Tag: Faith

The Gate Flung Open

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To young friends on their wedding day

Today is the day the pasture gate is flung open
after a long winter; you are let out on grass
to a world vast and green and lush
beyond your wildest imaginings.

You run leaping and bounding,
hair flying in the wind, heels kicked up
in the freedom to form together
a binding trust of covenant love.

You share with us your rich feast today,
as grace grows like grass
that stretches to eternity yet bound safely
within the fence rows of your vows.

When rains come, as hard times always do,
and this spring day feels far removed,
when covered in the mud or frost or drought of life,
know your promises were made to withstand any storm.

Even though leaning and breaking, as fences tend to do,
they remind you to whom you belong and where home is,
anchoring you if you lose your way,
pointing you back to the gate you bounded through.

Once there you will remember the gift of today:
a community of faith and our God blessed
this opened gate, these fences, and most of all your love
as you feast with joy on the richness of His spring pasture.
2013

outongrass

Blossom Cheeks

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Lined with light
the twigs are stubby arrows.
A gilded trunk writhes
Upward from the roots,
from the pit of the black tentacles.

In the book of spring
a bare-limbed torso
is the first illustration.

Light teaches the tree
to beget leaves,
to embroider itself all over
with green reality,
until summer becomes
its steady portrait
and birds bring their lifetime
to the boughs.

Then even the corpse
light copies from below
may shimmer, dreaming it feels
the cheeks of blossom.
~May Swenson “April Light”

 

Only a week ago we waited
on corpse light~
a mysterious illumination that came alive
on a bright Sabbath morning,
taking bare stubs of people.
begetting them green,
bursting them into blossom,
their cheeks pink with life,
in promise of faithful fruitfulness.

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Prepare for Joy: Keep An Open Mind

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I think there is no suffering greater than
what is caused by the doubts of those who want to believe.
I know what torment this is, but I can only see it,
in myself anyway, as the process by which faith is deepened.
What people don’t realize is how much religion costs.
They think faith is a big electric blanket,
when of course it is the cross.
It is much harder to believe than not to believe.
If you feel you can’t believe, you must at least do this:
keep an open mind.
Keep it open toward faith,
keep wanting it,
keep asking for it,
and leave the rest to God.
~Flannery O’Connor from The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O’Connor

 

And those are called blessed who make the effort to remain open-hearted.  Nothing that comes from God, even the greatest miracle, can be proven like 2 x 2 = 4. It touches one; it is only seen and grasped when the heart is open and the spirit purged of self. Then it awakens faith.  … the heart is not overcome by faith, there is no force or violence there, compelling belief by rigid certitudes.  What comes from God touches gently, comes quietly; does not disturb freedom; leads to quiet, profound, peaceful resolve within the heart.
~Romano Guardini

 

On my doubting days, days too frequent and tormenting,
I remember the risen Christ
reaching out to place Thomas’ hand in His wounds,
gently guiding Thomas to His reality,
so it becomes Thomas’ reality.
His open wounds called
to Thomas’ mind and heart,
His flesh and blood
awakening a hidden faith
by a simple touch.

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Where We Wander

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whiteviolet

And when music comes to us
With its heavenly beauty
It brings us desolation
For when we hear it
We half remember
That lost native country

We dimly remember the fields
Their fragrant windswept clover
The birdsongs in the orchards
The wild white violets in the moss
By the transparent streams

And shining at the heart of it
Is the longed-for beauty
Of the One who waits for us
Who will always wait for us
In those radiant meadows

Yet also came to live with us
And wanders where we wander.
~Anne Porter from “Music”

 

as cold days linger in interminable gray
when energy wanes
sleep as refuge
instead of restoration

to wander this wintry path
alongside the One who
readies us for radiance
of bird song and sleigh bell frog chorus

a remembrance
of a promise kept~
this is not all there is

dandysunset10s

Gone Underground

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…times of dormancy and deep rest are essential to all living things. Despite all appearances, of course, nature is not dead in winter–it has gone underground to renew itself and prepare for spring. Winter is a time when we are admonished, and even inclined, to do the same for ourselves.

Our inward winters take many forms–failure, betrayal, depression, death. But every one of them, in my experience, yields to the same advice: “The winters will drive you crazy until you learn to get out into them.” Until we enter boldly into the fears we most want to avoid, those fears will dominate our lives. But when we walk directly into them–protected from frostbite by the warm garb of friendship or inner discipline or spiritual guidance–we can learn what they have to teach us. Then, we discover once again that the cycle of the seasons is trustworthy and life-giving, even in winter, the most dismaying season of all.
~Parker Palmer

 

Why has “Let It Go” from the Disney movie “Frozen” resonated as the universal pop anthem of the past year for people of all ages and backgrounds?
Maybe we heed the call to emerge from our dormancy, to reach out in our God-given ability to overcome despite everything the outward and inward winters blow at us.

I trust, from all I’ve learned in His Word  —  I have only gone underground temporarily and will soon emerge in renewal.

The cold never bothered me anyway?
Yes, of course it did, but it is not the end of the story.

 

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Foggy and Fine Days

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The weather and my mood have little connection.
I have my foggy and my fine days within me;
my prosperity or misfortune has little to do with the matter.
– Blaise Pascal

There has been freezing fog the last several mornings when I’ve gone out to do barn chores. This is fog that literally sticks to the world, dripping in tiny icicles from everything, swallowing up all visible landscape, hushing bird song, erasing all color, homogenizing everything.

It also sucks up my horses as I send them out to the field from the barn. They lead slowly out to the gate, sniffing the wet cold air, hesitant to be turned out into the grey sea surrounding them. What is there to eat out here in this murk? Each one, when turned loose, wanders into the soup, disappearing, as if never to be seen again. One by one they move boldly forward to look for their buddies, although seeing nothing, hearing nothing, smelling nothing–lost and alone and bewildered until somehow they meet up in the mist.

I muse at their initial confusion and then their utter conviction there must be “something out there” worth finding. They are dependent on all the usual cues–visual, auditory, olfactory–all useless in the fog. Instead they rely on some inner sonar to find each other and bunch together in a protective knot, drops of fog dew clinging to their manes, their eyelashes and their muzzle whiskers. As day wears on, the fog dissipates, their coats dry under the warming sun, and the colors of the fields and trees and palomino horses emerge from the cocoon of haze.

Too often I feel lost in fog too–disconnected, afloat and circling aimlessly, searching for a touch point of purpose and direction and anything that is not smothering and gray. Perhaps I’ll bump into a fellow fog wanderer and we’ll remain knotted together, relieved in the connection to something solid and familiar. The isolation I sometimes feel may simply be a self-absorbed state of mind, sucking me in deep, separating me from others, distancing me from joy. I’m soaked, dripping and shivering.

If I only had the faith of my horses in the mist, I’d charge into the fog fearlessly, knowing there are others out there ready to band together for company, comfort and support, to await the sun. When that warm rejuvenation arrives, though not always as quickly as I would wish for, it will be enough to dry my whiskers, put color back in my cheeks and refresh my hopes and dreams.

Being lost in the fog is never forever.  The sun is always up there somewhere and all will be fine.

 

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Awaiting His Arrival: From Being Turned Away to Answering the Knock

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barnlatch

While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, 7 and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no guest room available for them.
Luke 2: 6-7

Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me.
Revelation 3:20

 

…we are faced with the shocking reality:
Jesus stands at the door and knocks, in complete reality.
He asks you for help in the form of a beggar,
in the form of a ruined human being in torn clothing.
He confronts you in every person that you meet.
Christ walks on the earth as your neighbor as long as there are people.
He walks on the earth as the one through whom
God calls you, speaks to you and makes his demands.
That is the greatest seriousness
and the greatest blessedness of the Advent message.
Christ stands at the door.
Will you keep the door locked or open it to him?
~Dietrich Bonhoeffer from an Advent Sermon “The Coming of Jesus into our Midst”

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Shattered and Scattered

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That cause can never be lost nor stayed
Which takes the course of what God has made;
And is not trusting in walls and towers,
But slowly growing from seeds to flowers.

Each noble service that has been wrought
Was first conceived as a fruitful thought;
Each worthy cause with a future glorious
By quietly growing becomes victorious.

Thereby itself like a tree it shows:
That high it reaches, as deep it grows;
And when the storms are its branches shaking,
It deeper root in the soil is taking.

Be then no more by a storm dismayed,
For by it the full grown seeds are laid;
And though the tree by its might it shatters,
What then, if thousands of seeds it scatters?
~Kristian Ostergaard   Source: from a Danish hymn, translated by J.C. Aaberg

 

springboardtrunk

What We Need Is Here

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Horseback on Sunday morning,
harvest over, we taste persimmon
and wild grape, sharp sweet
of summer’s end. In time’s maze
over fall fields, we name names
that went west from here, names
that rest on graves. We open
a persimmon seed to find the tree
that stands in promise,
pale, in the seed’s marrow.
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.
~Wendell Berry “Wild Geese”

 

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What Will Always Be

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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”

 

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