Tag: eternal

We Know in Our Bones…

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We all know that something is eternal.
And it ain’t houses and it ain’t names,
and it ain’t earth, and it ain’t even the stars
. . . everybody knows in their bones that something is eternal,
and that something has to do with human beings.
All the greatest people ever lived have been telling us that
for five thousand years and yet you’d be surprised
how people are always losing hold of it.
There’s something way down deep
that’s eternal about every human being.
We can only be said to be alive in those moments
when our hearts are conscious of our treasures.
Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it –
every, every minute?
~Thornton Wilder, quotes from “Our Town”

The words from the stage play “Our Town”,
written nearly 90 years ago still ring true:
at that time our country was crushed under the Great Depression.
Though now most people are more economically secure than the 1930’s, many of us are emotionally bankrupt.

Our country staggers under a Great Depression of the spirit~
despite greater connection electronically (often too much…),
many of us are more isolated from community, family, and faith.

We need reminding to be conscious of our many treasures and abundance, never forgetting to care of others in greater need.

God, in His everlasting recognition of our eternal need of Him,
cares for us, even as we turn our faces away from Him.

We all feel His Love, deep in our bones.

So I search the soil of this life, this farm, this faith
to find what yearns to grow, to bloom, to fruit,
to be harvested to share with others.

My deep gratitude goes to you who visit here
and to those who let me know
the small and the good I share with you
makes a difference in your day.
I am beyond thankful you are here, listening.

Many blessings in your own thanksgiving this week,
Emily

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You See, I Am Alive

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I am a feather on the bright sky

I am the blue horse that runs in the plain

I am the fish that rolls, shining, in the water

I am the shadow that follows a child

I am the evening light, the lustre of meadows

I am an eagle playing with the wind

I am a cluster of bright beads

I am the farthest star

I am the cold of dawn

I am the roaring of the rain

I am the glitter on the crust of the snow

I am the long track of the moon in a lake

I am a flame of four colors

I am a deer standing away in the dusk

I am a field of sumac and the pomme blanche

I am an angle of geese in the winter sky

I am the hunger of a young wolf

I am the whole dream of these things
You see, I am alive, I am alive
~N. Scott Momaday from “The Delight Song of Tsoai-talee” from In the Presence of the Sun: Stories and Poems

I wonder if, in the dark night of the sea, the octopus dreams of me.
~N. Scott Momaday

photo by Nate Gibson

If I am brutally honest with myself after my recent cardiac brush with my mortality, one of my worst fears is to have lived on this earth for a handful of decades and then pass away forgotten, inconsequential, having left behind no legacy of significance whatsoever. 

I’m well aware it is self-absorbed to feel the need to leave a mark, but a search for purpose and meaning lasting beyond my time here provides new momentum for each day. The forgetting can happen so fast. 

Most people know little about their great-great-grandparents, if they even know their names. A mere four generations, a century, renders us dust, not just in flesh, but in memory as well. There may be a yellowed photograph in a box somewhere, perhaps a tattered postcard or letter written in elegant script, but the essence of this person is long lost and forgotten.

We owe it to our descendants to write down the stories about who we were while we lived on this earth. We need to share why we lived, for whom we lived, for what we lived.

I suspect, although I try every day to record some part of who I am, it will be no different with me and those who come after me.  Whether or not we are remembered by great-great grandchildren or become part of the dreams of creatures in the depths of the seas:

we are just dust here and there is no changing that.

Good thing this is not our only home.  
Good thing we are more than mere memory and dreams. 
Good thing the river of life flows into
an eternity that transcends good works
or long memories or legacies left behind. 
Good thing we are loved that much and always will be.
You see, we are alive, we are alive,
forever and ever, Amen.

I remember your lectures, Professor Scott Momaday, now nearly two years after you passed from this earth at age 89 – your voice, your stories and your poetry live on.

You are alive. You are alive…

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How Small a Thing

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Again I resume the long
lesson: how small a thing
can be pleasing, how little
in this hard world it takes
to satisfy the mind
and bring it to its rest.

Within the ongoing havoc
the woods this morning is
almost unnaturally still.
Through stalled air, unshadowed
light, a few leaves fall
of their own weight.

                                       The sky
is gray. It begins in mist
almost at the ground
and rises forever. The trees
rise in silence almost
natural, but not quite,
almost eternal, but
not quite.

                      What more did I
think I wanted? Here is
what has always been.
Here is what will always
be. Even in me,
the Maker of all this
returns in rest, even
to the slightest of His works,
a yellow leaf slowly
falling, and is pleased.
~Wendell Berry “VII” from This Day

What more did I think I wanted?

What always has been and always will be:

Until I’m not able to hold on in the wind and rain,
may I be a slight spot of light
in this dark and bleak world.

As I let go, when the time to finish comes,
I know my Maker’s smile
means it was all worthwhile…

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A Yearning for Solace

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At once whatever happened starts receding.
—Philip Larkin

Last night I walked the woods
lit by the final moon of the month.

Days don’t count here
beneath the centuries-old pines

where my grandmother took her solace
on hard farm days, passing up

the washboard or jam-making
for the eternal whooshing

of the forest as much serenity
as yearning.
~Dave Malone “Walk in the Woods” from Tornado Drill

Over my seventy years, I’ve had the opportunity to walk through woods in different parts of the world –
from my childhood home near Puget Sound,
to the Bay Area in California,
from central Africa above Lake Tanganyika
to the forests of Northern Ireland
and the coastline of Vancouver Island.

Here on the farm, we have some dense woods that our grandson has designated “the haunted forest” because of its many downed trees from windstorms. He is convinced BigFoot lives somewhere in the dense underbrush, and he may well be right.

During a walk in the woods, no matter where it may be, I find solace in a world where there is teeming life thriving under the ground, at eye level, and overhead. I feel a palpable vibrance with each step I take, while experiencing sounds and smells I find nowhere else.

So, I too leave behind the work of the day – the laundry, the cleaning and cooking – if only for an hour or so. And once again, I sync my own heartbeat to the pulse of the mysterious life I find, ongoing and eternal, in the woods.

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What Wondrous Love: Something Way Down Deep

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We all know that something is eternal. 
And it ain’t houses and it ain’t names, 
and it ain’t earth, and it ain’t even the stars 
. . . everybody knows in their bones that something is eternal, 
and that something has to do with human beings. 
All the greatest people ever lived have been telling us that 
for five thousand years and yet you’d be surprised 
how people are always losing hold of it. 
There’s something way down deep 
that’s eternal about every human being.
~Thornton Wilder, from “Our Town”

Love bade me welcome. Yet my soul drew back
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning,
If I lacked any thing.

A guest, I answered, worthy to be here:
Love said, You shall be he.
I the unkind, ungrateful? Ah my dear,
I cannot look on thee.
Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,
Who made the eyes but I?

Truth Lord, but I have marred them: let my shame
Go where it doth deserve.
And know you not, says Love, who bore the blame?
My dear, then I will serve.
You must sit down, says Love, and taste my meat:
So I did sit and eat.
~George Herbert “Love III”

Write as if you were dying.
At the same time, assume you write for an audience consisting solely of terminal patients.
That is, after all, the case.
~Annie Dillard from “Write Till You Drop”

I began to write regularly after September 11, 2001 because more than on any previous day, it became obvious to me I was dying, though more slowly than the thousands who vanished that day in fire and ash, their voices obliterated with their bodies into eternity.  

Nearly each day since, while I still have voice and a new dawn to greet, I speak through my fingers to others dying with and around me.

We are, after all, terminal patients — some of us more prepared than others to move on — as if our readiness had anything to do with the timing.

Each day I get a little closer to the eternal, but I write in order to feel a little more ready.  Each day I want to detach just a little bit, leaving a trace of my voice behind.  Eventually, through unmerited grace, so much of me will be left on the page there won’t be anything or anyone left to do the typing.

There is no time or word to waste.

Listen, I tell you a mystery: 
We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed— in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet.
1 Corinthians 15: 51-52

This Lenten season I reflect on the words of the 19th century southern spiritual hymn “What Wondrous Love is This”

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The Sunrise Shall Visit Us: A Column of Light

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Gabriel disembodied,
pure column of light.

Humble Mary, receiving the word
that the baby she carries is God’s.

Not good news, not news, even,
but rather the rightly enormous word,

Annunciation. She knew
they were chosen. She knew

he would suffer, as the chosen child
always suffers. Perhaps she knew

the dearest wish, mercy,
would be ever-inchoate,

like Gabriel: light that carries
possibility, illuminates,

but that can promise nothing but itself.
~Elizabeth Alexander “Tanner’s Annunciation”

Henry Ossawa Tanner “Annunciation”

…to bear in her womb
Infinite weight and lightness; to carry
in hidden, finite inwardness,
nine months of Eternity; to contain
in slender vase of being,
the sum of power –
in narrow flesh,
the sum of light.

Then bring to birth,
push out into air, a Man-child
needing, like any other,
milk and love –

but who was God.
~Denise Levertov from “Annunciation”

As the wise men of old brought gifts
   guided by a star
      to the humble birthplace

of the god of love,
   the devils
      as an old print shows
retreated in confusion.

What could a baby know
      of gold ornaments
or frankincense and myrrh,
   of priestly robes
      and devout genuflections?

But the imagination
   knows all stories
      before they are told
and knows the truth of this one
   past all defection

The rich gifts
   so unsuitable for a child
      though devoutly proffered,
stood for all that love can bring.

 The men were old
      how could they know
of a mother’s needs
   or a child’s
      appetite?

But as they kneeled
   the child was fed.
      They saw it
and
   gave praise!

A miracle
had taken place,
   hard gold to love,
a mother’s milk!
   before
      their wondering eyes.

The ass brayed
   the cattle lowed.
      It was their nature.

All men by their nature give praise.
   It is all
      they can do.

The very devils
   by their flight give praise.
      What is death,
beside this?

Nothing. The wise men
      came with gifts
and bowed down
   to worship
      this perfection.
~William Carlos Williams “The Gift”

The uncontained contained
infinite made finite
humble made worthy
a Deliverer delivered
hungry sated on mother’s milk
unsuitable made perfect
darkness illuminated with possibilities
the eternal here and now

How can you measure the love of a mother,
Or how can you write down a baby’s first cry?
Candlelight, angel light, firelight and starglow
Shine on his cradle till breaking of dawn.
Gloria, gloria in excelsis Deo!
Angels are singing; the Christ child is born.
Shepherds and wise men will kneel and adore him,
Seraphim round him their vigil will keep;
Nations proclaim him their Lord and their Saviour,
But Mary will hold him and sing him to sleep.
Find him at Bethlehem laid in a manger:
Christ our Redeemer asleep in the hay.
Godhead incarnate and hope of salvation:
A child with his mother that first Christmas Day.
~John Rutter – words and music

Advent 2023 theme
…because of the tender mercy of our God,
whereby the sunrise shall visit us from on high 
to give light to those who sit in darkness
and in the shadow of death,
to guide our feet into the way of peace.
Luke 1: 78-79 from Zechariah’s Song

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Born to Witness What I Can

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(Laryx lyallis)

A few weeks after my mother died,
I dreamed that she was waiting for me
in a ravine of spring-green larches.
There was no worry in her eyes, and
she sat there with her knees drawn up,
content to be in the filtered sunlight.
Funny, because she never lived
among larch trees–my mom grew up
on an orange grove and raised us
in the Douglas fir. I do not live
among them either, apart from my rare
visits to the North Cascades. But when
I’m there, as now I am, sitting barefoot
on Cutthroat Pass among amber larches
bathing every bowl and basin,
I have a sense that she’s okay,
and that I am too, born to witness what
I can within this green and golden world
which still persists, with or without us,
but mostly with us, I’ve come to believe.
Things and people pass away–
but that’s when they become themselves.
There’s a new heaven, a new earth,
around and about us–and not much
different from the better parts of the old.
We don’t live there very often,
but when we do, eternity
ignites in a moment, light in the larches
that shines. And shines.
~Paul J. Willis “Sustainability” from Between Midnight and Dawn

We are promised all will be new.

When I imagine a new heaven and a new earth, I can only think of the moments in my life when eternity has been ignited momentarily – the light shining just so – when I realize what it will be like forever, not just for a moment.

Forever is more than I can fathom; we were put here to witness this green and golden world, while being loved by its infinite eternal Creator.

He will wipe every tear from their eyes. 
And there shall be no more death neither sorrow nor crying,
Neither shall there be any more pain,
For the former things are passed away. (Revelation 21:4)

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If You Must…

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My hand, my arm,
make sweeping circles.
Dust climbs the ladder of light.
For this infernal, endless chore,
for these eternal seeds of rain:
Thank you. For dust.
~Marilyn Nelson from “Dusting” from Magnificat

It comes equally to us all,
and makes us all equal when it comes.
The ashes of an oak in the chimney
are no epitaph of that oak,
to tell me how high or how large that was;
it tells me not what flocks it sheltered while it stood,
nor what men it hurt when it fell †
and when a whirlwind hath blown
the dust of the churchyard into the church,
and the man sweeps out
the dust of the church into the churchyard,
who will undertake
to sift those dusts again…
~John Donne from “The Equality of Death”

Dust if you must, but wouldn’t it be better
To paint a picture, or write a letter,
Bake a cake, or plant a seed;
Ponder the difference between want and need?

Dust if you must, but there’s not much time,
With rivers to swim, and mountains to climb;
Music to hear, and books to read;
Friends to cherish, and life to lead.

Dust if you must, but the world’s out there
With the sun in your eyes, and the wind in your hair;
A flutter of snow, a shower of rain,
This day will not come around again.

Dust if you must, but bear in mind,
Old age will come and it’s not kind.
And when you go (and go you must)
You, yourself, will make more dust.
~Rose Milligan “Dust If You Must”

…we all look the same in our beginning
and again when the end comes…
we are sifted through His hands,
blown on with His breath,
bled on in His sacrifice–

As varied as we are now in life,
our bodies in death melt to a dustiness
made manifest in His image:
dust motes sprung to life forever.

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Fallen Like the Trees

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I want to praise things
that cannot last. The scarlet and orange leaves
are already gone, blown down by a cold rain,
crushed and trampled. They rise again in leaf meal
and wood smoke. The Great Blue Heron’s returned to the pond,
settles in the reeds like a steady flame.
Geese cut a wedge out of the sky, drag the gray days
behind them like a skein of old wool.
I want to praise everything brief and finite.
~Barbara Crooker from her poem “Equinox” in Selected Poems

A gracious Sabbath stood here while they stood
Who gave our rest a haven.
Now fallen, they are given
To labor and distress.
These times we know much evil, little good
To steady us in faith
And comfort when our losses press
Hard on us, and we choose,
In panic or despair or both,
To keep what we will lose.

For we are fallen like the trees, our peace
Broken, and so we must
Love where we cannot trust,
Trust where we cannot know,
And must await the wayward-coming grace
That joins living and dead,
Taking us where we would not go–
Into the boundless dark.
When what was made has been unmade
The Maker comes to His work.
~Wendell Berry “Sabbaths, II”

Things: simply lasting, then
failing to last: water, a blue heron’s
eye, and the light passing
between them: into light all things
must fall, glad at last to have fallen.
~Jane Kenyon, from “Things” in Collected Poems

I know I am brief and finite,
leaning more and more from the prevailing winds,
wobbly throughout each storm.

Things I wish would last
don’t, so I hold them lightly in love.
I must trust God’s Light passes
through the darkness,
an illuminated pathway
I will follow,
even when falling, even when finite and failing
until I become Light myself.

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An Accident of Light

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A sudden light transfigures a trivial thing,
a weather-vane,
a wind-mill,
a winnowing flail,
the dust in the barn door;
a moment,
– -and the thing has vanished, because it was pure effect;
but it leaves a relish behind it,
a longing that the accident may happen again.
~Walter Pater from “The Renaissance”

The accident of light does happen, again and again, but when I least expect it.  If I’m not ready for it, in a blink, it can be gone and I have lost it.

Yet in that moment, everything is changed and transformed forever.  The thing itself, trivial and transient becomes something other, merely because of how it is illuminated.

So am I, trivial and transient, lit from outside myself with a light that ignites within. I’m transfigured by a love and sacrifice unexpected and undeserved.

I need to be ready for it.

Through love to light!
Oh, wonderful the way
That leads from darkness to the perfect day!
From darkness and from sorrow of the night
To morning that comes singing o’er the sea.
Through love to light!
Through light, O God, to thee,
Who art the love of love, the eternal light of light!
~Elaine Hagenberg

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