Teach me to walk with tender feet, as the wild ones do. Let me be the cinder-glow of the fox in her burrow, wreathed around the honey-spark fur of her sleeping kits.
Let me be the shaded pools of the doe’s eyes in winter, when the snow falls, when the stars lean down to listen, when the world is darker and softer than rain.
Let me be the swallow after flight, when she is perched upon the branch where the petals of the lilacs used to be, and she is just still, and quiet, her downy head inclined, as though she is praying for their return. ~Kimberly Beck “Tender Feet”
As the weather changes, softening in the mists of autumn, I walk each step with careful feet, my tender heart singing songs in the rain. I pray for peace in this troubled land, for protection from harm until spring comes again.
May God grant a gentle night’s sleep for all His creatures.
video by Harry Rodenberger
Lyrics for Aragorn’s Sleepsong: Lay down your head and I’ll sing you a lullaby Back to the years of loo-li lai-lay And I’ll sing you to sleep and I’ll sing you tomorrow
Bless you with love for the road that you go May you sail far to the far fields of fortune With diamonds and pearls at your head and your feet And may you need never to banish misfortune
May you find kindness in all that you meet May there always be angels to watch over you To guide you each step of the way To guard you and keep you safe from all harm Loo-li, loo-li, lai-lay
May you bring love and may you bring happiness Be loved in return to the end of your days Now fall off to sleep, I’m not meaning to keep you I’ll just sit for a while and sing loo-li, lai-lay
May there always be angels to watch over you To guide you each step of the way To guard you and keep you safe from all harm Loo-li, loo-li, lai-lay
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A butterfly dancing in the sunlight, A bird singing to his mate, The whispering pines, The restless sea, The gigantic mountains, A stately tree, The rain upon the roof, The sun at early dawn, A boy with rod and hook, The babble of a shady brook, A woman with her smiling babe, A man whose eyes are kind and wise, Youth that is eager and unafraid— When all is said, I do love best A little home where love abides, And where there’s kindness, peace, and rest. ~Scottie McKenzie Frasier “The Things I Love”
When all is said and done, I love best the people who bring kindness, peace and rest to the little house we call home.
It is enough and everything.
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True gardeners cannot bear a glove Between the sure touch and the tender root, Must let their hands grow knotted as they move With a rough sensitivity about Under the earth, between the rock and shoot, Never to bruise or wound the hidden fruit. And so I watched my mother’s hands grow scarred, She who could heal the wounded plant or friend With the same vulnerable yet rigorous love; I minded once to see her beauty gnarled, But now her truth is given me to live, As I learn for myself we must be hard To move among the tender with an open hand, And to stay sensitive up to the end Pay with some toughness for a gentle world. ~May Sarton “An Observation”
I’m reminded every spring, as my husband’s hands prepare the soil in the garden for that season’s planting, how challenging is the job of the gardener. His hands must fight the chaos of weeds and rocks to prepare a gentle bed for each seed.
A seed is a plain, unadorned and ordinary thing, a little boring even, practically forgotten once it is placed in the ground. Yet the ordinariness is only the outer dress; the extraordinary is contained inside, and within days a tender shoot braves all to come to the surface, bowed and humble. It establishes a tenacious root that ensures survival, grabbing hold in even the most inhospitable ground.
So it is with Jesus whose ordinary origins belied his holiness and majesty. Both hardy root and tender shoot, he reaches up to the heavens while his feet tread the soil, both at once. His toughness paid for our chance at a more gentle world.
And thanks to Him, we are fed.
For he grew up before him like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground; Isaiah 53:2a
AI image created for this post
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‘Ant, look at me!’ a young Grasshopper said, As nimbly he sprang from his green, summer bed, ‘See how I’m going to skip over your head, And could o’er a thousand like you! Ant, by your motion alone, I should judge That Nature ordained you a slave and a drudge, For ever and ever to keep on the trudge, And always find something to do.
‘Oh! there is nothing like having our day, Taking our pleasure and ease while we may, Bathing ourselves in the bright, mellow ray That comes from the warm, golden sun! While I am up in the light and the air, You, a sad picture of labor and care! Still have some hard, heavy burden to bear, And work that you never get done.
‘I have an exercise healthful, and good, For timing the nerves and digesting the food— Graceful gymnastics for stirring the blood Without the gross purpose of use. Ant, let me tell you ‘t is not a la mode, To plod like a pilgrim and carry a load, Perverting the limbs that for grace were bestowed, By such a plebeian abuse.
‘While the whole world with provisions is filled, Who would keep toiling and toiling to build And lay in a store for himself, till he ‘s killed With work that another might do? Come! drop your budget and just give a spring. Jump on a grass-blade and balance and swing. Soon you’ll be light as a gnat on the wing, Gay as a grasshopper, too!’
Ant trudged along while the grasshopper sung, Minding her business and holding her tongue, Until she got home her own people among; But these were her thoughts on the road. ‘What will become of that poor, idle one When the light sports of the summer are done? And, where is the covert to which he may run To find a safe winter abode?
‘Oh! if I only could tell him how sweet Toil makes my rest and the morsel I eat, While hope gives a spur to my little black feet, He’d never pity my lot! He’d never ask me my burden to drop To join in his folly—to spring, and to hop; And thus make the ant and her labor to stop, When time, I am certain, would not.
‘When the cold frost all the herbage has nipped, When the bare branches with ice-drops are tipped, Where will the grasshopper then be, that skipped, So careless and lightly to-day? Frozen to-death! ‘a sad picture’ indeed, Of reckless indulgence and what must succeed, That all his gymnastics ca ‘nt shelter or feed, Or quicken his pulse into play.
‘I must prepare for a winter to come. I shall be glad of a home and a crumb, When my frail form out of doors would be numb, And I in the snow-storm should die. Summer is lovely, but soon will be past. Summer has plenty not always to last. Summer’s the time for the ant to make fast Her stores for a future supply!’ ~Hannah Flagg Gould “The Grasshopper and the Ant”
I did not grow up in a household that took time off. We were trudgers.
When my dad came home from his desk job in town, he would immediately change into his farm clothes and put in several hours of work outside, summer or winter, rain or shine, light or dark.
My mother did not work in town while we were children, but worked throughout her day inside and outside the house doing what farm wives and mothers need to do: growing, hoeing, harvesting, preserving, washing, cleaning, sewing, and most of all, being there for us.
As kids, we had our share of chores that were simply part of our day as our work was never done on a farm. When we turned twelve, we began working for others: babysitting, weeding, barn and house cleaning, berry picking. I have now done over 56 years of gainful employment – at times holding part-time jobs at once because that was what I could put together to keep things together.
An absolutely dedicated trudger.
Now in retirement, my work is about showing up to do what is needed where I am needed. There is a sweetness to trudging that I’ve not known before.
Perhaps it is finding the blend of trudger ant and celebrant grasshopper in the form of the peaceful, gentle and colorful ladybug – doing its job of protecting the garden from harmful intruders.
Truly we should strive to emulate a creature who is welcome wherever it may be found.
Ladybugs are possibly the only non-controversial subject left in the world.You can start a ladybug conversation with a total stranger without getting hit in the mouth. ~Charles Harper
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Now I understand that there are two melodies playing, one below the other, one easier to hear, the other
lower, steady, perhaps more faithful for being less heard yet always present.
When all other things seem lively and real, this one fades. Yet the notes of it
touch as gently as fingertips, as the sound of the names laid over each child at birth.
I want to stay in that music without striving or cover. If the truth of our lives is what it is playing,
the telling is so soft that this mortal time, this irrevocable change,
becomes beautiful. I stop and stop again to hear the second music.
I hear the children in the yard, a train, then birds. All this is in it and will be gone. I set my ear to it as I would to a heart. ~ Annie Lighthart, “The Second Music” – author of Pax
So many themes run through our daily existence. Usually we can only attend to one thing at a time, most often the loudest. Yet if we listen and look closely, there is a softer telling just discernible under all the noise. Sometimes, like a fugue or canon, the themes trade places, one softer which becomes more apparent and insistent, then fading to soft again.
I want to hear the heart beat of the river of life that flows through me. May I never forget what is underneath all the noise.
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Sometimes when you start to ramble or rather when you feel you are starting to ramble you will say Well, now I’m rambling though I don’t think you ever are. And if you ever are I don’t really care. And not just because I and everyone really at times falls into our own unspooling —which really I think is a beautiful softness of being human, trying to show someone else the color of all our threads, wanting another to know everything in us we are trying to show them— but in the specific, in the specific of you here in this car that you are driving and in which I am sitting beside you with regards to you and your specific mouth parting to give way to the specific sweetness that is the water of your voice tumbling forth—like I said I don’t ever really mind how much more you might keep speaking as it simply means I get to hear you speak for longer. What was a stream now a river. ~Anis Mojgani “To the Sea”
I always thought softness was weakness that by letting my body relax or gentleness live on my fingertips that I was somehow letting go somehow sacrificing my bravery
I’ve always wanted to be tougher than I am. So soft, I’m ready to burst into tears too much of the time, whether from sadness, worry, or joy. I wish I could be less transparent with my big feelings.
Yet I wouldn’t change my softness for you. I want to always be unspooling myself, to finally reveal what is underneath all the woven threads.
So much of this life is about having the courage to trust even when things are rocky, to follow the flow of things rather than creating obstruction, to lead when everyone else hangs back, to be gentle when the world needs kindness.
May I always be soft enough if you need a cushion to land upon and a pillow to rest your thoughts.
The sun went down and the moon came out On the day that you were born The stars were more than we could count On the day that you were born On a morning that was old and new On the day that you were born The world opened up to welcome you On the day that you were born
It’s all mystery and motion How the wheels of this world open There were gentle rains and summer storms On the day that you were born
The winds blew patterns through the trees On the day that you were born The waters wandered toward the sea On the day that you were born
The redbuds fade and bloom again On the day that you were born The birds knew where and they knew when On the day that you were born
In the clouds and vapor and the quiet lakes On the day that you were born In the deepest currents and waves that break On the day that you were born
In the prayers and psalms that whisper through the trees In the secret places only God can see In the things we feel but cannot be said We all hold hands and bow our heads
Seasons pass and seasons grow On the day that you were born There were things we’ll never know On the day that you were born But love is all and love is true On the day that you were born And love will always welcome you On the day that you were born ~Carrie Newcomer
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This is what the Lord says to me: “I will remain quiet and will look on from my dwelling place, like shimmering heat in the sunshine, like a cloud of dew in the heat of harvest.” Isaiah 4:18
When all nature is at rest, not a leaf moving, then at evening the dew comes down — no eye to see the pearly drops descending, no ear to hear them falling on the verdant grass — so does the Spirit come to you who believe. When the heart is at rest in Jesus — unseen, unheard by the world — the Spirit comes, and softly fills the believing soul, quickening all, renewing all within. ~Robert Murray McCheynefrom The Love of Christ
Amid daily hubbub, there comes a time when I must be quiet myself, devoid of selfish desires and hushing pointless ambitions. I need rest and renewal with a refreshing of purpose.
Only when I am thus silent and still – receptive and emptied of self, I am ready.
It is then I am touched, filled oh so softly, without fireworks or thunderclap, or dramatic collapse. The Spirit descends like silent dew onto my longing heart.
I wake restored, a new life quickened within me.
It is that simple. And so gentle.
This year’s Barnstorming Lenten theme is taken from 2 Corinthians 4: 18: So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.
When you are already here you appear to be only a name that tells of you whether you are present or not
and for now it seems as though you are still summer still the high familiar endless summer yet with a glint of bronze in the chill mornings and the late yellow petals of the mullein fluttering on the stalks that lean over their broken shadows across the cracked ground
but they all know that you have come the seed heads of the sage the whispering birds with nowhere to hide you to keep you for later
you who fly with them
you who are neither before nor after you who arrive with blue plums that have fallen through the night
The light of September is a filtered, more gentle illumination than we have experienced for the past several months of high summer glare.
Now the light is lambent: a soft radiance that simply glows at certain times of the day when the angle of the sun is just right, and the clouds are in position to soften and cushion the luminence.
It is also liminal: it is neither before or after, on the threshold between seasons when there is both promise and caution in the air.
Sometimes I think I can breathe in light like this, if not through my lungs, then through my eyes. It is a temptation to bottle it up with a stopper somehow, stow it away hidden in a back cupboard. Then I can bring it out, pour a bit into a glass on the darkest days and imbibe.
But for now, I fill myself full to the brim. And my only means of preservation is with a camera and a few words.
So I share it now with all of you to tuck away for a future day when you too are hungry for lambent light. Just check out “September.”
More photos and words of light from Barnstorming available to order here:
This upstart thistle Is young and touchy; it is All barb and bristle,
Threatening to wield Its green, jagged armament Against the whole field.
Butterflies will dare Nonetheless to lay their eggs In that angle where
The leaf meets the stem, So that ants or browsing cows Cannot trouble them.
Summer will grow old As will the thistle, letting A clenched bloom unfold
To which the small hum Of bee wings and the flash of Goldfinch wings will come,
Till its purple crown Blanches, and the breezes strew The whole field with down. ~Richard Wilbur “A Pasture Poem” from Anterooms
Not unlike the thistles that dot our pastures, I can have a tendency to be a bristly, barbed and sharp – some is simply my nature, but also long years of relentless training to become tough and impenetrable. Perhaps it represents my need for self-protection, but like the thistle, though having spiky thorns may keep me from being “eaten”, it doesn’t deter the gentle approach of butterfly or bee.
As a result, I have been softened over time (in more ways than one!) by forces outside of myself – a ripening that means I am less threat and more welcoming. My unfolding into fluffy blossom became my way of enveloping myself around my world as grace enveloped me.
With the breezes, the softest of thistle down spreads afar rather than standing stock-still in self-defense. I find in my seventh decade, I’m actually meant to fly, settling into nooks and crannies I never could have dreamed while barbed and spiky.
That is how grace and redemption works on thistles and bristly people: from sharp edges to delicate downiness.
We are all in need of such transformation.
A new book from Barnstorming is available to order here:
The children have gone to bed. We are so tired we could fold ourselves neatly behind our eyes and sleep mid-word, sleep standing warm among the creatures in the barn, lean together and sleep, forgetting each other completely in the velvet, the forgiveness of that sleep.
Then the one small cry: one strike of the match-head of sound: one child’s voice: and the hundred names of love are lit as we rise and walk down the hall.
One hundred nights we wake like this, wake out of our nowhere to kneel by small beds in darkness. One hundred flowers open in our hands, a name for love written in each one. ~Annie Lighthart “The Hundred Names of Love”
In the lull of evening, your son nested in your arms becomes heavier and with a sigh his body sloughs off its weight like an anchor into deep sleep, until his small breath is the only thing that exists.
And as you move the slow dance through the dim hall to his bedroom and bow down to deliver his sleeping form, arms parting, each muscle defining its arc and release— you remember the feeling of childhood,
traveling beneath a full moon, your mother’s unmistakable laugh, a field of wild grass, windows open and the night rushing in as headlights trace wands of light across your face—
there was a narrative you were braiding, meanings you wanted to pluck from the air, but the touch of a hand eased it from your brow and with each stroke you waded further
into the certainty of knowing your sleeping form would be ushered by good and true arms into the calm ocean that is your bed. — Alexandra Lytton Regalado, “The T’ai Chi of Putting a Sleeping Child to Bed” author of Matria
Each of those countless nights of a child wakening, each of the hundreds of hours of lulling them in the moonlit dark, leading them back to the soft forgiveness of sleep.
I remember the moves of that hypnotic dance, a head nestled snug into my neck, their chest pressed into mine, our hearts beating in synchrony as if they were still inside.
Even when our sleep was spare and our rest was sparse, those night times rocking in unison were worth every waking moment, trusting we’re in this together, no matter what, no matter how long.
We’re in this together.
A new book from Barnstorming is available to order here:
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