Tag: exuberance

Ridiculously Courageous

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So I can’t save the world— 
can’t save even myself, 
can’t wrap my arms around 
every frightened child, can’t 
foster peace among nations, 
can’t bring love to all who 
feel unlovable. 

So I practice opening my heart 
right here in this room and being gentle 
with my insufficiency. I practice 
walking down the street heart first. 
And if it is insufficient to share love, 
I will practice loving anyway. 
I want to converse about truth, 
about trust. I want to invite compassion 
into every interaction. 
One willing heart can’t stop a war. 
One willing heart can’t feed all the hungry. 
And sometimes, daunted by a task too big, 
I ask myself, What’s the use of trying? 
But today, the invitation is clear: 
to be ridiculously courageous in love. 
To open the heart like a lilac in May, 
knowing freeze is possible 
and opening anyway. 
To take love seriously. 
To give love wildly. 
To race up to the world 
as if I were a puppy, 
adoring and unjaded, 
stumbling on my own exuberance. 
To feel the shock of indifference, 
of anger, of cruelty, of fear, 
and stay open. To love as if it matters, 
as if the world depends on it. 
~Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer “Because” From The Unfolding

I can’t stop all the pain and suffering in the world or bring peace between angry nations.

But I can make a difference to those around me. It won’t stop a war or cure all diseases, but I can be ridiculously courageous in my compassion for others.

As we’ve been traveling for the past week, I’ve had many opportunities to treat others like I hope to be treated. I’ve tried to listen carefully, to express gratitude for the efforts others make. I try to smile more when I’m among strangers and meet their gaze, which takes the greatest courage of all for an introvert like me.

So I’ll take lessons from puppies I’ve known: to wag and wiggle and treat everyone as a best friend – with great joy and exuberance. It matters. Peace in the world depends on it.

photo by Brandon Dieleman
AI image created for this post

At Least I Twirl

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The quiet of dawn
the honesty of dawn
the peace of empty roads

I start out
after years of twirling
in place

As once before when I began without knowing…
~Lawrence Bridges from “Lake Hughes Road”

All at once I saw what looked like a Martian spaceship whirling towards me in the air. It flashed borrowed light like a propeller. Its forward motion greatly outran its fall. As I watched, transfixed, it rose, just before it would have touched a thistle, and hovered pirouetting in one spot, then twirled on and finally came to rest. I found it in the grass; it was a maple key, a single winged seed from a pair.

Hullo.

I threw it into the wind and it flew off again, bristling with animate purpose, not like a thing dropped or windblown…

O maple key, I thought, I must confess I thought, o welcome, cheers.

And the bell under my ribs rang a true note, a flourish as of blended horns, clarion, sweet, and making a long dim sense I will try at length to explain. Flung is too harsh a word for the rush of the world. Blown is more like it, but blown by a generous, unending breath. That breath never ceases to kindle, exuberant, abandoned; frayed splinters spatter in every direction and burgeon into flame. And now when I sway to a fitful wind, alone and listing, I will think, maple key. When I shake your hand or meet your eyes I will think, two maple keys. If I am a maple key falling, at least I can twirl.
~Annie Dillard from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

Today’s late spring morning sun woke me early to streaming light
poured out on quilt and blankets.

Curious, I head out to see what’s happening with the world.
The road stretches empty for miles east and west

Thus kindled, exuberant, unleashed,
I am blown by dawn’s gentle breezes,
so inspired to twirl in place in my hilltop celebration,
as I’m pulled to the ground, settling in and buried
for what will come next.

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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As Trees Undress

barnstormingblog4 Comments

leaf117182

 

blueberryleaf101318

 

maplewindow

 

Everybody here knows what you mean
when you say, “The colors,” especially now,

the second day in October. They know
you’re talking about leaves turning away

from green — as in the yellows of elm and cottonwood,
the red-orange maple, the purple-red ash and aspen gold.

But only because we live here. Someplace else, where a year
is not so divided by seasons, colors

means something else — as in a knitter’s choice of skeins,
a budding artist’s paints for her work

in progress, a chef’s arrangement of aubergines
nestled against purple baby potatoes

and yams as bright as, yes, the turning leaves.
Colors — as in every shade surrounding

the second day of October, the day this year
when my mother would have turned eighty

and I remember that she loved palette words:
ecru,
chartreuse,
fuchsia,
and all the brightest reds
of the turning leaves.
~Monica Sharman, “The Colors” from Monica Sharman Editing

 

morning117182

 

morning117183

 

 

I’m wistful about the flame-out of color happening now – autumn leaves have been so exorbitantly boisterous and vibrant that watching the trees undressed by the wind feels unseemly and scandalous.  They seem more naked than usual because their costuming has been so extravagantly rich for weeks.

I’m depleted of exuberant words to describe the landscape so will just settle in behind my retinas and enjoy what’s left for dessert.  I’m satiated and ready for a nap.

Through the deep of winter, as I close my eyes,  visions of reds and golds and oranges will continue to dance merrily in my head.

 

 

oaklane117182

 

morning117186

Their Exuberant Souls

barnstormingblog3 Comments

summergrass

 

begoniabasket1

 

Whatever he needs, he has or doesn’t
have by now. 
Whatever the world is going to do to him
it has started to do… 

…Whatever is 
stored in his heart, he can use, now. 
Whatever he has laid up in his mind
he can call on.  What he does not have
he can lack…

…Whatever his exuberant soul
can do for him, it is doing right now…

…Everything that’s been placed in him will come out, now, the contents of a trunk
unpacked and lined up on a bunk in the underpine light.
~Sharon Olds from “The Summer-Camp Bus Pulls Away from the Curb”

 

vividred

 

wwugrass2

 

orangepetals

 

This is the season for graduations, when children move into the adult world and don’t look back.

As a parent, as an educator, as a mentor within church and community, and after nearly thirty years as a college health physician witnessing this transition many times over, I can’t help but be wistful about what I may have left undone and unsaid with the generation about to launch.

In their moments of vulnerability, did I pack enough love into those exuberant hearts so he or she can pull it out when it is most needed?

When our three children traveled the world after their graduations, moving way beyond the fenced perimeter of our little farm, I trust they left well prepared.

As a school board member, I watched students, parents and teachers work diligently together in their preparation for that graduation day, knowing the encompassing love behind each congratulatory hand shake.

When another batch of our church family children say goodbye, I remember holding them in the nursery, listening to their joyful voices as I played piano accompaniment in Sunday School, feeding them in innumerable potlucks over the years.  I pray we have fed them well in every way with enough spiritual food to stick to their ribs in the “thin” and hungry times.

When hundreds of my student/patients move on each year beyond our university and college health clinic, I pray for their continued emotional growth buoyed by plenty of resilience when the road inevitably gets bumpy.

I believe I know what is stored in the hearts of graduates because I, among many others, helped them pack it full of love.   Only they will know the time to unpack what is within when their need arises.

 

yellowpetals

 

farmroad

 

wwugrass

 

A Flash of Exuberance

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photo by Josh Scholten

The point of the dragonfly’s terrible lip, the giant water bug, birdsong, or the beautiful dazzle and flash of sunlighted minnows, is not that it all fits together like clockwork–for it doesn’t particularly, not even inside the goldfish bowl—but that it all flows so freely wild, like the creek, that it all surges in such a free, fringed tangle. Freedom is the world’s water and weather, the world’s nourishment freely given, its soil and sap: and the creator loves exuberance.
~Annie Dillard from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

photo by Josh Scholten

photo by Josh Scholten

photo by Josh Scholten