leaving them one feather in the midst of spring green. ~Jesse LoVasco, from Native
Every day, there is so much I miss seeing, sounds I fail to hear, a nurturing softness that eludes me, all because I am wrapped in my own worries.
The wonders I miss may never come my way again, so Lord, give me the eyes and ears and hands of a child seeing and hearing and touching everything for the first time.
To notice the beauty that surrounds me, let me marvel at a Creation that started as mere Word and Thought and Hope, left behind like a feather for me to hold on to.
“Hope” is the thing with feathers – That perches in the soul – And sings the tune without the words – And never stops – at all –
And sweetest – in the Gale – is heard – And sore must be the storm – That could abash the little Bird That kept so many warm –
I’ve heard it in the chillest land – And on the strangest Sea – Yet – never – in Extremity, It asked a crumb – of me. ~Emily Dickinson
Deep in the tarn the mountain A mighty phantom gleamed, She leaned out into the midnight, And the summer wind went by, The scent of the rose on its silken wing And a song its sigh. And, in depths below, the waters Answered some mystic height, As a star stooped out of the depths above With its lance of light.
And she thought, in the dark and the fragrance, How vast was the wonder wrought If the sweet world were but the beauty born In its Maker’s thought. ~Harriet Prescott Spofford
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Every morning, cup of coffee in hand, I look out at the mountain. Ordinarily, it’s blue, but today it’s the color of an eggplant. And the sky turns from gray to pale apricot as the sun rolls up…
I study the cat’s face and find a trace of white around each eye, as if he made himself up today for a part in the opera. ~Jane Kenyon, from “In Several Colors” from Collected Poems.
If you notice anything it leads you to notice more and more.
And anyway I was so full of energy. I was always running around, looking at this and that.
If I stopped the pain was unbearable.
If I stopped and thought, maybe the world can’t be saved, the pain was unbearable. ~Mary Oliver from “The Moths” from Dream Work
I try to see things in a new way as I wander about my day, my eyes scanning for how to transform all my mundane, dusty corners exposed by a penetrating sunbeam when its angle is just right.
My attempts to describe plain ordinary as extraordinary feels futile in a messed-up upside-down world.
Such efforts can be painful: it means getting tired and muddy in the muck, falling down again and again and being willing to get back up.
If I stop getting dirty, if I by-pass every day grunginess, if I give up the work of salvage and renewal, I then abandon God’s promise to see the world changed.
He’s still here, ready and waiting, handing me a broom, a shovel and cleaning rags, so I can keep at it – mopping up my messy ordinary.
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Just as the night was fading Into the dusk of morning When the air was cool as water When the town was quiet And I could hear the sea
I caught sight of the moon No higher than the roof-tops Our neighbor the moon
An hour before the sunrise She glowed with her own sunrise Gold in the grey of morning
World without town or forest Without wars or sorrows She paused between two trees
And it was as if in secret Not wanting to be seen She chose to visit us So early in the morning. ~Anne Porter, “Getting Up Early” from An All Together Different Language.
And who has seen the moon, who has not seen Her rise from out the chamber of the deep, Flushed and grand and naked, as from the chamber Of finished bridegroom, seen her rise and throw Confession of delight upon the wave, Littering the waves with her own superscription Of bliss, till all her lambent beauty shakes towards us Spread out and known at last, and we are sure That beauty is a thing beyond the grave, That perfect, bright experience never falls To nothingness, and time will dim the moon Sooner than our full consummation here In this odd life will tarnish or pass away. ~D.H. Lawrence “Moonrise”
I could not sleep last night, tossing in turmoil while wrestling with my worries, concerned I’ve dropped the ball.
As a beacon of calm, the moon shone bright onto our bed covers before sunrise.
This glowing ball is never dropped, this holy sphere of the night remains aloft, sailing the skies, to rise again and again to light our darkest nights.
Its lambent reflection of His Love and Peace is balm; I am covered in its beauty.
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Here, where this present darkness presses in, pushes down, imprisons you in ice and stone to wall you up alive or crush you into dust, even here, the gold glimmers through a crack in the rock, splits the stones as it flames up in the ruby hue of a tulip bursting into bloom, droops down in the blushing pink of a cherry blossom fluttering in the breeze, sings in the trilling call of a finch, shines in dewdrops sparkling on a spider’s web. Oh the gold pulsing in graced moments of camaraderie and laughter, in the warmth of gentle hands caressing a cold brow, in quiet words of love that brim the hearer’s eyes with tears. And the gold that rises up like incense when you raise your eyes, your heart, your hands in wonder, thanks, and praise. All this golden glory! Light and love. And life. And life. And life! ~E.M. MacDonald “The Double Strand”
It feels as if everything is emerging from the darkness: birdsong is earlier and louder, grass squeaks with growth, buds unfurling with vigor, light glowing with promise.
There is much momentum running pellmell into longer days; so much glory bursting all at once.
As showers blow in from clouds gray and thick with menace, we are stilled and quieted in the drenching, waiting, arms raised, for a shaft of light to break through again, turning everything from gray to golden.
photo by Natalia Burke
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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. ~Gerard Manley Hopkins from “God’s Grandeur”
What took Him to this wretched place What kept Him on this road? ~Stuart Townend and Keith Getty from “Gethesemane”
photo by Bob Tjoelker
Jesus said, wait with me. But the disciples slept. Jesus said, wait with me. And maybe the stars did, maybe the wind wound itself into a silver tree, and didn’t move, maybe the lake far away, where once he walked as on a blue pavement, lay still and waited, wild awake. Oh the dear bodies, slumped and eye-shut, that could not keep that vigil, how they must have wept, so utterly human, knowing this too must be a part of the story. ~Mary Oliver from “Gethsemane”
You could not watch one hour with me–James Tissot
Today marks the crushing of Christ in the Garden of the Oil Press: Gethsemane -a place of olive trees treasured for the fine oil delivered from their fruit. And so, on this 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 their weakened flesh 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 expectation that being called a follower of Jesus is somehow 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 give Him up with a kiss. I might even deny I know Him when I’m pressed hard.
Yet, the moment of His betrayal becomes the moment He is glorified, thereby God is glorified and we are saved.
Crushed, bleeding, poured out over the world – He becomes the sacrifice that anoints us.
Incredibly, mysteriously, indeed miraculously, He loves us anyway, broken as we are, because He knows broken like no other.
Van Gogh – Olive Grove 1889
This year’s Lenten theme for Barnstorming is a daily selection from songs and hymns about Christ’s profound sacrifice on our behalf.
If we remain silent about Him, the stones themselves will shout out and start to sing (Luke 19:40).
In His name, may we sing…
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