Tag: detail

God is in the Details

barnstormingblog2 Comments

Thanksgiving starts with thanks for mere survival,
Just to have made it through another year
With everyone still breathing. But we share
So much beyond the outer roads we travel;
Our interweavings on a deeper level,
The modes of life embodied souls can share,
The unguessed blessings of our being here,
The warp and weft that no one can unravel.

So I give thanks for our deep coinherence
Inwoven in the web of God’s own grace,
Pulling us through the grave and gate of death.
I thank him for the truth behind appearance,
I thank him for his light in every face,
I thank him for you all, with every breath.
~Malcolm Guite “Thanksgiving: A Sonnet”

Poetry is what you find
in the dirt in the corner,

overhear on the bus,
God in the details,

the only way to get from here to there.
Poetry (and now my voice is rising)

is not all love, love, love,
and I’m sorry the dog died.

Poetry (here I hear myself loudest)
is the human voice,

and are we not of interest to each other?
~Elizabeth Alexander from “Ars Poetica #100: I Believe”

photo of old Dylan by Nate Gibson

I started writing over twenty years ago as a way to explain who I am for descendants I will never know. I am beyond grateful for those of you who have shown an interest in what I share, whether photography, poetry or prose.

What you find here is my voice of thankfulness for the way God somehow finds His way into the details of my days – especially into the dustiest corners.

I try to preserve what challenges, shapes and molds me:
the beauty I witness in sunrises and sunsets,
this farm that blooms and often bears unexpected fruit,
the animals, those who live here and those passing through,
my mistakes and missteps, buoyed by a loving God,
my family and good folks surrounding me.

I want to say thank you on this Thanksgiving Day to each one of you who take a few minutes from your day to follow my stories. Some of you have become precious friends despite our never having met.

I am honored to hear from you whenever you have a moment.
Your details matter to me, and especially to God.

So when will I hear you tell your story?

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Whose Beauty is Past Change

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Glory be to God for dappled things –
   For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
      For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
   Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and plough;
      And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;
   Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
      With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
                                Praise him.
~Gerard Manley Hopkins “Pied Beauty”

The unconventional and unnoticed beauty,
freckled, spare and strange–
helps me feel beautiful too. 
The interplay of light and shadow
within every moment of our existence,
some moments darker than others,
some brilliant and dazzling.

I try to find the sweet and sour,
knowing I’m capturing my own dappled essence – 
a reflection of the Fathering that loves us
even in our fickleness,
who possibly could know how?

There is no perfection outside of Him;
His reflected beauty, His transfigured face
has no uniformity yet is past changing.

We give Him glory in our imperfection,
through defects and blemishes which
only He can make whole.

Who knows why He does this?
Yet He does.

Glory be.

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The Good Parts

barnstormingblog4 Comments

Once, in the cool blue middle of a lake,
up to my neck in that most precious element of all,

I found a pale-gray, curled-upwards pigeon feather
floating on the tension of the water

at the very instant when a dragonfly,
like a blue-green iridescent bobby pin,

hovered over it, then lit, and rested.
That’s all.

I mention this in the same way
that I fold the corner of a page

in certain library books,
so that the next reader will know

where to look for the good parts.
~Tony Hoagland, “Field Guide” from Unincorporated Persons in the Late Honda Dynasty.

photo by Josh Scholten
dragonfly wings photo by Josh Scholten

…God’s attention is indeed fixed on the little things. But this is not because God is a great cosmic cop, eager to catch us in minor transgressions, but simply because God loves us–loves us so much that the divine presence is revealed even in the meaningless workings of daily life. It is in the ordinary, the here-and-now, that God asks us to recognize that the creation is indeed refreshed like dew-laden grass that is “renewed in the morning” or to put it in more personal and also theological terms, “our inner nature is being renewed everyday”.
~Kathleen Norris from The Quotidian Mysteries

Whether it is in a favorite book of fiction or poetry,
or from the Word itself,
or as I keep my eyes open to the daily wonders around me,
I feel compelled to share the good parts with those of you who visit here.

It is easy to be ground to a pulp by the little things:
waiting in line too long, heavy traffic,
an insistent alarm clock,
a mouse (or more) in the house,
miserable spring-time pollen allergies,
wearing a face mask though we no longer want to. 

God is in the details, from dew drop to tear drop and even to nose snot.  His ubiquitous presence is in all things, large and small, not just the “good parts” of His exquisite grandeur.  

It isn’t all elegance from our limited perspective, but still, they are all good parts worthy of His divine attention.

The time has come to be refreshed and renewed by His care revealed in the tiniest ways.

He has my attention and I hope I now have yours.

A new book from Barnstorming – available to order here

A Miracle of Shade and Light

barnstormingblog3 Comments

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How often do we miss the fainter note
Or fail to see the more exquisite hue,
Blind to the tiny streamlet at our feet,
Eyes fixed upon some other, further view.
What chimes of harmonies escape our ears,
How many rainbows must elude our sight,
We see a field but do not see the grass,
Each blade a miracle of shade and light.
How then to keep the greater end in eye
And watch the sunlight on the distant peak,
And yet not tread on any leaf of love,
Nor miss a word the eager children speak?
Ah, what demand upon the narrow heart,
To seek the whole, yet not ignore the part.
~Philip Britts  “Sonnet 1”

 

 

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We are born nearly blinded with our sole focus on our hunger to be filled and held.  As we grow, our focus sharpens to marvel and fall in love with those who feed and nurture us.

The world is almost too much to take in — a miracle of shade and light.

With age, we scan for detail within the whole.  Time’s a wasting (and so are we) if we don’t capture it all with the lenses of our eyes.

Too soon the end of life, when once again our vision blurs and the world fades from view. We hunger again to be filled and held.

Heaven will be almost too much to take in – our hearts full to bursting.

 

 

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Submerged Day After Day

barnstormingblog2 Comments

oakleaf11171

 

morning1110173

 

If God makes the world, populates the world,
infuses the world with every kind of ethical meaning,
then the signature of God is the beauty of the world.
Why even imagine a mystical experience when we’re born into one,
submerged in one, day after day?
~Marilynne Robinson from Image Journal

 

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I’m reminded,
drowning in a morass of tiny details,
trying to make sense
of the incomprehensible~
life sometimes spread so thin
it’s punched with gaping holes
filled only by God’s breath.
This is Him
staking His claim
by signing His name
on our hearts.
There is beauty in the world
from our insides out,
submerged in
every hole of nothingness,
every connecting thread
every letter He has ever written
reminding us we are His.

 

 

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