Tag: creation

Clutching Stardust

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The true harvest of my daily life is somewhat as intangible and indescribable as the tints of morning or evening.  It is a little star-dust caught, a segment of the rainbow which I have clutched.
~Henry David Thoreau

Painting the indescribable with words necessitates subtlety, sound and rhythm on a page.  The best word color portraits I know are by Gerard Manley Hopkins who created  through startling combinations:  “crimson-cresseted”, “couple-colour”, “rose-moles”, “fresh-firecoal”, “adazzle, dim”, “dapple-dawn-drawn”, “blue-bleak embers”, “gash gold-vermillion”.

I understand, as Thoreau does,  how difficult it is to harvest a day using ordinary words.   Like grasping ephemeral star trails or the transient rainbow that moves away as I approach, what I hold on the page is intangible yet very real.

I will keep reaching for the rainbow, searching for the best words to preserve my days and nights forever, for my someday greatgrandchildren, or whoever might have the patience to read.

After all, in the beginning was the Word, and there is no better place to start.

More beauty in words and photography is found in this book available here:

On the Outside of the World

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At present we are on the outside of the world,
the wrong side of the door.
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.
Some day, God willing, we shall get in.
~C.S. Lewis, from The Weight of Glory

Sometimes I’m on the outside looking in,
other times I’m on the inside looking out,
wondering where I should be,
knowing where I want to be,
longing for something I can’t quite reach.

We see through a glass darkly,
waiting for the day when all will be clear,
waiting to be invited into the purity
of where God dwells richly.

A book of beauty in words and photography, available for order here:

Live Each Day As If It Were My First

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You tell me to live each day
as if it were my last. This is in the kitchen
where before coffee I complain
of the day ahead—that obstacle race
of minutes and hours,
grocery stores and doctors.

But why the last? I ask. Why not
live each day as if it were the first—
all raw astonishment, Eve rubbing
her eyes awake that first morning,
the sun coming up
like an ingénue in the east?

You grind the coffee
with the small roar of a mind
trying to clear itself. I set
the table, glance out the window
where dew has baptized every
living surface.
~Linda Pastan “Imaginary Conversation” 

To live each day like the first day, rather than the last…

It would mean unbridled awe and astonishment, as it should be.
Not only gratitude that the world exists, but grateful that I exist.

Newly created and baptized by amazement each day,
just like my first day.

A book of beauty in words and photography, available for order here:

Sparkled and Blazed

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How late I came to love you,
O Beauty so ancient and so fresh,
how late I came to love you.

You were within me,
yet I had gone outside to seek you.

Unlovely myself,
I rushed toward all those lovely things you had made.
And always you were with me.
I was not with you.

All those beauties kept me far from you –
although they would not have existed at all
unless they had their being in you.

You called,
you cried,
you shattered my deafness.

You sparkled,
you blazed,
you drove away my blindness.

You shed your Fragrance,
and I drew in my breath and I pant for you,
I tasted and now I hunger and thirst.
You touched me, and now I burn with longing.
~St. Augustine in Confessions

God spoke in His Word
but I didn’t listen.
God fed me
but I chose junk food.
God showed me beauty
but I couldn’t see Him.
God smelled like the finest rose
but I turned away.
God touched me
but I was numb.

So He sent His Son
as Word and food,
beauty and fragrance,
sparkling and blazing,
reaching out broken hands
so I would know
my hunger and thirst
is only and always
for Him alone.

A book of beauty in word and photography, available for order here:

Almost Eternal, But Not Quite

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Again I resume the long
lesson: how small a thing
can be pleasing, how little
in this hard world it takes
to satisfy the mind
and bring it to its rest.

Within the ongoing havoc
the woods this morning is
almost unnaturally still.
Through stalled air, unshadowed
light, a few leaves fall
of their own weight.

                                       The sky
is gray. It begins in mist
almost at the ground
and rises forever. The trees
rise in silence almost
natural, but not quite,
almost eternal, but
not quite.

                      What more did I
think I wanted? Here is
what has always been.
Here is what will always
be. Even in me,
the Maker of all this
returns in rest, even
to the slightest of His works,
a yellow leaf slowly
falling, and is pleased.
~Wendell Berry “VII”

What more did I think I wanted?

To know that as long as I’m able to hold on,
I can be a spot of light in a dark and bleak world.
Once I let go,
it is finished and worthwhile,
seeing His knowing smile.

A book of beauty in words and photography, available to order here:

Like a Passing Smile

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The morning glories
bloom, securing the gate
in the old fence
~Matsuo Basho Haiku

Was it worthwhile to paint so fair
The every leaf – to vein with faultless art
Each petal, taking the boon light and air
Of summer so to heart?

To bring thy beauty unto a perfect flower,
Then like a passing fragrance or a smile
Vanish away, beyond recovery’s power –
Was it, frail bloom, worthwhile?

Thy silence answers: “Life was mine!
And I, who pass without regret or grief,
Have cared the more to make my moment fine,
Because it was so brief.

In its first radiance I have seen
The sun! – Why tarry then till comes the night?
I go my way, content that I have been
Part of the morning light!”
~Florence Earle Coates “The Morning Glory”

I am alive — I guess —
The Branches on my Hand
Are full of Morning Glory —
~Emily Dickinson

Can I too unfurl with joy in the morning light, knowing I will wilt and wither at the end of the day? Will I live fully open to this day, unconcerned about tomorrow?

God intended for us to tend His garden yet He continually tends us. We mess up and are given a daily opportunity to make it right. I am alive – no question – to try to make this day better.

I blossom under His tending and like a passing smile, I leave without grief or regret.

A book of beauty in words and photos, available to order

Full of Mystery

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It’s strange to be here. The mystery never leaves you. 
~John O’Donohue from Anam Cara

We must learn to acknowledge
that the creation is full of mystery;
we will never entirely understand it.
We must abandon arrogance
and stand in awe.
We must recover the sense
of the majesty of creation,
and the ability to be worshipful in its presence.
For I do not doubt that it is only
on the condition of humility and reverence before the world
that our species will be able to remain in it.
~Wendell Berry from  The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays

How did we come here and how is it we remain?

Even when the wind blows mightily,
the waters rise,
the earth shakes,
the fires rage,
the pandemic persists…

~we are here, granted another day to get it right. And will we?

It is strange to be here,
marveling at the mystery around us –
recognizing we are the ultimate mystery of creation,
placed here as its witnesses,
worshiping in humility, with reverence and obedience.

We don’t own what we see;
we only own our awe.

Looking for a beautiful book to own or give? This is available to order here:

Stitching Broken Pieces Together

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“I make them warm to keep my family from freezing;
I make them beautiful to keep my heart from breaking.”
–From the journal of a prairie woman, 1870

To keep a husband and five children warm,
she quilts them covers thick as drifts against
the door. Through every fleshy square white threads
needle their almost invisible tracks; her hours
count each small suture that holds together
the raw-cut, uncolored edges of her life.
She pieces each one beautiful, and summer bright
to thaw her frozen soul. Under her fingers
the scraps grow to green birds and purple
improbable leaves; deeper than calico, her mid-winter
mind bursts into flowers. She watches them unfold
between the double stars, the wedding rings.
~Luci Shaw “Quiltmaker”

Perhaps the world was made this way:
piecemeal, the parts fitting together exactly
as if made for one another~
the unique, disparate and separate
coming together in a glorious harmony.

The point of its creation is
forever functional and full of love –
a blanket of warmth and security
for generations to come.
Our legacy is to preserve this
beauty arising from scraps,
this broken stitched to broken
in a tapestry holy and whole.

all quilts here are on display this week at the Northwest Washington Fair
see previous year’s artwork here and here and here and here

This new Barnstorming book is like a quilt made of pieces of poetry and photographs – available for order here:

The Center Cannot Hold

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Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere   
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
~William Butler Yeats from “The Second Coming”

The city orbits around eight million
centers of the universe
and turns around the golden clock
at the still point of this place.
Lift up your eyes from the moving hive
and you will see time circling
under a vault of stars and know
just when and where you are.
~Billy Collins “Grand Central”

At the still point of the turning world.
Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards;
at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered.
Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline.

Here is a place of disaffection
Time before and time after
In a dim light: neither daylight
Investing form with lucid stillness
Turning shadow into transient beauty
With slow rotation suggesting permanence
Nor darkness to purify the soul
Emptying the sensual with deprivation
Cleansing affection from the temporal.
Neither plentitude nor vacancy. 
~T.S. Eliot from “Burnt Norton” The Four Quartets

In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes. Judges 21:25

Which shall it be?
Billions of people orbit the center – or – each of us strives to be our own center of the universe, but cannot hold on there.

We’ve been to Grand Central Station, a relaxed rest stop compared to the moving hive we navigated at Shinjuku Station and Ikebukuro Station in Tokyo, a city four times the size of New York.

Try as I might to picture train stations constituting a “center” holding a great city together, such works of man – like political leaders – have only a tenuous hold on those who come and go. We each desire to do what is right in our own eyes.

As a result, there is no glue; things fall apart.

The Center only holds when it constitutes the Source itself-
the origin, the beginning and the end and everything in between.
Starting from there, no matter how far you may feel from the Center,
you have no doubt about who and where and when you are.
Then and only then, you know what is right to do.

More photos and words of encouragement are found in this new book from Barnstorming, available for order here:

Where Eye Imagines Sight

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A lurking man in that half light,
there where eye imagines sight,
stops my heart until I see
Lurking man is leaning tree.

What changed? The man? There was none. Tree?
The tree was always there. Then me?
I did not change. I came to see
and what I saw, what was could be.
~Archibald MacLeish, from Collected Poems 1917 to 1982

Every day I look for what is obvious on the farm – the trees, the flowers, the animals, the clouds, the lighting – all the daily and mundane things surrounding me. More often than not, what I see is straight-forward, needing no extra mental processing or interpretation.

Occasionally, my mind’s eye sees more and I’m stopped in my tracks. What is it I’m seeing and how much am I simply imagining? I see what “could be” and that alone creates a new dimension to what, on the surface, is plain and simple. Suddenly what is plain becomes glorious – a flower is otherworldly, a cat transformed by light, a wet feather a thing of beauty, a tree moves and breathes as if it is on fire.

Because my mind’s eye wants to look deeper, I see more detail.
Because I myself am complex, I seek out complexity.
Because I need transformation and renewal,
my mind seeks to transform and renew.
Because nothing around me is quite as it seems on the surface,
I am called upon to notice it, in its beauty and in its simplicity.

I am changed by imagining how glorious things could be.

Imagine what your mind’s eye can see in more Barnstorming photos in this book, available to order here: