Bring to Light the Mystery: Worlds Forming in My Heart

All beings
are words of God,
His music, His art.

Sacred Books are we,
for the infinite camps
in our souls.

Every act reveals God and expands His Being.
I know that may be hard
to comprehend.

All creatures are doing their best
to help God in His birth
of Himself.

Enough talk for the night.
He is laboring in me;

I need to be silent
for a while,

worlds are forming
in my heart.

~Meister Eckhart  “Expands His Being”

These first few days of spring are a reawakening of nature’s rebirthing rhythms, with increased activity of all the wild creatures and birds around us, and most importantly, God’s renewal of our weary wintery hearts.

Some late winter and early spring mornings still are pitch black with blustering winds and rain, even hail – looking and feeling like the bleakest of December mornings about to plunge into the death spiral of winter all over again.

What self-respecting God would birth Himself into recalcitrant hearts as dark as night?

This God would.

He labors in our bleakest of hearts for good reason. We are unformed and unready to meet Him in the light, clinging as we do to our dark ways and thoughts. Though we soon celebrate the rebirth of springtime, it is just so much talk until we accept the change of being transformed ourselves.

Though the woodpeckers are already noisily hammering on the bark, the birds singing their hearts out and the frogs chorusing in the warming ponds, we, His people, are silenced as He prepares for birth within us. The labor pains are His, not ours; we are awed witnesses to His first and last breath when He makes all things, including us, new again.

The world with its creatures, including us, is reborn — even where dark reigned before, even where it is bleakest, especially inside our healing wintery hearts.

This year’s Barnstorming Lenten theme is Ephesians 3:9:

…to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things…

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Posting Their Intentions

The woodpecker keeps returning
to drill the house wall.
Put a pie plate over one place, he chooses another.
There is nothing good to eat there:
he has found in the house
a resonant billboard to post his intentions,
his voluble strength as provider.
But where is the female he drums for? Where?
I ask this, who am myself the ruined siding,
the handsome red-capped bird, the missing mate.

~Jane Hirshfield “The Woodpecker Keeps Returning”

Piliated woodpecker
Flicker

One would think the bold rat-a-tats heard emanating from trees and buildings all over our farm would be due to very bold and fearless birds. Yet woodpeckers tend to be our most timid and seldom-seen though most-audible visitors. They project a loud and noisy presence to the ear but prefer to be invisible to the eye. I guess they don’t want us witnessing their repetitive self-induced head trauma

That’s not so different than some people I know, especially when they hammer away on social media, even when it hurts. I know that tendency: I want to be heard and want my voice acknowledged. I want my opinions to resonate and reverberate for all to hear, but hey, since I’m basically a shy and self-protective person, I prefer to remain in the background.

Whenever I hear an insistent pecking echoing from on high, I look to see if I can spot that busy woodpecker, admiring their dominance of the airwaves and persistence despite woody obstacles. Although most often I can’t see them in the branches, there is no question they have succeeded in getting my attention. I look forward to a day when they’ll allow me to see them as well as hear them.

They are worth the wait and the listen.

Downy woodpecker

“If only, if only, ” the woodpecker sighs
The bark on the trees was as soft as the skies…
~from the story “Holes”

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