Tag: Death

To Rise Again

September 16, 2026 barnstormingblog1 Comment

—Jesus explains

Not just the first crocus bulb poking
from the ground, but its pollen
shining saffronly on the legs of a bee.

The reverberations of a hammered
dulcimer or the puff of sweetness escaping
between peel and pith of a ripe tangelo.

It’s riding the elevator after the doctor
tells you, we can’t say why the scans
are suddenly clear, or, if you’re exhausted
from trying, time to surround yourself
with people you love. It’s waking

in the middle of the night, looking out
at the silhouettes of trees and realizing
there is nothing lonely about silence.
It’s cruising a wide-open Montana highway

or swinging your hips to the rhythm
of a street-corner bucket drummer
and daring the stares. It’s not the cicada
blooming from its shell as much

as the shell itself, balanced
on the finger of a little girl, then
tumbling along the grass tips
among the unkillable dandelions.
~Tania Runyan from “What It’s Like to Rise Again”

We’re each given a fresh start each day;
even when it was a fitful sleep,
and we’re fearful about what comes next,
or if there will even be a “next”…

Jesus explains what it is like to rise above the darkness;
bold, unafraid, leaving behind, neatly folded, the vestiges of death.

He gives us each reason to get up every morning,
surrounded by those who love us.

Even when crushed and broken,
He rose up so we can follow.

Everything’s going to be all right…

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Emerging Transformed

September 11, 2026 barnstormingblog1 Comment

The ghosts swarm.
They speak as one
person. Each
loves you. Each
has left something undone.

Today’s edges
are so sharp

they might cut
anything that moved.

The way a lost
word

will come back
unbidden.

You’re not interested
in it now,

only
in knowing
where it’s been.
~Rae Armantrout from “Unbidden” in Versed

I wish for you the blessing
of a room where strangers sit
breathing unashamed
into a chosen silence

Not the gasping breath
of travelers on a crowded plane
or the tenuous wheeze
of the waiting room

May you know the power
of those who have decided
to submit to the silence
to enter the mystery
be consumed by it
and emerge transformed

May you belong among those
who inhale the stillness
as if it is keeping us
because it is
keeping us alive
~Bethany Lee, “To Enter the Mystery” from Etude for Belonging: poems for practicing courage and hope

The grace of God means something like:
Here is your life.
You might never have been, but you are…
Here is the world.
Beautiful and terrible things will happen.
Don’t be afraid.
I am with you.
~Frederick Buechner in “Wishful Thinking and later” in Beyond Words

We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed;
perplexed, but not in despair;
persecuted, but not abandoned;
struck down, but not destroyed…

Therefore we do not lose heart.
Though outwardly we are wasting away,
yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.
For our light and momentary troubles
are achieving for us an eternal glory
that far outweighs them all.

So we fix our eyes not on what is seen,
but on what is unseen.
For what is seen is temporary,
but what is unseen is eternal.
-2 Cor 4:8-9, 16-18

I believe like a child
that suffering will be healed and made up for,
that all the humiliating absurdity of human contradictions
will vanish like a pitiful mirage
…that in the world’s finale,
at the moment of eternal harmony,
something so precious will come to pass
that it will suffice for all hearts,
for the comforting of all resentments,
for the atonement of all the crimes of humanity,
for all the blood that they’ve shed;
that it will make it not only possible to forgive
but to justify all that has happened.
~Fyodor Dostoevsky from The Brothers Karamazov

Twenty-five years ago,
a day started with bright sun above
and ended in tears and bloodshed below.

This is a day for recollection;
we live out a remembrance of
the torrential red that flowed that day;

A quarter century later,
our streets both near and far-away
still course with the blood of innocents,
so what have we learned from all this?

That terrible day’s edges were so sharp
we all bled;
still bearing the scars,
we need comforting.

So do not be afraid:
you are not alone.

We breathe and weep and love
as we remember that day,
emerging inevitably transformed.

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Come and See: So the House was Filled…

September 6, 2026 barnstormingblog1 Comment

Six days before the Passover, Jesus therefore came to Bethany, where Lazarus was, whom Jesus had raised from the dead.

So they gave a dinner for him there. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those reclining with him at table. Mary therefore took a pound of expensive ointment made from pure nard, and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped his feet with her hair.

The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.

But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (he who was about to betray him), said,“Why was this ointment not sold for three hundred denarii and given to the poor?”He said this, not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief, and having charge of the moneybag he used to help himself to what was put into it.

Jesus said, “Leave her alone, so that she may keep it for the day of my burial.For the poor you always have with you, but you do not always have me.”

When the large crowd of the Jews learned that Jesus was there, they came, not only on account of him but also to see Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. So the chief priests made plans to put Lazarus to death as well,because on account of him many of the Jews were going away and believing in Jesus.
John 12: 1-11

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.
~Gerard Manley Hopkins from “God’s Grandeur”

I am a man who has hoped, in time,
that his life, when poured out at the end,
would say ‘good-good-good-good-good!’
like a gallon jug of the prime local spirit.

I am a man of losses, regrets, and griefs.
I am an old man full of love.
I am a man of faith.

But faith is not necessarily, or not soon, a resting place.
Faith puts you out on a wide river in a little boat,
in the fog, in the dark.

Even a man of faith knows that …
we’ve all got to go through enough to kill us.
~Wendell Berry from Jayber Crow

She did what she could. She poured perfume on my body beforehand to prepare for my burial.
Mark 14:8

Last week, it became apparent one warm late summer evening that in the thick bushes lining the front of our farmhouse under our windows, some animal had died.

The stink wafted on the breeze into our bedrooms through our summer-open windows.

The outdoor farm cats and our dog were accounted for, so it must have been a dead squirrel, a raccoon or even a (actually dead) possum, all occasional nighttime visitors to our cat food dish on the nearby front porch.

Trying to find the offending carcass would involve cutting through dense foliage that had been growing over two decades – not an easy task to undertake. So we closed the windows and hoped the smell would dissipate quickly.

Surprisingly, a day later it was mostly gone, much to our relief. It is possible another animal scavenger decided it was worth hauling away. We were most grateful the smell of death was no longer filling our house…

Just the week before this scripture section from the book of John, Martha warned Jesus that opening Lazarus’ tomb would release the inevitable stench of death. Yet when Lazarus was raised, the odor of death was overcome by renewal and restoration.

When Martha’s sister Mary anoints Jesus’ feet with an expensive fragrant oil, normally used in preparation for burial, it fills the entire house with its perfume. Jesus sees it as a harbinger for what is to come in the next week.

His faith in God’s plan means Jesus goes through enough to kill Him.

In this broken world, we live in the smudge and stench of mortal man’s smell of death, yet we are saved by this crushed, dying Savior who pours out a perfume of Himself for us.

Like Mary, let us also do what we can:
filling God’s house with His fragrance.

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Going First Through the Dark Doorway

September 1, 2026 barnstormingblog3 Comments

In gratitude to the writing and wisdom of farmer Wendell Berry who, at age 92, passed through his porch’s dark doorway yesterday 8/31/26

All day he’s shoveled green pine sawdust
out of the trailer truck into the chute.
From time to time he’s clambered down to even
the pile. Now his hair is frosted with sawdust.
Little rivers of sawdust pour out of his boots.

I hope in the afterlife there’s none of this stuff
he says, while I broom off his jeans, his sweater flocked
with granules, his immersed-in-sawdust socks.
I hope there’s no bedding, no stalls, no barn

no more repairs to the paddock gate the horses
burst through when snow avalanches off the roof.
Although the old broodmare, our first foal, is his,
horses, he’s fond of saying, make divorces.

…he says
let’s walk up to the field and catch the sunset
and off we go, a couple of aging fools.

I hope, he says, on the other side there’s a lot
less work, but just in case I’m bringing tools.
~Maxine Kumin from “Chores”

They sit together on the porch, the dark
Almost fallen, the house behind them dark.
Their supper done with, they have washed and dried
The dishes–only two plates now, two glasses,
Two knives, two forks, two spoons–small work for two.
She sits with her hands folded in her lap,
At rest. He smokes his pipe. They do not speak,
And when they speak at last it is to say
What each one knows the other knows. They have
One mind between them, now, that finally
For all its knowing will not exactly know
Which one goes first through the dark doorway, bidding
Goodnight, and which sits on a while alone.
~Wendell Berry “They Sit Together on the Porch”

If just for a moment,
when this world is tilting so far
we just might fall off,
we pause to look at where we’ve been
and get our feet back under us.

The porch is a good place to start:
a bridge to what is beyond
without leaving the familiar.

Outside, looking square at the unknown,
yet still hearing and smelling and tasting
the affection that dwells just inside these walls.

What could we want more
than to be missed when we step away?

Our voice, our words, our heart, our touch
never to be replaced,
its absence a hole impossible to fill…

When we are called back inside
where Love made us who we are,
may the “in between” of
time spent on the porch,
be even more treasured,
because two aging fools sat together there a spell.

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Come and See: Gathering Together Those Who Scattered

August 30, 2026 barnstormingblogLeave a comment

Many of the Jews therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what he did, believed in him,but some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done. So the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered the council and said, “What are we to do? For this man performs many signs.If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation.”

But one of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, “You know nothing at all.Nor do you understand that it is better for you that one man should die for the people, not that the whole nation should perish.”

He did not say this of his own accord, but being high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus would die for the nation,and not for the nation only, but also to gather into one the children of God who are scattered abroad.

So from that day on they made plans to put him to death.

Jesus therefore no longer walked openly among the Jews, but went from there to the region near the wilderness, to a town called Ephraim, and there he stayed with the disciples.

Now the Passover of the Jews was at hand, and many went up from the country to Jerusalem before the Passover to purify themselves.

They were looking for Jesus and saying to one another as they stood in the temple, “What do you think? That he will not come to the feast at all?”Now the chief priests and the Pharisees had given orders that if anyone knew where he was, he should let them know, so that they might arrest him.
John 11: 45-57

Thy children are gathering home,
With joy they are gathering home;
From all the divisions in which they were scattered,
Thy children are gathering home.
~Charles Naylor from “Thy Children are Gathering Home”

A setting out to find oneself astray,
And coming home at dusk a different way.
~Malcolm Guite from “Prayer/Walk”

God is at home, it’s we who have gone out for a walk.
~Meister Eckhart

we who wander,
scattered beyond reach

who take wrong turns
never ask for directions
stumble over the rough roads
find ourselves in the ditch
distracted by glitter and gold
forgetting our ultimate destination

nothing we’ve seen thus far
no goal achieved
compares to the unity awaiting us

gather us home, O Lord,
as you did through your death.

just point the way.

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Come and See: Let Us Also Go…

August 9, 2026 barnstormingblogLeave a comment

Now a man named Lazarus was sick. He was from Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. (This Mary, whose brother Lazarus now lay sick, was the same one who poured perfume on the Lord and wiped his feet with her hair.)So the sisters sent word to Jesus, “Lord, the one you love is sick.”

When he heard this, Jesus said, “This sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God’s glory so that God’s Son may be glorified through it.” Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus.So when he heard that Lazarus was sick, he stayed where he was two more days, and then he said to his disciples, “Let us go back to Judea.”

“But Rabbi,” they said, “a short while ago the Jews there tried to stone you, and yet you are going back?”

Jesus answered, “Are there not twelve hours of daylight? Anyone who walks in the daytime will not stumble, for they see by this world’s light. It is when a person walks at night that they stumble, for they have no light.”

After he had said this, he went on to tell them, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep; but I am going there to wake him up.”

His disciples replied, “Lord, if he sleeps, he will get better.” Jesus had been speaking of his death, but his disciples thought he meant natural sleep.

So then he told them plainly, “Lazarus is dead, and for your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.”

Then Thomas (also known as Didymus) said to the rest of the disciples, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.”
John 11: 1-16

There were moments, hours even,
when it was clear what I

was meant to do, as if
a landscape had revealed itself

in the morning light.
I could see the road

plainly now, imagining myself
walking towards the distant mountains

like a pilgrim in the old stories—
ready to take on any danger,

hapless but always hopeful,
certain that my simple belief

in the light
would be enough.
~Joyce Sutphen “Those Hours” from Carrying Water to the Field

All the paths of the Lord are loving and faithful.
Psalm 25:10

All does not mean “all – except the paths I am walking in now”
or “nearly all” – except this especially difficult and painful path.

All must mean all.

So, your path with its unexplained sorrow or turmoil,
and mine with its sharp flints and briers –
and both our paths,
with their unexplained perplexity,
their sheer mystery –
they are His paths,
on which he will show Himself loving and faithful.
Nothing else; nothing less.
~Amy Carmichael–from You Are My Hiding Place

When Christ calls a man, He bids him come and die.
~Dietrich Bonhoeffer from “The Cost of Discipleship”

When I need to walk down the grassy slope to the barn from our house at night, I risk falling without carrying a light to shine ahead of me. In darkness, I stumble and trip, unable to see where the ground dips or rises unexpectedly when I take a step.

Jesus is pointing out the obvious to his disciples: travel is safest in the daylight. What is not as obvious to them is what lies ahead for Him and them.

Nor is it obvious to us as we try to see through a glass darkly.

We know only that all paths of the Lord are loving and faithful, even when full of potholes, thorns, obstacles and hazards.

Our belief in His Light and His Word is enough.
Nothing else; nothing less.

Lyrics:

In love, we find our way
With trust, hope remains

I’ll be here
Stay right here
Don’t you fear

In love, we find our way through the night
In love, we find our way

In love, we find a way
Your love leads the way

Tell me, where is the road
I can call my own,
That I left, that I lost
So long ago?
All these years I have wandered,
Oh when will I know
There’s a way, there’s a road
That will lead me home?

After wind, after rain,
When the dark is done,
As I wake from a dream
In the gold of day,
Through the air there’s a calling
From far away,
There’s a voice I can hear
That will lead me home.

Rise up, follow me,
Come away, is the call,
With the love in your heart
As the only song;
There is no such beauty
As where you belong;
Rise up, follow me,
I will lead you home.

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Go Help Your Dad

July 13, 2026 barnstormingblog1 Comment

We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind;
In the primal sympathy
Which having been must ever be;

Thanks to the human heart by which we live,
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.
~William Wordsworth from “Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood”

It was hard work, dying, harder
than anything he’d ever done.

Whatever brutal, bruising, back-
Breaking chore he’d forced himself

to endure—it was nothing
compared to this. And it took

so long. When would the job
be over? Who would call him

home for supper? And it was
hard for us (his children)—

all of our lives we’d heard
my mother telling us to go out,

help your father, but this
was work we could not do.

He was way out beyond us,
in a field we could not reach.
~Joyce Sutphen, “My Father, Dying” from Carrying Water to the Field: New and Selected Poems.

Thirty-one years ago today
we watched by your bedside as you labored,
readying yourself to die;
we could not help
other than to be there while you
slipped farther away from us.

This dying, the hardest work you had ever done:

harder than handling the plow behind a team of draft horses,
harder than confronting a broken, alcoholic and abusive father,
harder than slashing brambles and branches to clear the woods,
harder than digging out stumps, shoring up foundations, fixing roofs,
harder than shipping out to war,
harder than leaving behind a new wife after a week of marriage,
harder than leading a battalion to battle on Saipan, Tinian and Tarawa,
harder than returning home so changed there were no words,
harder than returning to school, working long hours to support family,
harder than running a farm with nothing but muscle and will power,
harder than coping with an ill wife, infertility, job conflict, discontent,
harder than building your own garage, your own house, a pool,
harder than ending your marriage, a second wife dying,
and returning home forgiven.

Dying was the hardest of all
as no amount of muscle or smarts could stop it from crushing you,
you, who could do nearly anything you put your mind and muscle to,
taking away the strength you relied on for nearly 73 years.

So as you lay helpless,
moaning,
struggling to breathe,
we knew most of your hard work was complete;
what was yet undone was not for us
to finish up for you.

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Gone to Feed the Roses

May 25, 2026 barnstormingblog1 Comment

Done are the toils and the wearisome marches,
Done is the summons of bugle and drum.
Softly and sweetly the sky overarches,
Shelt’ring a land where Rebellion is dumb.
Dark were the days of the country’s derangement,
Sad were the hours when the conflict was on,
But through the gloom of fraternal estrangement
God sent his light, and we welcome the dawn.
O’er the expanse of our mighty dominions,
Sweeping away to the uttermost parts,
Peace, the wide-flying, on untiring pinions,
Bringeth her message of joy to our hearts.

Ah, but this joy which our minds cannot measure,
What did it cost for our fathers to gain!
Bought at the price of the heart’s dearest treasure,
Born out of travail and sorrow and pain;
Born in the battle where fleet Death was flying,
Slaying with sabre-stroke bloody and fell;
Born where the heroes and martyrs were dying,
Torn by the fury of bullet and shell.
Ah, but the day is past; silent the rattle,
And the confusion that followed the fight.
Peace to the heroes who died in the battle,
Martyrs to truth and the crowning of Right!

Out of the blood of a conflict fraternal,
Out of the dust and dimness of death,
Burst into blossoms of glory eternal
Flowers that sweeten the world with the breath.
Flowers of charity, peace, and devotion
Bloom in the hearts that are empty of strife;
Love that is boundless and broad as the ocean
Leaps into beauty and fullness of life.
So, with the singing of paeans and chorals,
And with the flag flashing high in the sun,
Place on the graves of our heroes the laurels
Which their unfaltering valor has won!
~Paul Dunbar “Ode for Memorial Day”

I am not resigned to the shutting away
of loving hearts in the hard ground.
So it is, and so it will be,
for so it has been, time out of mind:

Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned
With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.
Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.
Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.

A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,
A formula, a phrase remains,—but the best is lost.
The answers quick and keen, the honest look,
the laughter, the love,—
They are gone. They are gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled
Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know.
But I do not approve.

More precious was the light in your eyes
than all the roses in the world.
Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;

Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.
~Edna St. Vincent Millay “Dirge Without Music”

Each Memorial Day weekend without fail ~

we gather with family, have lunch, reminisce,
and trek to a cemetery high above the Sound
to catch up with our relatives who lie there, still.
Some for nearly 120 years, some more recent,
some we knew and loved and miss every day,
others not so much, unknown to us
except on genealogy charts,
their long-ago names and dates and these stones
all that is left of them.

Seven generations together briefly,
above and below the ground,
age 6 through 200 years.

Yet we know each
(as we know for ourselves and others)
was tender and kind, even though flawed and broken,
was beautiful and strong, even though wrinkled and frail,
was hopeful and faithful, even though too soon in the ground.

We know this about them
as we know it about ourselves:
someday we too will feed roses,
the light in our eyes transformed into elegant swirls
emitting the fragrant scent of heaven.

No one asks if we approve.
Nor am I resigned to this but only know:
So it is, so it has been, so it will be.

Goin’ home, goin’ home,
I’m a goin’ home;
Quiet like, some still day,
I’m jes’ goin’ home.
It’s not far, jes’ close by,
Through an open door;
Work all done, care laid by,
gwine to fear no more.

Mother’s there ‘spectin’ me,
Father’s waitin’ too;
Lots o’folk gather’d there,
All the friends I knew.

Home, home,
I’m goin’ home!
Nothin’ lost, all’s gain,
No more fret nor pain,
No more stumblin’ on the way,
No more longin’ for the day,
Gwine to roam no more!

Mornin’ star lights the way,
Res’less dreams all done;
Shadows gone, break o’day,
Real life jes’ begun.

Dere’s no break, ain’t no end,
Jes’ a livin’ on;
Wide awake, with a smile.
Goin’ on and on.

Goin’ home, goin’ home,
I’m jes’ goin’ home.
It’s not far, jes’ close by,
Through an open door;
I’m jes’ goin’ home.
Goin’ home.

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Not One Will Know

May 11, 2026 barnstormingblogLeave a comment

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pools, singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white,

Robins will wear their feathery fire,
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,
If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.
~Sara Teasdale “War Time There will come soft rains”

Not much to me is yonder lane
Where I go every day;
But when there’s been a shower of rain
And hedge-birds whistle gay,
I know my lad that’s out in France
With fearsome things to see
Would give his eyes for just one glance
At our white hawthorn tree.

. . . .

Not much to me is yonder lane
Where he so longs to tread:
But when there’s been a shower of rain
I think I’ll never weep again
Until I’ve heard he’s dead.
~Siegfried Sassoon “The Hawthorn Tree”

…war spreading,
families dying,
the world in danger,
I walk the rocky hillside,
sowing clover…
~by Wendell Berry, “February 2, 1968”, from The Peace of Wild Things

The headlines talk about ceasefires on several fronts –
Ukraine/Russia, Israel/Gaza, Iran/U.S.
yet they seem unconvincing.

Still, with talks of peace, drone bombs fly and reap destruction,
their fire and smoke overpowering any negotiations to stop killings.

Modern war attacks remotely
but death is never remote.
It is real and devastating and final.

So the soft rains come,
like long-held-back tears,
trying to heal scarred land
and despairing hearts.

We keep planting for the future,
sowing hope in weary bloody ground.

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