Tag: creation

The Air Sighs

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marchmoonbaker

When, in the cavern darkness, the child
first opened his mouth (even before
his eyes widened to see the supple world
his lungs had breathed into being),
could he have known that breathing
trumps seeing? Did he love the way air sighs
as it brushes in and out through flesh
to sustain the tiny heart’s iambic beating,
tramping the crossroads of the brain
like donkey tracks, the blood dazzling and
invisible, the corpuscles skittering to the earlobes
and toenails? Did he have any idea it
would take all his breath to speak in stories
that would change the world?
~Luci Shaw “Breath”
Breath that created the world
by forming the Words
that tell the stories
that change the world.
We rest in that breath today,
sighing in Sabbath.

northernlandscape2

Not a Single Inch

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photo by Andrea Nipges
photo by Andrea Nipges

Nobody in the hospital
Could tell the age
Of the old woman who
Was called Susanna

Because she had no visitors
I would stop by to see her
But she was always sleeping

One day I was beside her
When she woke up
Opening small dark eyes
Of a surprising clearness

She looked at me and said
You want to know the truth?
I answered Yes

She said it’s something that
My mother told me

There’s not a single inch
Of our whole body
That the Lord does not love

She then went back to sleep.
~Anne Porter  from “Susanna”

We tend to forget who made us,
including the funny looking feet,
the crooked teeth, the wrinkles, the scars, the split ends —
We see only imperfection
when our Creator sees dust made manifest
in His image.

He loves us even when we do not love ourselves,
hiding our nakedess.
He loves us even when we cover up with gloss
of polish, perms, plucking and plastic surgery,
hiding beneath our cosmetic masks.

He loves every inch
because we are His opus, a masterpiece.
He knew what He was doing.

An Oath of Loyalty to Life

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needles

It is…the refusal to take the oath of loyalty to life…
The man who kills a man kills a man.
The man who kills himself kills all men.
As far as he is concerned, he wipes out the world.
~ G.K. Chesterton

Suicide rates globally have climbed 60% in the past forty years,
particularly in developed countries.
Based on the distress of the patients I see every day,
the easy contemplation of suicide,
if only a passive “I wish I were dead”,
there will be no slowing of this trend.

…when there is no sense of loyalty to life, as stressful and messy as it can be,
…when there is no honoring of the holiness of the created being,
…when there is no resistance to the buffeting winds of life,
only a toppling over, taking out everything and everyone in the way,
…the world is wiped out, all people killed in one act of self-murder.

woods27

One Moment Breathless

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photo taken to the north from the farm by Emily Gibson
photo taken to the north from the farm by Emily Gibson

All this he saw, for one moment breathless and intense, vivid on the morning sky; and still, as he looked, he lived; and still, as he lived, he wondered.
~Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows

Every time I open my eyes, I am reminded how precious is this moment, how intense is each breath and each heartbeat.

We are created for this.  We are meant to wonder with ceasing.

Keeps Goings Graces

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photo by Josh Scholten
photo by Josh Scholten

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies dráw fláme;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell’s
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves—goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying Whát I do is me: for that I came.

Í say móre: the just man justices;
Kéeps gráce: thát keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God’s eye what in God’s eye he is—
Chríst—for Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men’s faces.
~Gerard Manley Hopkins

 

We are more than simple flash of wing or clarion ring~
We are imaged in God’s eye, imagined and brought to life,
We are His own retinal reflection
upon His creation,
ten thousand times ten thousand.

We are created lovely,
so much more
than light and sound~
inscaped, steeped
in justice and sanctity~
keeps all his goings graces
featured in His face, our faces
as seen through His eyes.

photo by Josh Scholten
photo by Josh Scholten

Inherited Specks

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photo by Josh Scholten
photo by Josh Scholten

Skin was earth; it was soil. I could see, even on my own skin, the joined trapezoids of dust specks God had wetted and stuck with his spit the morning he made Adam from dirt. Now, all these generations later, we people could still see on our skin the inherited prints of the dust specks of Eden.
~Annie Dillard from An American Childhood

A goodly portion of every clinic day is spent looking at my patients’ skin.  Most of the time, it is a quick assessment of color, moisture and texture before I go on to concentrate on the chief complaint that brought the patient in.  However, skin concerns frequently are the chief complaint — perhaps as straight forward as an abrasion or laceration, or a puzzling bump, an oozing sore, a total body itch, or an ominous pigmented lesion.

I feel like Sherlock Holmes when I focus on a patient’s outer covering in magnified detail.  I assume the identity of detective, inspector and archeologist all at once, trying to discern what is taking place on or beneath a piece of dermatologic geography.

No matter what the diagnosis or the treatment plan, I’m continually awestruck by the topography of skin.  This supple landscape is made up of trapezoidal specks connected one to another, just like the soil upon which I tread.   Skin cells are in a state of constant renewal, the dead and discarded falling off to rejoin the dust from which it came.

This elaborate matrix of collagen and keratin is the foundation for our scaffolding and our shroud.

His spit provides the superglue: the rivets, the bolts and the nails that bind us together for a lifetime.

We are created to be far more than a mere pile of random dust specks.

Lenten Grace — Fearful Dust

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photo from the top of Mt. Baker by Josh Scholten
photo from the top of Mt. Baker by Josh Scholten

I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
~T.S. Eliot in “Burial of the Dead” from “The Wasteland”

We do not want to think of ourselves as the dust we were and the dust we will become.  There is too much of us living right now; we cast shadows before and behind us depending on the time of day and time of life.  We are substance with our shadows only ephemeral reflections of our presence on earth.

Yet the dust we were and the dust we become is a fearful thing.
Nothing but dust…
until the Creator lifts us up in the palm of His hand, and blows on us.  Now we breathe and pulse and weep and bleed.

We become something different than mere shadow.

We become His, awed,  to the last grain of fearful dust with which we are made.  We become so much more.  So much more.

photo by Josh Scholten
photo by Josh Scholten

Explore the Neighborhood

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photo by Nate Gibson
photo by Nate Gibson

Some unwonted, taught pride diverts us from our original intent, which is to explore the neighborhood, view the landscape, to discover at least where it is that we have been so startlingly set down, if we can’t learn why.
~Annie Dillard from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

As much as I want to know how and why of my life, I must settle for what and where.   As I grow older, more and more I dwell on who.

I am here to explore, to notice what happens around me and to me, to record it in words that will live beyond my time, to express unceasing gratitude to who has done this wondrous thing I am witness to.

It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood (thanks, Fred Rogers).

Not Poet Enough

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224573_4837727973365_889710465_nphoto by Josh Scholten

If your everyday life seems poor to you, do not accuse it; accuse yourself, tell yourself you are not poet enough to summon up its riches; since for the creator there is no poverty and no poor or unimportant place.
― Rainer Maria Rilke

As a child, I would sometimes spend long rainy afternoons languishing on the couch, complaining to my mother how boring life was.  Her typical response was to remind me my boredom said more about me than about life– I became the accused, rather than the accuser,  failing to summon up life’s riches.  Thus convicted, my sentence followed:  she would promptly give me chores to do.   I learned not to voice my complaints about life because it always meant work.

Some things haven’t changed, even fifty years later.  Whenever I am tempted to feel pitiful or bored, accusing my life of being poor or unfair, I need to remember what that says about me.  If I’m not poet enough to celebrate the gilded edge of the plain and simple, if I’m not poet enough to articulate beauty even in the sharp thorns of life, if I’m not poet enough to recognize the creator’s brilliance in every molecule, then it is my poverty I’m accusing, not his.

Back to work then.  There is a life to be lived and poems to be written.

photo by Nate Gibson
photo by Nate Gibson

A Faint Tracing

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photo by Josh Scholten
photo by Josh Scholten

“Our life is a faint tracing on the surface of mystery, like the idle curved tunnels of leaf miners on the face of a leaf. We must somehow take a wider view, look at the whole landscape, really see it, and describe what’s going on here. Then we can at least wail the right question into the swaddling band of darkness, or, if it comes to that, choir the proper praise.”
~Annie Dillard from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

We were meant to be more than mere blemish, more than a sullied spot or gaping hole on the surface, imperfect and inconvenient.
We were created as air and water and flesh and bones, from the covering of skin to our deeper darkened cavities that fill and empty.
We were created out of Word and Silence.
We were created to weep and praise, praise and weep.

We were meant to be mystery, perfect in our imperfection.  Blemish made beautiful.

photo by Josh Scholten
photo by Josh Scholten