Tag: Flood

Falling Water

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Lord,
          when you send the rain,
          think about it, please,
          a little?
  Do
          not get carried away
          by the sound of falling water,
          the marvelous light
          on the falling water.
    I
          am beneath that water.
          It falls with great force
          and the light
Blinds
          me to the light.
~James Baldwin “Untitled”

Without water
the great rock will stare
unmagnetized, bare,
no longer wearing
rainbows or rain,
the forgiving air
and the high fog gone;
the owls will move on
and the several
waterfalls shrivel
in the steady sun.
~Elizabeth Bishop from “Song for the Rainy Season”

photo by Josh Scholten

I opened my eyes
And looked up at the rain,
And it dripped in my head
And flowed into my brain,
And all that I hear as I lie in my bed
Is the slishity-slosh of the rain in my head.

I step very softly,
I walk very slow,
I can’t do a handstand–
I might overflow,
So pardon the wild crazy thing I just said–
I’m just not the same since there’s rain in my head.
~Shel Silverstein “Rain”

Here in the Pacific Northwest, we are predicted to have a solid week of rain starting two days from now. It is sorely overdue, as our skies are continually filled with wildfire smoke and the ground parched and dusty. We webfoots are thirsty for muddy puddles.

The need for moisture is critical, but too much at once is devastating; we experienced overwhelming flooding last November in our county. Some families still have yet to recover, having lost everything, including livable homes.

So, dear Lord, when you send the rain, we don’t need to be dazzled by its volume, or it pounding hard throughout the night, or by its blinding reflection of the light. We simply ask for our fabled green to return along with our sweet clover in the fields and puddles in our pathways. A sweet steady drizzle from your heavens would be perfect – not a downpour, not a gully washer, not a knock-us-off-my-feet drenching – just a gentle gift of your grace sprinkling over and around us.

May I overflow with such goodness – and slishity-slosh when I turn my head…

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But For Rain…

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Every valley drinks,
        Every dell and hollow:
    Where the kind rain sinks and sinks,
        Green of Spring will follow.
 
    Yet a lapse of weeks
        Buds will burst their edges,
    Strip their wool-coats, glue-coats, streaks,
        In the woods and hedges;

    But for fattening rain
        We should have no flowers,
    Never a bud or leaf again
        But for soaking showers;

    We should find no moss
        In the shadiest places,
    Find no waving meadow grass
        Pied with broad-eyed daisies:
 
    But miles of barren sand,
        With never a son or daughter,
    Not a lily on the land,
        Or lily on the water.
~Christina Georgina Rossetti from “Winter Rain” from  Poems of Christina Rossetti (1904)

Reading the news of ongoing drought in the U.S. Southwest being the worst in over a thousand years, I look at our over-filled Northwest rain gauges with renewed appreciation and gratitude. We’ve had more “fattening” rain than typical over the last several months, which at times resulted in devastating flooding and damage, impacting hundreds of homes and businesses. Yet, but for rain, we too would become miles and miles of barren sand, with nothing able to thrive and grow, no sons or daughters or the beauty of the lilies.

I love our “kind” rain: the wet, the drizzle, the mist, the gray, the clouds, the mud, the moss, the slosh and the “evening dews and damps.”

“In the beauty of the lilies, Christ was born across the sea…”
The rain transfigures us all.

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord:
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword:
                       His truth is marching on.

I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps,
They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps;
I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps:
                       His day is marching on.

I have read a fiery gospel writ in burnished rows of steel:
“As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my grace shall deal;
Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with his heel,
                       Since God is marching on.”

He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat;
He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment-seat:
Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet!
                       Our God is marching on.

In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in his bosom that transfigures you and me:
As he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
                       While God is marching on.
~Julia Ward Howe (published 1862)

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Because They Are No More

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The snow is melting
and the village is flooded
     with children.
~Kobayashi Issa (translated by Robert Haas)

A voice is heard in Ramah,
    mourning and great weeping,
Rachel weeping for her children
    and refusing to be comforted,
    because they are no more.
Matthew 2:18 and Jeremiah 31:15

…as you sit beneath your beautifully decorated tree, eat the rich food of celebration, and laugh with your loved ones, you must not let yourself forget the horror and violence at the beginning and end of the Christmas story. The story begins with the horrible slaughter of children and ends with the violent murder of the Son of God. The slaughter depicts how much the earth needs grace. The murder is the moment when that grace is given.

Look into that manger representing a new life and see the One who came to die. Hear the angels’ celebratory song and remember that sad death would be the only way that peace would be given. Look at your tree and remember another tree – one not decorated with shining ornaments, but stained with the blood of God.

As you celebrate, remember that the pathway to your celebration was the death of the One you celebrate, and be thankful.
~Paul Tripp

God could, had He pleased, have been incarnate in a man of iron nerves, the Stoic sort who lets no sigh escape him. Of His great humility He chose to be incarnate in a man of delicate sensibilities who wept at the grave of Lazarus and sweated blood in Gethsemane. Otherwise we should have missed the great lesson that it is by his will alone that a man is good or bad, and that feelings are not, in themselves, of any im­portance. We should also have missed the all-important help of knowing that He has faced all that the weakest of us face, has shared not only the strength of our nature but every weakness of it except sin. If He had been incarnate in a man of immense natural courage, that would have been for many of us almost the same as His not being incar­nate at all.
― C.S. Lewis, The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis

There is no consolation for families
of those lost to death come too soon:
a rogue king’s slaughter of innocents,
and now so much needless death:
weather, war, accidents, random shootings, COVID.

Arms ache with the emptiness of grief,
beds and pillows lie cold and unused,
hugs never to come again.

There is no consolation;
only mourning and great weeping,
sobbing that wrings dry
every human cell,
leaving dust behind,
which is our beginning
and our end.

God came to us
for times such as this,
born of the dust of woman and
the breath of the Holy Spirit,
God bent down to
lie in manger dust,
walk on roads of dust,
die and be laid to rest as dust
to conquer such evil as this
that displaces masses and massacres innocents.

He became dust to be
like us
He began a mere speck in a womb
like us

His heart beat
like ours
breathing each breath
like ours
until a fearful fallen world
took His
and our breath
away.

He shines through
the shadows of death
to guide our stumbling uncertain feet.

He hears our cries
as He cried too.
He knows our tears
as He wept too.
He knows our mourning
as He mourned too.
He knows our dying
as He died too.

God weeps
as this happens.

Only God can glue together
what evil has shattered.
He asks us to hand Him
the pieces of our broken hearts.

We will know His peace
when He comes
to bring us home,
our tears finally dried,
our cells no longer
just dust,
as we are glued together
by the holy breath of our God
forevermore.

Lully, lullay, thou little tiny child,
Bye bye, lully, lullay.
Thou little tiny child,
Bye bye, lully, lullay.

O sisters too, how may we do
For to preserve this day
This poor youngling for whom we sing,
“Bye bye, lully, lullay?”

Herod the king, in his raging,
Chargèd he hath this day
His men of might in his own sight
All young children to slay.

That woe is me, poor child, for thee
And ever mourn and may
For thy parting neither say nor sing,
“Bye bye, lully, lullay.”

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Most Poignant of All

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In the years to come they will say,
“They fell like the leaves
In the autumn of nineteen thirty-nine.”
November has come to the forest,
To the meadows where we picked the cyclamen.
The year fades with the white frost
On the brown sedge in the hazy meadows,
Where the deer tracks were black in the morning.
Ice forms in the shadows;
Disheveled maples hang over the water;
Deep gold sunlight glistens on the shrunken stream.
Somnolent trout move through pillars of brown and gold.
The yellow maple leaves eddy above them,
The glittering leaves of the cottonwood,
The olive, velvety alder leaves,
The scarlet dogwood leaves,
Most poignant of all.

In the afternoon thin blades of cloud
Move over the mountains;
The storm clouds follow them;
Fine rain falls without wind.
The forest is filled with wet resonant silence.
When the rain pauses the clouds
Cling to the cliffs and the waterfalls.
In the evening the wind changes;
Snow falls in the sunset.
We stand in the snowy twilight
And watch the moon rise in a breach of cloud.
Between the black pines lie narrow bands of moonlight,
Glimmering with floating snow.
An owl cries in the sifting darkness.
The moon has a sheen like a glacier.
~Kenneth Rexroth, “Falling Leaves and Early Snow” from The Collected Shorter Poems.


These photos of our farm are from last week, before an atmospheric river fell in torrents from the sky. The downpour precipitated melting of new-fallen snow in the nearby Cascade mountains and foothills, with subsequent cresting of the rivers and streams in lower mainland British Columbia and our local counties over the weekend.

Before the storm hit us, these pictures depict a flood of golden sunshine in the late afternoon. It was the kind of saturation of light we all were needing, unaware that our skies and ground would soon be over-saturated with far too much water in a few days.

Our communities, both north and south of our nearby Canadian border, continue to reel from this unprecedented flood event, with roads impassable due to standing water and landslides, as well as whole towns evacuated by boat and homes and businesses will be uninhabitable for weeks, if not months.

The sun has returned now that the river in the sky has dried up, having dumped its load. We now wait for the waters and the misery to recede.

The scarlet red of the dying dogwood leaves are poignant indeed, but nothing like the poignancy of communities pulling together to restore normalcy after disaster. Churches have quickly become places of refuge for those who have no home this week and in the weeks to come.

Bless those who are able to help, if not with boats and muscle, then with donations:

The Whatcom Community Foundation Resilience Fund is targeting the local efforts as well as support of the Red Cross, critical in meeting all disaster needs everywhere.

Thank you for reading and praying for restoration for the affected Canadians and Americans.

Another Way Home

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I do remember darkness, how it snaked
through the alders, their ashen flanks
in our high-beams the color of stone.
That hollow slap as floodwater hit
the sides of the car. Was the radio on?
Had I been asleep?
Sometimes you have to tell a story
your entire life to get it right.

Twenty-two and terrified, I had married you
but barely knew you. And for forty years
I’ve told this story wrong. In my memory
you drove right through it, the river
already rising on the road behind us,
no turning around.
But since your illness I recall it
differently. Now that I know it’s possible
to lose you, I’m finally remembering
it right. That night,
you threw that car in reverse,
and gunned it. You found us
another way home.
~Emily Ransdell, “Everywhere a River,” from New Letters

When life gets scary, we long for rescue as the world threatens to overwhelm us. And eventually it is true, this world will overwhelm us, and we’ll wonder how we will escape.

Where does our help come from?

It doesn’t always come from the direction we expect. Most often, we keep staring ahead, hoping somehow salvation lies just around the corner.

But salvation has been behind us all the while. We were created saved but need to believe it, live it out, share it with anyone open to listen.

We all need to trust in the Rescuer when we are stuck and flooded with life. It takes courage, faith and grace to be led home, either straight ahead or back the way we came.

Heidelberg Catechism Question and Answer 1:

Q.What is your only comfort in life and death?
A.That I am not my own, 1
but belong with body and soul,
both in life and in death, 
2to my faithful Saviour Jesus Christ. 
3He has fully paid for all my sins
with his precious blood, 
4and has set me free
from all the power of the devil. 
5He also preserves me in such a way 
6that without the will of my heavenly Father
not a hair can fall from my head; 
7indeed, all things must work together
for my salvation. 
8Therefore, by his Holy Spirit
he also assures me
of eternal life 
9and makes me heartily willing and ready
from now on to live for him

A book of beauty and hope in words and photography, available for order here:

Promises Promises

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The flown, the fallen,
the golden ones,
the deciduous dead, all gone
to ground, to dust, to sand,
borne on the shoulders of the wind.

Listen! They are whispering…

Look at the trees!

Every leaf-scar is a bud
expecting a future.
The earth speaks in parables.
The burning bush. The rainbow.
Promises. Promises.
~Gillian Clarke from “The Year’s Midnight” From Selected Poems

Having turned the ragged corner into a new year,
I search for any signs of recovery from
what was fallen and flown from last year.
Instead there is rain upon rain and water levels rise.

I step cautiously upon the sponge of soaked leaves underfoot,
recalling their crisp vibrancy when still attached
to branches that are now picked clean
to bare bones, all flesh devoured.

Yet, as I examine those skeletal remains,
I see their scars swelling with potential,
even now, even in early winter there is expectancy.

These bushes will not burn to ashes;
this rain will cease to flood.
This sky, these trees will light up once again
with promises made
and promises kept.

The Marvelous Light

barnstormingblog1 Comment

 Lord,
              when you send the rain
              think about it, please,
              a little?
      Do
              not get carried away
              by the sound of falling water,
              the marvelous light
              on the falling water.
          I
              am beneath that water.
              It falls with great force
              and the light
Blinds
              me to the light.
~James Baldwin, “Untitled” from Jimmy’s Blues

The good Lord sends what He knows we need even if we don’t know we need it. Then we’re puzzled and not just a little perturbed, especially when it doesn’t fit our plans, our timeline, our desires, our hopes and dreams.

Anyone ask for this year’s chaos and grief? Can I see a show of hands?

No one I know sent up prayers
for a viral scourge to sicken 40 million
and kill over a one million in a matter of months,
or for ever-widening political divides and disagreements,
or increasing distrust and less cooperation between nuclear powers,
or devastating unemployment and economic hardship,
or triggers for riots in the streets,
or being unable to visit my 100 year old aunt in her long term care facility.

Maybe, just maybe,
we are too blinded by the force of this deluge pounding and battering us
to acknowledge the nearly-drowned soaking we bring upon ourselves.

Maybe, just maybe,
the Lord thinks a bit about what He sends,
just as He has done before
and has ever promised to do:
a Light in the midst of the storm,
that Marvelous Light,
if only we would open our eyes enough to see it.

The Light is Enough

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There were moments, hours even,
when it was clear what I

was meant to do, as if
a landscape had revealed itself

in the morning light.
I could see the road

plainly now, imagining myself
walking towards the distant mountains

like a pilgrim in the old stories—
ready to take on any danger,

hapless but always hopeful,
certain that my simple belief

in the light
would be enough.
~Joyce Sutphen “Those Hours” from Carrying Water to the Field

We’re not always sure we’re on the right road, are we? Too often we’re struggling to find our way in the dark.

Suddenly things are under water, the bridge is washed out, there are potholes everywhere, the fog line disappears in the mist, a mudslide covers both lanes – the road seems impossibly impassable.

Yet we set out on this road for a reason and a purpose; this is not wasted effort. If we can’t see where we are going, fearing we may plunge off an unseen cliff, we pause, waiting until the light is enough to take the next step.

So the light will come.
I believe it will.
I know it will as it always has.

A Long and Wondrous Journey

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sunrise99184

 

sunset831182

 

clouds912181

 

Last night
the rain
spoke to me
slowly, saying,
what joy
to come falling
out of the brisk cloud,
to be happy again
in a new way
on the earth!

Then it was over.
The sky cleared.
I was standing
under a tree.

imagine! imagine!
the long and wondrous journeys
still to be ours.
~Mary Oliver from “Last Night the Rain Spoke to Me”

 

sunset831141

 

rainyhydrangea

 

 

Our rainfall this week was met with joy and relief, refreshing what had waited all summer parched and dry and dying.

Too little too late.

Across the country and in other parts of the world, this week’s rainfall caused flooding and destruction, threatening homes and lives.

Too much too soon.

This life’s too little/too much journeys are frightening, wondrous and arduous.

And this journey, this life, is ours to travel.  Let us pray for a little more just right.

 

 

bakerhighway

 

sunset910182

 

sunset91181

With Heavy Heart

barnstormingblog4 Comments

rainstorm

rainywindow

Outside the house the wind is howling
and the trees are creaking horribly.
This is an old story
with its old beginning,
as I lay me down to sleep.
But when I wake up, sunlight
has taken over the room.
You have already made the coffee
and the radio brings us music
from a confident age. In the paper
bad news is set in distant places.
Whatever was bound to happen
in my story did not happen.
But I know there are rules that cannot be broken.
Perhaps a name was changed.
A small mistake. Perhaps
a woman I do not know
is facing the day with the heavy heart
that, by all rights, should have been mine.
~Lisel Mueller “In November” from Alive Together

loneleaf

pears1

It does not escape me~
(I wake every day knowing this)
the earthquake happened somewhere else,
a windstorm leveled a town,
a drunk driver destroyed a family,
a fire left a house in ashes,
a missing child finally found at the bottom of a cliff,
a flood ravaged a village,
a devastating diagnosis darkens
someone’s remaining days.

No mistake has been made,
yet I wake knowing this part of my story
has not yet visited me,
the heavy heart
that should have been mine
awaits,
still beating,
still breaking,
still bleeding.

oakleafhydrangea1112