Tag: green

A Soft Landscape

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Now have come the shining days
When field and wood are robed anew,
And o’er the world a silver haze
Mingles the emerald with the blue.

Summer now doth clothe the land
In garments free from spot or stain—
The lustrous leaves, the hills untanned,
The vivid meads, the glaucous grain.

The day looks new, a coin unworn,
Freshly stamped in heavenly mint;
The sky keeps on its look of morn;
Of age and death there is no hint.

How soft the landscape near and far!
A shining veil the trees infold;
The day remembers moon and star;
A silver lining hath its gold.

Again I see the clover bloom,
And wade in grasses lush and sweet;
Again has vanished all my gloom
With daisies smiling at my feet.

Again from out the garden hives
The exodus of frenzied bees;
The humming cyclone onward drives,
Or finds repose amid the trees.

At dawn the river seems a shade—
A liquid shadow deep as space;
But when the sun the mist has laid,
A diamond shower smites its face.

The season’s tide now nears its height,
And gives to earth an aspect new;
Now every shoal is hid from sight,
With current fresh as morning dew.
~John Burroughs “June’s Coming”

Out of the deep and the dark,
A sparkling mystery, a shape,
Something perfect,
Comes like the stir of day:
One whose breath is a fragrance,
One whose eyes reveal the road to stars,
The wind in his countenance,
The glory of heaven upon his back.
He steps like a vision hung in air,
Diffusing the passion of eternity;
His abode is the sunlight of morn,
The music of eve his speech:
In his sight,
One shall turn from the dust of the grave,
And move upward to the woodland.
~Yone Noguchi “The Poet”

Each month is special in its own way:  I tend to favor April and October for how the light plays on the landscape during transitional times — a residual of what has been, with a hint of what lies ahead.

Then there is June.  Dear, gentle, abundant and overwhelming June.  Nothing is dried up, there is such a rich feeling of ascension into lushness of summer with an “out of school” attitude, even if someone like me has graduated long ago.

And the light, and the birdsong and the dew and the greens — such vivid verdant greens. The stir of the day stirs my heart…

As lovely as June is, 30 days is more than plenty or I would become helplessly saturated. Then I can be released from my sated stupor to wistfully hunger for June for 335 more.

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Despite the Mess

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More than the fuchsia funnels breaking out
of the crabapple tree, more than the neighbor’s
almost obscene display of cherry limbs shoving
their cotton candy-colored blossoms to the slate
sky of Spring rains, it’s the greening of the trees
that really gets to me. When all the shock of white
and taffy, the world’s baubles and trinkets, leave
the pavement strewn with the confetti of aftermath,
the leaves come. Patient, plodding, a green skin
growing over whatever winter did to us, a return
to the strange idea of continuous living despite
the mess of us, the hurt, the empty. Fine then,
I’ll take it, the tree seems to say, a new slick leaf
unfurling like a fist to an open palm, I’ll take it all.
~Ada Limón “Instructions on Not Giving Up”

It wasn’t until I paused under the huge silver maple tree in front of our house that I began to notice not the blossoms, but the way the leaves were unfurling. How suddenly a tree transformed back into a tree, with all its good green leaves. It felt like a lesson in resilience. The tree wasn’t giving up. The tree was just going to keep doing its tree thing. Noticing those leaves felt like the first moment of breath I’d had all winter. Under that tree, the line “it’s the greening of the trees that really gets to me” came to me.
~Ada Limón writing about how “Instructions on Not Giving Up” came to her

I watch daily as our farm’s trees reawaken in the spring. Some, like the maples and chestnuts turn green in April. The walnuts stay naked well into May, quite bohemian compared to their glossy green neighbors.

New growth is always an encouragement to me, especially after a brutally cold winter when branches have broken off in the snows or a tree has toppled over in exhaustion from resisting the winter wind.

As leaves swell and begin to unwrap in the spring sun, trees are feeling what I feel: the need for fresh air and renewal, absorbing the warmth of the sun while new nutrients surge in my sap.

Most trees find it is easy being green, as that is who they are and that is who I am. Some are colorful show-offs, putting me to shame for my plainness. They bloom their hearts out with the joy of living yet another spring, exuberant and wild, and oh so messy.

The trees’ resilience captures my heart. Dogwood and crabapple petals follow us inside the house stuck to our shoes, left scattered here and there on the floor. Perhaps they think they can remain bright and beautiful inside a different wooden home. I sweep them up to put them back outside on the ground where they, like I will someday, become part of the soil once again.

Exuberant in my messy plainness.

AI image created for this post

There is a tree beyond this world
In it’s ancient roots this song is curled
I am the fool whose life’s been spent
Between what’s said and what is meant
~Carrie Newcomer

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I’ll Sing and Joyful Be: A Greening Glory

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I rise today
in the power’s strength, invoking the Trinity
believing in threeness,
confessing the oneness,
of creation’s Creator.

I rise today
in heaven’s might,
in sun’s brightness,
in moon’s radiance,
in fire’s glory,
in lightning’s quickness,
in wind’s swiftness,
in sea’s depth,
in earth’s stability,
in rock’s fixity.

I rise today
with the power of God to pilot me,
God’s strength to sustain me,
God’s wisdom to guide me,
God’s eye to look ahead for me,
God’s ear to hear me,
God’s word to speak for me,
God’s hand to protect me,
God’s way before me,
God’s shield to defend me,
God’s host to deliver me,
from snares of devils,
from evil temptations,
from nature’s failings,
from all who wish to harm me,
far or near,
alone and in a crowd.

Around me I gather today all these powers
against every cruel and merciless force
to attack my body and soul.

May Christ protect me today
against poison and burning,
against drowning and wounding,
so that I may have abundant reward;
Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me;
Christ within me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me;
Christ to the right of me, Christ to the left of me;
Christ in my lying, Christ in my sitting, Christ in my rising;
Christ in the heart of all who think of me,
Christ on the tongue of all who speak to me,
Christ in the eye of all who see me,
Christ in the ear of all who hear me.

For to the Lord belongs
salvation,
and to the Lord belongs salvation
and to Christ belongs salvation.
May your salvation, Lord, be with us always.

—”Saint Patrick’s Breastplate,”
Old Irish, eighth-century prayer.

St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Downpatrick, Northern Ireland
St. Patrick’s grave marker, Downpatrick, Northern Ireland

Six years a slave, and then you slipped the yoke,
Till Christ recalled you, through your captors cries!
Patrick, you had the courage to turn back,
With open love to your old enemies,
Serving them now in Christ, not in their chains,
Bringing the freedom He gave you to share.
You heard the voice of Ireland, in your veins
Her passion and compassion burned like fire.

Now you rejoice amidst the three-in-one,
Refreshed in love and blessing all you knew,
Look back on us and bless us, Ireland’s son,
And plant the staff of prayer in all we do:
A gospel seed that flowers in belief,
A greening glory, coming into leaf.
~Malcolm Guite  — A St. Patrick Sonnet

St. Patrick is little remembered for his selfless missionary work in Ireland in the fifth century, but rather has become a caricature of all the drunken silliness of this day. Visiting his grave in Downpatrick, Ireland, just a humble stone on a hill top overlooking the sea, I wondered what he would make of the modern March 17.

He would advise us to be still and know.

He would plant his staff in us and all we do; we would respond by flowering up from the green.

Be still, and know that I am God…
Psalm 46:10

Be still and know that I am God.
Be still and know that I am.
Be still and know.
Be still.
Be.

St. Patrick’s Cathedral

This Lenten season I reflect on the words of the 19th century southern spiritual hymn “What Wondrous Love is This”

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A Green Sprouting Thing

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Now wind torments the field,
turning the white surface back
on itself, back and back on itself,
like an animal licking a wound.

Nothing but white–the air, the light;
only one brown milkweed pod
bobbing in the gully, smallest
brown boat on the immense tide.

A single green sprouting thing
would restore me . . .

Then think of the tall delphinium,
swaying, or the bee when it comes
to the tongue of the burgundy lily.
~Jane Kenyon “February: Thinking of Flowers”

Turning the page on the calendar last week or watching for groundhog predictions didn’t magically bring spring.  We’ve had more arctic wind and southerly blows as well. The sun has kept its face hidden behind its gray veil.

By this time of winter, I’m like a dog tormented by my own open and raw flesh, trying my best to lick it healed, unable to think of anything or anyone else, going over it again and again – how weary I feel, how bruised I am by the wind, how uprooted I feel, how impossibly long it will be until I feel warm again.

Then I see the photos from Turkey and Syria after the recent devastating series of building-shattering earthquakes leaving many dead, injured and homeless in mid-winter. I realize I truly have no idea how deep wounds can be…

Despite it all, green sprouts are trying to push up even while frozen by snow and ice. Soon fresh blooms will once again grace the barnyard and with that renewal of life and hope, I just might be distracted from my own wound-licking.

photo by Nate Gibson
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I’ll Take It

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More than the fuchsia funnels breaking out
of the crabapple tree, more than the neighbor’s
almost obscene display of cherry limbs shoving
their cotton candy-colored blossoms to the slate
sky of Spring rains, it’s the greening of the trees
that really gets to me. When all the shock of white
and taffy, the world’s baubles and trinkets, leave
the pavement strewn with the confetti of aftermath,
the leaves come. Patient, plodding, a green skin
growing over whatever winter did to us, a return
to the strange idea of continuous living despite
the mess of us, the hurt, the empty. Fine then,
I’ll take it, the tree seems to say, a new slick leaf
unfurling like a fist to an open palm, I’ll take it all.
~Ada Limón  “Instructions on Not Giving Up”

I thought I was empty – hollow and irretrievable – after such a long drawn out winter. Yet here I am, here we are, still among the living and I find I am swept away and useless to accomplish anything else except breathing. 

The landscape is exploding with layers of color and shadow and standing too close, I too am ignited.  It is impossible to witness so much unfolding life and light and not be engulfed and singed.

It lures me outside where flames of green lap about my ankles as I stroll the fields and each fresh breeze fans the fires until I’ve nothing left of myself but ash and shadow.

Consumed and subsumed.  Combusted and busted.

What a way to go.

I’ll take it. I’ll take it all.

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The Edible World

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I came downstairs for Lavina’s scones, butter-ready
from the oven, crusty and cratered, awaiting their dollop
of jam.

The morning clouds had whipped themselves up
to a billow, mounds of soft cream.

The plink plink song of a chaffinch dotted the air like currants.
Daffodils, pats of butter on thin stems, did their little dance, and the edible world spread its feast before me on the fresh green tablecloth.

Oh, how delicious, this sweet Irish spring.
~Barbara Crooker, “Morning Tea” from The Book of  Kells

Northern Ireland
Whatcom County
Northern Ireland
Home
Whatcom County
Whatcom County

It was nine years ago we visited Northern Ireland where we were surrounded by ever-delicious colors and landscape and gracious hospitality where ever we went.

As I look out at our own rolling green hills and billowy clouds of a Whatcom County springtime, I am filled as if it were all edible feast, reminded of the vibrant green of the Irish countryside, backed by the silhouettes of the nearby Mourne Mountains.

If only all the world could be blessed and tasty as fresh warm scones with jam and a pot of tea.

Mourne Mtns – Northern Ireland
Whatcom County
Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland

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The Live-Long Light

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Some of the most powerful memories of summer
come out of our childhood when we wake up on a June morning and suddenly remember that school is out
and that summer stretches in front of us
as endlessly as the infinities of space.

Everything is different.
The old routines are gone.
The relentless school bus isn’t coming.
The bells will be silent in silent hallways.

And all the world is leafy green,
and will be green,
forever and ever.
~Ray Bradbury from Summer: A Spiritual Biography of the Season

The sun is rich
And gladly pays
In golden hours,
Silver days,

And long green weeks
That never end.
School’s out. The time
Is ours to spend.

There’s Little League,
Hopscotch, the creek,
And, after supper,
Hide-and-seek.

The live-long light
Is like a dream,
and freckles come
Like flies to cream.

~John Updike “June” from A Child’s Calendar

photo by Harry Rodenberger
Photo by Harry Rodenberger

Time lurches ahead in imprecisely measured chunks. 

Sometimes the beginning and ending of seasons are the yardstick,  or the celebration of a holiday or a birthday.  Memories tend to be stickiest surrounding a milestone event: a graduation, a move, a wedding, a birth, a road trip, a funeral.

But Summer needs nothing so remarkable to be memorable. It simply stands on its own in all its extravagant abundance of light and warmth and growth and color stretching deep within the rising and setting horizons.  Each long day can feel like it must last forever, never ending.

Yet summer does eventually wind down, spin itself out, darkening gradually into the shadow dusk of autumn and the night of winter. 

I always let go of summer with reluctance, feeling as if no summer like it will ever come again.

Yet another will, somehow, somewhere, someday.  Surely a never-ending summer is what heaven itself will be.

Perfectly delightful and delightfully perfect. 

We’ve already had a taste.

A new book from Barnstorming is available to order here:

Moss Balm For Misunderstanding

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There is an ancient conversation going on between mosses and rocks, poetry to be sure. About light and shadow and the drift of continents. This is what has been called the “dialect of moss on stone – an interface of immensity and minuteness, of past and present, softness and hardness, stillness and vibrancy…

Learning to see mosses is more like listening than looking.
A cursory glance will not do it.
Mosses are not elevator music;
they are the intertwined threads of a Beethoven quartet.
~Robin Kimmerer from Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses

Most lie low, flourishing with damp,
harvesting sunlight, no commotion, moss
mouse-silent, even through wind and hail,
stoic through motors roaring fumes,
through fat-clawed bears grubbing.

They can soothe the knife-edges of stones
with frothy leaf by leaf of gray-green life,
and burned-ground mosses cover destruction,
charred stumps, trees felled and blackened.
Cosmopolitan mosses likewise salve
sidewalk cracks, crumbling walls.

They root in thin alpine air, on sedentary
sand dunes, cling to cliff seeps beneath
spilling springs. For rest, they make mats
on streamside banks, for pleasure produce silky
tufts, wavy brooms of themselves in woodlands
for beauty, red roof moss for whim, elf
cap, hair cap, sphagnum for nurturing.

I believe they could comfort the world
with their ministries. That is my hope,
even though this world be a jagged rock,
even though this rock be an icy berg of blue
or a mirage of summer misunderstood
(moss balm for misunderstanding),
even though this world be blind and awry
and adrift, scattering souls like spores
through the deep of a starlit sea.
~Pattiann Rogers from “The Moss Method”

In this part of the world, mosses are everywhere. They are so much a part of the green backdrop, they become invisible as part of the scenery. Our lawn is mostly moss carpet in some spots, and many shingles on roofs sprout verdant fuzz.

Trees and rocks are festooned with moss: draped, painted and garlanded. Moss rugs make bare-foot tree climbing a more comfy adventure with branches forming hairy armpits and cushiony crotches.

Moss is softens our sharp edges, it forgives our abrasive surfaces, it heals the wounds and gaps and cracks. It becomes balm-like therapy for a struggling world baring its teeth in anger and misunderstanding.

I say let it grow: green, gentle, generous and grace-filled.
We all can use more of that.

All Things Glad and Flourishing

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Spring flew swiftly by, and summer came;
and if the village had been beautiful at first,
it was now in the full glow and luxuriance of its richness.
The great trees, which had looked shrunken and bare in the earlier months, had now burst into strong life and health;
and stretching forth their green arms over the thirsty ground,
converted open and naked spots into choice nooks,
where was a deep and pleasant shade
from which to look upon the wide prospect,
steeped in sunshine, which lay stretched out beyond.
The earth had donned her mantle of brightest green;
and shed her richest perfumes abroad.
It was the prime and vigour of the year;
all things were glad and flourishing.”
~ Charles Dickens from Oliver Twist 

Despite a pandemic,
despite economic hardship,
despite racial tensions and in-the-street protests,
despite political maneuvering and posturing:

life is green and flourishing and vigorous
even when we feel gray and withered and weakened.

May we not forget why we are here.
May we never forget our calling and purpose
to steward the earth and care for one another.

Abundant Overwhelming June

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I wonder what it would be like to live in a world
where it was always June.
~L. M. Montgomery from Anne of the Island

Each month is special in its own way:  I tend to favor April and October for how the light plays on the landscape during transitional times — a residual of what has been, with a hint of what lies ahead.

Then there is June.  Dear, gentle, abundant and overwhelming June.  Nothing is dried up, there is such a rich feeling of ascension into lushness of summer with an “out of school” attitude, even if one has graduated long ago.

And the light, and the birdsong and the dew and the greens — such vivid verdant greens.

As lovely as June is, 30 days is more than plenty or I would become completely saturated. Then I can be released from my sated stupor to wistfully hunger for June for 335 more.