September: it was the most beautiful of words
he’d always felt,
evoking orange-flowers,
swallows,
and regret.
~Alexander Theroux
September’s Baccalaureate
A combination is Of Crickets — Crows — and Retrospects
And a dissembling Breeze
That hints without assuming —
An Innuendo sear
That makes the Heart put up its Fun
And turn Philosopher.
~Emily Dickinson
I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars.
~Walt Whitman
All photos were taken this week while walking past Western Washington University garden plots on my way to and from meetings on campus. My routine tasks, my everyday journeyman duties, are rendered extraordinary in the light of petals, pollen, webs, pigment, fruit, seed pods and always, always the nurture of soil and rain. I chanced upon a gardener yesterday and told him the difference his work makes in my day. The rich visual and tactile variety in the gardens is like star-lit nebulae and galaxies scattered about in planter pots and plots.
He looked up, startled, so used to not being noticed, and simply said, “it’s been a good year for the plants.”
Indeed it is. A good year for us all.
I went to bed and woke in the middle of the night thinking I heard someone cry, thinking I myself was weeping, and I felt my face and it was dry.
Then I looked at the window and thought: Why, yes, it’s just the rain, the rain, always the rain, and turned over, sadder still, and fumbled about for my dripping sleep and tried to slip it back on.
~Ray Bradbury
After weeks of dry weather and only an occasional shower, it was relief to wake to the pattering and dripping, an old familiar friend returned in the dark of night.
Weeping clouds and misty eyes are not always from sadness. They can shed sweet tears, wistful wondrous full-to-the-brim tears.
This is how it was as I slipped a dripping sleep back on, lulled by the rhythm of the drops. This is how it is this morning capturing each one where it landed before it disappears forever.
My face will remain damp with the memory.
As I go between meetings on the Western Washington University Campus in Bellingham, Washington, I can’t help but admire the work of the stewards of the gardens and landscape, as well as some of the four legged visitors. These are iPhone photos, taken on the run.
What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and wildness?
Let them be left,O let them be left, wildness and wet,
Long live the weeds and the wildness yet.
~Gerard Manley Hopkins from “Inversnaid”
Maybe I identify with weeds as I too have grown a bit “excessive” in mid-life, growing unnecessarily and a bit fluffier than I need be. Maybe I admire their ability to thrive where they land, resilient through all sorts of trials and deprivation. Certainly they deserve appreciation for their wildly unique characteristics and their perfect imperfections. Once I get to know them, their beauty brings me joy.
I can only hope I too can be left, my over-proliferation shown grace, my greediness granted mercy.
In nature, nothing is perfect and everything is perfect.
~Alice Walker
…if the simple things in nature have a message you understand,
Rejoice, for your soul is alive.
~Eleanora Duse
Weeds are flowers too, once you get to know them.
~A. A. Milne
…make no mistake: the weeds will win; nature bats last.
~Robert M. Pyle
Weak and wounded sinner
Lost and left to die
O, raise your head for love is passing by
Come to Jesus
Come to Jesus
Come to Jesus and live
Now your burden’s lifted
And carried far away
And precious blood has washed away the stain
So sing to Jesus
Sing to Jesus
Sing to Jesus and live
And like a new born baby
Don’t be afraid to crawl
And remember when you walk sometimes we fall
So fall on Jesus
Fall on Jesus
Fall on Jesus and live
Sometimes the way is lonely
And steep and filled with pain
So if your sky is dark and pours the rain
Then cry to Jesus
Cry to Jesus
Cry to Jesus and live
Ohh, and when the love spills over
And music fills the night
And when you can’t contain your joy inside
Then dance for Jesus
Dance for Jesus
Dance for Jesus and live
And with your final heartbeat
Kiss the world goodbye
Then go in peace, and laugh on glory’s side
And fly to Jesus
Fly to Jesus
Fly to Jesus and live
Fly to Jesus
Fly to Jesus
Fly to Jesus and live
~Chris Rice “Untitled Hymn” (click link to hear this hymn which was sung at Linda’s funeral)
Our little church family lost one of its own last weekend. Linda wasn’t in her usual seat last Sunday morning, which was notable. When a family member later couldn’t reach her on the phone, it was discovered she had slept all the way to heaven sometime in the night.
Hers had been a final heartbeat that only God knew would happen, and when.
We miss our sister in Christ and she was missed again this morning as we sang and prayed and heard God’s Word to us; we miss her gentle smile and her ready willingness to help whenever needed. We miss her dedication to a Savior who, by His grace, reshaped her life from self to selfless service and sacrifice. We miss her love and caring for the rest of us who worshiped alongside her.
Yet we are comforted by what she has left behind: the flower gardens around our church that Linda tended faithfully for years, the crocus and tulip bulbs we know will come up next spring as they will continue to do, to remind us of renewal and resurrection. Linda got down on her knees to work the soil to create beauty, falling on her knees in gratitude for forgiveness she had known and been shown. She cried, she sang, she danced, and now, now she has flown to Jesus long before we were ready for her to leave.
We raise our tearful faces to see her love passing by.
Go in peace, Linda. You have found joy on glory’s side.
Here are sweet-peas, on tip-toe for a flight:
With wings of gentle flush o’er delicate white,
And taper fingers catching at all things,
To bind them all about with tiny rings.
~John Keats
I grew up watching sweet peas climb a trellis in our family garden. Their delicate tendrils did wrap clinging fingers around anything they could reach and grasp. The blossoms were too ephemeral to bring indoors for a vase on the table — the petals would droop and then drop within a day or so. They were meant to be appreciated right where they grew, so I would visit them regularly, breathe deeply with my nose in their midst to capture and keep their lovely scent with me as I went on about my day, leaving them waving their vines in my wake.
Some things are better left undisturbed, to flourish right where they have taken hold. In the case of sweet peas, if I had stood beside them long enough, the finger-like tendrils would have reached out and grasped me as well, climbing up my frame and wrapping their blooming fragrance around me, truly changing me forever.
And so it will be in heaven someday: we will be grasped and clung to with the sweet scent of everlasting love, never to be let go, and never again to be what we once were.
Who would have thought it possible that a tiny little flower could preoccupy a person so completely that there simply wasn’t room for any other thought.
~ Sophie Scholl
This time of year I can’t seem to form any other thoughts beyond appreciation for the beauty on each stem and the fragrance that wafts from heliotrope and roses through an open window. I might just fall head-long into the dark center of a flower like Alice into the rabbit hole and not find my way back.
Are there other thoughts that matter?
“I wonder what it would be like to live in a world where it was always June.”
~L. M. Montgomery
At least we get a taste of it, if only for a month at a time…
Barnstorming 
