There is an arid Pleasure
As different from Joy
As Frost is different from Dew
Like element—are they
~Emily Dickinson
Tag: dew
No Shame to Weep
Don’t be ashamed to weep; ’tis right to grieve. Tears are only water, and flowers, trees, and fruit cannot grow without water. But there must be sunlight also. A wounded heart will heal in time, and when it does, the memory and love of our lost ones is sealed inside to comfort us.”
~ Brian Jacques
The end-of-summer farm is silently sobbing in its loss; tears of fall, from fog, mist and drizzle, cling to everything everywhere. I arrive back in the house from barn chores soaked through from walking through the weeping. ‘Tis no shame to be drenched in such sorrow.
The memory of summer is pressed deep in our grieving its passing, our wounds healed by Light that illumines our tears.
We are never left comfortless and weep in the knowing.
A Mere Mist
Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.
James 4:14
…Noticing
a spider’s web under the olive trees
splendidly hung with early drops, already
vanishing up the vortex of the air
…a heaven-sent refreshment? or a curtain
cutting out the light?
And I must ask it now
(small moisture that I am)under the sun of God’s great grace on me:
Which am I–dew, or fog?
~Luci Shaw from “…for you are a mist“
To be mist that clarifies
rather than opacifies,
that reflects
rather than absorbs,
that replenishes
rather than depletes~
to evaporate within His warmth,
glistening with descended grace.
Lenten Grace — We are All Sojourners
“I alternate between thinking of the planet as home
– dear and familiar stone hearth and garden –
and as a hard land of exile in which we are all sojourners.”
~Annie Dillard from Teaching a Stone To Talk
I find it very difficult to admit I am as temporary as a dew drop on a leaf, a mere mirrored reflection of this incredible place where I dwell. I want it to last, I want it etched in stone, I want to be remembered beyond the next generation, I want not to be lost to the ether.
Yet I, like everyone, am sojourner only, not settled and certainly not lasting. As a garden flourishes and then dies back, so will I. This is exile in the wilderness until I am led back home.
Home. Really home.
Forever etched on His heart.
Forever dwelling within His Hand.
Lenten Grace — Merciful Dew
He hath abolished the old drought
And rivers run where all was dry,
The field is sopp’d with merciful dew
He hath put a new song in my mouth.
~Gerard Manley Hopkins
When I have no voice left, He gives me a song I can still sing.
When I run dry, He replenishes.
When I wither, His merciful dew
restores and readies me for a new day.
I am stopped astonished,
sopped and mopping up,
spilling over in His grace.
Advent Sings: Words Descend Like Dew
Listen, you heavens, and I will speak;
hear, you earth, the words of my mouth.
2 Let my teaching fall like rain
and my words descend like dew,
like showers on new grass,
like abundant rain on tender plants.
Deuteronomy 32:1-2 in the Song of Moses
God’s people had been wandering homeless in the desert for years before they were allowed to enter the Promised Land. To them, there was great hope in the possibility of moisture coming from heaven as the bountiful gift Moses describes in an analogy for his words and teaching. The dew of heaven becomes the representation of God’s all-encompassing Spirit and gift of grace in this and other Old Testament scripture passages.
Ultimately, God’s Word descends like dew from heaven in the form of a newborn baby in a manger come to dwell among us. Like dew, He comes at no cost to us, freely, in the night, into the darkness, as a gentle covering of all things dry and dying, to refresh, to restore, to soften, to make what was withered fruitful once again. We live again because of the Word quickening within us.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning. 3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. 4 In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
John 1
Barnstorming 