drought – Page 4 – Barnstorming

A World Planted in Pennies

November 18, 2013 barnstormingblogLeave a comment

If you cultivate a healthy poverty and simplicity,
so that finding a penny will literally make your day,
then,
since the world is in fact planted in pennies,
you have with your poverty bought a lifetime of days.
—Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

Planted pennies
on days like today
are like raindrops,
just as plain and more than plentiful.
When I’m feeling dry and withered
I only need to look up into gray skies
and all the drops fill my bank
and hydrate my soul, lost in wilderness.
The desert flows, my thirst is quenched
by something so simple, so underwhelming,
so enriching
as pennies and raindrops.

Lenten Grace — Merciful Dew

February 25, 2013 barnstormingblog2 Comments

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.

Need a Hug

August 23, 2012 barnstormingblogLeave a comment

photo from iowacorn.org

“I’m still discovering, right up to this moment, that it is only by living completely in this world that one learns to have faith. I mean living unreservedly in life’s duties, problems, successes and failures, experiences and perplexities. In so doing, we throw ourselves completely into the arms of God.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer

There are plenty of mornings when we climb out of bed and know we need a hug to help us meet the obligations of the day. The troubles we face can seem so overwhelming, we can’t do it without help and encouragement. Without that support, it can be tempting to turn and run, or hunker and hide.

Instead some of us choose to battle through troubles alone, relying solely on the strength of our own feeble problem-solving skills, or our frail muscle power to persevere. Others rely on the seductive fickle embrace of the bottle or other addictions to get through the day.

Today as we drove through drought-stricken dust-stormed central Iowa, I sense the deep need of the people here for any kind of encouragement and hope as they watch their crops dry up on the stalk. 91 degrees with a strong hot wind from the south withers farms, families and faith.

Many here are being called to live through this time of trial wrapped within the arms of God. We are asked to gratefully surrender our supposed autonomy; He graciously surrendered Himself for us to sustain us eternally through times like these.

We need to throw ourselves into His arms before we too dry up and blow away like dusty chaff. He bathes us in living water, a drenching from above, soaking us through and through in His sacrificial embrace.

photo by Josh Scholten

Sliding on Slug Slime

July 25, 2012July 25, 2012 barnstormingblog1 Comment

“Girls are like slugs—they probably serve some purpose, but it’s hard to imagine what.”
― Bill Watterson, in Calvin and Hobbes

how many slugs can you count in this picture?

Summer rain, so desperately needed In much of our country, has been a frequent visitor to the Pacific Northwest. While corn is dying of thirst in the Midwest, we are overflowing with…slug slime and the lovely multicolored creatures that produce it. They appear out of the ground after a rain like seeds that plump and germinate miraculously overnight. The slug crop burgeons, and with it, oozy trails of glistening slug slime.

We live on a hill, which means I need to walk downhill to the barn. On one particular day, the path included a slug (or three) under each foot. That produces a certain memorable squish factor.

I’ve learned to don my rubber boots and just squash and slide. There will undoubtedly be more slugs to replace the flattened lost, like watching freeze-dried shrinky dinks spontaneously rehydrate.

I’d love to send the rain to those who need it most, but part of the deal includes the slugs must go too. With gallons of slime.

Of course, I’d miss them and their sticky icky gooiness. But it is time for someone else to figure out what their purpose is.

I’ve given up.

Unruffled Calm

July 2, 2012July 2, 2012 barnstormingblog1 Comment

321804_2530862863179_1536222393_o — photo by Josh Scholten

Surely there is something in the unruffled calm of nature that overawes our little anxieties and doubts: the sight of the deep-blue sky, and the clustering stars above seem to impart a quiet to the mind.
Jonathan Edwards

During times like the last couple weeks, nature has certainly been less than calm (wildfires, windstorms, drought, overbearing heat, flooding). Anxiety and worry seems an appropriate response in the face of such tragedy.

We have been spared in our part of the world, dealing only with unseasonably cool and wet weather, disrupting the growing season and hay harvest. Our anxieties, ever present nevertheless, are quite little compared to those elsewhere who have lost family members, their homes and all their belongings.

Even with that point of view, anxiety and doubt can take root like a weed in a garden patch– overwhelming, crowding out and impairing plants trying to be fruitful. The result is nothing of value grows–only unchecked proliferation of more weeds.

I need reminding to keep my anxiousness winnowed out. I don’t need a large scale natural disaster as impetus. I simply need to look up at the sky to know: I am not God and never will be. My worry helps no one, changes nothing, only hinders me from being fruitful.

Reaching for the unruffled calm overawes, imparting quiet to the mind, taking a deep breath and knowing He is in control.

A physician’s chronicle of faith, family and farm life in rural northwest Washington state.

I come from Pacific Northwest farmers going back four generations: the daughter of teachers, married to a son of farmers. We have raised three children who are making a difference in the world in their professional lives and as people of faith.

While keeping my eyes and heart open to the extraordinary things around me, I have worked over forty years as a family physician as well as a steward of the small farm we call home.

What I harvest in words or pictures finds its way here.
I welcome your messages and comments sent to emilypgibson@gmail.com

Listening to Others…

…whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. … And the God of peace will be with you. Philippians 4: 8 -9

What is my only comfort in life and in death? That I am not my own, but belong—body and soul, in life and in death—to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ.
~Heidelberg Catechism

Instructions for living a life:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.
~Mary Oliver

To do the useful thing, to say the courageous thing, to contemplate the beautiful thing: that is enough for one man’s life.
~ T.S. Eliot

A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.
~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

To live is so startling, it leaves little room for other occupations.
~Emily Dickinson

I believe in God as I believe that the Sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.
~ C. S. Lewis

Remember this. When people choose to withdraw far from a fire, the fire continues to give warmth, but they grow cold. When people choose to withdraw far from light, the light continues to be bright in itself but they are in darkness. This is also the case when people withdraw from God.
~ Augustine

Hello, sun in my face. Hello you who made the morning and spread it over the fields…Watch, now, how I start the day in happiness, in kindness.
~ Mary Oliver

The seed is in the ground. Now may we rest in hope while darkness does its work.
~ Wendell Berry

Nothing will sustain you more potently than the power to recognize in your humdrum routine the true poetry of life.~ Sir William Osler

But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts, and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.
~George Eliot’s final sentence in Middlemarch

If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.
~ E.B. White

Geese appear high over us, pass, and the sky closes. Abandon, as in love or sleep, holds them to their way, clear, in the ancient faith: what we need is here. And we pray, not for new earth or heaven, but to be quiet in heart, and in eye clear. What we need is here.~~ “The Wild Geese” Wendell Berry

Let it come, as it will, and don’t be afraid. God does not leave us comfortless, so let evening come.
~ Jane Kenyon from “Let Evening Come”

You can only come to the morning through the shadows.~ J.R.R. Tolkien

Look for what you notice but no one else sees. ~Rick Rubin

If you want to identify me, ask me not where I live, or what I like to eat, or how I comb my hair, but ask me what I am living for, in detail, ask me what I think is keeping me from living fully for the thing I want to live for. ~ Thomas Merton

This life therefore is not righteousness,
but growth in righteousness,
not health but healing,
not being but becoming,
not rest but exercise.
We are not yet
what we shall be,
but we are growing toward it.
The process is not finished
but it is going on.
This is not the end
but it is the road.
~Martin Luther

Ten times a day something happens to me like this – some strengthening throb of amazement – some good sweet empathic ping and swell. This is the first, the wildest and the wisest thing I know: that the soul exists and is built entirely out of attentiveness.
~ Mary Oliver

It is not your love that sustains the marriage —
but from now on, the marriage that sustains your love.
~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer

She has done what she could…
~Mark 14:8

What do you mean? Do you wish me a good morning, or mean that it is a good morning whether I want it or not; or that you feel good on this morning; or that it is a morning to be good on?~ J. R. R. Tolkien from The Hobbit

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