I have been younger in October than in all the months of spring walnut and may leaves the color of shoulders at the end of summer a month that has been to the mountain and become light there the long grass lies pointing uphill even in death for a reason that none of us knows and the wren laughs in the early shade now come again shining glance in your good time naked air late morning my love is for lightness of touch foot feather the day is yet one more yellow leaf and without turning I kiss the light by an old well on the last of the month gathering wild rose hips in the sun ~W.S. Merwin from “The Love of October”from Migration: New & Selected Poems, 2005
Each leaf is beautifully unique, one of a kind, each shaped and hued differently — except those more tattered than others, bespeaking the harshness of their short existence when all life surrounding them seems at risk of being destroyed.
At the end of their allotted life span they return to the earth from which they came. And the Creator-God is pleased. His creations have served the purpose for which He created them. Now, they will enrich the soil, each leaving its own special contribution toward the next generation where differences no longer matter. The unseen birthing and dying mystery continues…. ~Alice La Chapelle, in a comment
The wind gusts through shedding branches stripping them bare, carrying the leaves far away, piling up a diverse gathering they have never known before – chestnut, cherry, birch, walnut, apple, katsura, maple, parrotia, pear, oak, poplar, dogwood – suddenly all sharing the same fate and grave, each wearing a color of its own, soon to blend with the others as all slowly melt to brown.
There is lightness in the letting go, for reasons none of us knows.
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The mail truck goes down the coast Carrying a single letter. At the end of a long pier The bored seagull lifts a leg now and then And forgets to put it down.
There is a menace in the air Of tragedies in the making. Last night you thought you heard television In the house next door. You were sure it was some new Horror they were reporting, So you went out to find out. Barefoot, wearing just shorts. It was only the sea sounding weary After so many lifetimes Of pretending to be rushing off somewhere And never getting anywhere.
This morning, it felt like Sunday. The heavens did their part By casting no shadow along the boardwalk Or the row of vacant cottages, Among them a small church With a dozen gray tombstones huddled close As if they, too, had the shivers. ~Charles Simic “Late September” from The Voice at 3:00 a.m.: Selected Late and New Poems
Have compassion for everyone you meet, even if they don’t want it. What seems conceit, bad manners, or cynicism is always a sign of things no ears have heard, no eyes have seen. You do not know what wars are going on down there where the spirit meets the bone. ~Miller Williams “Compassion” from The Ways We Touch: Poems.
Christians are called by God to be living so sacrificially and beautifully that the people around us, who don’t believe what we believe, will soon be unable to imagine the world without us. ~Pastor Tim Keller
As we walk this life of trouble and suffering, this Jericho Road together, we cannot pass by the brother, the sister, the child who lies dying in the ditch.
We must stop and help. We cannot turn away from others’ suffering.
By mere circumstances of our place of birth, it could be you or me there bleeding, beaten, abandoned until Someone, journeying along that road, comes looking for us.
He was sent to take our place, as Substitution so we can get up, cared for, loved, made whole again, and walk Home.
Maranatha.
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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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To see a World in a Grain of Sand And a Heaven in a Wild Flower, Hold Infinity in the Palm of your Hand, and Eternity in an Hour.
When the Soul Slept in Beams of Light God Appears & God is Light To those poor Souls who dwell in Night But does a Human Form Display To those who Dwell in Realms of day ~William Blake from “Auguries of Innocence”
Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths, Enwrought with golden and silver light, The blue and the dim and the dark cloths Of night and light and the half light, I would spread the cloths under your feet: But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams. ~William Butler Yeats “Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven”
If I look closely enough underfoot, I might find the extraordinary in the commonplace things of life.
So I keep my eyes alert; my heart open to infinite possibilities and try to tread softly.
Sometimes what I see is so beautiful, it is uncovering heaven come to earth, when the cosmos is contained within the commonplace.
The God of Light and Living Water is no further away than my back yard.
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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.
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The meaning of marriage begins in the giving of words. We cannot join ourselves to one another without giving our word. And this must be an unconditional giving, for in joining ourselves to one another we join ourselves to the unknown. ~Wendell Berry from “Poetry and Marriage” in Standing By Words
Our vows to one another forty-four years ago today:
Before God and this gathering, I vow from my heart and spirit that I will be your wife/husband for as long as we both shall live.
I will love you with faithfulness, knowing its importance in sustaining us through good times and bad.
I will love you with respect, serving your greatest good and supporting your continued growth.
I will love you with compassion, knowing the strength and power of forgiveness.
I will love you with hope, remembering our shared belief in the grace of God and His guidance of our marriage.
“And at home, by the fire, whenever you look up, there I shall be–and whenever I look up, there will be you.”
(our wedding vows for our September 19, 1981 wedding at First Seattle Christian Reformed Church — the last line adapted from Thomas Hardy’s “Far From the Madding Crowd”)
Sometimes our life reminds me of a forest in which there is a graceful clearing and in that opening a house, an orchard and garden, comfortable shades, and flowers red and yellow in the sun, a pattern made in the light for the light to return to. The forest is mostly dark, its ways to be made anew day after day, the dark richer than the light and more blessed, provided we stay brave enough to keep on going in.
We enter, willing to die, into the commonwealth of its joy. ~Wendell Berry from “A Country of Marriage”
…Marriage… joins two living souls as closely as, in this world, they can be joined. This joining of two who know, love, and trust one another brings them in the same breath into the freedom of sexual consent and into the fullest earthly realization of the image of God. From their joining, other living souls come into being, and with them great responsibilities that are unending, fearful, and joyful. The marriage of two lovers joins them to one another, to forebears, to descendants, to the community, to heaven and earth. It is the fundamental connection without which nothing holds, and trust is its necessity. ~Wendell Berry from Sex, Economy, Freedom and Community
We married forty-four years ago today in our Seattle church with Pastor Peter Holwerda officiating, with a small group of family and friends as witnesses.
It was a wedding of two frugal people with little to spend – I sewed my dress and Dan’s shirt from muslin, we grew our own flowers, our families helped potluck the lunch afterward and our tiered carrot cake was made by a friend.
Yet our vows to one another were not frugal and held nothing back. They were extravagant and comprehensive, coming from our hearts and spirits. The music we asked our amazing organist to play (versions below) inspired us by its simplicity and complexity – very much like the families that raised us and the God we worship.
Our vows have taken us from the city to the countryside, to the raising and rejoicing in three amazing children and now six grandchildren. We both served more than forty years as a public-employed attorney and physician. We have laid down those responsibilities, and picked up the tools of farm and garden along with church and community service for as long as we are able.
We treasure each day of living together in faithfulness, respect, compassion and hope – knowing that how we love and find joy in one another mirrors how God loves and revels in His people.
We pray for many more days to fill us with what endures.
A pot of red lentils simmers on the kitchen stove. All afternoon dense kernels surrender to the fertile juices, their tender bellies swelling with delight.
In the yard we plant rhubarb, cauliflower, and artichokes, cupping wet earth over tubers, our labor the germ of later sustenance and renewal.
Across the field the sound of a baby crying as we carry in the last carrots, whorls of butter lettuce, a basket of red potatoes.
I want to remember us this way— late September sun streaming through the window, bread loaves and golden bunches of grapes on the table, spoonfuls of hot soup rising to our lips, filling us with what endures. ~Peter Pereira from “A Pot of Red Lentils”
Here are versions of the organ music we selected for prelude, processional, recessional and postlude
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Yet you, Lord, are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand. Isaiah 64:8
From dust to purpose, beauty spins as planned. Love is crafted by surrender when clay trusts the Potter’s hands. ~Jamie Trunnel from “The Potter’s Hands”
For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. Ephesians 2:10
The best pottery is never completely perfect, becoming an original, unique piece. It is infused with the potter’s eye and energy, the expert pressure of fingers and palm, with a design and vision coming from the heart and imagination of the potter.
Last night, during our evening church worship, two artists in our congregation, one using words of scripture and the other at a pottery wheel, demonstrated how creating and sculpting a work of pottery is key to understanding how God shapes each one of us, from our beginnings, preparing us in advance for the work we are to do.
Each one is a unique and original individual, formed by the hands of the Artist to become something with a purpose and plan. Even with imperfections, we are created as both beautiful and functional.
His Hands remain around us, holding and molding us to His plan.
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Let me remember you, voices of little insects, Weeds in the moonlight, fields that are tangled with asters, Let me remember, soon will the winter be on us, Snow-hushed and heavy.
Over my soul murmur your mute benediction, While I gaze, O fields that rest after harvest, As those who part look long in the eyes they lean to, Lest they forget them. ~Sara Teasdale from “September Midnight”
The tumult and the shouting dies; The Captains and the Kings depart: Still stands Thine ancient sacrifice, An humble and a contrite heart. Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet, Lest we forget—lest we forget! ~Rudyard Kipling from “Recessional”
If I were called upon to identify briefly the principal trait of the entire twentieth century, here too, I would be unable to find anything more precise and pithy than to repeat once again: Men have forgotten God. ~Aleksandr Solzhenitzyn from his 1983 acceptance speech for the Templeton Prize
Lest I forget…
I look long in the eyes I lean to…
whether a loved one, or the mountains, or summer-weary fields, or the face of God Himself.
I cannot risk forgetting Who must be remembered — He is encased in my heart like a treasured photograph, like a precious gem, like a benediction soothing me quiet when anxious.
It is His ultimate promise: Neither will He forget me – looking long in my eyes that lean in to Him.
[And the Lord answered] Can a woman forget her nursing child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? Yes, they may forget, yet I will not forget you. Isaiah 49:15
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The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing — to reach the Mountain, to find the place where all the beauty came from — my country, the place where I ought to have been born. Do you think it all meant nothing, all the longing? The longing for home? For indeed it now feels not like going, but like going back. ~ C. S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces
The soul must long for God in order to be set aflame by God’s love. But if the soul cannot yet feel this longing, then it must long for the longing. To long for the longing is also from God. ~Meister EckhartfromFreedom from Sinful Thoughts
I tend to get distracted, losing my sense of purpose and the reason I’m here; I become too absorbed by the troubles of the moment, or dwelling on the troubles of the past, or anticipating the troubles of tomorrow.
My feelings end up overwhelming all else – am I uncomfortable? restless? discouraged? peevish? worried? empty?
When my spirit grows cold, I need igniting. I long for the spark of God to set me aflame again, even at the risk of getting singed.
We’re all His kindling ready to be lit. I long for longing at the beginning and ending of every day.
Lyrics: From the love of my own comfort From the fear of having nothing From a life of worldly passions Deliver me O God
From the need to be understood From the need to be accepted From the fear of being lonely Deliver me O God Deliver me O God
And I shall not want, I shall not want when I taste Your goodness I shall not want when I taste Your goodness I shall not want
From the fear of serving others From the fear of death or trial From the fear of humility Deliver me O God Deliver me O God
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In 2012, we stayed with our friends Brian and Bette at their cabin on a bluff just above the Pacific Ocean at Sendai, Japan, just a few dozen feet above the devastation that wiped out an entire fishing village below during the 3/11/11 earthquake and tsunami.
As we walked that stretch of beach, we heard the stories of the people who had lived there, some of whom did not survive the waves that swept their houses and cars away before they could escape. We walked past the footprints of foundations of hundreds of demolished homes, humbled by the rubble mountains yet to be hauled away a year later, to be burned or buried. There were acres of wrecked vehicles piled one on another, waiting to become scrap metal.
It was visual evidence of life so suddenly and dramatically disrupted and carried away.
This had been a place of recreation and respite for some who visited regularly, commerce and livelihood for others who stayed year round and, in ongoing recovery efforts, struggling to be restored to something familiar. Yet it looked like a foreign ghostly landscape. Many trees perished, lost, broken off, fish nets still stuck high on their scarred trunks. There were small memorials to lost family members within some home foundations, with stuffed animals and flowers wilting from the recent anniversary observance.
Tohoku is a powerful place of memories for those who still live there and know what it once was, how it once looked and felt, and painfully, what it became in a matter of minutes on 3/11/11. The waves swept in inexplicable suffering, then carried their former lives away. Happiness gave ground to such terrible pain that could never have hurt as much without the joy and contentment that preceded it.
We are tempted to ask God why He doesn’t do something about the suffering that happened in this place or anywhere a disaster occurs –but if we do, He will ask us the same question right back. We need to be ready with our answer and our action.
God knows suffering. Far more than we do. He took it all on Himself, feeling His pain amplified, as it was borne out of His love and joy in His creation.
This beautiful place, and its dedicated survivors have slowly recovered, but the inner and outer landscape is forever altered. What remains the same is the pulsing tempo of the waves, the tides, and the rhythm of the light and the night, happening just as originally created.
With that realization, pain will finally give way, unable to stand up to His love, His joy, and our response to His sacrifice.
We can call Him up anytime and anywhere.
bent gate at Sendai beach -2012
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