Light splashed this morning on the shell-pink anemones swaying on their tall stems; down blue-spiked veronica light flowed in rivulets over the humps of the honeybees; this morning I saw light kiss the silk of the roses in their second flowering, my late bloomers flushed with their brandy. A curious gladness shook me. So I have shut the doors of my house, so I have trudged downstairs to my cell, so I am sitting in semi-dark hunched over my desk with nothing for a view to tempt me but a bloated compost heap, steamy old stinkpile, under my window; and I pick my notebook up and I start to read aloud and still-wet words I scribbled on the blotted page: “Light splashed…”
It is too easy to be ground to a pulp by the various irritations of the day – aggravations are too easily expressed, worries never seem to wane – all of it sucks gladness out of me.
When my feelings become four-dimensional and surround and drown me, I lose all perspective on what got me out of bed to begin the day.
God is in these intricate details, whether the splash of light on a petal or the smell of rotting compost; it is my job to notice this. It is tempting to look past His ubiquitous presence in all things, to seek out only the elegant grandeur of creation and bypass the plain and smelly and homely.
Yet even what lacks beauty from my limited perspective is worthy of His divine attention. He knows the value and purpose of each thing He created, including me and the things that aggravate me no end – like mosquitos.
The time has come to be refreshed and renewed even when surrounded by decay. His care is revealed in the tiniest way. He is worthy of my attention because I am constantly worthy of His.
If I rise early enough, I can see each new day’s light splash everything awake. By the time I come in to sit down to record my words and photos, I’m thoroughly washed by a fresh dawn. I can scarcely wait to take on what this day will bring.
I can scarcely wait till tomorrow when a new life begins for me, as it does each day, as it does each day.
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
Master, how serene Are all the hours We waste If, as we waste them, We place them in a vase Like flowers.
There are no sorrows In our lives Nor joys either. Let us learn then, Innocent sages, Not to live life,
But to pass through it, Tranquil, serene, Taking children As our teachers, Eyes full Of Nature . . .
Beside a river, Beside a road, Wherever we are, Living life With the same Light ease.
Let us gather flowers. Let us bathe our hands In the calm rivers, And from them Learn their calm.
[12 June, 1914] ~Fernando Pessoa from “Ode 1” translated from Portuguese by Margaret Jull Costa & Patricio Ferrari
How fresh, oh Lord, how sweet and clean Are thy returns! even as the flowers in spring; To which, besides their own demean, The late-past frosts tributes of pleasure bring. Grief melts away Like snow in May, As if there were no such cold thing.
Who would have thought my shriveled heart Could have recovered greenness? It was gone Quite underground; as flowers depart To see their mother-root, when they have blown, Where they together All the hard weather Dead to the world, keep house unknown.
These are thy wonders, Lord of power, Killing and quickening, bringing down to hell And up to heaven in an hour; Making a chiming of a passing-bell. We say amiss This or that is: Thy word is all, if we could spell.
Oh that I once past changing were, Fast in thy Paradise, where no flower can wither! Many a spring I shoot up fair, Offering at heaven, growing and groaning thither; Nor doth my flower Want a spring shower, My sins and I joining together.
But while I grow in a straight line, Still upwards bent, as if heaven were mine own, Thy anger comes, and I decline: What frost to that? what pole is not the zone Where all things burn, When thou dost turn, And the least frown of thine is shown?
And now in age I bud again, After so many deaths I live and write; I once more smell the dew and rain, And relish versing. Oh, my only light, It cannot be That I am he On whom thy tempests fell all night.
These are thy wonders, Lord of love, To make us see we are but flowers that glide; Which when we once can find and prove, Thou hast a garden for us where to bide; Who would be more, Swelling through store, Forfeit their Paradise by their pride. ~George Herbert “The Flower”
There are days we live as if death were nowhere in the background; from joy to joy to joy, from wing to wing, from blossom to blossom to impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom. ~Li-Young Lee from “From Blossoms”
Our small church has a couple of gracious and kind gardeners who share the produce from their yards and fields each week to provide a fresh bouquet to sit on the table in front of our humble wooden pulpit.
It is a special treat to walk into church and see what they brought to the altar to share with us all on Sunday morning. I keep a photo album of these very unique Sunday “pulpit posies” our keepers of gardens share.
Why are these arrangements special? After all, almost every church displays a floral arrangement every Sunday.
These are special as many of these flowers are seeded, watered, fertilized and nurtured by one of our own, grown with love and caring, just as God cares for each of His children.
These are special as some are considered simple weeds, and are gleaned from ditches and hedges. They are part of God’s creation and have a wild beauty that can be as breathtaking as a hothouse orchid.
These are special because they often go home with a congregant or visitor who will enjoy their loveliness for many more days, as if they represent the manifestation of God’s Word itself.
Some of us are dahlias, zinnias and roses. Some of us are rare gardenias and orchids. Most of us are dandelions, sagebrush, Queen Anne’s lace, fireweed, burdock, and daisies thriving in the crevasses, ditches and hedgerows of life.
No matter which roots we sprout from, or where, we are the wonders of our loving gardening God. He created us to take care of His creation.
Each week, we bud afresh for Him.
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
I’ve learned that no matter what happens, or how bad it seems today, life does go on, and it will be better tomorrow. I’ve learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way he/she handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights. I’ve learned that regardless of your relationship with your parents, you’ll miss them when they’re gone from your life. I’ve learned that making a ‘living’ is not the same thing as making a ‘life.’ I’ve learned that life sometimes gives you a second chance. I’ve learned that you shouldn’t go through life with a catcher’s mitt on both hands; you need to be able to throw something back. I’ve learned that whenever I decide something with an open heart, I usually make the right decision. I’ve learned that even when I have pains, I don’t have to be one. I’ve learned that every day you should reach out and touch someone. People love a warm hug, or just a friendly pat on the back. I’ve learned that I still have a lot to learn. I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel. ~Maya Angelou
…think of all the things you’ve learned over the years— the hard and the holy, the mysteries that will always remain mysterious, the clean edges of truth, the soft edges of every kindness given or received, the way trouble and wonder will continue to show up, sometimes leaving us beached and breathless with uncontainable joy or unutterable sorrow. I think of all the times I was knocked to my knees by a beautiful and brilliant flash of the completely obvious. ~Carrie Newcomer from A Gathering of Spirits
I learned from my mother how to love the living, to have plenty of vases on hand in case you have to rush to the hospital with peonies cut from the lawn, black ants still stuck to the buds. I learned to save jars large enough to hold fruit salad for a whole grieving household, to cube home-canned pears and peaches, to slice through maroon grape skins and flick out the sexual seeds with a knife point. I learned to attend viewings even if I didn’t know the deceased, to press the moist hands of the living, to look in their eyes and offer sympathy, as though I understood loss even then. I learned that whatever we say means nothing, what anyone will remember is that we came. I learned to believe I had the power to ease awful pains materially like an angel. Like a doctor, I learned to create from another’s suffering my own usefulness, and once you know how to do this, you can never refuse. To every house you enter, you must offer healing: a chocolate cake you baked yourself, the blessing of your voice, your chaste touch. ~Julie Kasdorf– “What I Learned from my Mother”
Five years ago today, I wrapped up 45 years of uninterrupted medical training and doctoring.
Even while bearing three children and going through a few surgeries myself, I was not away from patient care for more than twenty consecutive days at any one time. This was primarily out of my concern that, even after a few weeks, I would forget all that I’d ever known.
Indeed, half of what I learned in medical school and residency nearly fifty years ago has evolved, thanks to new discoveries and clarifying research. I worried if I actually stepped away from doctoring for an extended time, then return to see patients again, I would be masquerading as a physician rather than be the real thing.
I couldn’t fathom a day when I could actually investigate a medical dilemma by typing a few words in a search engine on a computer screen. Instead, I researched through opening my encyclopedic collection of reference textbooks along with huge notebooks of “Scientific American Updates,” a monthly process of throwing out old articles to be replaced by newly discovered data. That is how I kept learning before the computer replaced books and pen and paper…
If being truly honest, even now, those who spend their professional lives providing medical care to others always share this concern: if a patient only knew how much we don’t know and will never know, despite everything we DO know, there would really be no trust left for us at all.
With so much rapidly changing medical information at everyone’s fingertips and computer screens, who needs a trained physician when there are so many other resources – many sketchy and opportunistic – for seeking health care advice?
Yet, I am convinced most patients really do want doctors to share the best information they have available at any point in time rather than rely on the latest internet algorithm and so-called “experts.”
I know over forty years of clinical experience gave me an eye and an ear for the subtle signs and symptoms that no googled website or AI app or virtual doc-in-the-box can discern: the avoidance of eye contact, the tremble of the lip as they spoke, the barely palpable rash, the hardly discernible extra heart sound, the fullness over an ovary, the slight squeak in a lung base. These are things I was privileged to see and hear, about which I made decisions together with my patients.
The work I did over four decades was a reflection of a continual learning process; out of my natural caution, I was honest when I didn’t know what the diagnosis was, nor the best treatment, but committed to doing my best to find out.
Continual learning – what I was trained to do for thousands of days and many more thousands of patients during my professional life, while passing a comprehensive certification examination every few years to prove my study and changing fund of knowledge.
Since retiring, the help I offer no longer means writing a prescription for a medication, or performing a minor surgery. I have to simply offer up me for what it’s worth, without a stethoscope.
Now I aim to be the best mom and grandma and friend I can be. I can press my hand into another’s, hug when needed, smile and listen and nod and sometimes weep when someone has something they need to say. No advanced degree or certification required.
Someday, hopefully not too soon, I will die happy knowing I chose this with my life: still learning and still caring.
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
O! my heart now feels so cheerful as I go with footsteps light In the daily toil of my dear home; And I’ll tell to you the secret that now makes my life so bright— There’s a flower at my window in full bloom.
It is radiant in the sunshine, and so cheerful after rain; And it wafts upon the air its sweet perfume. It is very, very lovely! May its beauties never wane— This dear flower at my window in full bloom.
Nature has so clothed it in such glorious array, And it does so cheer our home, and hearts illume; Its dear mem’ry I will cherish though the flower fade away— This dear flower at my window in full bloom.
Oft I gaze upon this flower with its blossoms pure and white. And I think as I behold its gay costume, While through life we all are passing may our lives be always bright Like this flower at my window in full bloom. ~Lucian Watkins“The Flower at My Window”from Voices of Solitude
Details of the life of poet Lucian Watkins are few: a black man born in 1879 in Virginia, educated as a teacher, a writer and poet, then served as a U.S. Army Sergeant during WWI in the Philippines and France, dying of an unknown illness in Fort McHenry hospital in 1921.
He leaves behind only a handful of poems, including the one above.
Among the sparse information available about Lucian are three letters written by him. This was a young man who earnestly wanted to have both a writing career and a “bread-winning vocation.” He describes feeling compelled to compose poetry, no matter what else he accomplishes.
The obvious challenges he faced – –as a black man looking for a suitable place to live in Illinois so he can attend a college where there are no other people of color nearby, –as a veteran of a most horrific war, –as a creative mind trying to find a way to make a living.
He writes passionately about the aspirational purity of a white flower outside his window. Its bright radiance represents what he longs for in his own life.
From his letter to President Bissell of Bissell Colleges in Effingham, Illinois in 1919 after President Bissell is unable to assist in finding him a place to live, having suggested that the war veteran might consider “doing light housekeeping” – essentially live as a servant in a white household:
“About this matter of a boarding place. While I had hoped to obtain board with a member of my own race in Effingham, I had not thought it imperative that I should do so. I feel sure that there is enough Christianity in Effingham to provide that a brother-stranger in their midst shall not die of hunger.
What would Jesus do?
It seems that some places in the south they rise more readily to our American ideal of democracy than in the North and Middle-West. ‘The Richmond Planet’ of Richmond, Va., states that ‘right here in Richmond, the capital of the late Confederacy, colored soldiers are welcomed to aristocratic Westhampton, and with no sigh of racial discrimination or antipathy to their being there.’
What is the matter with Illinois?
I am not sure as to what your question involves. We shall talk it over when I arrive. There must be a way that is just and that will be good for all concerned. Very respectfully, signed Lucian B. Watkins“
**This man was not only a poet. He was a statesman.**
And a few months later, to the Editor of Crisis Magazine, the publication for the NAACP:
I have tried my best to forget poetry since being here – this with the hope I could the better prepare for a sure-enough bread-winning vocation. But the spell is on me again. With me, this thing is a madness. I hope you understand me, as it is really a painful matter that I have never expressed to anyone before. I have always felt that people can never know as to what this fever means.
Had I the world to give, I would give it freely for my ability to concentrate my mental and physical forces on real money-earning work as I seem compelled to do in the making of a quatrain. Now unless I can get away from this verse-making obsession, I must fail in everything, because success as a poet means very little, in a material way, even for those who are called masters in the art.
I hope you will pardon me for this much of your time I have taken.
Though Lucian Watkins’ life was cut short by an unknown illness, and his portfolio of poetry is small, he is nonetheless a gift to generations of future poets and readers.
This black artist did not let the inevitable rainfall in his life discourage his world view; he himself is radiant with illumination, showing a budding cheerfulness. His work reminds us:
Something as simple as observing a resilient flower outside our window can help heal painful hurts and fulfill our deepest longing.
Something as basic as seeing life through different perspectives or lenses can make all the difference in how we feel about our existence.
In his writing, Lucian Watkins draws a thin line between joy and sorrow, embracing joy in a simple white flower in full bloom — before it, as will we all, fades away.
From this low-lying valley; Oh, how sweet And cool and calm and great is life, I ween, There on yon mountain-throne—that sun-gold crest!
From this uplifted, mighty mountain-seat: How bright and still and warm and soft and green Seems yon low lily-vale of peace and rest! ~Lucian Watkins “Two Points of View”
Flower gleam and glow let your power shine make the Clock reverse bring back what once was mine What once was mine Heal what has been hurt change the fate’s design Save what has been lost bring back what once was mine what once was mine ~Healing Song from Tangled
Something about the relentless beauty of the dahlias this year makes me forget lists and calls and news and aches as I stand beside them in a splendor stupor, watching them bloom in real time, not wanting to miss a moment of the long stems rising, the red color deepening then fading from the petals as they age. I imagine a time lapse begins, and the world’s winter white, then greening again, and now a hundred years pass, now five hundred, a thousand, and the garden bed is gone and the fence is gone and the trees and the ditch and the home are gone, and there’s no way to know this was once a place where dahlias grew. Is it any wonder, then, I call to you, ask you to come stand here with me to watch the dahlias open themselves to the sun, each petal a hymn to the present, a history soon to be forgotten, a shimmer in time we might put in a vase and marvel as all around it the whole world spins. ~Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer “A Scrap in Time”
In my beginning is my end. Now the light falls Across the open field, leaving the deep lane Shuttered with branches, dark in the afternoon…
The dahlias sleep in the empty silence. Wait for the early owl.
Dawn points, and another day Prepares for heat and silence. Out at sea the dawn wind Wrinkles and slides. I am here Or there, or elsewhere. In my beginning.
Home is where one starts from.
Love is most nearly itself When here and now cease to matter. ~T. S. Eliot, verses from “East Coker” in Four Quartets
What a pity flowers can utter no sound! —A singing rose, a whispering violet, a murmuring honeysuckle… oh, what a rare and exquisite miracle would these be! ~Henry Ward Beecher
A flower garden is a place for prayer and hymns of praise.
When I meet a truly great gardener, like my friend Jean who has grown and hybridized dahlias, what I see growing in the soil is a choral composition of petals, leaves and roots.
Jean has passionately cared for these plants for many of her nine decades of life. They reflect that love in every spiral and swirl, hue and gradient of color, showing stark symmetry and delightful variegation.
Arising from the plainest of homely and knobby look-alike tubers grow these luxurious beauties of infinite variety. I am stunned by each one, captivated, realizing that same Creator ensures we too bloom from mere dust, becoming a hymn of praise arising from every fiber of our being.
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
Thou art the Iris, fair among the fairest, Who, armed with golden rod And winged with the celestial azure, bearest The message of some God. ~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow from Flower-de-Luce
At the end of my suffering there was a door.
Hear me out: that which you call death I remember.
Overhead, noises, branches of the pine shifting. Then nothing. The weak sun flickered over the dry surface.
It is terrible to survive as consciousness buried in the dark earth.
Then it was over: that which you fear, being a soul and unable to speak, ending abruptly, the stiff earth bending a little. And what I took to be birds darting in low shrubs.
You who do not remember passage from the other world I tell you I could speak again: whatever returns from oblivion returns to find a voice:
from the center of my life came a great fountain, deep blue shadows on azure sea water. ~Louise Glück“The Wild Iris”
It doesn’t have to be the blue iris, it could be weeds in a vacant lot, or a few small stones; just pay attention, then patch a few words together and don’t try to make them elaborate, this isn’t a contest but the doorway into thanks, and a silence in which another voice may speak. ~Mary Oliver “Blue Iris”
May your blooms be floriferous and in good form, Distinctive, with good substance, flare, and airborne, With standards and falls that endure, never torn. May you display many buds and blooms sublime, In graceful proportion on strong stalks each day, Gently floating above the fans and the fray. May you too reach toward the moon and stars, Bloom after bloom, many seasons in the sun, Enjoying your life, health, and each loved one, Until your living days are artfully done. ~Georgia Gudykunst “Iris Blessing”
Whenever I allow my eye to peer inside an iris, it takes all my attention.
I need a flotation device and depth finder as I’m likely to get lost, sweeping and swooning through inner space of complex tunnels, canyons and corners, then coming up for air and diving in again to journey into exotic locales draped in silken hues.
This fairy land of petals on a stem, is birthed by the creative genius of God.
AI image created for this post
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee, a One clover, and a bee, And revery. The revery alone will do, If bees are few. ~Emily Dickinson
Bees do have a smell, you know, and if they don’t they should, for their feet are dusted with spices from a million flowers. ~Ray Bradburyfrom Dandelion Wine
Pollinators are having a rough time of it these days, combating man-made insecticides or failing to find flowering weeds to visit given the wide-spread use of herbicides. Plus, there is the American penchant for mowing grassy landscapes to look perfectly uniform and weed-free.
When I see a honey or bumble bee happily doing its job, it is a cause for celebration.
I was thrilled to see the latest research reported today demonstrating the ability of a flowering plant, like a snapdragon in the study, to “hear” (through vibro-acoustic signals) the buzz of an approaching pollinator, responding instantly by increasing its nectar volume and sweetness. The postulated feedback mechanism is that pollinators will be more attracted to a plant that “rewards” their visit, thereby increasing the likelihood of ongoing pollination visits and survival of further generations of both creatures.
This world depends on a revery of communication we can only begin to understand – between plant to plant, plant to insect — a daydream of connections bringing the spicy smell of pollen from a million flowers to the lowly feet of the bee, which generates more of both as well as honey for you and me. May it be, may it be, may it bee…
May we know such reverie.
AI image created for this post
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
As we walk into words that have waited for us to enter them, so the meadow, muddy with dreams, is gathering itself together
and trying, with difficulty, to remember how to make wildflowers. Imperceptibly heaving with the old impatience, it knows
for certain that two horses walk upon it, weary of hay. The horses, sway-backed and self important, cannot design
how the small white pony mysteriously escapes the fence everyday. This is the miracle just beyond their heavy-headed grasp,
and they turn from his nuzzling with irritation. Everything is crying out. Two crows, rising from the hill, fight
and caw-cry in mid-flight, then fall and light on the meadow grass bewildered by their weight. A dozen wasps drone, tiny prop planes,
sputtering into a field the farmer has not yet plowed, and what I thought was a phone, turned down and ringing,
is the knock of a woodpecker for food or warning, I can’t say. I want to add my cry to those who would speak for the sound alone.
But in this world, where something is always listening, even murmuring has meaning, as in the next room you moan
in your sleep, turning into late morning. My love, this might be all we know of forgiveness, this small time when you can forget
what you are. There will come a day when the meadow will think suddenly, water, root, blossom, through no fault of its own, and the horses will lie down in daisies and clover. Bedeviled, human, your plight, in waking, is to choose from the words
that even now sleep on your tongue, and to know that tangled among them and terribly new is the sentence that could change your life. ~Marie Howe “The Meadow”from The Good Thief
I am constantly looking for the sentence that will change my life.
I search high and low: in books, on tape, in sermons, and in everyday conversation.
I listen.
I realize it will not be a brand new revelation. Instead, it is a very very old sentence:
“I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” John 8:12
I look for the Light in the most unexpected places, and if I find it, I always try to share it here…
What is a sentence that has changed your life?
AI image created for this post
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
…you mustn’t be frightened … if a sadness rises in front of you, larger than any you have ever seen; if an anxiety, like light and cloud-shadows, moves over your hands and over everything you do. You must realize that something is happening to you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hand and will not let you fall. Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness, any misery, any depression, since after all you don’t know what work these conditions are doing inside you? ~Rainer Maria Rilke from Letters to a Young Poet
…difficulties are magnified out of all proportion simply by fear and anxiety. From the moment we wake until we fall asleep we must commend other people wholly and unreservedly to God and leave them in his hands, and transform our anxiety for them into prayers on their behalf: With sorrow and with grief… God will not be distracted. ~Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Letters from Prison
During my decades as a primary care physician for a university health center, my clinic days were often filled with young adults who were so consumed by anxiety they were immobilized in their ability to move forward through life’s inevitable obstacles and difficulties. They were so stuck in overwhelming feelings, they couldn’t sleep or eat or think clearly. They tended to self-medicate, self-injure and self-hate. Unable to nurture themselves or others, they withered like a flower without roots deep enough to reach the vast reservoir untapped beneath them. In epidemic numbers, some decide to die, even before life really has fully begun for them.
My role was to help find healing solutions, whether it was counseling therapy, a break from school, or a medicine that may give some form of relief.
My heart knows the ultimate answer is not as simple as choosing the right prescription – light and cloud shadows differ for each person – it can feel like the sun is blocked forever, all that is left is rain and snow and gray.
I too have known anxiety and how it can distort every thought.
We who are anxious can depend upon a Creator who is not distracted from His care for us even if we have turned away in our worry and sorrow, unable to look past our own eyelashes.
Like a thirsty withering plant, we need to reach higher and deeper: asking for help and support, working through solutions with those helpers, acknowledging there exists a healing power greater than ourselves.
So we are called to pray for ourselves and for others. Self compassion and caring for others can disable anxiety and fear by transforming it to growth, gratitude and grace.
No longer withering, we just might bloom.
AI image created for this post
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
Our heart wanders lost in the dark woods. Our dream wrestles in the castle of doubt. But there’s music in us. Hope is pushed down but the angel flies up again taking us with her. It is no surprise that danger and suffering surround us. What astonishes is the singing. We know the horses are there in the dark meadow because we can smell them, can hear them breathing. Our spirit persists like a man struggling through the frozen valley who suddenly smells flowers and realizes the snow is melting out of sight on top of the mountain, knows that spring has begun. ~Jack Gilbert from “Horses at Midnight Without a Moon”
In trees still dripping night some nameless birds Woke, shook out their arrowy wings, and sang, Slowly, like finches sifting through a dream. The pink sun fell, like glass, into the fields. Two chestnuts, and a dapple gray, Their shoulders wet with light, their dark hair streaming, Climbed the hill. The last mist fell away.
And under the trees, beyond time’s brittle drift, I stood like Adam in his lonely garden On that first morning, shaken out of sleep, Rubbing his eyes, listening, parting the leaves, Like tissue on some vast, incredible gift. ~Mary Oliver “Morning In a New Land”from New and Selected Poems
As if — we are walking through the darkest woods, still stuck in the throes of winter, and catch a whiff of a floral scent, or a hint of green grass, or hear the early jingle bells song of peeper frogs in the wetlands, or feel the warm breath of horses puffing steam at night.
As if — there is hope on the other side, refreshment and renewal and rejoicing just around the corner.
As if — things won’t always be frozen or muddy or barren, that something is coming behind the snowdrops and crocus.
The snow is melting, imperceptibly, but melting nonetheless. And that vast incredible gift thaws what is frozen in me…
photo by Emily Dieleman
This year’s Lenten theme:
…where you go I will go… Ruth 1:16
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time and recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
