Tag: God

November 7, 2026November 7, 2026 barnstormingblogLeave a comment

Fingerprints of Radiance

And when light
comes from nowhere I can see,
when my soul is clothed in
golden bandages, ribbons of grace,
how can I tell you? Or even tell myself
so I can write it down? No words
are bright enough to catch
those fingerprints of radiance
that flicker on my wall.
~Luci Shaw from “I Say Light, Thinking” in Harvesting Fog

That afternoon, the air’s large hand
took hold of their backyard
apricot tree, the one that
had fruited, bountifully, a lush yield
in late summer, caught it in a downdraft
of chill, shook it lightly, again, again,
loosening each leaf from its
thumb of stem.
For two days I watched
the leaves’ pale, ground-ward drift,
each leaf singly, in its
gentle shedding, among all
the glints of gold,
each crumpled flick of fiber
from its stem’s thumb
a departure, a declaration.
An announcement, God saying,
gently, Thank You for
a lovely job. Now,
time to let go.
~Luci Shaw “Loewy’s Apricot Tree, Fall 2022”

Here God lives, burrowing among
the petals, cross-
pollinating. Here is Christ’s mind
juiced, joined, fleshed, celled.

Here is the clash,
the roil, an invasion, not gentle
as dew; the rose is unfurled
violently until the scent explodes
and detonates in the air

And oh, it trembles—
thousands of seeds ripen in it as
it reels in the wind.
~Luci Shaw from “Flower Head” from Polishing the Petoskey Stone

I awake with my mind as askew as my hair,
brushing away the cobwebs of dreams,
smoothing down worries ever present,
curling the whiff of memories long forgotten.

And I realize these same molecules transmitting my thoughts
also carried Christ’s while He walked this earth;
the earthbound thoughts of God Himself,
borne by His integration of chemistry with ions,
in millions of electrical explosions per second.

My own mind trembles with the thought of it:

here God lives and shines His Light,
here He leaves His radiant fingerprints,
here He thinks in Words I understand,
here He loves, catching me when I let go…

Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

$10.00

$25.00

$50.00

$5.00

$15.00

$100.00

$5.00

$15.00

$100.00

Or enter a custom amount

Your contribution is deeply appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Seize Each Day Gently

November 6, 2026 barnstormingblog2 Comments

Certain I can’t carry
another sadness,
I step outside
and let the shine
of the mid-morning sun
stroke my cheek
like a lover.
And the air has a strange
bright citrus tang.
I inhale it
again and again.
Whatever it means
to be alive,
it has something
to do with this—
scent of leaf
and spruce and shadow.
The astonishing warmth
of a late October day.
The weight
of loving another,
that weight
without which
I would be nothing.
~Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer “Whatever It Means” from The Wonderment: Poems

Night and day
seize the day, also the night —
a handful of water to grasp.
The moon shines off the mountain
snow where grizzlies look for a place
for the winter’s sleep and birth.
I just ate the year’s last tomato
in the year’s fatal whirl.
This is mid-October, apple time.
I picked them for years.
One Mcintosh yielded sixty bushels.

Fifty years later we hold each other looking
out the windows at birds, making dinner,
a life to live day after day, a life of
dogs and children and the far wide country
out by rivers, rumpled by mountains.
So far the days keep coming.
Seize the day gently as if you loved her.
~Jim Harrison, from “Carpe Diem” from Dead Man’s Float

What prayer or magic spell or luck
leaves us breathless, thunder struck
just from looking in each other’s eyes
across the breakfast table? Surprise
of love comes as a kind of Divine Grace,
as if I’d never seen your face
before and now am stunned that you adore
the likes of me; whatever for
I do not know but now you’re stuck
and seem enamored of my face, its every ruck
and deep crevasse your sheer delight; it defies
all reason. Yet this spell causes us to rise
and with no word we tenderly embrace.
The sweetest feelings rush to fill the space
as if God came in through an open door
and we are nothing like we were before.
~Red Hawk “The Transformation” from #45 – Fall 2014
Tribute to Poets of Faith

Over forty-five years later,
the days keep coming,
a life lived together
day after day after day.

I try not to take a single one for granted,
each morning
a gift to be seized gently,
embraced with reverent gratitude.

There is so much to cling to,
as if this were the only day,
the only night,
knowing it can never come again.

There is so much that has passed,
like a blink –
we wonder where time disappears to,
where it hides after it disappears over the horizon.

There is so much to remember
and never forget.
There is so much yet to come
that is unknowable.

So I seize each day,
oh so gently,
like a lover.

Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

$10.00

$25.00

$50.00

$5.00

$15.00

$100.00

$5.00

$15.00

$100.00

Or enter a custom amount

Your contribution is deeply appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Sometimes God Only Knows…

November 3, 2026 barnstormingblogLeave a comment

Sometimes when day after day we have cloudless blue skies,
warm temperatures, colorful trees and brilliant sun, when
it seems like all this will go on forever,

when I harvest vegetables from the garden all day,
then drink tea and doze in the late afternoon sun,
and in the evening one night make pickled beets
and green tomato chutney, the next red tomato chutney,
and the day after that pick the fruits of my arbor
and make grape jam,

when we walk in the woods every evening over fallen leaves,
through yellow light, when nights are cool, and days warm,

when I am so happy I am afraid I might explode or disappear
or somehow be taken away from all this,

at those times when I feel so happy, so good, so alive, so in love
with the world, with my own sensuous, beautiful life, suddenly

I think about all the suffering and pain in the world, the agony
and dying. I think about all those people being tortured, right now,
in my name. But I still feel happy and good, alive and in love with
the world and with my lucky, guilty, sensuous, beautiful life because,

I know in the next minute or tomorrow all this may be
taken from me, and therefore I’ve got to say, right now,
what I feel and know and see, I’ve got to say, right now,
how beautiful and sweet this world can be.
~David Budbill “Sometimes”

This is a beautiful, wonderful, terrific day to vote.

Normally election days are filled with stressful anticipation about what storms and floods will arrive next due to the ever-changing political climate.

Yet today, as I fill out my ballot, along with millions of others in my country, no matter how erratic our leadership, how corrupt its political machinations, we together have the ability to change course through the sacred privilege and responsibility of voting.

Over two centuries of great sacrifice has bought us this right and freedom. I am proud to exercise it, no matter the result. Too many people in the world do not know this privilege, so I do not take it lightly.

Sometime, and God only knows when, we’ll find ourselves united more than divided, working together to harvest the best we can grow.

Then what a wonderful world this will be…

Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

$10.00

$25.00

$50.00

$5.00

$15.00

$100.00

$5.00

$15.00

$100.00

Or enter a custom amount

Your contribution is deeply appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Reflecting Light Like Drops of Dew

November 1, 2026 barnstormingblog1 Comment

Though Satan breaks our dark glass into shards
Each shard still shines with Christ’s reflected light,
It glances from the eyes, kindles the words
Of all his unknown saints. The dark is bright
With quiet lives and steady lights undimmed,
The witness of the ones we shunned and shamed.
Plain in our sight and far beyond our seeing
He weaves them with us in the web of being
They stand beside us even as we grieve,
The lone and left behind whom no one claimed,
Unnumbered multitudes, he lifts above
The shadow of the gibbet and the grave,
To triumph where all saints are known and named;
The gathered glories of His wounded love.
~Malcolm Guite “All Saints’ Day”

The ordinary saints, the ones we know,
Our too-familiar family and friends,
When shall we see them? Who can truly show
Whilst still rough-hewn, the God who shapes our ends?
Who will unveil the presence, glimpse the gold
That is and always was our common ground,
Stretch out a finger, feel, along the fold
To find the flaw, to touch and search that wound
From which the light we never noticed fell
Into our lives? Remember how we turned
To look at them, and they looked back? That full-
-eyed love unselved us, and we turned around,
Unready for the wrench and reach of grace.
But one day we will see them face to face.
~Malcom Guite “Ordinary Saints”

As grains of sand, as stars, as drops of dew,
Numbered and treasured by the Almighty Hand,
The Saints triumphant throng that holy land
Where all things and Jerusalem are new.

We know not half they sing or half they do,
But this we know, they rest and understand;
While like a conflagration freshly fanned,
Their love glows upward, outward, through and through.

Lo! like a stream of incense launched on flame
Fresh Saints stream up from death to life above,
To shine among those others and rejoice.

What matters tribulation whence they came?
All love, and only love, can find a voice
Where God makes glad His Saints, for God is Love.
~Christina Rossetti “As Grains of Sand“

At almost four in the afternoon, the
wind picks up and sifts through the golden woods.

The tree trunks bronze and redden, branches
on fire in the heavy sky that flickers

with the disappearing sun. I wonder
what I owe the fading day, why I keep

my place at this dark desk by the window
measuring the force of the wind, gauging

how long a certain cloud will hold that pink
edge that even now has slipped into gray?

Quickly the lights are appearing, a lamp
in every window and nests of stars

on the rooftops. Ladders lean against the hills
and people climb, rung by rung, into the night.
~Joyce Sutphen “On the Shortest Days” from Modern Love and Other Myths

We are created to reflect the Light sent from above, whether we are the smallest dewdrop, a grain of sand on an infinite beach, or the first rung on a ladder set for heaven.

We are here today due to sacrifices of ordinary saints who came before:
the parents who stayed up all night with our high fever measles,
the grandparents who nurtured us when our parents were too weary, the church members who prayed over us when we went astray.

We are who we are today because of people who invested in our surviving, who bore arms in foreign lands far from home, who strived to keep water and air clean, who grew good food not knowing who would benefit.

We are gifted from the reach of common grace that emanates from common people; grace such as this wrenches us away from caring only for ourselves and thrusts us into the lives of others.

We are all created in the image of a very personal God who knows our very folds and inner and outer flaws, but loves us nonetheless, reminding us to sacrifice self for the sake of the other, to reflect His Light no matter where He sends us.

We are unselved by the saints today: loved for who we are
yet created to love those we’ll never know.

Lyrics:
All around us and within us
And yet it’s only at times we notice
As real as rain, and soft as stardust
We know deep down, what nobody told us.

Chorus: Can’t you feel it ever closer
We breathe it in and we then we exhale
We touch both sides and now eternal
Standing closer to the veil

Now is just a, moving image
Not a ribbon, a start and end
There is a bird, a hidden singer
That calls and listens, and calls again

Centered down and moving outward
Sometimes almost, to sweet to bare
There are endless ways to reach home
Just keep walking and I’ll meet you there

Standing closer to the veil
There’s a blurring of the borders
And I swear that I heard voices
But every act of, simple kindness
Calls the kingdom down and all around us

Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

$10.00

$25.00

$50.00

$5.00

$15.00

$100.00

$5.00

$15.00

$100.00

Or enter a custom amount

Your contribution is deeply appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Comprehending the Difference

October 26, 2026 barnstormingblog1 Comment

…the essence of sin
is man substituting himself for God,
while the essence of salvation
is God substituting himself for man.
~John Stott from The Cross of Christ

Try as we might
to make things in our own image,
no matter what discontent we feel,
we fail to comprehend
we are not God
and never can be.

Try as we might
to pick ourselves up when we fall,
no matter the anguish we feel,
we struggle to understand
He fell to earth specifically to catch us:
He bled our blood, shed our tears, brought us home.

Lyrics from Psalm 84:

How lovely is your dwelling place,
O Lord of hosts!
² My soul longs, yes, faints
for the courts of the Lord;
my heart and flesh sing for joy
to the living God.

³ Even the sparrow finds a home,
and the swallow a nest for herself,
where she may lay her young,
at your altars, O Lord of hosts,
my King and my God.
⁴ Blessed are those who dwell in your house,
ever singing your praise!

Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

$10.00

$25.00

$50.00

$5.00

$15.00

$100.00

$5.00

$15.00

$100.00

Or enter a custom amount

Your contribution is deeply appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

~Abraham Joshua Heschel

A Radical Amazement

October 23, 2026 barnstormingblogLeave a comment

I shall open my eyes and ears.
Once every day I shall simply stare
at a tree, a flower, a cloud, or a person.
I shall not then be concerned at all to ask what they are but simply be glad that they are.
I shall joyfully allow them the mystery of what C.S. Lewis calls their “divine, magical, terrifying and ecstatic” existence.
~Clyde Kilby in “Amazed in the Ordinary”

Our goal should be to live life in radical amazement. ….get up in the morning and look at the world in a way that takes nothing for granted. Everything is phenomenal; everything is incredible; never treat life casually. To be spiritual is to be amazed.

An open heart is alive to wonder, to the sheer marvel of “isness.”
It is remarkable that the world is,
that we are here,
that we can experience it.
This world is not ordinary.
Indeed, what is remarkable is that
it could ever look ordinary to us.

An open heart knows “radical amazement.”
An open heart and gratitude go together.
We can feel this in our bodies.
In the moments in my life
when I have been most grateful,
I have felt a swelling,
almost a bursting in my chest.
~Marcus Borg from The Heart of Christianity

Much of the time I sleep-walk through each day, oblivious, as if in dense fog with unseeing wide-open eyes.

Especially if I’m rushing from here to there, I sense time slowing: I stumble through the days, the path appears indiscernible, my future uncertain, my purpose elusive.

How to stay awake and aware of the radical amazement of each moment given to me?

When I’m simply glad, everything becomes more vivid — the sounds of geese flying overhead, the smell of the farm, the layers of a foggy landscape, the taste of an autumn apple right from the tree, the string of fog-drop pearls on a spider web, the necessity and intensity of every breath, my purpose to be witness.

So wake me to be amazed anew -please- to see all that is around me. I want to chew on it again and again, simply savoring and simply glad.

Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

$10.00

$15.00

$40.00

$5.00

$15.00

$100.00

$5.00

$15.00

$100.00

Or enter a custom amount

Your contribution is deeply appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

You Who Are Reading This Now…

October 22, 2026 barnstormingblog4 Comments

Starting here, what do you want to remember?
How sunlight creeps along a shining floor?
What scent of old wood hovers, what softened
sound from outside fills the air?

Will you ever bring a better gift for the world
than the breathing respect that you carry
wherever you go right now? Are you waiting
for time to show you some better thoughts?

When you turn around, starting here, lift this
new glimpse that you found; carry into evening
all that you want from this day. This interval you spent
reading or hearing this, keep it for life –

What can anyone give you greater than now,
starting here, right in this room, when you turn around?
~William Stafford, “You Reading This, Be Ready” from Ask Me

Now after nearly seventeen years of daily writing here in this spot:

I have come to know you
who I will never meet face to face in this life
but who share with me:
your love of the land, the clouds, the light,
your families,
your vocations and gifts,
your hopes and dreams,
and most of all —
our Lord and Creator.

What do I want to remember about today?
I treasure your encouragement as it finds its way here to light the gray and dusty corners of my life: a kind word, a silent tear, a gentle smile, a shared prayer.

What do I want you to remember about having visited here?
I want you to feel the nurture of hope in these words, sensing the warmth of the sun on your face from these photos, to almost feel you are here, or as close as possible.

Mostly, I want you to know each morning,
I invite you to walk with me as a fellow pilgrim.

Carry this with you, pass on its message to others.
You never know where it might end up.

lyrics:
Even before we call on Your name
To ask You, O God,
When we seek for the words to glorify You,
You hear our prayer;
Unceasing love, O unceasing love,
Surpassing all we know.
Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit.
Even with darkness sealing us in,
We breathe Your name,
And through all the days that follow so fast,
We trust in You;
Endless Your grace, O endless Your grace,
Beyond all mortal dream.
Both now and forever,
And unto ages and ages, Amen.

Now Available:
New Barnstorming photo notecards for Autumn sent to you as a thank you for your donation to support this website

Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

$10.00

$25.00

$50.00

$5.00

$15.00

$100.00

$5.00

$15.00

$100.00

Or enter a custom amount

Your contribution is deeply appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

To Keep Looking Out

October 20, 2026 barnstormingblog1 Comment

Dawn comes later and later now,
and I, who only a month ago
could sit with coffee every morning
watching the light walk down the hill
to the edge of the pond and place
a doe there, shyly drinking,

then see the light step out upon
the water, sowing reflections
to either side — a garden
of trees that grew as if by magic —
now see no more than my face,
mirrored by darkness, pale and odd,

startled by time. While I slept,
night in its thick winter jacket
bridled the doe with a twist
of wet leaves and led her away,
then brought its black horse with harness
that creaked like a cricket, and turned

the water garden under. I woke,
and at the waiting window found
the curtains open to my open face;
beyond me, darkness. And I,
who only wished to keep looking out,
must now keep looking in.
~Ted Kooser “A Letter in October”

God knows we seek out light
these autumn mornings

praying to see multicolors filling the lines outside;
my face a shadow in a blackened window pane

Some mornings we can only see our own reflection
mirrored by darkness, startled by time, as we wonder what comes next.

God knows, as each year passes, we need His Light illuminating us as we look beyond ourselves, but even more as we look within.

Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

$10.00

$25.00

$50.00

$5.00

$15.00

$100.00

$5.00

$15.00

$100.00

Or enter a custom amount

Your contribution is deeply appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Come and See: Lifted His Heel Against Me

October 18, 2026 barnstormingblogLeave a comment

When he had washed their feet and put on his outer garments and resumed his place, he said to them, “Do you understand what I have done to you? You call me Teacher and Lord, and you are right, for so I am. If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet.

For I have given you an example, that you also should do just as I have done to you. Truly, truly, I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them.

I am not speaking of all of you; I know whom I have chosen. But the Scripture will be fulfilled, ‘He who ate my bread has lifted his heel against me.’ (Psalm 41:9)

I am telling you this now, before it takes place, that when it does take place you may believe that I am he.

Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever receives the one I send receives me, and whoever receives me receives the one who sent me.”
John 13: 12-20

I, too, stood on the sacred image … on the face of the man who has been ever in my thoughts, … on the best and most beautiful face that any man can ever know, on the face of him whom I have always longed to love.

I understand your pain and your suffering. It is for that reason that I am here.

Lord, I resented your silence.

I was not silent. I suffered beside you.
~Shisaku Endo from Silence – an interchange at the end of the book between Father Sebastian Rodrigues and the voice of the Lord Jesus

Then Judas in his hot desire
Said, “Give me what you will.”
Christ spoke to him with words of fire,
“Then, Judas, you must kill,
One whom you love, One who loves you
As only God’s son can:
This is the work for you to do
To save the creature man.“

“And men to come will curse your name,
And hold you up to scorn;
In all the world will be no shame
Like yours; this is love’s thorn.
It takes strong will of heart and soul,
But man is under ban.
Think, Judas, can you play this role
In heaven’s mystic plan?”

So Judas took the sorry part,
Went out and spoke the word,
And gave the kiss that broke his heart,
But no one knew or heard.
And no one knew what poison ate
Into his palm that day,
Where, bright and damned, the monstrous weight
Of thirty white coins lay.

It was not death that Judas found
Upon a kindly tree;
The man was dead long ere he bound
His throat as final fee.
And who can say if on that day
When gates of pearl swung wide,
Christ did not go His honored way
With Judas by His side?

~Countee Cullen “Judas Iscariot”

And then there is the love for the enemy–
love for the one who does not love you
but mocks, threatens, and inflicts pain.
The tortured’s love for the torturer.
This is God’s love.
It conquers the world.
~Frederick Buechner from The Magnificent Defeat

Even my close friend in whom I trusted, who ate my bread, has lifted his heel against me. Psalm 41:9

…he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel. Genesis 3:15

Jesus knew Judas would “lift his heel against him” – Jesus chose him for that very reason, a close friend who had been a cherished part of the twelve.

The kick is hard, but not unexpected.

A heel crushes the image of Jesus and all that is good and beautiful.

Yet, this Lord is able to understand the pain of the betrayer and know suffering so much, He brings it onto Himself.

It was for this reason He came. It was for this reason He invites us to eat the bread of life alongside Him. We are filled and forgiven because He loves us enough to take our kicks and crushes.

What a gift to be known so well by God Himself.

Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

$10.00

$25.00

$50.00

$5.00

$15.00

$100.00

$5.00

$15.00

$100.00

Or enter a custom amount

Your contribution is deeply appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.