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”
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
To plunge headlong into the heart of a blossom, its amber eyes inscrutably focusing on your own, magnified by a lens of dew. Whose scent, invisible, drowns you in opulence, and for which you can find nothing adequate to say.
You sense that you are loved wholly, yet are quite unable to understand why. But then, you lift your face, creased with the ordinary, to a heaven that is breaking into blue, and find your contentment utterly beyond telling, unspeakable, uncontained. ~Luci Shaw from “Speechless” from Sea Glass
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“An Iris Blessing”
Whenever I allow my eye to peer into an iris, it takes all my attention: I need a flotation device and depth finder. I’m likely to get lost, sweeping and swooning through inner space of tunnels, canyons and corners, coming up for air and diving in again to journey into exotic locales draped in silken hues ~this fairy land on a stem~ Patching a few words together, I’m immersed in the possibilities, blessed by such an impossible blossom.
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
What does it feel like to be alive? Living, you stand under a waterfall… It is time pounding at you, time. Knowing you are alive is watching on every side your generation’s short time falling away as fast as rivers drop through air, and feeling it hit.
I had hopes for my rough edges. I wanted to use them as a can opener, to cut myself a hole in the world’s surface, and exit through it. ~Annie Dillard from An American Childhood
I saw a mom take her raincoat off and give it to her young daughter when a storm took over the afternoon. My god, I thought, my whole life I’ve been under her raincoat thinking it was somehow a marvel that I never got wet. ~Ada Limón from “The Raincoat”
Mothering can be like standing under a waterfall, impacted breathless by the incredible 24/7 responsibility of birthing and raising children. And a mother does whatever she must to protect her children from also getting soaked in the barrage of each drop of time, knowing they too can feel overwhelmed by the rapid passage of life.
As I tried my best to keep my children covered and dry until it was their turn to raise kids and stand under the same waterfall, my own rough edges have been impacted, smoothed and soothed by the flow of time.
I’m well aware rough edges still surface, unbidden and unwarranted, ready to cut a hole in the world for an escape hatch from troubles. So my children and grandchildren polish me even as I still try to protect them from inevitable downpours.
No longer is my reach enough nor must it be.
Life keeps pounding away, but oh so gentler on grandmothers. I know it is still ruffing and buffing me — each drop of time passing over me becomes a mixed blessing.
Each moment so precious, never to come again, yet leaving me forever and wonderfully changed.
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
But when Aurora, daughter of the dawn, With rosy lustre purpled o’er the lawn. ~Homer from the Odyssey
Aurora is the effort Of the Celestial Face Unconsciousness of Perfectness To simulate, to Us. ~Emily Dickinson
…for the sun stopped shining. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two. Luke 23:45
It felt appropriate to whoop and holler when the lights began to shimmer and shift above us.
Yet as the colors deepened and danced, what struck me most was the sense of how the heavens and earth had found a “thin place” where the space between God and us had narrowed and we were being summoned to communion with Him.
Just as the curtain barring us from the holy of holies in the temple was torn in two at Christ’s moment of death, the curtain between heaven and earth was pulled apart last night.
We are no longer separated from God. He bids us to join Him and see His face.
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
Veil after veil of thin dusky gauze is lifted, and by degrees the forms and colours of things are restored to them, and we watch the dawn remaking the world in its antique pattern. ~Oscar Wilde from The Picture of Dorian Gray
Never did sun more beautifully steep In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill; Ne’er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep! The river glideth at his own sweet will: Dear God! the very houses seem asleep; And all that mighty heart is lying still! ~William Wordsworth from “Composed Upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802”
Dawn is the time when nothing breathes, the hour of silence. Everything is transfixed, only the light moves. ~Leonora Carrington
Looking for God is the first thing and the last, but in between so much trouble, so much pain. ~Jane Kenyon from “With the Dog at Sunrise”
In the moments before dawn when glow gently tints the inside of horizon’s eyelids, the black of midnight wanes to mere shadow, the fear of night forgotten.
Gloaming dusk transposed to gleaming dawn, its backlit silhouettes stark as a dark hurting earth slowly opens her eyes to greet a new and glorious morn.
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
A hundred thousand birds salute the day:– One solitary bird salutes the night: Its mellow grieving wiles our grief away, And tunes our weary watches to delight; It seems to sing the thoughts we cannot say, To know and sing them, and to set them right; Until we feel once more that May is May, And hope some buds may bloom without a blight. This solitary bird outweighs, outvies, The hundred thousand merry-making birds Whose innocent warblings yet might make us wise Would we but follow when they bid us rise, Would we but set their notes of praise to words And launch our hearts up with them to the skies. ~Christina Rossetti “A Hundred Thousand Birds”
Birds afloat in air’s current, sacred breath? No, not breath of God, it seems, but God the air enveloping the whole globe of being. It’s we who breathe, in, out, in, the sacred, leaves astir, our wings rising, ruffled—but only saints take flight… But storm or still, numb or poised in attention, we inhale, exhale, inhale, encompassed, encompassed. ~Denise Levertov from “In Whom We Live and Move and Have Our Being”from The Stream and the Sapphire
As if reluctant to let go the setting sun last night, one lone bird still sang a twilight song, long after the others fell asleep, their heads tucked neatly under their wings.
This lone bird had not yet finished with the day, breathing in and out its plaintive melody, articulating my thoughts I could not say.
And before a hint of light this May morning, I am swept from my dreams by a full chorus singing from the same perch, no longer a lone voice, but hundreds.
My day is launched by the warbling songs, but I cannot forget twilight’s one reluctant bird who fought the impending darkness using only its voice.
I too fight back the darkness with what I write here, if I can keep it at bay: inhaling, exhaling, encompassed in Breath. I want to sing out light to Light and live light in Light.
No darkness here.
I hear a bird chirping, up in the sky I’d like to be free like that spread my wings so high I see the river flowing water running by I’d like to be that river, see what I might find
I feel the wind a blowin’, slowly changing time I’d like to be that wind, I’d swirl and the shape sky I smell the flowers blooming, opening for spring I’d like to be those flowers, open to everything
I feel the seasons change, the leaves, the snow and sun I’d like to be those seasons, made up and undone I taste the living earth, the seeds that grow within I’d like to be that earth, a home where life begins
I see the moon a risin’, reaching into night I’d like to be that moon, a knowing glowing light I know the silence as the world begins to wake I’d like to be that silence as the morning breaks
He doesn’t know the world at all Who stays in his nest and doesn’t go out. He doesn’t know what birds know best Nor what I sing about, Nor what I sing about, Nor what sing about: That the world is full of loveliness.
When dew-drops sparkle in the grass And earth is aflood with morning light. light A blackbird sings upon a bush To greet the dawning after night, the dawning after night, the dawning after night. Then I know how fine it is to live.
Hey, try to open your heart to beauty; Go to the woods someday And weave a wreath of memory there. Then if tears obscure your way You’ll know how wonderful it is To be alive. ~Paul Read
This morning the green fists of the peonies are getting ready to break my heart as the sun rises, as the sun strokes them with his old, buttery fingers
and they open — pools of lace, white and pink —
and all day under the shifty wind, as in a dance to the great wedding,
the flowers bend their bright bodies, and tip their fragrance to the air, and rise, their red stems holding
all that dampness and recklessness gladly and lightly, and there it is again — beauty the brave, the exemplary,
blazing open. Do you love this world? Do you cherish your humble and silky life? Do you adore the green grass, with its terror beneath?
Do you also hurry, half-dressed and barefoot, into the garden, and softly, and exclaiming of their dearness, fill your arms with the white and pink flowers,
with their honeyed heaviness, their lush trembling, their eagerness to be wild and perfect for a moment, before they are nothing, forever? ~Mary Oliver fromNew And Selected Poems
The peonies, too heavy with their beauty, slump to the ground. I had hoped they would live forever but ever so slowly day by day they’re becoming the soil of their birth with a faint tang of deliquescence around them. Next June they’ll somehow remember to come alive again, a little trick we have or have not learned. ~Jim Harrison “Peonies” from In Search of Small Gods
Later this month, I will bring our peonies to the graves of those from whom I came, to lay one after another exuberant floral head upon each headstone, a moment of connection between those in the ground and me standing above, acknowledging its thin space when one more humble and silky life shatters, its petals slowly scatter, lush and trembling, to the wind.
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
I pray because I can’t help myself. I pray because I’m helpless. I pray because the need flows out of me all the time — waking and sleeping. It doesn’t change God — it changes me. ~attributed to C.S. Lewis in “Shadowlands”
Last week, on May 1, I found a surprise hanging on our front door – a little May Day basket full of little perennial blooms, along with a cheery message and a rainbow sticker. It hung from the door handle as a symbol of spring renewal, as well as a bit of a mystery – the flowers came with no hint of who had left them.
So I did a little sleuthing (actually A LOT of sleuthing) and found out they were delivered by our nearby neighbor Faye, who turned 11 just last week. She has a very special history some of you may remember:
Nine years ago, on this Barnstorming blog, I wrote about our little neighbor, two year old Faye, sickened by E.Coli 0157 infection/toxin to the point of becoming critically ill with Hemolytic Uremic Syndrome (plummeting cell counts and renal failure requiring dialysis to keep her alive). My original post about her illness is found here. I asked for your prayers on her (and others’) behalf.
At the worst point of her hospitalization at Seattle Children’s, when the doctors were sounding very worried on her behalf, Faye’s mother Danyale, in the midst of her helplessness, wrote to our Wiser Lake Chapel Pastor Bert Hitchcock with a plea for prayers from our church.
Here is how Pastor Bert responded to Danyale and her husband Jesse who remained at home, caring for their four other children:
“I understand that Faye (and everyone dealing with her) is fighting for her life. And that’s the way I am praying: that God in his merciful power, would deliver her, even if her condition looks hopeless.
If you were able to be in church this morning, you might hear my sense of urgency, for I have chosen this benediction, with which to close the service — and I give it to you right now, from the mouth of our Lord:
Jesus said: “Do not be afraid, Danyale! I am the First and the Last. I am the Living One. I died, but look – I am alive forever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and the grave.
Neither you nor I know how this will turn out — the possibilities are terrifying. But we do know who holds the keys of life and health and death; He is the Life-giver, who heals all our diseases — nothing can rip our lives (or little Faye’s life) out of His hands. And, when He does allow these bodies to give out, He promises to give us glorious new life, safe forever in His presence. These are not pious platitudes; these are the rock-hard promises of the one who loves us more than life, and who is absolutely in control of what is happening today.
Safe in the arms of Jesus, Safe on His gentle breast; There by His love o’ershaded, Sweetly my soul shall rest.
I’m praying for you all; and your Chapel Family will be praying this morning, as we gather in the Lord’s presence.
Love you, and yours, Danyale, Pastor Bert Hitchcock
That week, Faye’s renal failure reversed itself. She was able to return home with normal kidney function and improved cell counts, having also survived a bout with pneumonia.
Here is what her mother wrote to share with you all once she came home:
“Dear Friends and readers of Barnstorming,
Some of you we know, but so many of you we do not. Whichever the case, Emily tells me you have prayed for our little girl, Faye, throughout her sickness and into her recovery. What can parents say when people–many of whom we may never be privileged to meet in this life–have come alongside us to beseech the Lord for our daughter’s life and pray for her healing? Thank you. Thank you!
Faye is doing so well; stronger every day, more and more herself! It is wonderful to see.
This week we head back down to Seattle Children’s for a check up–we’ll get to say hello to the good folks who saw her through her sickness. A special stop will be made on the dialysis unit to see Nurse Kathy, a favorite of Faye’s. We anticipate a good report!
Thanks again for your love and support, far and wide. Truly astounding. Danyale and Jesse, for Faye, too
—————————————
Now Faye is a delightful, healthy eleven year old girl who secretly blessed me with a basket of May Day flowers. She doesn’t remember the crisis that nearly took her from us nine years ago, but she does know about God’s rainbow promises. And she certainly knows about the power of prayer in the face of helplessness.
As Pastor Bert said: our faith in an unchanging and steadfast God who loves and holds us, can change us – forever.
The year Dylan’s mother died I picked sprays of apple blossom, wound its pink, off-white shades in raffia for you to take to him.
Every year it’s out I think of us, the children, how apples bring the tree so low, until they thud to the lawn, drumming the end
of summer. The blossom was heavy when Dylan’s mother was dying – old wood doing its best again – and he, like you, was so young. ~Jackie Wills “Apple Blossom”
I can see, through the rifts of the apple-boughs, The delicate blue of the sky, And the changing clouds with their marvellous tints That drift so lazily by. And strange, sweet thoughts sing through my brain, And Heaven, it seemeth near; Oh, is it not a rare, sweet time, The blossoming time of the year? ~Horatio Alger, Jr. from “Apple Blossoms”
Is there anything in Spring so fair As apple blossoms falling through the air?
When from a hill there comes a sudden breeze That blows freshly through all the orchard trees.
The petals drop in clouds of pink and white, Noiseless like snow and shining in the light.
Making beautiful an old stone wall, Scattering a rich fragrance as they fall.
There is nothing I know of to compare With apple blossoms falling through the air. ~Henry Adams Parker “Apple Blossoms”
The rain eases long enough to allow blades of grass to stand back up expectant, refreshed yet unsuspecting, primed for the mower’s next cutting swath.
Clusters of pink tinged blossoms sway in response to my mower’s pass. Apple buds bulge on ancient branches in promise of fruit caressed by honeybees’ tickling legs.
Though I bow low beneath the swollen blooms, I’m still caught by snagging branches; showers from hidden raindrop reservoirs collected within blushing petal cups.
My face is anointed by perfumed apple tears.
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
And with sighs soaring, soaring síghs deliver Them; beauty-in-the-ghost, deliver it, early now, long before death Give beauty back, beauty, beauty, beauty, back to God, beauty’s self and beauty’s giver. See; not a hair is, not an eyelash, not the least lash lost; every hair Is, hair of the head, numbered. ~Gerard Manley Hopkins from “The Golden Echo”
…writing was one way to let something of lasting value emerge from the pains and fears of my little, quickly passing life. Each time life required me to take a new step into unknown spiritual territory, I felt a deep, inner urge to tell my story to others– Perhaps as a need for companionship but maybe, too, out of an awareness that my deepest vocation is to be a witness to the glimpses of God I have been allowed to catch. ~Henri Nouwenfrom Reaching Out: The Three Movements of the Spiritual Life
“Last forever!” Who hasn’t prayed that prayer? You were lucky to get it in the first place. The present is a freely given canvas. That it is constantly being ripped apart and washed downstream goes without saying. ~Annie Dillard from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
For too much of my life I have focused on my foreshortening future, bypassing the present in my headlong rush to what lies ahead. There is always a goal to achieve, a conclusion becoming commencement of the next phase, a sunset turning right around in a few hours to become sunrise.
Yet the most precious times occur when the present is so over-whelming, so riveting, so tenderly full of beauty that I believe I can see a brief glimpse of God. I must grab hold with all my strength to try and secret it away and keep it forever. Of course the present still slips away from me, elusive and evasive, torn to bits by the unrelenting movement of time.
Even when I’m able to take a photo to lock it to a page or screen, it is not enough. No matter how I choose to preserve the essence of this moment, it is already passed, ebbing away, never to return.
So I write to harvest those times to make them last a little bit longer although they will inevitably be lost downstream into the ether of unread words.
Where have all the words, all the flowers, all those moments gone?
Even if unread, I am learning that words, which had power in the Beginning to create life itself, still can bring tenderness and meaning back to my life. How blessed to live the gift twice: not just in the moment itself but in recording in words that preserve and treasure it all up, if only for that ephemeral blooming moment.
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
Let us not with one stone kill one bird, much less two. Let us never put a cat in a bag nor skin them, regardless of how many ways there are to do so. And let us never take the bull, especially by his gorgeous horns. What I mean is
we could watch our tongues or keep silent. What I mean is we could scrub the violence from our speech. And if we find truth in a horse’s mouth, let us bless her
ground-down molars, no matter how old she is, especially if she was given as a gift. Again, let’s open her mouth——that of the horse, I mean——let us touch that interdental space where no teeth grow, where the cold bit was made to grip. Touch her there, gently now, touch that gentle
empty between her incisors and molars, rub her aching, vulnerable gums. Don’t worry: doing so calms her. Besides, she’s old now; she’s what we call broken; she won’t bite. She’s lived through two thirteen-year emergences of cicadas
and thought their rising a god infestation, thought each insect roiling up an iteration of the many names of god, because god to her is the grasses so what comes up from grass is god. She would not say it that way. Nor would she
say the word cicada——words are hindrances to what can be spoken through the body, are what she tolerates when straddled, giddy-up on one side then whoa on the other. After, it’s all good girl, Mable, good girl, before the saddle sweat is rinsed cool with water from the hose and a carrot is offered flat from the palm. Yes, words being
generally useless she listens instead to the confused rooster stuttering when the sun burns overhead, when it’s warm enough for those time-keepers to tunnel up from the dark and fill their wings to make them stiff and capable of flight. To her, it is the sound
of winter-coming in her mane or the sound of winter-leaving in her mane—— yes, that sound——a liquid shushing like the blood-fill of stallion desire she knew once but crisper, a dry crinkle of fall leaves. Yes, that sound, as they fill their new wings then lumber to the canopy to demand come here, come here, come here, now come.
If this is a parable you don’t understand, then, dear human, stop listening for words. Listen instead for mane, wind, wings, wind, mane, wings, wings, wings. The lesson here is of the mare and of the insects, even of the rooster puffed and strutting past. Because now, now there is only one thing worth hearing, and it is the plea of every living being in that field we call ours, is the two-word commandment trilling from the trees: let live, let live, let live. Can you hear it? Please, they say. Please. Let us live. ~Nickole Brown “Parable”
When a governor writes about her decision to shoot her wayward dog and stinky goat, our reaction is about the injustice perpetrated on the dog more than her decision to play god with any animal she has responsibility for. I feel a twinge of guilt at the accusation. Who among us can throw stones?
God is clear we are meant to be caretakers of His Creation. Yet I still swat flies and trap mice – there is no pleasure in doing so, so I still ask for forgiveness for my lack of charity and decision to make my own existence more comfortable at the expense of another living thing.
I admit I fail Creation in myriad ways.
I have owned animals whose behavior brought me to my knees, sometimes literally with my face in the muck. I have wept over the loss of a deformed stillbirth foal and a pond of koi frozen in a bitter winter storm. The stories abound of my helplessness in the face of sadness and loss and frustration but I never wanted to become executioner.
I don’t live with cycles of cicada population booms but have experienced their overwhelming din and understood we are mere witnesses and not in control. We are not “little g” gods on this earth. We are its stewards.